Chi Achebe
About Chi Achebe
Grounded by a belief that "talent is equally distributed, but opportunity is not", Chi Achebe is an investor & venture catalyst that is committed to investing in underestimated and resilient founders & creators that are building human-centered, community-driven, and market-based solutions. She has made a number of venture capital investments, of which 3 have reached unicorn status & nearly all have raised further / multiple rounds. She currently works at YouTube, where she specializes in product and go-to-market strategy and has covered the following product areas: News, Elections, Embedded Videos, Notifications, and Third-party APIs. Prior to YouTube, Chi managed financial models, enhanced fund performance tracking processes, and facilitated investments at Citi. At Omidyar Network, Chi built a pipeline of over 200 ESG investment opportunities/climate finance funds, managed proptech and geospatial investments, and assisted with the spin out of the Property Rights group. At Astia Angels, a global angel fund that invests in women-led companies, she analyzed & managed consumer/ fintech/medtech investments, one of which (nVision Medical) was acquired for $258 million dollars. Chi holds a BA with distinction from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from Columbia Business School, where she was awarded a full-tuition merit-based scholarship. Before business school, Chi lived in South Africa for 4 years. In South Africa, Chi served as the inaugural program manager of the Anzisha Prize, a pan-African entrepreneurship competition which invests in entrepreneurs across various industries and is anchored by a $10 million dollar fund, sponsored by The MasterCard Foundation and African Leadership Academy. Under her leadership, the Anzisha Prize scaled from a one city pilot into a Pan-African movement that spans over 40 countries and four languages, is covered by global media (BBC/Al Jazeera/CNN/Forbes), and impacts countless entrepreneurs. Prior to her time in South Africa, she worked at Google as an account strategist and manager of a book of business of 100 enterprise tech companies. As a medtech startup founder, she developed an award-winning emergency response app and was recognized in the 2016 Forbes 30 under 30 Pitch Competition. An avid traveler, she has visited 39 countries and counting. Specialities: Early-stage investing, storytelling, writing, connecting people, coaching talent, deal negotiation, financial modeling, SEO, SEM