Ajo Angels Weekly is your inside look at deals and lessons shaping startup investing across the US and Africa, with a spotlight on Black founders.
🗓️ Upcoming Events
Fintech NerdCon
Fintech developers and operators for two days of education, cooperation, and deep-dive technical sessions.
Dates: Nov 19 to Nov 20 2025
Location: Miami, Fl
Africa/Week @ Norrsken House
Africa/Week unites the leading techies & founders to spotlight the investors & tech shaping the future of Africa.
Dates: Nov 20 to Nov 21 2025
Location: Kigali, Rwanda
🦄 Deal Watch
1. Helping Schools Find and Support Students Who Are Struggling
Psyflo is an AI tool that helps schools spot mental health problems early. It checks in with students, watches for warning signs, and tells counselors when someone needs help.
The Backstory: Many students are stressed, sad, or overwhelmed, but schools don’t have enough counselors to support them. Psyflo was created to fix this problem and give schools a simple way to support every student.
Key Innovation: Psyflo automates 80% of a counselor’s workload. Students check in through a fun, game-like app that feels friendly and safe. The system tracks moods, teaches coping skills, and sends alerts when a student might be in trouble.
Funding: Raising $250,000 to grow faster, launch more school pilots, and support bigger districts.
📘Dropping Knowledge: Private Markets vs Public Markets
Before you start judging investments, it helps to know the two markets they come from. Here is a clear look at both.
Public Markets
Public markets are the part of the financial world that everyone can see and access.
Examples:
Stocks
ETFs
Mutual funds
Crypto
A company reaches the public markets only after it has already passed years of growth, funding rounds, audits, and approvals.
Key traits of public markets:
Easy to buy and sell
Heavy regulation
Millions of investors competing
Information is public, so the edge is small
Most people start here because it’s easier but it also limits you.
Once a company is public, most of the explosive growth has already happened.
Private Markets
Private markets are everything that happens before a company becomes big enough to go public.
Examples:
Angel investing
Venture capital
Private equity
Private credit
Secondary shares
These areas do not show up in a brokerage app.
They run on relationships, research, and access.
Key traits of private markets:
Companies are young or mid stage
Less regulation
Fewer investors competing
Higher risk and higher potential reward
Why Private Markets Might Be the Unsung Hero of Wealth Building
You enter before the value is obvious.
The biggest growth happens long before a company reaches the public.
Smaller companies move faster.
A jump from five million to fifty million is possible early, but not after IPO.
You build ownership, not just positions.
You hold a piece of a company while it is being created, not after the peak.
Bottom Line
Public markets grow your money slowly because you enter after the big growth already happened.
Private markets grow your money faster and bigger because you enter while the growth is being created.
Most people only understand the public side, which limits their potential.
Real wealth comes from knowing how to use both.
This Weeks Thoughts
🤔💭The Return of Real Money
For years, folks treated early stage investing like a patience contest. Long timelines and big promises; but very little talk about how or when the money actually comes back.
But that era is fading….or has faded.....….READ FULL POST HERE
Did You Know? Tha a $3,500 angel investment in The Honey Pot Company in 2016 would have turned into about $266,000 when it sold in 2024? That’s a 76× return and proof that early ownership makes all the difference.
Cheers,
Abdul