The first thing you notice about Agnes Aistleitner, a partner at Africa-focused venture capital firm First Circle Capital, is that she answers questions as though she has been thinking about them for years. Her opinions are tempered by the time she has spent listening to founders, watching businesses succeed and fail, and learning which assumptions hold up in reality.
We meet at Artcaffé in Village Market, inside Nairobi’s diplomatic zone, where aid workers, diplomats, founders, and investors walk in and out of meetings that may, or may not, change the future.
Aistleitner speaks directly, laughs easily, and answers questions without the fog that clouds VC. An Austrian by birth, she now divides her life between Nairobi and Kampala, searching for founders worth backing and convincing investors to place bigger bets on Africa.
Before we begin the interview proper, we spend several minutes catching up on the sluggish investment climate, the difficulty of raising money in today’s market, why elections always make capital nervous, and whether Kenya’s politics this time will once again freeze decisions.
She orders hibiscus tea with samosas. I settle for hot chocolate and a croissant. Then she glances at her watch.
