Founded in 2020 and headquartered in San Francisco, P1 Ventures is an active early-stage venture capital firm investing exclusively across Africa. With a lean team, the firm targets pre-seed and seed rounds in fintech, healthtech, e-commerce marketplaces, software, and AI. Typical initial checks range from $100,000 to $1 million, reflecting a strategy designed to catalyze company formation and help founders move from zero to one. P1 Ventures currently manages two funds, including a first institutional Fund II closed at $50 million, and counts roughly 30 portfolio companies across multiple African markets.
Investment Thesis: Backing Talent Where Capital Is Scarce
P1 Ventures’ core belief is straightforward: entrepreneurial talent is more widely distributed across the continent than venture capital. The firm aims to close that gap by partnering closely with founders at the earliest stages, providing capital and hands-on company-building support. The team points to portfolio-wide outcomes as validation—on average, every dollar invested by P1 Ventures has attracted 35x in follow-on capital—alongside tangible, market-level traction such as $248 million in consumer loans disbursed by companies in its orbit. That combination of catalytic capital and compounding follow-on interest underpins the firm’s conviction in Africa’s venture opportunity.
The Team: Operator-Investor DNA
P1 Ventures is led by Managing Partners Mikael Hajjar and Hisham Halbouny, whose experiences straddle operating, venture building, and high-stakes finance. Hajjar—a Berkeley engineer and Stanford MBA—transitioned from business operator to investor after launching products and scaling ventures across the U.S., South Africa, China, and France. Born in Dakar and raised in Nouakchott, he credits a multigenerational West African entrepreneurial upbringing for his empathy for founders. Halbouny brings a complementary track record in private markets and investment banking. As a partner at Man Capital, he spearheaded a global private investments platform with stakes in leading technology companies and helped launch high-growth ventures spanning Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya, the U.S., and India. Previously a Managing Director at EFG Hermes, he advised on more than $10 billion in M&A, IPOs, and debt transactions across the Middle East and Africa. The leadership bench is rounded out by venture partners Nada Abdelnour and Ijeoma Arum and operations director Selva Govinden.
Portfolio Footprint and Early Outcomes
In just a few years, P1 Ventures has assembled a portfolio of approximately 30 companies across the continent, with one exit to date (Traction App). Notable names include Raenset, Mnzl, Salus, and Chari, startups that align with the firm’s focus on financial inclusion, healthcare delivery, marketplace efficiency, and software infrastructure. The breadth of this portfolio reflects a thesis that Africa’s most compelling venture-scale opportunities often sit at the intersection of critical services and technology rails, where early capital can unlock step-change improvements in access and affordability.
Recent Moves: New Fund, Fresh Cheques
The firm’s momentum is underscored by two recent milestones. First, P1 Ventures closed its inaugural institutional fund at $50 million, backed by anchor and strategic investors including the International Finance Corporation, Egyptian entrepreneur Mohamed Mansour, Axian Group, and partners from Andreessen Horowitz and Index Ventures. Second, the firm led a $400,000 pre-seed round for MoneyBadger, a South African crypto payments provider best known as the company behind Pick n Pay’s nationwide Bitcoin payment system. The deal illustrates P1’s appetite for infrastructure-grade fintech plays that extend modern payment experiences to mainstream retail.
With a compact team and a clear mandate, P1 Ventures has positioned itself as a high-conviction partner to Africa’s earliest-stage founders. Its check sizes are calibrated for speed and company formation, while its hands-on approach and global networks aim to accelerate traction and unlock meaningful follow-on capital. Backed by a $50 million institutional fund and a portfolio already showing both scale and liquidity events, the firm’s thesis has moved from narrative to numbers. For founders building in fintech, health, marketplaces, software, and AI across the continent, P1 Ventures is signaling it intends to be on the ground floor of Africa’s next generation of category leaders.