An innovation practice built by operators. We sit inside the work — writing briefs, running experiments, shipping the MVP — and leave the systems behind for your team to keep running.
Launching and scaling in African and other emerging markets means navigating uneven infrastructure, new consumer patterns, and capital that expects evidence over decks.
Health, finance, and mobility are where compliance, trust, and unit economics all have to be solved together — and where most advisers stop short.
The teams most likely to win are the ones bringing in people who have built and scaled ventures themselves — and who can sit inside the work, not above it.
Identifying which opportunities to pursue and how to set up to build them — thesis design, portfolio prioritisation, and the operating-model choices that let organisations ship new ventures repeatably.
Defining what to build and why — product vision, roadmap, and localisation decisions grounded in customer behaviour and market reality, not transplanted playbooks.
Launch and early-growth execution: segment, channel, pricing, and partnerships that translate the product into commercial traction — measured, iterated, in-market.
Business model design, unit economics, financial modelling, and the commercial structuring required to raise and to scale responsibly — modelled from day one, not retrofitted.
We sit inside the build — writing briefs, running experiments, shipping the MVP. A temporary extension of your team.
Every product decision is paired with a financial view — unit economics, funding path, and commercial structure, modelled from day one.
Our default is fragmented infrastructure, thin data, and regulated environments — not a lift-and-shift from a mature-market playbook.
The people you meet are the people who do the work. No pyramid, no hand-offs, no dilution of senior attention.
A focused sprint to frame the opportunity — customer, market, commercial model, and the riskiest assumptions we need to validate first.
The bulk of the engagement. We work alongside the team to build, ship, and test in live conditions — product, GTM, and commercial model tested together.
We leave behind the playbooks, tooling, and dashboards the team needs to keep operating — so the engagement ends with capability, not dependency.
Over a decade launching and scaling digital products across Africa, the Middle East, and other emerging markets. Most recently Head of Venture Studio at NEXT176 (Old Mutual), with prior operating roles at Talabat, Tencent, and Airbnb; founder of Craft Financial (0→1, 5,000+ users, R20M+ invoiced).
Chartered Accountant (SA) with five-plus years of venture capital experience across South African and pan-African investing. Three years at NEXT176 (Old Mutual CVC) as the second investment hire, prior roles at Goodwell Investments and Allan Gray's venture capital team, CA(SA) qualified at Deloitte.