APPTSUMMIT 2026 Speaker Spotlight: Lola Masha of Antler on What Early-Stage Investors Really Look For in African PropTech Founders

Few investors in Africa have seen the property market from as many angles as Lola Masha. She ran OLX Nigeria, at the time one of the country’s largest property-classifieds businesses, and went on to lead trust and safety across more than 30 OLX markets worldwide. She scaled Bolt’s operations as Regional General Manager for North, East and West Africa. She co-founded Babban Gona, the agricultural social enterprise that has now reached more than 500,000 smallholder farmers in northern Nigeria. And earlier still she worked at Google on business development and product strategy for emerging markets.

Today she is a Partner at Antler, the global early-stage venture firm that backs founders from “day zero” — often before a company exists. Antler opened its first African office in Nairobi in 2019 and launched its Lagos programme in 2025, drawing more than 1,000 applications in its first week; PitchBook ranked the firm the fifth most active venture investor in the world for 2018–2024. Masha, who is based in Lagos, also hosts Periscope, a podcast that demystifies the startup and investment process for African founders.

At 9:45am on Tuesday 13 October she takes the stage for the first fireside chat of APPTSUMMIT 2026, the inaugural Africa PropTech Priority Summit at the Lagos Oriental Hotel. The session, “Investing in African PropTech: What Early-Stage Investors Are Really Looking For”, is moderated by Adebisi Borokinni, co-founder of Keble, and follows the summit’s opening keynotes on compliance, governance and the Africa–MENA investment corridor. Ahead of the summit, Property News Africa — the event’s Official Digital Media Partner — asked her for the honest answer to that question, what her OLX years taught her about trust in property marketplaces, and what a fundable PropTech looks like in 2026. Her answers, lightly edited, are below.

In conversation with Lola Masha

Tell us about Antler in Africa. How does the model work — backing founders from day zero — and where does PropTech sit in the portfolio so far?

Antler backs founders from day zero, often before they have a fully formed company, helping them validate ideas, find co-founders, build products and get to their first milestones. Antler is sector agnostic, but we are particularly interested in founders using technology and innovation to solve meaningful problems.

Antler launched its first African location in Nairobi in 2019 and has since supported more than 350 founders across the continent. PropTech has been an important part of that journey. We have invited several PropTech founders across our Lagos and Nairobi cohorts, spanning areas such as property discovery, transactions, financing and the broader infrastructure around how people access and manage property.

Your session is titled “What Early-Stage Investors Are Really Looking For”. What is the honest answer — and what do African PropTech founders most often get wrong about it?

At the earliest stage, we are really looking for founders with deep domain knowledge, a clear understanding of the problem they are solving, and the grit to keep going when things inevitably get difficult.

One mistake I see founders make is focusing too much on the idea or the size of the market, and not enough on demonstrating that they deeply understand the customer and the problem.

You ran OLX Nigeria and later led trust and safety across 30-plus OLX markets. What did that teach you about property listings, fraud and trust in Nigeria?

My experience at OLX taught me that the challenge isn’t simply a lack of property listings or availability. The real challenge is quality, trust and relevance. Customers don’t want a mish-mash of listings; they want credible, well-curated options that match their specific needs.

Trust therefore has to be built into the product and the marketplace, from the quality of listings and verification to how you identify and manage fraudulent behaviour. Technology can help significantly, but trust is ultimately a product and operating model challenge, not just a fraud-detection problem.

Having scaled operations at Bolt across several African markets, what does an operator’s lens tell you about PropTech businesses — which models scale across borders and which stay local?

The biggest lesson from scaling across Africa is that you can scale a model, but you can’t assume you can copy and paste the operating model. The underlying customer problem may be similar across markets, but regulation, consumer behaviour, purchasing power, supply dynamics and the way transactions happen can be very different.

For PropTech, the technology layer can often scale relatively well, but businesses that depend heavily on local property supply, regulation, relationships or physical operations tend to require significant localisation. The strongest regional businesses understand what should be standardised and what needs to be rebuilt market by market.

Funding into Nigeria tightened in 2025 while investors favoured proven revenue. What does a fundable early-stage PropTech look like today, and where are the real opportunities?

The bar is higher for everyone, and I think that is ultimately healthy for the ecosystem. At early stage, I would look for a strong founding team with real domain expertise, evidence that customers have a real problem, early signs of product-market fit and a credible path to a scalable business model.

For PropTech in particular, I would pay close attention to the economics of the transaction. It is not enough to show that you can acquire users or generate activity; you need to demonstrate that there is a sustainable way to make money from that activity.

There are opportunities across the property value chain, particularly where technology can reduce friction, improve trust and transparency, unlock access to financing, improve property management or make existing processes significantly more efficient.

What should attendees take away from your fireside chat at APPTSUMMIT 2026?

I hope founders leave with a clearer understanding of how investors think about early-stage businesses and what they can control.

You don’t need to have everything figured out on day one. But you do need to demonstrate that you understand the problem deeply, know your customer, have the ability to execute and can show evidence that you are solving something people care about.

For investors, the question is ultimately not just “Is this a big market?” It’s also “Is this the team that can build a meaningful business in this market?”

At a glance: Lola Masha and Antler

About 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 initiatives that scale impact and drive growth across Africa’s emerging markets. Recognising that many capable founders lack a deep understanding of the business fundamentals needed to build venture-scale companies — and that venture capital can seem inaccessible — she launched Periscope, a podcast series that demystifies the startup and investment process for African founders.

She has held senior roles at some of the continent’s most influential companies. As Co-Founder and Director at Babban Gona, she helped grow one of Africa’s most prominent social enterprises, which has to date improved the lives of over 500,000 smallholder farmers in northern Nigeria. She served as Country Manager for OLX Nigeria, scaling the business to millions of users, and later as Regional General Manager for Bolt, responsible for North, East and West Africa. Earlier in her career she worked with Google on business development and product strategy for emerging markets. An engineer by training, she holds a PhD in Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, and a BSc in Chemical Engineering from the University of Virginia, and continues to mentor, invest in and support entrepreneurs solving some of Africa’s most pressing challenges.

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