OUR TEAM
We are a team of tech founders, fintech experts and venture capitalists, passionate about creating positive change with tech.
Selma is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of First Circle Capital. Selma combines a powerful mix of entrepreneurial, investment and corporate experience and is recognized as veteran of the African fintech industry. She has been in African fintech since 2012, first as an M-Pesa executive, then as an entrepreneur where she founded, scaled and sold a fintech business, and since 2015 she has been investing in fintech. Notable investments include Qonto, Expensya, Dash, Bamboo, THNDR. INSEAD Alumna now based in Casablanca Morocco.
Agnes is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of First Circle Capital. Agnes has legal training by background, and has led a life of a serial entrepreneur in emerging markets, seed investor and a super networker. Before settling in Uganda four years ago with her tech business, Agnes built businesses in Jordan and the Ukraine, focused on employing local women. Agnes is a WEF Global Shaper and was selected for Forbes 30 under 30 outstanding individuals in 2022.
Ming heads Portfolio Management and is part of the investment team at First Circle Capital. She has 15 years of experience in the tech industry, notably spending 7 years at Lazada, from its earliest days all the way to exit to Alibaba for $3.5bn. Ming is a very strong operator, having built and scaled the operations internally for this complex marketplace in Southeast Asia. Upon moving to Morocco she was a CEO of one of the first fintechs in the country. INSEAD alumna, Ming is based in First Circle's Casablanca office.
Rob is an Investment Principal & Head of Operations with First Circle Capital. After starting his career in PE transaction advisory and strategy consulting in the UK, he moved to East Africa and has spent the last ten years working in financial services and technology businesses in the region. He was COO of a data analytics business in Tanzania for a number of years before joining First Circle. He holds an MSc from LSE and an MBA from LBS. He is based in our Uganda office, in Kampala.
Zach Hokfelt is a Swiss-qualified lawyer and notary public with experience across corporate law, corporate finance, and strategic advisory. He has advised multinational corporates on cross-border disputes and regulatory investigations, led governance, ESG, and investment framework workstreams in-house, and advised founders and investors on equity and debt financings, secondaries, and M&A. He also brings perspective from private banking and strategic consulting roles focused on restructurings and transaction execution.
Prosper supports across dealflow, investment assessment, portfolio management, and fund operations. He began his career in risk advisory before transitioning to management consulting and transaction advisory where he worked on diverse projects for different stakeholders (SMEs, startups, DFIs, and PE/VC investors). He has experience in providing investment readiness support to startups and a keen interest in channelling capital to businesses with the potential to scale and have a significant impact in Africa.
Jack is a seasoned entrepreneur and investor who has spent two decades building conscious companies. He currently serves as an Advisor to Capria, a global venture capital firm specialized in emerging markets, where he was previously a co-founder and Partner. Jack’s efforts led to the growth of Capria’s active fund manager network from $0 AUM to over $1B AUM with direct and indirect investments spanning more than 40 countries. Currently he serves as President of Revoluity LLC, a boutique advisory firm he recently founded that works with emerging managers and early-stage entrepreneurs.
Paola has spent 25+ years in fund-of-funds investment, including 24 years at the European Investment Bank, where she developed initiatives like Boost Africa (a joint initiative between the European Investment Bank, the African for Development Bank and the European Commission focusing on supporting the nascent African Venture Capital industry through fund of funds investments and capacity building programmes for first time fund managers) and retired as a Senior Investment Officer. Post-retirement, she advises global fund managers and works with the International Climate Finance Accelerator, ANAVA, the IFC, and Avanz Capital Egypt.
Samantha brings a mix of corporate, start up and academic experience, and is a recognised thought-leader in the fintech industry. She spent 10 years as Partner at Anthemis, a leading fintech VC investor in USA and Europe. In 2019, she became Co-CEO of SingLife, the leading insurtech in South east Asia. She led the company to an exit through a trade sale in Dec 2020. The $3.2B transaction is one of the largest in the insurtech industry. Most recently she founded Habitto, an insurtech business in Japan.
Andi Dervishi is the former Chief Investment Officer & Global Head, Fintech, ePayments and New Finance at IFC. While with IFC he has been investing around the world and built and managed a portfolio of over 80 Fintech companies in over 28 countries. He is a thematic investor that identifies long term trends and helps entrepreneurs build the company and strategy accordingly, handle regulatory issues and define growth or exit paths.
Our venture partners are ecosystem insiders, experienced entrepreneurs and investors.
VPs source early investment opportunities and provide valuable input in DD process.
.png){kind=small}
.png){kind=small}
.png){kind=small}
.png){kind=small}
