Lola Masha

Lola Masha is a Partner at Antler, a global early-stage venture capital firm that invests in the world’s most driven founders from inception. She brings over 15 years of leadership experience at the intersection of technology, agriculture, and mobility, where she has led transformative initiatives that scale impact and drive growth across Africa’s emerging markets.

Many capable and driven founders often lack a deep understanding of essential business functions to build venture scale businesses and venture capital can seem inaccessible. Lola launched Periscope, a podcast series, to bridge this gap. Periscope demystifies the startup and investment process for African founders. The podcast aims to provide accessible and practical insights into fundamental concepts critical for building successful companies.

Lola has held senior roles at some of the continent’s most influential and innovative companies. As a Co-Founder and Director at Babban Gona, she helped grow one of Africa’s most prominent social enterprises, delivering increased incomes and improved livelihoods to thousands of smallholder farmers. To date, Babban Gona has improved the lives of over 500,000 smallholder farmers in Northern Nigeria.

She also served as Country Manager for OLX Nigeria, where she scaled the business to millions of users, and later as Regional General Manager for Bolt, responsible for North, East and West Africa, where she led strategic initiatives and operations in a highly competitive mobility sector. Earlier in her career, she worked with Google, focusing on business development and product strategy for emerging markets.

An engineer by training, Lola holds a Ph.D. in Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, and a B.Sc. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Virginia. Passionate about building ventures that combine purpose with performance, Lola continues to mentor, invest in, and support entrepreneurs who are solving some of Africa’s most pressing challenges.