Investing in Nigerian Startups — The Lagos Angels Network (LAN) Story

The Lagos Angel Network (LAN) was borne out of a need to professionalize the early stage investment process for its founders who had all been using personal experience and expertise for years. We had been individually investing in family members, friends, and members of the public by introduction with inconsistent results and all shared that feeling of “there must be a better way”. We simultaneously discovered that Angel investing enables the professionalization of seed and early stage investment processes and through training, could facilitate deal making in a syndicated manner and assist us with the management of our investment portfolios. While there have always been investment guidelines, regulations and policies in Nigeria provided by various ministries, agencies and departments there are no policies that specifically addresses angel investing as an asset class.

The network started in 2012 with 5 Business Angels and host of supporting organisations including Paradigm Initiative Nigeria, CCHub, Wennovation Hub, the World Bank InfoDev, KC Lions, Nokia, Digital Bridge Academy, Mobile Monday and quite a few others. Our expectation being that coming together as a network would create better returns on individual investor’s funds while also enabling us to have an impact on the Lagos early stage entrepreneurial ecosystem to…