Mikael Hajjar

Managing Partner

Mika is a business operator turned investor. He launched new products and scaled up ventures at early stage startups and Fortune 500 companies in the U.S., South Africa, China & France. He was born in Dakar, Senegal and raised in Nouakchott, Mauritania. He grew empathy and inspiration for founders from a young age coming from an entrepreneurial family as his parents and grandparents built businesses in West Africa for the past decades. He is a Berkeley engineer and Stanford MBA graduate.

Mika loves running and regularly goes on 10+ miles runs. He has been preparing for his first marathon for too long and plans to complete it in less than 3.5 hour. He also loves sleeping - he prides himself in taking impromptu naps at any point in the day and anywhere including on bumpy safari roads.

Hisham Halbouny

Managing Partner

Hisham is an investor, venture builder and a former investment banker. As a Partner at Man Capital, he spearheaded the global private markets investment platform that includes some of the most notable technology companies such as Uber, Bolt, Airbnb and Fairmarkit. He launched and has been on the board of several high growth companies in Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya, US, and India.

Prior to that he was a Managing Director at EFG Hermes where he advised on $10+B worth of M&A, IPOs and debt transactions across Middle East and Africa region.

Hesham is born and raised in Egypt. He may claim he isn’t a die-hard national soccer fan but would always ask for a break every time Egypt is defeated in international soccer competition.

Nada Abdelnour

Venture Partner

Nada has over 15 years of experience driving go-to-market strategies and monetization at startups across both seed and scale-up stages. She led product marketing roles at Yahoo, iZettle (acquired by PayPal) and Yoco. 

Most recently, Nada co-founded Axis, a neobank for small businesses and solopreneurs in Egypt.

Nada holds an undergraduate degree in International Economics from Georgetown University and an MBA from INSEAD.

Ijeoma
Arum

Venture Partner

Ijeoma is a Nigerian American originally from Oakland, California who currently resides in Lagos.
She is the Chief Commercial Officer at Jumia Nigeria and has been in commerce 14+ years with prior roles at Google, Nike, and Target focused on improving operational efficiency, identifying consumer insights, and capturing market opportunities. She received her BA from UCLA and MBA from Columbia University.

Ijeoma is excited about the innovation coming out of Africa that will make people’s lives easier and look forward to getting connected with startups that aim to change the world.

Selva Govinden

Ops Director

Selva has over 15 years of experience in finance operations and fund management. Prior to joining P1 Ventures, he served for eight years as the Head of Operations at Savannah Fund. Selva loves working closely with African startup founders and support them reconcile and balance financial statements with operation growth.

Selva is an avid nature and outdoors enthusiast who loves hiking. Selva is from Mauritius - not to be confused with Mauritania!

Melody Ama

Investor

Melody was born in Nigeria and graduated from the London School of Economics. She was previously an investment banker in J.P. Morgan’s London office, working on M&A for financial institutions. She enjoys hiking, and is working towards climbing Kilimanjaro.

Bernard
Dalle

Senior Advisor

Bernard grew up in Morocco and co-founded Index Ventures in 1997 that he helped scale up to $20+B AUM. He led 20+ investments including Mimecast, one of the first African unicorns. He was previously in consulting at McKinsey and in product at P&G. He is an EFPL graduate engineer and a Kellogg MBA.

Emil
Michael

Senior Advisor

Emil is Egyptian and was Chief Business Officer at Uber, where he led the company through a period of exponential growth raising $15+B in 30 months and expanding to more than 80 countries in all continents. Emil is a graduate of Harvard College and Stanford Law School.

We’re growing our team and adding at least one investment professional:

Must-have attributes:

  • Built strong professional and/or personal network in Francophone Africa, Nigeria and/or Kenya to originate and source investment opportunities in software and technology-enabled start-ups

  • Possess rigorous investment assessment skills (incl. develop a thesis, write an investment memo, negotiate deal terms, conduct due diligence, complete reference calls)

  • Acquired robust operational skills in order to lead and build processes and tools (e.g. procedure, document templates, dashboard...) to track portfolio companies’ updates and investments’ performance

Bonus attributes:

  • Already built a track record as a tech founder, investor, advisor, and/or operator at a start-up that fundraised at least $2m.

  • Former role as an operator (e.g. growth, product, sales, talent) in a fast-growing startup in a specific sector or business model (e.g. AI, SaaS, marketplace, payment or blockchain).

  • Speak fluent more than English: Swahili, French, Arabic, and/or other African languages

For questions or interest, please reach out to Mika Hajjar at m@p1.ventures.

“If you want to go fast, go alone.
If you want to go far, go together”

— Old African Proverb