Welcoming Michael Tefula to Ada Ventures as an Investor-in-Residence
We are so happy to announce that long-time collaborator Michael Tefula has joined the Ada Ventures team as an Investor-in-Residence.
Check and I have known Michael for a long time. He came on board at Ada Ventures as a Venture Partner in 2020 and joined the second cohort of Ada Angels in March 2023. We are so glad to step up our relationship as he joins our investor team for six months from October.
Michael will be looking for new investment opportunities and helping us analyse potential investments. Start-ups, get in touch!
How did we meet Michael and what was the process that led to him joining?
Check and I met Michael before we founded Ada Ventures — we hired him into the investment team at our previous firm. And when we left to try and change the world, we knew he was a key ally and someone we hoped we’d get to work with again sometime.
Michael showed huge potential when his CV first appeared on my desk and he has continued to fulfil it since then. After being promoted from Associate to Principal at Downing Ventures, he left VC in order to gain more operating experience. He took on a role as Head of Finance, and was shortly promoted to Chief Finance Officer, at the impact-investing platform Circa5000, which is now part of the Ada portfolio. Circa5000 has accomplished some fantastic milestones, including entering the European exchange-traded fund (ETF) market in June of this year when they floated five impact ETFs on the LSE.
We have stayed in touch with Michael as both friends and colleagues. Since 2020, he has worked as a Venture Partner at Ada Ventures, focusing on fundraising support for portfolio companies; due diligence on prospective investments; and assisting with fintech and deeptech dealflow.
Over the years, we have witnessed Michael’s enthusiasm, professionalism and his interest in getting involved in the nuts and bolts of the start-ups he is supporting. We have always admired his skills and how complementary they are to the rest of the investment team. He is a thesis-driven investor, with seven years’ experience in VC and a lot of experience in B2B companies in particular. He is a chartered accountant who knows what it is to be a CFO. His advice will be invaluable for the investment team and for the start-ups in our portfolio.
Michael is also a self-taught software developer and is helping us automate a variety of processes at the firm using AI. It is important for us as a company to understand the tech that powers our portfolio and use it to help us change the world (more efficiently!). He is absolutely brilliant at explaining and illustrating difficult concepts in an entertaining way — case in point his latest blog post where he discusses developing a code to find the best café midway between two locations using ChatGPT.
Michael is interested in how technology can exponentially drive outcomes for human accomplishment, be that in enterprise software, financial equity, or climate. That’s what makes him so in line with our mission at Ada Ventures.
A few fun facts about Michael so you can get to know him better:
Michael organises basketball games for people in tech (the group has over 160 members — get in touch if you want to join!). He’s written four published books on a variety of subjects, including how to get the best out of university. He also tells me he can cook the best Korean fried chicken — I am looking forward to being the judge of that.
He is coming on board at the right time; co-founding partner Check is going on maternity leave in a couple of months and we are bound to be busy as we get stuck into investing Fund II.
