Africa-focused venture capital firm TLcom Capital has appointed Eloho Omame as a partner six months after announcing the first close of TIDE Africa Fund II, its $150 million second fund (it expects to reach a second close later this year, according to its partners). appoints

TLcom Capital is known for investing from seed to Series B. Some of the deals from its portfolio in this category include uLesson, Ajua, Ilara Health, Kobo360 and Twiga. However, the venture capital firm has been flexible with its deal-making processes, registering a few later stages deals in Andela's Series C and much earlier stages like Autochek’s pre-seed deal.

Taking a more proactive approach, the firm, which has offices in Lagos, London and Nairobi, intends to place more emphasis on the pre-seed stage and Omame’s appointment is critical to this objective. She is the co-founder and general partner of FirstCheck Africa, an early-stage firm that invests in pre-seed and seed-stage startups with at least one female founder or co-founder. Before FirstCheck Africa, Omame was the founding managing director of Endeavor Nigeria, leading a community of high-impact founders on the continent.

It’s still very early in the African tech ecosystem. However, some say it reached an inflection point last year as startups received over $5 billion in venture capital funding. Though foreign capital from global investors in the U.S. and Europe has driven much of this growth, local and Africa-focused investors are pulling their weights, raising small to medium-sized funds to support innovation.

Only a handful of these firms have an arsenal of over $100 million to deploy in Africa and they have typically made bets from seed to Series C for years. But firms like TLcom Capital are increasing their appetite for much earlier deals—it's identical to how firms that back IPO-ready companies such as Tiger Global and Softbank move for seed deals as valuations of later-stage companies take a beating and IPO stalls.