Hey {{first_name|default:there}}, it’s Vadim 👋
When you’re building something new, it’s tempting to believe it’s never been done before.
Sometimes that’s true. But more often, the business model you need has already worked somewhere else, just in a different market, for a different customer, or at a different time.
Eunice Ajim, Founding Partner of Ajim Capital, has turned that idea into an investment strategy.
Before she ever wrote a check, Eunice built her own companies and experienced the ups and downs of entrepreneurship firsthand.
Her first startup, an AI talent marketplace she launched in 2017, ran out of money, and she ended up homeless, sleeping in her car and in coffee shops while she kept showing up to meetings.
Today she backs pre-seed and seed founders across Africa, is deploying her second fund, and was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in venture capital this year.
A personal note: many readers may not know this, but over a decade ago I spent several years on the ground across Eastern and Southern Africa with a major global health organization, working with partners like the Gates Foundation, USAID, the UN, the WHO, and ministries of health. I worked to expand access to HIV and malaria medicines and led a few mHealth pilots with local health systems (who remembers mHealth? 🙂).
That work was a big reason why I pivoted my career from finance into healthcare, and into my first work with startups: I saw they could deliver innovation faster, and sometimes better, than large multinationals. People were paying with their phones years before Apple Pay launched in the U.S., and the cities were full of young entrepreneurs.
I’ve been bullish ever since, so when I came across Eunice’s work backing early-stage founders in the region, it was a no-brainer.
We sat down in New York during UN General Assembly week, the day after her Ajim Summit brought LPs, fund managers, and founders together to take a serious look at what’s being built and financed across Africa. I was in the room, and the caliber of people there was something else.
Here’s what we covered with Eunice:
Her path from working at Apple to losing everything, to launching a VC fund, and the lessons she learned along the way
Why “Africa does not need to reinvent the wheel,” and how she maps business models that have worked elsewhere
Why founders who copy-paste a Silicon Valley playbook into Africa often fail
Healthcare: who actually pays, and why a great idea can still struggle with adoption
The fund math every founder should understand before they pitch
How to build trust with investors long before you ask for money
You can watch the full interview or listen via your podcast platform of choice below.
Listen + subscribe: Spotify / Apple Podcasts / YouTube
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In case we haven't met: when I'm not writing this newsletter, I run Bench2Bio, my advisory firm for life science founders. My team and I help you raise capital, model and value your assets, and land pharma partnerships.
Before a raise, that often means taking your deck, website, and other fundraising materials off your plate, from first draft to finished product, and pressure-testing your story before investors see it.
JPM is about three months out, or closer to ten working weeks once the holidays take their cut. If your materials would benefit from a second pair of eyes before then, let's talk.