The Raba Partnership

Technology + Partnership

Raba is an investment firm focused on partnering with founders in emerging technology ecosystems across Africa.

Long-term partnership + capital:

We focus on opportunities in the earliest part of a company’s life — it’s a journey we’ve been on with many founders and where as early stage investors we can have outsized impact. Investment themes help inform paths to explore and deepen our understanding of areas we believe are poised for long-term growth. Software powered financial services, logistics and supply chain companies that facilitate efficient movement of capital and essential products have been focus areas for us. These companies are building important “platforms” to enable other businesses to be built.

While themes give us a general guide to where we believe opportunity will come, we focus deeply on why founders are building their companies — is it a problem they have? What would attract other talented people to come and build this company with them? While it rarely comes down to a single factor, we look to partner with founders who have incredibly strong internal motivation and drive to push through when challenges come, as they inevitably will.

We believe long-term investment results are in part driven by a combination of an unconventional thesis, investment process, and ability to invest with a longer-term horizon than traditional market participants. Through our limited partnership base, we’ve built long-term thinking and company building experience into our “operating system” from the start.

Raba is backed by a select group of company founders and prominent technology investors who have built and/or invested in many of the category defining global technology companies we know today.

For founders:

Unlike conventional venture capital, we seek to partner with founders building category defining companies over an indefinite time horizon.

We are interested in getting to know founders who:

• are solving a problem that is critically important and needs a solution
• can demonstrate why the solution is 10x better than current alternatives
• at it’s core, are building a technology company (delivered via software and/or internet)