Yvonne Bajela has spent more than a decade investing in companies before their potential became clear to the wider market. Her early bets include Wise, Marshmallow, Moove and Flutterwave, businesses that went on to establish themselves in their respective markets. Now, the Ghanaian British investor is putting that experience behind her own venture capital firm, Evertrue Capital, which has closed an oversubscribed $17 million debut fund.

The London-born investor, who has Ghanaian roots, said Evertrue would back early-stage companies across the United Kingdom and Europe, focusing on founders at the pre-seed stage. The fund has already invested in seven companies and plans to back at least 20 over the next three years. Its average investment will be about £350,000, according to Bajela.

The fund was raised from five institutional investors, alongside a group of founders, business operators and investors. Bajela said she had spent 12 months building Evertrue behind the scenes before announcing its launch, describing the fund as an opportunity to invest independently and put her own approach to early-stage investing into practice.

“After more than a decade backing founders who bet everything on their ideas, it felt like time to make a bet of my own,” she said. “I wanted the independence to act on those convictions and build something that reflected my own approach to investing.”

Backing founders early

Bajela’s investment philosophy has been shaped by years of working with companies when their commercial prospects were not yet widely recognised. She said the potential of businesses such as Wise, Marshmallow and Moove was far from obvious when she first backed them, but their founders had identified opportunities others had not yet recognised and showed the discipline to build around those insights.

That experience is central to Evertrue’s investment strategy. The firm describes itself as a pre-seed investor backing founders before consensus forms, particularly those who have developed a close understanding of difficult problems and see opportunities that may appear too specialised or commercially uncertain to other investors.

For Bajela, the earliest stages of a company do not necessarily offer the clearest evidence of what it can become. A market may appear too small, a business idea may be difficult to understand, and a founder may not fit the profile investors have traditionally favoured. She believes those early signs can still reveal the quality of an opportunity to investors willing to look beyond conventional measures.

Evertrue’s investment approach is built around the gap between what a founder has already demonstrated and what that founder could achieve. Bajela said she looks for people who have overcome significant challenges, identified problems that others have overlooked and developed the conviction to build businesses around their findings.

She is particularly interested in founders who combine ambition with disciplined execution, treat company-building as a long-term commitment and can persuade talented people to join them. Their businesses may operate in difficult or less fashionable markets, but she believes the strength of the underlying problem and the founder’s ability to address it matter more than immediate market attention.

From Goldman Sachs to venture capital

Bajela began her career at Goldman Sachs before moving to Mitsui, where she became the youngest investment manager in a company with 90,000 employees. During her time there, she led the company’s investment in Wise, then known as TransferWise, giving her direct experience backing a business that would later become one of the better-known companies in the financial technology sector.

She subsequently joined Impact X Capital as a founding member, where she co-led the seed investment in Marshmallow. She later became a partner at LocalGlobe, one of Europe’s leading seed investment firms, extending her work with founders and early-stage businesses. Her career has also taken her across Japan, Kenya, Israel, South Africa and other markets, giving her experience in investing, operating and company-building across Europe, Africa and Asia.

Those experiences helped her develop networks across different markets and work with founders seeking to build companies beyond their home countries. The companies she has backed include Wise, Marshmallow, Moove and Flutterwave. Her work with businesses at an early stage has reinforced her view that strong founders can emerge outside familiar investment networks and that promising ideas are not always immediately apparent to the broader market.

A concentrated investment strategy

Evertrue plans to build a concentrated portfolio, with Bajela investing between £250,000 and £500,000 in pre-seed companies. The firm will focus predominantly on founders with European roots and intends to move quickly when she is convinced by a business and its leadership.

Beyond providing capital, Bajela intends to draw on a network of more than 50 operators and former founders to support portfolio companies. The group includes professionals from Anthropic, Revolut and J.P. Morgan, among others, who can offer founders access to experience and practical support as they build their businesses. The strategy reflects her view that early-stage investing involves more than identifying a promising idea and providing funding.

Founders also need access to people who understand the demands of building companies, hiring teams and developing businesses in competitive markets. Bajela said she wanted Evertrue to reflect the lessons she had gained as both a founder and an early-stage investor. Having backed companies from their beginnings, she is now building a firm that allows her to apply that experience with greater independence and a clear investment mandate.

In announcing the fund, she thanked the institutional investors, founders, friends, former colleagues and family members who supported its creation. She said the launch marked the beginning of a new chapter and that she intended to share more about her investment philosophy and the experience of building Evertrue.

The fund’s first seven investments give it an initial portfolio as it begins pursuing its target of at least 20 companies over three years. For Bajela, the central principle remains the same as it was during her years backing businesses at other investment firms: identify promising founders early, commit when the evidence supports conviction and remain involved as they build.