WE INVITED MELVYN LUBEGA CO-FOUNDER AT GO1 AND MANAGING PARTNER AT BREEGA. IN OUR CONVERSATION WE TALKED ABOUT WHAT IT TAKES TO BUILD A UNICORN, FIND THE RIGHT TEAM, EXPLORE RELATIONSHIPS WITH INVESTORS AND MOST IMPORTANTLY HOW TO APPROACH BUILDING A SUCCESSFUL STARTUP.
Brief on Melvyn:
Melvyn Lubega is an experienced technology entrepreneur and investor who has built businesses that serve customers on every continent, except Antarctica. Most notably he built and scaled Go1, a leading technology platform present in over 60 countries, which became the first South African unicorn (valued at +$2 billion) attracting over $400 million in investment from SoftBank, Salesforce Ventures and M12 (Microsoft Ventures) among other tier-1 international investors. He is a Partner at Breega, one of the fastest-growing early-stage venture capital investors in Europe and Africa, with over EUR500 million in assets under management, investing in African disruptive technologies that solve significant economic and social challenges.
He began his career as one of Boston Consulting Group’s first consultants in Africa. Today, he is a trusted advisor to governments and leading enterprises: serving on boards of listed companies as a non-executive director as well as on presidential and ministerial committees primarily focused on investments and the digital economy.
An actuary by training, he holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Cape Town and postgraduate degrees from the University of Oxford where he was a Rhodes Scholar. At Oxford, Melvyn completed two masters (MPP and MSc), receiving a distinction for his research into disruptive technologies in emerging markets.
