The Counder Podcast

Pioneering African Venture Capital From the Ground Up

with Brian Waswani Odhiambo

When he joined, his fund's first $80 million was nearly half of all the venture capital that existed on the entire African continent. Eleven years later, Novastar manages close to $350 million and Brian Waswani Odhiambo has spent his career building the asset class from the ground up. Brian Waswani Odhiambo joins Tobi to trace Novastar Ventures' journey from a handful of people with almost no ecosystem around them to one of Africa's largest venture funds — backing Moniepoint's rise from 3,000 customers to roughly 20 million, and building an electric-mobility portfolio spanning battery-swap networks, ride-hailing fleets, and East Africa's largest electric bus operator. They talk through Novastar's thesis of investing where commercial return and social impact intersect, why he thinks the American venture model built for five-year exits doesn't fit a continent where funds typically take 16 to 20 years to mature, and the $150 million fund he just closed to prove it can still work. Brian's conviction: the biggest misconception about venture investing in Africa isn't that the opportunity is small — it's that people assume there's no money to be made at all, when the data proving otherwise simply hasn't caught up yet.