back to team members

Chad Larson

Senior Advisor

About Me

Chad Larson has served as a Senior Advisor to KawiSafi Ventures since 2018. Since 2019, Chad has served as CEO of Kopo Kopo Inc, a leading fintech based in Nairobi, providing payment and credit services for over 20,000 Kenyan businesses. Prior to joining Kopo Kopo, Chad founded and served as CFO of M-KOPA Solar, the award winning pioneer of pay-as-you-go solar in Africa, currently serving over one million rural households. He began work on M-KOPA with the two other founders during its pre-launch piloting in 2010, and has lived in Nairobi with his wife and three boys since the company launch in 2011.

Chad began his career in structured finance at Bank of America, where he worked in various senior positions for ten years, in New York, Sydney and San Francisco. He went on to become Chief Financial Officer of the Africap Microfinance Investment Fund in Johannesburg, and eventually of Signal Point Partners, an incubation and advisory group for mobile payments and mobile services ventures. He serves on the boards of several businesses focused on rural distribution and finance. A Chartered Financial Analyst, Chad holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in finance from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an MBA with distinction from Oxford University.