Richmond Bassey

Richmond Bassey is the co-founder and CEO of Bamboo, the Lagos-based digital investment platform he launched in 2019 alongside Yanmo Omorogbe after struggling to buy US stocks from Nigeria. Educated at Anglia Ruskin University (mechanical engineering) and Queen Mary University of London (management), Bassey honed his product instincts at Mastercard, L5 Labs, and Helium Health before building Bamboo into a platform with 2.3 million users across Nigeria, Ghana, and South Africa. The company, a Y Combinator Winter 2020 alumnus backed by Tiger Global and Greycroft, has processed over $1.3 billion in investment transactions and offers fractional shares in more than 3,000 US-listed stocks, ETFs, and ADRs, with entry points as low as $10.

Bassey occupies a singular position in African retail investment: he built the plumbing that routes everyday Nigerian savings into Apple, Amazon, and Google before most regulators had even considered the idea. Under his leadership, Bamboo has expanded beyond equities into Nigerian stocks, treasury bills, Naira savings, and Misan — a remittance and virtual USD card service rolled out across 15 African markets. His vision of levelling the investment playing field for ordinary Africans, not just high-net-worth individuals, has established Bamboo as one of the continent's definitive wealth-building platforms.