INCLUSIVE CAPITALIST

Base10's ADEYEMI AJAO, the first Black investor on Forbes' annual list of top venture capitalists, built a winning portfolio by backing founders "solving problems for the 99%."

- ALEX KONRAD

When Adeyemi Ajao heard that fellow Spaniards were working on a Facebook competitor for their country at the famed tech hub of Stanford University in 2005, the college student coder figured his own nascent social network, Tuenti, was doomed. But Ajao held his own, signing up half of Spain's computer owners over the next five years before selling to Telefónica for $100 million.

It was while attending Stanford himself (MBA, 2010) that Ajao found his true calling: superstar tech investor. With his business school classmates, Ajao launched three startups-Identified, which used AI to scour social media for recruiting purposes; staffing marketplace Jobandtalent; and a Latin American Uber rival called Cabify. Identified, which he chose to run full-time, was acquired by Workday for about $50 million in 2014 (it was mostly stock, which was eventually worth more than $100 million). Jobandtalent and Cabifythe two he seeded with cash from Tuenti's sale are each currently valued at over $1 billion.