Elizabeth Rossiello On Raising $80 Million To Build A FinTech Company To Help Accelerate Economic Growth In Africa

Elizabeth Rossiello, founder and CEO of AZA Finance, has been riding the wave of startup life since 2013. Over the past decade, she has steered her company through 16 “crypto winters” and raised over $80M.

Elizabeth’s journey is not just inspiring because of the impressive figures but also because of her resilience, adaptability, and vision in navigating the ever-evolving fintech landscape.

AZA finance has attracted capital from top-tier investors like FTX, Pantera Capital, Draper, Greycroft, and Development Bank of South Africa.

In this episode, you will learn:

• Resilience and adaptability are essential in navigating the volatile startup landscape.
• Early experiences, like growing up in diverse environments, can shape leadership skills.
• Networking is crucial for securing capital, even with those outside your comfort zone.
• The African fintech market offers unique challenges and opportunities for innovation.
• Staying true to core values and company culture strengthens long-term business success.
• Entrepreneurs must communicate their vision, especially in frontier markets.
• Success requires more than talent—it’s about leveraging networks and opportunities.

 

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About Elizabeth Rossiello:

Elizabeth Rossiello is the CEO and Founder of AZA, a financial technology company that provides banking and payment solutions for frontier markets.

Prior to AZA, Elizabeth was an Africa Investment Associate at Grameen Foundation, where they made debt and equity investments in microfinance institutions and social enterprises across sub-Saharan Africa.

Elizabeth also worked as an analyst at Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs, and as a consultant for Acumen Fund, AGRF, Wellspring, Fenix Intl, GALVmed, and Farm Africa.

In 2009, Elizabeth became the Deputy Office Director for Planet Rating’s East and Southern Africa office. In 2012, Elizabeth was appointed as a Co-Chair of the World Economic Forum Global Fourth Industrial Revolution Council on Blockchain.

Elizabeth Rossiello has an M.A. in International Business and Finance from Columbia | SIPA, a B.A. in Political Science, German, and Italian from State University of New York College at Buffalo, and a Diploma from Hunter College High School.

Connect with Elizabeth Rossiello:

• LinkedIn
• The Org
• Crunchbase
• RocketReach

Read the Full Transcription of the Interview:

Alejandro Cremades: All righty. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Deal Maker Show. So today we have a really incredible founder, you know a founder that has been riding the ship you know of her startup ah since 2013. So now we are on our way to 11 years. you know There is, say, 16 times you know that they that they have experienced and survived you know what is called the crypto winters ah and really inspiring journey you know when it comes to building, scaling, financing,

Alejandro Cremades: They’ve raised over $80 million dollars and really inspiring background story and and and and beyond. So brace yourself for a very interesting conversation. So without further ado, let’s welcome our guest today. And that is going to be, let’s see if I pronounce it very well here, Elizabeth Rosiello. Welcome to the show.

Elizabeth Rossiello: Perfectly pronounced. Thanks for having me.

Alejandro Cremades: So born and raised in Queens, New York, Elizabeth. So tell us about life growing up. Give us a walk through memory lane.

Elizabeth Rossiello: Well, I’m from a community in Queens, which is, I think, still the borough in the United States that speaks the most languages. um And everybody in my um elementary school was from a different country.

Elizabeth Rossiello: So I grew up in a really multicultural international setting. Everybody was an immigrant. Everybody had different food at home. Everybody had different languages. Everybody had different customs. So already from an early age, I was aware that there was life beyond my own family, which was cool. And it’s at the tone. And then I kind of continued on and became a nomad pretty early. I left Queens to go to school at a fancy school in Manhattan and then right after my undergraduate, I went to Europe and I kind of never came home. So those early steps where I grew up, it was a bit of a rough neighborhood. I won’t lie. When I go back there with my kids, they’re like, whoa, mom. But it really developed a resilience early age and taught me that if I wanted to get out and see the world, I’d have to do it myself.

Alejandro Cremades: so then So then what kind of um perspective would you say it gave you? I mean, obviously being in a multicultural um area like you were in Queens kind of like opened up you know a lot the way that you thought about life, about the world. I guess as you were getting out of New York and as you were now in Europe and and and you were experiencing that there was a world outside of the US and outside of Queens, what kind of um perspective do you think that gave you?

Elizabeth Rossiello: You know, it’s also interesting because when you grow up in an immigrant neighborhood where everybody is from a different place, you’re representing your own culture and to other people at all times. you’re I was explaining what it meant to be Italian American, why my family ate certain food or what we went to church or what we traditions we had to my Chinese American and my Russian American friends. So you’re kind of representing yourself. You’re like a little founder already, you know, representing your community and getting along. And it teaches you to communicate with people who have a different worldview. Even now, I’ll meet people, my age mates, who I think are international, went to international business school, who have traveled, and they really struggle to communicate with people who think differently than they do. They’re like, why won’t he understand that? Or why don’t they accept this? And for me, I’m always thinking, where are they coming from? What do they know? How do they make decisions? what

Elizabeth Rossiello: what level of context do they need? And it’s really set the tone for how our team now, which is from all over the world, communicates. And I think, I didn’t realize I had that in me until I became a leader, but I really do believe that’s from where I grew up.

Alejandro Cremades: and Obviously, there was like a really interesting transition of events to the professional level because you started in government, then from government to banking, then banking kind of like give you that exposure to microfinance. and I think that that was kind of like the segue to getting going as a founder. but Walk us through what was the thought process behind perhaps starting from government, how that you know got you into banking, and then how that eventually led you into founding the business.

Elizabeth Rossiello: Well, I’ve talked about this before, but I didn’t really know about that many careers. I didn’t really know. My whole family are public school or state school teachers. Everybody, it’s the family businesses to work for the city. And firemen, policemen, sanitation workers, maybe there’s some independent contractors who do construction work, but that’s it. So I didn’t know what careers were out there, but I did know that smart people could become lawyers or doctors. That was always talked about in the neighborhood and by my parents.

Elizabeth Rossiello: So I was kind of pushed to think that I would be one of those two things. And, you know, when you when you go to school in the city and I went to, like, I traveled to another planet going to school in the Upper East Side, and there my friend’s parents were like, I’m an Oscar winner, or I write the music for Sesame Street, or, you know,

Elizabeth Rossiello: I owned 12 magazines. I was like, what are these jobs? One person was like a photographer, you know, things you didn’t know about. And so a lot of my career has been taking a step of what I knew, what I could see. And then once I got there looking around and saying, oh, wait, I can go higher. I can go higher. And I think, you know, it was exciting to me to see what was next. So one of my one of my first internships was a friend’s mom who was and a lawyer and she worked at a hospital and I got to see a little bit about what the but that looked like and what policy looked like. And then I took a class and I had a politics teacher who was very inspiring. So he showed me how to get an internship and I applied for one in Germany because I spoke German. So it was always just taking these baby steps. And then when I got there, who can I learn from now? Who can be my mentor now? And not being afraid to change and to say what’s next and what am I good at now?

Elizabeth Rossiello: And I think I just realized if you have these basic skill sets, if you have this kind of hustle and this curiosity, and you’re not afraid to communicate and you’re not afraid of the new, you can kind of step from one thing to another. What brought me to to finance was I went to a degree at Columbia University at the School of International Affairs. um Everybody was very international. You have to speak two languages to go there, or three languages, two foreign languages. um And I started taking school ah classes at the engineering school and at the business school.

Elizabeth Rossiello: And I realized that would be a great way to pay for my student loans. So I went into finance just thinking that. And then when I got there, I saw, oh, I can do this. I can do that. um So yeah.

Alejandro Cremades: So then how microfinance comes knocking to you, because it sounds like microfinance you know hot like got you hooked.

Elizabeth Rossiello: Yeah, well, remember, look, this was 2007. I was working in prime brokerage and sales and trading. I was in Zurich. um Credit Suisse was doing well then. I was working for a Swiss bank in Switzerland. You know, I had the languages under my belt. I was like rising star as an analyst. I was traveling back and forth, New York, London, Zurich. It was a great life, but I hated the way I was treated. I hated the way women were treated. I found the culture terrible. And even though I was excelling, I was like, I don’t like anybody here.

Elizabeth Rossiello: And, you know, my managing director was really cool and very kind to me and also from Queens, New York. But everybody else, I was like, I don’t know if I want a career with these people. So I was doing a lot of research online about what was next. And Muhammad Yunus had just won the Nobel Peace Prize in microfinance. And everybody was talking about this. And even Credit Suisse at the time had created a microfinance division to invest in this new class of finance, which could do good, but be profitable, right? So it was like a baby step. And that’s kind of how I got into it. And I just started interviewing secretly for jobs related to that. And I found one in in Nairobi that sent me there.

Alejandro Cremades: So then let’s talk about Africa, because i mean Africa is quite the yeah you know like a different you know place from Europe. so why so So walk us through the opportunity of going to Africa, because I know that Africa was quite pivotal in your journey to become a founder.

Elizabeth Rossiello: Yeah, and honestly, I applied for a job in Manila. So they sent me to Nairobi. It wasn’t originally my selection. So it was totally random that I got sent there. And you know, I’m a big Chinua Achebe fan, like things fall apart. I was like, why does Africa need me? You know, what is Elizabeth from Queens need to be going here? What can I show anybody there? um So I went pretty humble thinking like,

Elizabeth Rossiello: you know it’s I thought it was strange that Westerners or Americans were you know going to Africa. I always ah kind of identified it with like a miss missionary thing. And then when I got there, Nairobi was booming and there was so much going on and the financial sector was booming. And I was like, wow, this is really exciting. And you know I just did my little job, tried to help where I could.

Elizabeth Rossiello: And I just put my head down and worked and I went bank to bank all over the continents and I would do deep dives into their technology, into their risk, into their trading, into their portfolio, their product, visit their clients. I’d go to visit branches, you know, fishing people.

Elizabeth Rossiello: industrial people all over the continent. In Ghana, I would travel on a bus. In Malawi, I would travel on a motorcycle. I mean, it was really crazy. And then I’d go to the boardroom, and usually in the boardroom, it would be the local microfinance board, and then always a European board member.

Elizabeth Rossiello: And I’m like, what is this guy doing here? And I soon realized all of the funding was coming from Europe and the US in dollar and euro. And not only was it like this weird colonialism set up of like, you know, what was going on, but also it was really an efficient way to fund, especially when these little banks were on lending and local currency. So I found it super strange. And again, I just had that New York spunk where I was like, hey, this isn’t right. This is strange. This is weird. And so I started mentioning it in my research reports and people were like, shh.

Elizabeth Rossiello: And then I started mentioning it when I did trainings. And then I started getting side hustle gigs as like, you know, PwC would come down and do a training on microfinance and they’d hire me to lead it. Or the central bank of South Sudan wanted a trainer to go in and talk about legislation. So I started like doing all these things where I had a platform for talking about what I’d been learning. um And yeah, that became my niche for like seven years.

Alejandro Cremades: So then walk us through that moment where you decide to take reins of your own destiny, of your own future, and become an entrepreneur.

Elizabeth Rossiello: Well, I always say becoming an entrepreneur is a privilege in some ways because a lot of people don’t have the money to just not take an income and to be an entrepreneur. So you’re either a student and you’re broke anyway. You have some money you saved up or or you have privately wealthy because I couldn’t become an entrepreneur. I couldn’t miss a paycheck.

Elizabeth Rossiello: and I was just finished paying off my student loans and had been recently married and wasn’t getting any financial help from that. And I had had two kids right in a row. I had a one and a two year old and I lost my job. They put somebody else, they like closed the office and I i started doing consulting and I couldn’t really get enough consulting work. And I started talking about how everybody wanted me to work for free. They’d come and ask me questions. Oh, just come for a casual dinner and then pump me for information. Come for a little chat. We’re setting up an office here. Pump me for information. You know, all those coffees and and lunches and dinners, even like asking me for email, I was dumb and young and gave away a lot of free information.

Elizabeth Rossiello: And then finally, I met someone who said, you know, Elizabeth, you’re one of the smartest people I know. You have all this talent. Here you are. You don’t realize it. Why don’t you just do something for yourself? And there is no entrepreneur bone. You know, you can do this. So it was really a thought shift. And it came from other people, actually, and some good friends. And then I met a seed investor who was going around my Robie saying, I’m looking for entrepreneurs to start something. And he gave us a $50,000 check.

Elizabeth Rossiello: which not at once, but he paid the bills for like the first three months while they got up and running. And by month three, I had won another $50,000 check from the World Bank. And then a month later, I got investment from venture. So I think if I hadn’t met that original seed investor, I wouldn’t have had the luxury of of starting my own company. And so I think it’s important to say that especially for women, especially for women with children, especially for women who don’t have help, you know, that’s really what I needed to get going.

Alejandro Cremades: So why didn’t that are becoming the business model of the company?

12:46.64
Elizabeth Rossiello:
So right away, we were called Bitpasa at the time. We were the first company in the entire world to trade African currencies against crypto and definitely the first to trade crypto against mobile money. There was a kapochi, which is a really cool wallet that was there, but we were the first exchange and we launched it with a retail model. So Kenyan Shilling to Bitcoin.

Elizabeth Rossiello: delivered straight into the MPASA mobile money wallet. You could buy and sell in seconds. And it was up and running, I think by month three, we had it going. And yeah, we got a lot of international attention. We were were one of the first African companies in the space. I think Luno hadn’t started yet. And it was just a wild ride from literally month one.

Alejandro Cremades: And I know that they there were even some wild events happening on year one. What happened with the government?

Elizabeth Rossiello: So after, well, we had a great first year where the head of Google Kenya invested, Barry Silbert from DCG found me on LinkedIn and invested. I had, you know, calls with Nick Carey and Peter Smith from blockchain, you know,

Elizabeth Rossiello: Everybody like Charles Hoskinson from Adam, Skype called me, how funny is that? You know, all these crypto guys, these like legend guys called me and we were talking and I got flown to Necker Island. All these cool things were happening. And then lo and behold, the local Telcom, Safaricom decided they didn’t like that we were using their platform. Now we were paying the money. We were using their platform like everybody else. was if There was no regulation about it, but the Kenyan government got involved and they sued They sued us. um And so my advisor at the time said, it’s not a fight without a punch. Terrible advice. And and we we sued back and we went into court and I found out what it was like to sue the largest monopoly in Kenya, who holds up like 80% of the stock exchange and is government funded. We got, you know,

Elizabeth Rossiello: trashed in the press, full page ads from the central bank with our names in it. It was wild and we were young and dumb, but we survived.

Alejandro Cremades: Wow. And how do you think that builds you up too? Because I mean, I think that that helps to get that thick skin you know going as well.

Elizabeth Rossiello: Yeah, of course. I mean, it was so crazy, but at that time, you know, the blockchain, came the the crypto community was so, you know, values based, I want to say. We were like, let’s change the world. Everybody’s read the white paper. It was still very early days. And I had been in the system. I had worked in investment banking. I had worked in development finance, which I thought was kind of a scam. You know, like everybody goes there to save the world, but they’re just as, you know, profit minded and it was still a colonial mindset as anywhere else. And I was just like fed up. And I didn’t want to say that I was a libertarian because I’m still not.

Elizabeth Rossiello: But I was really passionate about what we were doing. And we said, we have customers. We’re getting attention all around the world. This innovation is amazing. It will help your own product. I didn’t really i didn’t really believe there was a logical reason why um we should be in so much trouble. I really felt like people were afraid of the new. And that fueled me.

Alejandro Cremades: So then talk to us too about capital raising because you alluded to it earlier, how you started getting investors and Barry Silver silver and you know speaking with other people like Peter Smith. and So all in all, how much capital have you guys raised to date and how how has it been the experience too of going through the motions of going from one financing cycle to the next?

Elizabeth Rossiello: Yeah, well it’s been very tough. First, as a female, where only 2% of capital is even available to me. um And as a female working in Africa, which becomes in and out of favor. And then with a crypto and a payments component, sometimes we’re more crypto or less crypto or stablecoin or not. So depending on the cycle. And now I’ve been doing it 11 years. So when I was young and shiny, you know even though I was a working mom and I didn’t look like a lot of the people people were investing in, I was like the only girl and the only person in Africa.

Elizabeth Rossiello: So very shiny and everybody gave me a seed investment and that round came together pretty easy and then a year or two later when we needed more to expand we got a top-up and Pantera joined us blockchain capital joined us and Then came the years where we were really building where we were saying, you know Everybody wants on and off Rams on this continent that takes time You know, it’s not like you just build in Europe. Even Circle at the time didn’t have a license in the UK and Europe. And in 2015, just two years later, we were licensed by the FCA, one of the first companies that had blockchain involved in their payments plan. And we got that license with almost no funding. And then we started to realize that venture has a short attention span.

Elizabeth Rossiello: So we had revenue, we were growing, you know we’re getting along there, but we were like, we need to go to West Africa. If you really want to do remittances to Africa, you can’t just be in one country. You have to really think about how do you do a pan-African network? And that’s what we started building. And then it became very hard to raise money. And we had a down round and we got non-crypto venture for the first time from Draper and Graycroft.

Elizabeth Rossiello: And you know we learned a lot of lessons through that. We got lean and we really started to grow. And then our revenue started to grow. We made the big leap of leaving Kenya um and my co-founder went to the UK and I went to Nigeria and our team stayed in Kenya, but we kept expanding. We ended up very successfully opening Nigeria, opening up the UK, moving on into other markets. But at the same time, we didn’t really see venture interested in building an infrastructure company.

Elizabeth Rossiello: They were like, we want to see the revenue. And we were like, well, what about the infrastructure? This would be a huge on and off ramp. Payment companies later on will want to build it. But we didn’t have that long-term financing. I think in emerging markets where people worry about risk, they want things done quick, quick. But at the same time, in emerging markets, things take time. So that was a bit of a struggle.

Elizabeth Rossiello: And as crypto came in and out of favor in different cycles, we would either attract crypto funding or be repelled by trad-fi or non-crypto. So it was a wild ride up and down. And then we were doing really well. We had you know huge revenues in one market in Nigeria. We were profitable. Things were great. And then the Nigerian government decided to shut down all international companies and stop the use of the local currency.

Elizabeth Rossiello: as a payments mechanism and they only allowed dollar payments and this was in January 2021 and we thought the world was going to end. We went from you know millions of dollars of revenue a month to hundreds of dollars of revenue in just one month and I think a couple of companies exited the market.

Alejandro Cremades: Wow.

Elizabeth Rossiello: Partner companies were calling, you know backstabbing, calling the regulator. There were a lot of crazy phone calls. you know there all this sort of jockeying for position. I remember it was over Christmas. Everything crazy always happens over Christmas break. And we were like, is this it? And then we realized it’s not it. This is not where we end. And we just dug deep, took the cash we had, bought a company in South Africa we had been working on buying, deployed all of our cash to open up new markets.

Elizabeth Rossiello: And just race into other markets with our really good team. And it was a lot of work and we basically rebuilt the company. So from being ah almost purely Nigerian company with a little bit of Kenyan business, we went into Ghana, Central Africa, West Africa, South Africa, and by that.

Elizabeth Rossiello: the latter six months of the year, we had regained our ARR. So going from almost zero revenue, gen to June, to doing you know over 10 million of revenue the second half of the year alone on all new markets. And after that, we were like, we’re invincible. We can do anything. um And then a lot of investors were like, wow, that was so amazing. No one could have done that. But you know you’re a six, seven year old company. yeah you know We’d rather invest in a brand new company.

Elizabeth Rossiello: So we really struggled with that concept because we had showed what it takes to build on this continent, what kind of resilience, what kind of know-how, what kind of team. And we didn’t really see investors understanding that. And we raised along the way, and that’s why we did eventually a partnership with FTX. um And we eventually got money from the Development Bank of South Africa. But I would say this whole process has left me quite jaded in what people and invest in.

Elizabeth Rossiello: And now, you know, we’re doing around right now. And I think we see from a lot of strategic partners, tons of interest in the infrastructure we’ve built. And they’re like, how did you possibly build this? But along the way, we didn’t see a lot of investors understand that journey or be there to really invest in that journey.

Alejandro Cremades: So, FTX, you mentioned FTX. I mean, that was quite a moment for you guys too. How did you navigate that day craziness?

Elizabeth Rossiello: Well, life has been crazy, so we were used to crazies. Like with any partner, we know who we are. Not to go back to, you know, not to be cheesy and loop it back to the beginning, but I know what my culture is. I know what my values are. Even if I’m communicating to other cultures and other kinds of people, I can’t change, you know, my own values. We stayed true to who we were as AZA, and we built things for them.

Elizabeth Rossiello: but we were very careful not to change the fundamentals of our kind our company. So when they would say things like, hey, let’s erase all the information on our Slack channels, we would be like,

Elizabeth Rossiello: Nope. you know That’s not exactly our company culture, and we’re not going to do that. We built a lot of barriers around us, um and we worked to launch them in a few markets, and there was a lot of press about it, a lot of you know noise, and we enabled their their entry into a couple of markets. so When they went down, it was rough.

Elizabeth Rossiello: We had to do a lot of repair work. We had to work with all our regulators, all of our advisors and authorities and clients, and it took a good year and a half to recover all those relationships.

Alejandro Cremades: so then So then in this case, um I guess you know it’s been quite a while, right? no You have the 16 crypto winters, you have 50X, you have those battles with the government. It’s crazy. But obviously, you know like when when you’re able to go through all these different cycles, it’s because there is a bigger purpose. you know There’s a bigger thing that you guys are going after. And I think that That also you know helps to bring on board investors, to bring on board customers, employees.

Alejandro Cremades: So if you were to go to sleep tonight, Elizabeth, and you would wake up in a world where the vision of the company is fully realized, what does that world look like?

Elizabeth Rossiello: i

Elizabeth Rossiello: Well, I think it’s just the support I think from, I think we need an, well, let’s go back. I think what we need in my own company and companies like ours is more debt investment. We have a lot of equity investment at the seed stage. We have some at the growth stage, but then we don’t have that debt facilities to help companies like ours really grow. It goes back to what I first started when I worked on this continent with all these microfinance institutions lending in dollar euro from far away lenders who didn’t understand their business models. We still have that same problem. We have development lenders on the continent. That’s really it. We have quasi private lenders who most of them get money from development lenders.

Elizabeth Rossiello: So their metrics are still not commercial. And and that’s really it. It’s very hard. to keep going. I don’t think the venture model works when you’re past growth stage. Now you really need debt facilities and we don’t really see that available. We were one of the first companies to take debt from partners. We were one of the first to take it from clients. We were one of the first to take it from alternative methods. We really find ourselves always as the first, really pushing our way on how We can keep this business model um going without the rest of the market being developed. And what keeps us waking up every morning is our clients. We have some of the biggest blue chip clients in the world. I have 34 of the largest remittance companies on planet Earth that trade with through me. And all this nonsense about, oh, blockchain for remittance, this and that, here we go. I’ve got them, 11 years. We also have 10 of the largest global payment companies. If I told you the names, it’s like every single large payment company works with us.

Elizabeth Rossiello: We also have some of the largest processors, credit card. We have some of the biggest corporates, everybody from Heineken and Procter & Gamble to Total. You know, multi-choice. So what keeps me going in the beginning was the passion for the idea. What keeps me going the last eight years is product market fit. Even if we don’t have the best balance sheet, even if we have, you know, bad press from who we dealt with, even if a market is going tough, clients are clamoring for this product.

Elizabeth Rossiello: because they don’t see anything else like it in the market. And they don’t see the kind of coverage we have, the compliance we have, the product we have, and that drives us through the rainiest days. And I would not be getting up and I would not be able to keep a team going with me through all these ups and downs. you know Forget cult of personality or you know team culture, all good things to keep teams together. But if they don’t see the product, they don’t hear clients go,

Elizabeth Rossiello: Thank gosh for you guys. I don’t think that they’re going to stick with you through ups and downs.

Alejandro Cremades: so then So then now that we’re talking about the future, I want to talk about the past, but doing so with a lens of reflection. you know If you were to go back in time you know to that moment that you know you were in Africa and and and seeing all the issues that you were seeing, you know let’s say we go back to 2013 and you have the opportunity of giving that younger Elizabeth one piece of advice before launching a business, what would that be and why, given what you know now?

Elizabeth Rossiello: It would be to network more with people you don’t like. Is that a crazy thing to say? I think I was like, ugh, don’t want to deal with these people. I don’t like them. I don’t share values with them. So I’m going to just ignore them. And then I needed their capital. And so then you’re like, oh, you know, I think take it or leave it. If you want a company that needs financing, you have to know the finding financiers.

Elizabeth Rossiello: you know You have to get to know these funds. You have to network these funds. And I don’t mean just once a year. I mean, you really have to be sending them weekly updates, calling them coffees, meetings, dinners, networking events, all the stuff that is really distracting if you’re a focused operator. And that’s what I would consider myself, a founder operator. I don’t like doing that stuff. I do a lot of press, but I always do it from my office. um You really do need to network because Capital is not fungible. Capital is not efficiently allocated. This isn’t a mathematics class. People don’t allocate capital by a mathematical formulas. They allocate capital through who they know and what they know. And going back to that first example, people only know what they’ve been exposed to. And it’s really hard for some people to see the vision or see you know the future when they haven’t experienced it.

Elizabeth Rossiello: I don’t care how many venture capitalists say they’re innovative thinkers, or they’re out there to seek the future. A lot of them can’t see beyond what they know. And they all look and have a lot of the same experience. So it’s very hard for them to understand. And you know I’ll get together with some other African founders, and we’re always talking about the same thing. Can you believe they asked us this? Or can you believe they don’t understand this? or So I think there’s still a need to communicate across from your special, and this could work if you’re like at the frontier of technology and you’re dealing with venture capitalists who don’t understand your technology. If you’re like in a medical device or you were in AI before anybody thought that was interesting or all these frontier places, whether it’s a frontier geography or a frontier product, it’s really important for you to communicate that in into digestible way and a non-intimidating way and really network with the people who you’ll need going forward.

Elizabeth Rossiello: I don’t always believe that. No matter what, even if you work in a dark closet, if you’re good at what you do, money will find you. You don’t believe that. And that’s something I think that’s a lie we tell founders. If you’re good enough, they’ll find you. No. You know how many really smart kids I met in Senegal or Nairobi who didn’t go to Stanford? They were brilliant, but Stanford didn’t find them. You know you have to go travel there, do summer camps, hire a consultant. Then you get into that school. So I think it’s a real misconception that

Elizabeth Rossiello: It’ll just find you. You have to actively build that road and network and put yourself out there.

Alejandro Cremades:
That’s amazing, Elizabeth. So for the people that are listening that would love to reach out and say hi, what is the best way for them to do so?

Elizabeth Rossiello: um LinkedIn, Twitter.

Alejandro Cremades: Amazing. Well, that’s easy enough. Well, Elizabeth, thank you so much for being on the Dealmaker show today. It there has been an absolute honor earth to have you with us.

Elizabeth Rossiello: Thank you so much for having me.

*****

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