Co-Founder & Managing Partner at Launch Africa Ventures · Joined 2020
View Live Interactive Profile →Zachariah George spent nearly a decade in Wall Street M&A at Lehman Brothers and Barclays before a trip to South Africa for the 2010 World Cup turned into a permanent relocation once he recognized how underdeveloped the continent's tech ecosystem was. He built the Tech Lab Africa accelerator with Barclays, later sold to Techstars, and co-founded Startupbootcamp AfriTech, becoming an active angel investor with stakes in more than 50 African startups including Flutterwave, KudaBank, Mono, and Yoco along the way. Recognizing a persistent funding gap for companies emerging from accelerators at the pre-Series A stage, he co-founded Launch Africa Ventures in 2020 with Janade du Plessis, then head of venture capital at Nedbank, raising an oversubscribed $36 million debut fund from 238 retail and institutional investors across 40 countries - notably without a single development finance institution among them. George has since grown Launch Africa into the continent's most active early-stage VC fund, backing more than 180 startups across 25 countries, and has been featured on the covers of Fast Company, Destiny Man, and Forbes.