Nigerian entrepreneur and co-founder of Andela, Iyinoluwa Aboyeji popularly known as “Iyin”, has been cited amongst 62 global entrepreneurs that have founded two unicorns.
The ranking was compiled by the Venture capital initiative of the Stanford Graduate school of Business, which listed him alongside Tesla and Twitter CEO Elon Musk.
Speaking on the latest ranking of global serial unicorn founders, the director of Venture Capital Initiative, Ilya Strebulaev stated that there are a total of 3,025 unicorn founders in the world, and only one person, Richard Klausner, who is the Director of Juno Therapeutics, Director of GRAIL, Executive Chairman of Wisdo, Chairman of Mindstrong has so far founded 4 unicorns.
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He further disclosed that 3 Entrepreneurs have founded 3 unicorns, while 62 have founded 2 unicorns each, making a total of 66 people that have founded more than one company valued at $1 billion or higher.
Commenting on the list of 62 global entrepreneurs that have founded two unicorns, Andela co-founder Iyinoluwa Aboyeji said,
“At 31 years old, by the grace of God, I am one of 62 people in the whole world and very likely the only African to have co-founded two unicorns – Andela and Flutterwave.“I am grateful to my country, Nigeria.
“I have repeatedly said that in no other country on earth would my story have been possible. I am not a caucasian male. I’m just barely 30 years old. I wasn’t born into old money.
“My parents are humble clergy – the son of a butcher and the daughter of clergy who worked their way up. It is only through prayers, hard work, and the favour of God we have come this far. Can anything good come out of Nigeria? Well yes, this is our testimony. We produce unicorns.
“They believed when no sane person would. They worked and sacrificed everything to build the future on the continent and I’m so happy for how God has blessed the work of their hands in return”.
Iyinoluwa is the co-founder of Andela, an organization that cultivates IT talent in Africa and provides leading global technology companies with access to a high-skilled resource pool.
Also, he is currently the CEO and General Partner of future Africa, an early-stage venture capital firm with a portfolio of 100 companies collectively worth over 6 billion dollars.
Before founding the Fund, he was the founding CEO of flutterwave, a billion-dollar global payments platform.
In 2019, Aboyeji was cited as one of the Top 100 most influential Africans by New African magazine. In October 2022, he was conferred with the rank of the Officer of the Order of the Niger (OON) amongst other top Nigerian entrepreneurs.
As a faith-driven investor and serial entrepreneur, Iyin is passionate about Africa, and he is hell-bent on unlocking the continent’s potential.