Ibrahim Sagna, executive chairman at Silverbacks Holdings: Each week, My Morning Routine looks at how a successful member of the community starts their day — and then throws in a couple of random business questions just for fun. Speaking to us this week is Ibrahim Sagna (LinkedIn), executive chairman at Silverbacks Holdings.

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My name is Ibrahim Sagna, pronounced “Sanya.” It’s a Senegalese name that people often mispronounce as Sagna, so I try to make it easy for them by saying, “You know lasagna? Just remove the ‘la’.” Of course, then people tend to fixate on lasagna — which actually helps make sure they don’t forget my name.

I’m an investor by training. My focus is on three key sectors — technology, sports, and entertainment — all of which are areas that remain underserved in Africa and the Middle East. I believe these industries have the potential to redefine the region’s position on a global scale.

In practice, my job as executive chairman comes down to three things — aligning management with the board’s vision, maintaining strong investor relationships, and evolving the firm’s long-term strategy. At its core, my role is about being a dream builder — using decades of investment experience to help founders scale their vision into something global.

The firm I lead is called Silverbacks Holdings, which takes its name from the elder and leader within a gorilla tribe — a reference to dominance and leadership. We focus on identifying dominant players in underserved markets and empowering them with capital, empathy, and authority. Our team, predominantly financially trained, has deep expertise in money management and capital, while our media and entertainment experience allows us to first understand a founder’s story and then amplify it. We’re also well known in the market and command respect, which we leverage to support the businesses we back.

I started Silverbacks Holdings with my own capital five years ago, investing a few mn USD alongside investment partners who are now part of our team. We later onboarded former clients, including CEOs of banks, insurance firms, and large construction companies and were backed by former athletes and Grammy-winning music superstars. These long-standing relationships, some spanning 15 to 20 years, backed us early in key bets.

We’ve had our share of “happy accidents” in the tech space — including an investment in Flutterwave which we exited (partially) after 36 months at a price 73x higher than our entry price. One of sub-Saharan Africa’s fastest-growing unicorns, Flutterwave scaled rapidly with strong VC backing and a founder experienced in payments. After that success, we set out to replicate it, first by taking a significant portion of our initial investment and reinvesting it. We allocated about 10% into GPs, and today, we’re invested in nine different funds.

Since that first happy accident, we’ve had six more — achieving seven exits in five years. Our lowest exit returned 1.36 times cash. Two exits exceeded 10 times cash. A notable recent gain came from another fintech company called Moove, which we backed when valuation was at USD 65 min. We took a partial exit shortly after Uber took a 10% stake and valued the business at USD 750 mn. While we don’t expect to replicate these returns indefinitely, we believe we’ve refined a strategy that differentiates between beta and alpha returns, with beta returns coming from backing emerging fund managers primarily in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of MENA.

This approach helps us uncover what we call “silverbacks” — the standout outliers. We allocate 80% of our capital to these silverbacks, ensuring we back the strongest players in the market, while the remaining 20% goes to GPs. Our assets under management started at USD 5 mn and have grown significantly, attracting reinvestors and, more recently, we are busy attracting institutional capital, including DFIs and corporate private equity.

We focus on four key sectors: sports, tech, entertainment, and a touch of fashion. Tech is the backbone, driving capital gains, while entertainment has proven highly profitable by backing producers who sell to platforms like Netflix and Amazon. Our niche in entertainment is cross-cultural storytelling, targeting massive, underexplored markets. A prime example is the Post Cards series, a Nigerian-Indian love story that resonated across both regions. Love stories, whether framed around culture, religion, or geography, are timeless, and securing distribution deals in FX provides a strong hedge against FX risks in markets like Egypt, Nigeria, and Turkey.

Sports, often overlooked as an asset class, is actually the premium tier of entertainment. This is especially true in the US leagues, where multi-bn USD broadcast rights generate guaranteed, long-term revenues. These rights are pre-sold for up to 11 years in advance, creating predictable cash flow. Major leagues like the NBA and NFL are expanding into Africa, bringing with them institutional investment and sponsorship money. Recognizing this, we co-founded a South African basketball team that went on to become a national champion, leveraging our early insight into the NBA’s expansion strategy.

We see sports as the antidote to AI’s growing influence. AI-generated content will dominate screens, just as processed food has overtaken natural diets. And just like the rise of organic food, live experiences — sports, concerts, theater — will become the “organic” alternative to digital saturation. Demand for real, in-person connection will surge, and live events will be priced like premium goods. This is why we’re doubling down on sports and entertainment — industries that aggregate communities in ways AI never can.

Beyond sports, we’ve created an ecosystem where tech, entertainment, and media investments feed into each other. Our portfolio founders cross-invest — tech firms sponsor our sports teams, while others back our entertainment ventures. In the Valley, our podcast with 3 mn views on YouTube, amplifies these ventures by providing a media platform for CEOs and founders. We’ve also invested in media platforms like Amaka, which started as a women-focused creator network and now amplifies content for a broad base of creators. Additionally, we work with Forbes local franchises in multiple languages to ensure our portfolio companies gain visibility across key markets.

The future of business isn’t necessarily written in the West — it’s being reshaped by regions like the Gulf, where Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar are investing bns into sports, media, and entertainment. The next 30 years will see power centers multiply, and the key is to own businesses that can tap into these recurring revenue streams.

Today, immigrants are building businesses for the diaspora — whether within their adopted countries or back home. This space is largely untapped, yet holds immense potential. We back founders who see these gaps, whether it’s a designer whose shoes now sell on Broadway or a beauty entrepreneur catering to underserved markets at Sephora. These businesses don’t need control-heavy investors; they need partners who bring financial expertise, governance, and authority — and then step back and let them do what they do best.

My morning routine is built around aligning my day with my obsessions. I wake up around 5:00am or 5:30am, and after the morning prayer, I ease into the day with coffee — always blended with butter, a habit I picked up a few years ago that boosts energy and curbs hunger — then head to a workout. When I’m in Cairo, I train at F45, a high-intensity mix of lifting and cardio that fits perfectly into my schedule since it’s never more than 45 minutes. On days I don’t go, I hit Gold’s Gym for cycling and weights. Throughout, I’m always listening to a podcast, making the most of that time by learning something new.

Podcasts have been a game-changer for me. I used to read a lot, but with ADHD, long-form reading requires breaks. Podcasts, on the other hand, allow for continuous learning. I divide my listening across three areas: investing, philosophy, and health. On investing, Ray Dalio and Robert Smith stand out, and I regularly tune into Capital Allocators, 20 VC, Invest Like the Best for insights from top investors. For philosophy, Naval Ravikant’s audiobook titled The Almanack is a must — his perspective on wealth, happiness, and peace has been transformative for me. On health, podcasts involving Peter Attia are eye opening, and Diary of a CEO has been producing good content lately.

I stay focused by constantly filtering — figuring out what not to do, which transactions to avoid, and which opportunities aren’t worth the time. To stay organized, I’ve surrounded myself with highly intuitive and structured people, most of whom are women. I believe intuition is the most reliable of human faculties — it sharpens with time, unlike physical strength or intellect. Yet, men are often conditioned to suppress it.

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