Zachariah George 2023 Speaker

Managing Partner

Launch Africa Ventures

Biography

Zach is the Managing Partner at Launch Africa Ventures – Africa’s most prominent and active early-stage VC Fund with a portfolio of 130+ tech ventures across 20+ countries. He is also the Co-Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Startupbootcamp AfriTech – the leading multi-corporate backed venture accelerator program in Africa. Zach is a prominent Angel investor in 50+ leading tech startups in Africa including Flutterwave, KudaBank, Mono, Marketforce and several others. He was featured on the cover of Fast Company Africa (May 2018), Destiny Man (Nov 2019) and on several occasions on CNBC Africa. In January 2020, he was recognized as one of the Top 4 Most Influential Persons in Technology in Africa by Les Echos (the French equivalent of the Financial Times). Zach was formerly the head of Africa Investments for U-Start – the largest network of private Multi-Family offices in Europe. Prior to moving to South Africa, he was an investment banker on Wall Street covering mergers & acquisitions, corporate finance strategy and risk management at Lehman Brothers and Barclays Capital, New York. Zach has a Master’s degree in Finance & Management from Stanford University and a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology. Outside of his professional life, Zach is an acoustic guitarist, pianist and vocalist with cover albums ‘Give A Little’ (2010) and ‘Humans with Hearts’ (2018) on iTunes and Spotify. He is an avid lover of theatre and the performing arts, likes hiking and a good game of tennis and squash. He enjoys creative writing and is currently busy finishing a work of non-fiction.