Now Co-Founder of Venture for Africa, an immersion program and talent community designed to enable experienced local and global non-engineering talent to transition into the African startup ecosystem, Tobi Lafinhan began his career with a pivot from Civil Engineering. He joined a tech startup in Lagos focused on building and scaling community-driven recycling programs.
This led Lafinhan to a four-year stint at MEST Africa, an international non-profit that recruits, trains and invests in aspiring African software entrepreneurs.
At MEST, Lafinhan was brought on as hire #2 to support the launch of a new incubator, then went on to run operations for the Nigeria office, and eventually spearheaded recruitment across the organisation.
Lafinhan led and managed recruitment processes and funnels in 5 key African markets, recruiting founders across 11 companies eventually backed by $1.1M in seed funding.
Lafinhan's most recent leap has been to pursue his passion for finding and recruiting talent by co-founding a startup called Venture for Africa where they're bridging talent gaps for Africa's high-growth tech startups through a fellowship program designed to immerse top global talent in the African startup ecosystem.