There aren’t many people who can claim they beat Mark Zuckerberg at his own game. Adeyemi “Ade” Ajao is one of them.
In the mid-2000s, while Facebook was steamrolling social networks across America, Ajao co-founded Tuenti, a social platform that dominated Spain with an iron grip. For years, Spanish users chose Tuenti over Facebook—a rare victory in Facebook’s otherwise unstoppable global expansion. The platform eventually sold to telecommunications giant Telefónica for $100 million in 2010, cementing Ajao’s reputation as one of Spain’s most successful tech entrepreneurs.
But that was just the beginning.
Today, Ajao is the co-founder and managing partner of Base10 Partners, the first Black-led venture capital firm to cross $1 billion in assets under management. The San Francisco-based firm now manages $1.8 billion across six active funds and more than 100 portfolio companies, with investments in category-defining companies like Nubank, Figma, Notion, and Instacart.
In 2023, Ajao became the first Black person ever to make the Forbes Midas List, the annual ranking of the world’s top 100 venture capitalists—what tech journalist Kara Swisher has called “the Oscars for venture capitalists in tech.” He made the list again in 2024, ranking #96.
For Ajao, a Spanish-Nigerian entrepreneur who once pitched VCs with a thick Spanish accent only to be told his startup sounded like “a Nigerian scam,” the journey to the top of Silicon Valley’s elite investor class has been anything but conventional.
The Spanish Facebook
Ajao’s origin story doesn’t start in Silicon Valley. It starts in Spain, where he was raised with Nigerian roots. He holds a law degree and a master’s in economics from Icade University in Spain, credentials that seem wildly disconnected from the startup world he would eventually dominate.
But in 2006, Ajao saw an opportunity. Facebook was growing rapidly in the U.S., but its expansion into international markets was slow and culturally tone-deaf. Ajao and his co-founders launched Tuenti, a social network designed specifically for Spanish users, with features and cultural nuances that resonated locally in ways Facebook couldn’t match.
The strategy worked. Tuenti took on Facebook in a hard-fought battle for users in Spain, and for several years, it won. Spanish teenagers and young adults flocked to Tuenti, making it the dominant social platform in the country. At its peak, Tuenti was a household name, the go-to destination for an entire generation of Spanish internet users.
Telefónica acquired Tuenti in 2010 for $100 million, giving Ajao his first major exit. But Facebook eventually caught up. The global giant adjusted its international strategy, poured resources into localization, and slowly chipped away at Tuenti’s dominance. By the mid-2010s, Facebook had reclaimed Spain.
Despite ultimately losing to Facebook, Ajao’s success with Tuenti didn’t stop him from defining the tech world in other ways. That $100 million exit was just the opening act.
Founding, Investing, and Exiting
After Tuenti, Ajao enrolled at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, where he would make connections and hone instincts that would define the next phase of his career.
He helped launch three startups while at Stanford. Two of them—Cabify and Jobandtalent—became billion-dollar companies. Ajao was a founding investor in Cabify, which became the largest ridesharing company in Latin America and is currently valued at over $1 billion. He also invested early in Jobandtalent, another unicorn.
But the third startup—Identified, an AI-powered recruiting platform—was the one Ajao chose to lead as CEO. Identified was acquired by Workday in 2014, though the exit was worth significantly less than the billion-dollar outcomes of the companies he had simply backed. His friends, Ajao admits, won’t let him forget it.
At Workday, Ajao led the launch of Workday Ventures, the first fund focused on applied AI for enterprise software, and served as VP of Technology Strategy. It was there that he saw the venture capital industry from the inside—and identified its blind spots.
Building Base10: Data Over Gut
In 2018, Ajao and co-founder TJ Nahigian launched Base10 Partners with a contrarian thesis: venture capital was too reliant on pattern-matching and personal networks, and not enough on data.
The firm created an automated software tool to track startups in real time using predictive data points. Today, Base10 tracks more than 15,000 companies, but has made only 64 investments—representing 0.4% of the companies it follows.
“There are way too many companies out there,” Ajao explained. “By our calculations, there are 110 new deals per day that our VCs have to look at, so we have to find a way to focus and filter that.”
The firm’s focus is clear: automation of the largest sectors of the Real Economy, with concentrated portfolios of about 25 companies per fund in three to four core sectors considered “global megatrends”. Since inception, Base10 has invested more than 60% of its capital in just four trends: food, retail, logistics, and global fintech.
Base10’s approach has yielded results. The firm led the seed round in restaurant marketing startup PopMenu, now valued at $525 million. It also incubated cloud kitchens company All Day Kitchens, valued at $375 million. The portfolio includes stakes in Nubank, Figma, Notion, and Instacart—companies that have become infrastructure for millions of users.
But Base10’s investment strategy is only part of the story. The firm’s structure is what makes it truly unusual.
The Advancement Initiative: Putting Money Where Values Are
In 2021, Base10 raised a $300 million growth-stage fund called The Advancement Initiative, which donates 50% of carried interest to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to create scholarships and support university endowments.
Not 1%. Not 5%. Fifty percent.
Samuel Adeyemo, co-founder of Aurora Solar, explained why his company partnered with Base10 in its Series C round: “Despite it being heavily oversubscribed, we partnered with Base10 because we loved the Advancement Initiative’s mission”.
The structure sends a message: Base10 isn’t just talking about diversity and impact—it’s institutionalizing it into the firm’s financial architecture. Every dollar Base10’s team earns directly funds scholarships for students at HBCUs, many of whom come from backgrounds underrepresented in venture capital.
About 60% of Base10’s investments have been awarded to companies with minority founders, though the firm explicitly does not operate minority-focused funds. Base10 focuses on finding and investing in the best entrepreneurs around the world solving problems for the 99%.
The $1 Billion Milestone—And What It Means
In April 2022, Base10 announced it had closed a $460 million fund for early-stage investments, bringing its total assets under management to $1.3 billion—making it the first Black-led VC firm to cross the billion-dollar threshold.
The achievement was historic, but also sobering.
“It’s crazy that in a world where venture capital raises $150 billion a quarter, we are the first one. There should be multiple by now,” Ajao said at the time.
At a dinner in March 2022 with about 20 other Black investors, Ajao admitted the moment felt bittersweet because while hopeful, he realized there was still so much work to do. While limited partners were increasingly asking him to connect them to other fund managers of underrepresented backgrounds, Ajao noted: “I was not hearing those questions four years ago”.
“We shouldn’t let people forget that all these things were said and all these promises were made. We have to keep going because if not no one will,” Ajao said.
By 2025, Base10 had grown to manage $1.8 billion in AUM, cementing its position as one of the world’s largest Black-led venture capital firms.
The Midas Touch
In 2023, Ajao’s investment performance earned him a spot on the Forbes Midas List, the industry’s most prestigious ranking. In a LinkedIn post, Ajao wrote: “Joining as the very first Black Midas List investor is an honor but also a reflection of how much work we still have to do as an industry”.
Ajao’s notable investments include transformative startups like Nubank, Figma, and Instacart, each of which has redefined its category. His ability to identify automation trends early—combined with Base10’s data-driven approach—has produced portfolio companies with a combined value in the billions.
He made the Midas List again in 2024, solidifying his status among the world’s elite venture investors.
The Outsider Advantage
Ajao focuses on process automation companies that rebuild heavy offline workflows into simpler products for frontline workers, and he spends time in the field with customers to understand real problems firsthand rather than relying purely on financial pattern-matching.
This operational focus reflects his founder DNA. Unlike many venture capitalists who never built companies themselves, Ajao built and sold multiple category-defining companies including Tuenti and Identified, giving him rare experience as a founder who directly competed with and beat Facebook in a local market before exiting.
That founder empathy shapes Base10’s approach. The firm doesn’t just write checks—it builds infrastructure. Through various Base10 programs, portfolio companies hire interns across their organizations and turn to Base10 for advice on important personnel matters.
Aurora Solar’s Samuel Adeyemo praised the support: “We are fortunate to count several of Silicon Valley’s top-tier VCs as investors, and Base10 is up there amongst them in terms of value provided”.
The Broader Mission
Beyond returns, Ajao is a committed advocate for diversity, collaborating with organizations like Code2040 and Black Venture Capital Consortium to improve inclusivity in tech.
His inclusion on the 2026 ForbesBLK 50: Money Masters list—compiled to celebrate leading Black investors shaping private equity, private credit, and venture capital—marks another milestone. The list borrows the legacy of trailblazers like Reginald Lewis, the first Black American to operate a billion-dollar corporation, and places modern wealth creators like Ajao front and center.
Ajao’s story is particularly inspiring to many Nigerians and Africans in the diaspora who see in him a model of global achievement rooted in diverse heritage. His journey from Lagos and Spain to Stanford, Silicon Valley, and the Forbes Midas List illustrates what’s possible when talent meets opportunity—and when systems are intentionally designed to create access.
The Long View
In 2010, when Ajao was an entrepreneur going down Sand Hill Road pitching VCs, he was told there were about 20 firms that could realistically invest in his round. “Being a VC in those days was fun. It was essentially an oligopoly, and you sat at your desk at one of those 20 firms, waiting for entrepreneurs to come to you with the next billion-dollar startup”, he recalled.
The ecosystem has changed dramatically since then. Today, the VC industry as a whole raised $128 billion in 2021. Competition is fierce. The barriers to entry for new firms have fallen.
But for Black-led firms, the barriers remain stubbornly high. Ajao’s success with Base10 is proof that performance matters—but also that the industry has a long way to go.
In announcing Base10’s $1.3 billion milestone, Ajao wrote: “If the Base10 Partners story means anything to the broader industry, it’s proof that the Silicon Valley dream is definitely alive and well”.
He added: “As imperfect as it is, this is a truly unique and wonderful place to be in and we can’t imagine building Base10 anywhere else”.
The Uncomfortable Truth
Ajao is now 43 years old, managing nearly $2 billion in assets, sitting on the boards of companies like Waterplan and Jet HR, and advising firms like Tpaga and Job&Talent. He’s a Forbes Midas List honoree, a ForbesBLK 50 Money Master, and the architect of a venture model that donates half its profits to education.
But the fact that he’s the first Black person to achieve many of these milestones—in 2023, in 2024, in 2026—is a damning indictment of the venture capital industry’s diversity problem.
Ajao has said he thinks it will take “no time” to see the second Black-led fund cross $1 billion, shouting out firms like 645 Ventures, Harlem Capital, Kindred Ventures, Plexo Capital, and Precursor Ventures as rising Black-backed funds.
But “no time” has already stretched into years. The promises made during 2020’s racial reckoning have largely evaporated. The pipeline of Black fund managers remains thin. The dollars remain concentrated in the same hands.
What makes Ajao’s story powerful isn’t just that he succeeded—it’s that he succeeded despite a system designed to exclude him, and then used that success to build ladders for others.
What’s Next
Base10 continues to scale. The firm is expanding beyond its core focus areas, with recent moves into African fintech and other emerging markets. The data infrastructure that powers Base10’s investment decisions is getting smarter, tracking more signals, identifying trends earlier.
And the Advancement Initiative continues to funnel millions into HBCU scholarships, creating a pipeline of diverse talent that the industry desperately needs.
Ajao’s journey from beating Facebook in Spain to breaking barriers in Silicon Valley is remarkable. But the real story isn’t just about one man’s success—it’s about what happens when someone with an outsider’s perspective, a founder’s empathy, and a commitment to systemic change gets a seat at the table.
And then builds a bigger table.
