OUR TEAM
We are a team of tech founders, fintech experts and venture capitalists, passionate about creating positive change with tech.
Our Investment Team are based in two offices on the continent, Casablanca, Morocco and Kampala, Uganda.
Selma is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of First Circle Capital. Selma combines a powerful mix of entrepreneurial, investment and corporate experience and is recognized as veteran of the African fintech industry. She has been in African fintech since 2012, first as an M-Pesa executive, then as an entrepreneur where she founded, scaled and sold a fintech business, and since 2015 she has been investing in fintech. Notable investments include Qonto, Expensya, Dash, Bamboo, THNDR. INSEAD Alumna now based in Casablanca Morocco.
Agnes is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of First Circle Capital. Agnes has legal training by background, and has led a life of a serial entrepreneur in emerging markets, seed investor and a super networker. Before settling in Uganda four years ago with her tech business, Agnes built businesses in Jordan and the Ukraine, focused on employing local women. Agnes is a WEF Global Shaper and was selected for Forbes 30 under 30 outstanding individuals in 2022.
Ming heads Portfolio Management and is part of the investment team at First Circle Capital. She has 15 years of experience in the tech industry, notably spending 7 years at Lazada, from its earliest days all the way to exit to Alibaba for $3.5bn. Ming is a very strong operator, having built and scaled the operations internally for this complex marketplace in Southeast Asia. Upon moving to Morocco she was a CEO of one of the first fintechs in the country. INSEAD alumna, Ming is based in First Circle's Casablanca office.
Rob is a Senior Associate leading on investments, fund operations and reporting at First Circle Capital. Rob started his career in strategy consulting with Strategy& in London, before working in strategy and operations roles at One Acre Fund in Kenya. He co-founded and scaled a healthtech startup in Tanzania. Rob has a deep network in East Africa and is fluent in Swahili. He has an MBA from LSE and an MSc from LSE. Now based in Kampala, Uganda.
Ziad Mokhtar is a Founding Partner of Algebra Ventures and CEO of Expeditions.tech. He is a the leading Venture Capital investors who has shaped tech investment in Egypt over the last 13 years. He started at Ideavelopers in 2010, where his investments included fawry (acquired), siware, and vezeeta (exited) among others. He then cofounded and led Algebra Ventures, where Investments include MNT-Halan, Dsquares, elmenus, Khazna, trella, Yodawy, Lucky, Eventtus (acquired), Posrocket (acquired), and Shift EV. Ziad has recently established his own technology company, Expeditions.tech a venture studio launching innovative tech products. He is a McKinsey and Stanford MBA alumni.
Amal is the Chief Investment Officer of the American University in Cairo’s Endowment. She is a Partner at 500 Global, a Senior Advisor on COP27 to the World Resources Institute, and founder of The Lotus Collective, an organization supporting access to finance for women and climate solution for sustainable and inclusive growth. She holds an MBA degree from Harvard Business School, a MELI fellowship at the Aspen Institute, and is a Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum.
Samantha brings a mix of corporate, start up and academic experience, and is a recognised thought-leader in the fintech industry. She spent 10 years as Partner at Anthemis, a leading fintech VC investor in USA and Europe. In 2019, she became Co-CEO of SingLife, the leading insurtech in South east Asia. She led the company to an exit through a trade sale in Dec 2020. The $3.2B transaction is one of the largest in the insurtech industry. Most recently she founded Habitto, an insurtech business in Japan.
Our venture partners are ecosystem insiders, experienced entrepreneurs and investors.
VPs source early investment opportunities and provide valuable input in DD process.
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