Nigerian venture capitalist Adeyemi Ajao named to Forbes Midas List

Nigerian venture capitalist Adeyemi Ajao, the co-founder of Base10 Partners, has been named to the prestigious Forbes Midas List, the annual ranking of the world’s top 100 venture capitalists, making him the first-ever black investor to make it to the list.

The Forbes Midas list ranks the most influential and best-performing venture capital investors annually. It identifies the venture capitalists generating exceptional returns for their investors while helping create the most impactful and valuable companies. Kara Swisher has described it as the “Oscars for venture capitalists in tech.”

Ajao, 40, is ranked number 96 on the list. He serves as the managing partner of Base10 Partners, the first Black-led venture capital firm to reach $1 billion in assets under management.

The son of a Nigerian father and Spanish mother, Ajao moved from Lagos to southern Spain at age eight and taught himself to code in high school.

The Stanford grad and McKinsey alumni co-founded Spanish mobile virtual network operator Tuenti in 2005 while he was an undergraduate student in Madrid and eventually sold it to Telefonica for $100 million. Other companies he co-founded include the on-demand staffing marketplace Jobandtalent and Identified, which was acquired by Workday in 2014.

In 2017, seven years after he completed his Stanford MBA, he founded Base10 Partners, a venture capital firm that aims to invest in automation for the real economy. He is an investor in neobank Nubank, design software maker Figma, Colombian e-commerce app Rappi, and grocery delivery service Instacart.