How Nigerian billionaire Tunde Folawiyo's firm got into Paystack and Flutterwave early

Nigerian billionaire Tunde Folawiyo, chairman of the Yinka Folawiyo Group, has quietly become one of the most active backers of African technology through Pave Investments, a multi-family office that bought into payments companies Paystack and Flutterwave when each was worth only a few million dollars.

Pave invested in Flutterwave at a valuation of about $2.5 million and in Paystack at about $5 million, the firm's partners have said. It has since sold out of both. Stripe Inc. bought Paystack in 2020 for more than $200 million, and Flutterwave was later valued at $3 billion.

The firm got in early by writing small checks into companies that had little more than a founding team, leaning on a network that ran through Silicon Valley's best-known startup accelerator, and on the backing of a family whose name opened doors in Lagos boardrooms.

A Bain mentorship and two families

Pave started with two consultants. Kwamena Afful, a Ghanaian lawyer with degrees in law and in finance from the University of Sydney, worked for the Australian law firm Allens before joining Bain & Co. in Sydney in 2009. He later moved to Bain's new Johannesburg office, where in 2012 he was assigned to mentor Sayo Folawiyo, Tunde Folawiyo's son, who had joined the firm straight out of university.

Both men came from business families and wanted to build technology companies. Afful left Bain and began making angel investments with his own money. Sayo Folawiyo left in 2014, and the two put more capital behind their deals under the Pave name that year.

"We lived off of our savings and didn't take a salary for the first eight years," Afful said in 2022.

Pave is backed by two West African families. Tunde Folawiyo is chairman, and the founding partners are Sayo Folawiyo, Kweku Afful and Kwamena Afful, who runs the firm as managing director. The elder Folawiyo gave the young investors something they could not buy.

"His backing and involvement formalized the access we were looking for, to incumbent industries," Afful said, describing the chairman as someone who is "really good about backing younger people."

The Paystack and Flutterwave bets

The early checks went into payments, the part of Nigerian tech that was growing fastest. Paystack, founded by Shola Akinlade and Ezra Olubi, became the first Nigerian startup to go through Silicon Valley accelerator Y Combinator in 2016. In December that year it closed a $1.3 million seed round backed by Chinese technology group Tencent Holdings, Comcast Ventures and Singularity Investments. Pave took part alongside Y Combinator partner Michael Seibel and Twitch co-founder Justin Kan.

Seibel became an important ally. He told Afful to "stop complaining and invest earlier," advice that led Afful to set up a dedicated fund for the earliest stage of startups.

Stripe led an $8 million Series A in Paystack in 2018, with Visa also taking part. In October 2020, Stripe agreed to buy the company outright for more than $200 million, the largest acquisition of a Nigerian startup at the time. Paystack then served about 60,000 businesses in Nigeria and Ghana. The sale price was roughly 40 times the valuation at which Pave invested, before dilution from later rounds.

Pave kept a stake in the story by buying into Stripe, which is now one of its direct holdings.

Flutterwave, which stayed independent, grew far larger than Paystack. It was valued at $3 billion in February 2022 after a $250 million Series D, making it one of Africa's most valuable private technology firms. Pave has not said when it sold its Flutterwave shares or for how much.

More than 100 deals

Paystack and Flutterwave are the best known of more than 100 investments Pave has made since 2014, directly and through funds it helped start.

To write early checks faster, it co-founded Microtraction, a Lagos-based pre-seed investor, with Nigerian entrepreneur Yele Bademosi in 2017. Seibel invested in both Microtraction funds. The firm announced a $15 million first close of its second vehicle, the Community Fund, in August 2022, and its portfolio includes genomics company 54gene and savings app Cowrywise. Afful also co-founded Magic Fund, a founder-led early-stage fund launched in 2018.

Pave is a founding investor in Microtraction and Magic Fund, as well as Lagos-based Future Africa, Dakar-based Wuri Ventures, crypto investor Volt Capital, Alcent Capital and Pendulum Holdings, a Los Angeles platform that backs founders of color.

Its crypto bets run through Bademosi, a former director of Binance Labs. Pave backed Bundle Africa, Bademosi's Binance-supported cash and crypto payments app, in a $450,000 round in September 2019, and helped him build Nestcoin, a Web3 company that raised $6.45 million in February 2022 from investors including Serena Williams' Serena Ventures. It has also built Muva Networks, an over-the-counter crypto trading desk, and Peswa, a credit platform, with their founders.

Its current direct stakes reach well beyond Africa. Alongside Stripe, Pave owns shares in men's health company Roman, ticket marketplace StubHub, digital lending platform Blend, basketball training app HomeCourt, child online safety startup L1ght, creator platform Humanz, webtoon studio Raptures, esports company Unanimous Games, betting platform Blackbet and Kenya's MarketForce, a business-to-business app for informal retailers.

Sport is the firm's other big bet. In May 2021, the National Basketball Association formed NBA Africa, which owns the Basketball Africa League, and named two strategic investors: Helios Fairfax Partners and a consortium led by Tunde Folawiyo. Former NBA players Dikembe Mutombo, Luol Deng, Grant Hill and Joakim Noah also invested. Folawiyo sits on the NBA Africa board.

In February 2025, Pave bought into San Diego FC, Major League Soccer's newest club, which is chaired by Egyptian billionaire Mohamed Mansour. Pave brought in co-investors including former Manchester United midfielder Juan Mata, actress Issa Rae and Nigerian singer Tems. The terms were not disclosed.

"At the core of what we do at Pave is to invest in talent," Folawiyo said at the time.

The firm also backs The Uprise, a program founded by former New York Giants defensive end Osi Umenyiora to scout and train African players for the National Football League.

An oil and banking empire

Folawiyo's own business predates Nigerian tech by decades. His father, Wahab Iyanda Folawiyo, a Lagos businessman and Muslim leader who held the title Baba Adinni of Nigeria, founded Yinka Folawiyo & Sons in 1957. It grew into the Yinka Folawiyo Group, with interests in energy, agriculture, shipping, real estate and engineering. Tunde Folawiyo took over after his father died in June 2008.

The group's main oil asset is the Aje field on Oil Mining Lease 113, off the coast of Lagos. Yinka Folawiyo Petroleum was awarded the acreage in 1991 and operates it. Aje began producing in 2016, making Lagos an oil-producing state. Norwegian company PetroNor E&P has been a partner in the field since 2019.

Folawiyo has held some of the most prominent board seats in Nigerian business. He was a non-executive director of MTN Nigeria, the country's largest mobile operator, from 2001 to 2019, and spent 12 years on the board of Access Bank after leading Marina International Bank into a merger with the lender during Nigeria's 2005 bank consolidation. He chairs Coronation Merchant Bank and fuel retailer Enyo Retail & Supply.

He studied at the London School of Economics and University College London, was called to the bar in England and Wales in 1985, and practiced law in Nigeria before joining the family business in 1989.