Pave Investments, an investment firm chaired by Nigerian businessman Tunde Folawiyo and backed by two West African family offices, was one of the investors in Paystack’s $1.3 million seed round in December 2016. Less than four years later, Stripe agreed to buy Paystack for a reported price of more than $200 million. A profile published by Billionaires.Africa on 17 October 2026 brought the story back into view.
It matters because it shows a pattern seen across emerging markets: a family whose fortune came from oil and trade puts part of it into young technology companies at home. It also shows how venture investing works for a family office, and how much a good story can rest on figures only the investor can confirm.
Where the Folawiyo money came from
Tunde Folawiyo is chairman and chief executive of the Yinka Folawiyo Group, which works in energy, agriculture, shipping and real estate. He took over the family’s businesses after the death of his father, Wahab Iyanda Folawiyo.
The group’s best-known asset is the Aje field on OML 113, an oil lease off the coast of Lagos. Yinka Folawiyo Petroleum, the operator, was awarded the original licence in 1991. The field was discovered in 1996, and the company announced first production in May 2016, after several missed targets. Press reports at the time called Aje the first oil production outside the Niger Delta. That is 25 years from licence to first oil.
What Pave is: two families, one team
Pave took formal shape around 2014, according to a 2022 interview in The Flip, an African technology newsletter. Kwamena Afful, its managing director, a Ghanaian lawyer by training who worked at Bain & Company, described it as “backed by two West African family offices.” Tunde Folawiyo is its chairman. His son Sayo Folawiyo, who met Afful at Bain, was a partner.
A single family office serves one family. A multi family office serves several and spreads the cost of one team across them, as we explained in Single Family Office vs. Multi Family Office. Pave works like a small version of the second: two families put money behind one professional team. Note the generational split too: the father chairs, the son helps run the venture side, a real job with a clear scope.
According to The Flip, Pave had made more than 100 investments since 2014, directly and through funds. It co-founded Microtraction, a Nigerian early-stage fund, and has backed new fund managers such as Magic Fund and Wuri Ventures.
The two early bets: Paystack and Flutterwave
Paystack. Founded in 2015 by Shola Akinlade and Ezra Olubi, the Lagos payments company announced its $1.3 million seed round on 19 December 2016. The press release named Tencent, Comcast Ventures and Singularity Investments, and listed Pave Investments alongside other funds and individual angels. In October 2020 Stripe announced it was buying Paystack. The price was not officially disclosed; TechCrunch reported, citing sources, that it was more than $200 million.
Flutterwave. The payments company was founded in 2016. In February 2022 it raised $250 million in a Series D round led by B Capital Group, which valued it at more than $3 billion.
Billionaires.Africa attributes the entry prices to Pave’s partners. The Flip wrote in 2022, without naming a source, that Pave invested in Flutterwave at a valuation of about $2.5 million and in Paystack at about $5 million. No documents have been published to confirm either figure, or the size of Pave’s stakes.
Our rough, undiluted calculation from those claims: from about $5 million to more than $200 million, Paystack’s value grew roughly 40 times or more. Pave’s own return would likely be lower, because every later funding round, such as Paystack’s $8 million Series A in 2018, issues new shares and shrinks an early holder’s percentage. This is called dilution. As of 18 October 2026, Billionaires.Africa reports that Pave has exited both companies, but no source we found discloses what it received from Stripe, or when and for how much it sold its Flutterwave shares.
How a family office does venture investing
Venture investing means buying small stakes in young private companies in the hope that a few grow very large. For a family office it usually follows four rules.
- Small cheques. Paystack’s whole seed round was $1.3 million, split among many investors. Each early cheque is small next to a family’s wealth.
- Many bets. Most start-ups fail or return little. Dozens or hundreds of investments, as Pave has made, raise the chance of holding a rare winner. Backing small funds as well as companies spreads the bets further.
- A long wait. Money is locked up for years with no income. Paystack’s under four years from seed to sale was fast; many companies take ten years or more, and some never sell.
- A few big winners. Venture returns are lopsided: one or two successes can pay for all the failures. Judge the portfolio as a whole.
Families bring their own edge: home-market knowledge and patience. A family that waited 25 years for an oil field is used to long timelines. But investing at home adds to a concentration in one country and currency the family already has, a point we discussed with Narayana Murthy’s family office. Family offices in India are making a similar move into AI start-ups.
A fair caveat
This story rests largely on the investor’s own account. The entry valuations appeared in The Flip, and that article itself notes that Kwamena Afful and Sayo Folawiyo are shareholders in The Flip’s media business and venture fund. The Stripe price is a press report, not a disclosed figure, and Flutterwave’s $3 billion was a private funding-round valuation, not cash. We also hear about winners like these far more often than about the many investments that went nowhere.
Five lessons to take away
- Venture is a portfolio game. Judge the whole set of bets, not single companies.
- Keep each cheque small. Size every investment so that losing it would not hurt.
- Expect to wait. Plan for money to be locked up for many years with no income.
- Ask for documents, not stories. Entry prices, stakes and exit proceeds should be on paper.
- Give the next generation a defined role. A partner seat in a venture arm is a real job with clear limits.
Questions to bring to your advisors
What share of our wealth could we lock up for ten years or more? Would we invest directly, through funds, or both, and who would choose? How would we track dilution and what each investment actually returned? These are questions to bring to your advisors, not advice.
