P1 Ventures, the Pan-African Seed VC fund combining local market knowledge, a global track record and AI to unlock the continent’s huge and largely untapped potential has completed the first $25 million close of its second fund.
Founded in 2020, P1 Ventures is a high-conviction investor that intentionally focuses on a small number of exceptional African founders and companies building transformational software businesses with regional and global potential. P1 Ventures works alongside the visionary founders it invests in across fintech, e-commerce, healthtech, SaaS and AI. With a local-global approach, P1 leverages decades of experience operating and investing in African markets, supporting ambitious startups with global multi-stage and sector experience and its networks across the US, Europe and Asia.
Founder and general partner Mikael Hajjar is an engineer and Stanford MBA graduate who has held leadership roles at Fortune 500 technology companies Areva, Google and Zum. He started angel investing in Africa in 2014 and learned his craft from the “Elon Musk of China,” William Li.
Co-founder and general partner Hisham Halbouny previously served as a Partner at Man Capital, an early investor in Uber, Airbnb, and Bolt, and has built and scaled businesses across Africa, Nigeria, Kenya and Egypt. Prior to that, he was Managing Director at EFG Hermes, the region’s largest investment bank.
P1’s advisory committee comprises investors and operators who have made a global impact with investments, including Bernard Dalle, a founding team member of Index Ventures, and Emil Michael, the former Chief Business Officer at Uber.
Mikael Hajjar said “As far I know, I’m the first Mauritanian who’s ever launched a fund. Coming from a relatively small economy inspires us at P1 Ventures to go off the beaten path and back the underdogs. We love ambitious African founders who build products and services addressing a regional, if not global, customer base. Combining our deep local knowledge, our strong data orientation and our experience as investors, we can identify unique opportunities and help entrepreneurs become global winners.”
Hisham Halbouny added “Every globally minded asset allocator has been actively seeking exposure to the continent. We’ve witnessed similar inflexion points in other regions, such as Europe and Latin America, where leading VC firms like Index and Kaszek Ventures have emerged.”
Since its launch, P1 Ventures has invested in 29 early-stage companies across 10 countries including Money Fellows in Egypt, and Reliance Health in Nigeria where P1 has a presence. The firm’s inaugural investment was in Yassir in Algeria – a super-app operating in Francophone Africa. Yassir recently announced the closing of $150 million in a Series B funding round. More recently, P1 Ventures led the Seed round of Gameball, a software company gamifying loyalty and customer retention with an international client base across 70 countries.
