👨🏿‍🚀TechCabal Daily – Lori’s discounted ride

Globally, angel investors often have a hard time investing in startups. But, by only investing in sectors where angels have experience and helping the startup hit its revenue milestones, angels are more likely to get returns on their investment, according to Fisayo Durojaye, an angel investor in Shuttlers, Home Depot and Oneport 365.

Why should you listen to Durojaye? Well, he has exited from Oneport, worked as a VC for 4 years at Echo VC, and was investment director at Lagos-based WAEV Capital, while also running a VC course that has spun investors at Lofty Inc., Seven VC and Kuramo Capital.

Before all this, he was an investment banker , a career he left behind because he did not find it fulfilling. He found that fulfilment in VC after Lifebank, a portfolio startup at Echo VC, provided the blood his wife needed for the birth of their child.

Perhaps the most important thing from Durojaye’s conversation with TechCabal’s Muktar Oladunmade was the need for local context in startup investing. That local context helped Durojaye invest in Shuttlers and dodge an investment opportunity in a startup that relied too heavily on partnerships with governments for subscription-based emergency services. When investing outside Nigeria, he defers to local VCs who understand that terrain.

Durojaye is also adamant that the next generation of funds must perform, or they won’t raise again, implying this fund cycle is a make-or-break cycle. If you ask him, liquidity is the holy grail for investing, and without exits or secondaries, capital won’t recycle. He also believes the ecosystem must include non-VC capital for businesses that don’t scale like tech—SMEs, manufacturing, healthcare, etc.

Not one to pass up on an opportunity to share his deep scepticism of startups with high burn and no path to profit, he critiqued African startups that claim tech efficiency but burn like traditional businesses. He also insists on revenue-based modelling, EBITDA, and price discipline, not GMV or valuation inflation as an investor.

You can read this week’s episode of Ask an Investor here.