Lagos Business School Management Hub (Insights Edge Podcast)
Welcome to Insights Edge Podcast, your exclusive gateway to understanding the intricacies of the African business landscape! Prepare yourself for captivating and insightful discussions with distinguished management scholars, industry thought leaders and corporate titans. In every episode, we dive deep into cutting-edge insights and gain insider tips on thriving in today's dynamic and complex market. Get your pen and paper ready!
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Lagos Business School Management Hub (Insights Edge Podcast)
Live Session: Scaling a Tech-Enabled Business – The Path to Profit (LBS Tech-Leap Initiative)
What does it really take to scale a tech-enabled business with a clear path to profitability?
This episode features a live panel from Lagos Business School, where some of Nigeria’s sharpest minds in tech and business unpack the hard truths behind sustainable growth.
Moderated by David Lanre Messan (First Founders), this conversation brings together Onyinye Okonji (Sycamore), Mobolaji Ajayi (Pure Life Pharmacy), Oswald Guobadia (DigitA), and Olu Akanmu (LBS Tech-Leap Initiative) to share invaluable insights, real-world challenges, and actionable strategies for sustainable growth
https://managementhub.lbs.edu.ng/
Good evening, everyone. I'd like to hear someone say hello for us to get this started. Can anybody hear me?
SPEAKER_05:Yes, we can.
SPEAKER_04:Awesome. Awesome. Thank you. It is 8 o'clock and we start right on the dot. Welcome, welcome everyone to the Lagos Business School Spaces tonight. I'm absolutely thrilled to kick off a conversation that I know is top of mind for so many of you on the topic, scaling a tech-enabled business, a path to profit. Oftentimes, we're thinking about building in tech, and of course, growth is exciting, but the true success often lies on the elusive word, profitability. And tonight, we will be diving deep into the strategies, pitfalls, and breakthroughs needed to not just grow your tech business, but to scale it sustainably and profitably. Get ready to share your insights with me tonight. And of course, I'll be asking some burning questions from our very, very important and thought leaders in this session tonight. My name is David Larry Messon, and I'm a venture builder and an angel investor in Fest Founders Venture Studio. Once again, I welcome you to this session. One of the reasons why scaling the tech, anybody's business. It's taking place today simply because it's serving as a prelude to a program that the Lagos Business School will be hosting sometime soon. And it's titled Managing the Tech Startup Business, which sort of dives deeply into the tech ecosystem in Africa and how it is growing fast. and why venture capital funding has sort of slowed down and investors are sort of returning to capital market and have moved strong to positive yields from the negative yields of the past, which, of course, is a major requirement when it comes to the venture funding space. And, of course, in the past, the seamless availability of investor capital could cover for the inefficient running of tech startup. And then... There are certain expectations that we have as tech entrepreneurs when it comes to running or managing a tech startup. We want to be able to have a clear path to profit. And this course definitely will be able to provide more information to how you can manage your tech startup, lead it to profitability, learning from top speakers, instructors, both from the Lagos Business School and outside of the Lagos Business School. I will be diving deep more into that as we progress with these spaces today. But very quickly, I would like to welcome our speakers to these spaces. And I would just like to quickly hear from them before I read their profiles to you. So hello. Oswald, I can see you. How are you doing today?
SPEAKER_03:I'm good. Not bad
SPEAKER_04:at all. Thanks for having me. Awesome. Awesome. And hello, Usaulu. How are you doing today? Good
SPEAKER_05:evening, Larry. Good
SPEAKER_04:evening,
SPEAKER_05:everyone. It's good to be here.
SPEAKER_04:Awesome. Awesome. Thank you very much for joining the spaces. We have Mubalaji Ajaye on the call.
SPEAKER_00:Hi, everyone. Hi, David. I'm good.
SPEAKER_04:Fantastic. Thank you so much for joining this call tonight. And of course, we have Onye Okonji. Is she here?
SPEAKER_01:Yes, I am. Good evening, everyone. Thank you,
SPEAKER_04:David.
SPEAKER_01:Thanks for having
SPEAKER_04:me. Awesome. Awesome. Thank you very much for joining the space. So we have our four brilliant speakers in the house tonight. And of course, I can just imagine what insight we are going to be taking away from this session tonight. But very quickly, I'd like to just introduce them briefly. And of course, they have one minute to as well just say a little bit about themselves and then we dive deeply into the questions for tonight. So I'll start with Onye Okonji. Onye Okonji is a transformational leader and two-time founder driving growth in fintech and hospitality. As a co-founder of Sycamore and CEO of Bedrock Residences, she led 61X and 13X growth respectively for these businesses. She's also a social impact advocate through Hand of Love and an active member of top professional networks. Once again, I want you to give, through your emojis, can you give a round of applause to Onye Okonji on the call? Welcome, Ponyye, to this session.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you very much, David. Thank you.
SPEAKER_04:I'll move very quickly to Mubalaja Jai. She's revolutionizing healthcare assets in Nigeria as founder, CEO of Pure Life Pharmacy and Pure Life Health. Driven by personal tragedy, she built a digital health tech. health tech model, serving over 500,000 clients. With degrees in pharmacy, public health, and an MBA, she leads boldly blending innovation, empathy, and systems thinking. Awesome. Welcome, Mobalaji. Can we just give a round of applause to our emojis? I mean, let's encourage our speakers tonight.
SPEAKER_00:Thanks, David. Thanks, everyone.
SPEAKER_04:You are welcome. You're welcome. Emojis for them. We need to encourage them. Emojis, emojis, emojis. You know, let's encourage them. Really, we'll be hearing a lot from them tonight. And it just makes sense that we begin to prep them up, prep them up. Oh, yeah. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'll move very quickly to Oswald Bobadia. He's a seasoned policy advisor and managing partner of Digitech, leading digital transformation across Africa with nearly 30 years of experience. He has driven multimillion-dollar infrastructure projects, influenced key policy frameworks, and fostered continental collaboration. A renowned thought leader, he champions Africa's rise in the global digital economy. Welcome, Oswald, to this Twitter session. A round of applause, please, emojis, emojis for Oswald. Thank you.
SPEAKER_03:Thank you very
SPEAKER_04:much. You're welcome. And I'll move to Olu Akomu. Olu Akomu is a seasoned tech and business leader with vast experience across fintech, telecom banking, and healthcare. Former co-CEO of OPE and executive at ETEL, FCNB, and MTN. He now mentors future leaders at Lagos Business School. He champions inclusive innovation through public-private collaboration and advisory services. A round of applause through your emojis for Olu Akamu. Thank you. You're welcome. You're welcome. So we all know the topic is scaling tech-enabled business, power to profit. And there's a lot of questions that sort of pops up when we talk about tech-enabled business. You know, we see the rise and rise of startups shutting down. A couple of startups are sort of stuck, you know, in that space. imbroglio of how do we scale? How do we move from revenue to profit? And how do we stabilize our systems towards ensuring that we scale profitably as a business? But then there's a context to this, which I want to ask our speakers questions on. I can see Shagun's hand up. You want to ask a question? Shagun Thomas? okay all right so so there's a context to this you know and um i will want to begin by asking you know oswald our first question so how do you define scaling in nigeria's tech ecosystem how do i define scaling yes how do you define scaling a tech startup in Nigeria's tech ecosystem. How do you, what context would you give to that?
SPEAKER_03:Okay, so I think scaling is a global thing, right? So if you're trying to move a business from serving a certain number of people to now growing in the way it produces or the way it disrupts the industry that it's involved with, and I think that's what defines a startup, right? In the sense that a startup is fast scaling. So I think if you want to say in a Nigerian or African context, I think it's a bit more difficult to do based on the policy environment and maybe not the availability of funds for experimentation. Where most people, I won't say most people, I guess people don't phrase it this way as much, but a startup is really experimentation. If you read about certain startups in other parts of the world, you almost hear them not having it together until almost the end, right? So There's a particular startup I read about recently, and they already raised maybe$300 million,$400 million. But when you read what they're talking about, you can hear that they're still experimenting. They're still trying to get it right. They're still trying to get the product to make sense before they go to IPO. And they even put IPO as a mark where they want to get to. They already had a lot of customers already, but they were still trying to get it right. What you find in our market is that we say we have a very high rate of failure, but a lot of these failures that we have are only in the first iteration of the idea. First, second, third iteration, maybe has just seen the market and has a customer base. but it doesn't have the runway to evolve, which will lead to scaling, right? So maybe you are serving, you know, a few states in Nigeria, but you have not really evolved to get that product to a place where you're serving all of Nigeria and you are now bleeding to Africa. We've had products fail that are even Pan-African, right? But they're just taking a small slice of every country to form this product to form this customer base. But, you know, they don't have the runway or the cash flow to be able to afford the experimentation that's required for them to truly scale into being, you know, a large Pan-African company. So that's why, you know, when you look at unicorns as defined by, you know, there are just a handful of them, right? So we're still under 10. Whilst you have other countries that, you know, have different kind of funding structures and policy support structures that are scaling to the 30s and 40s of startups. Sometimes, I mean, you need whatever. I don't refer to that term anymore. Within a year, they have over 30. So I'll stop there for now.
SPEAKER_04:Thank you. Thank you very much, Oswald. I mean, giving us that perspective to what scaling is. in a global and a local context. Thank you very much. I'll move very quickly to Oluwakamu. What would you say are the main external risks to scaling sustainably in Nigeria, following the fact that startups often take for granted certain external risks when it comes to scaling sustainably? you know, in the ecosystem. So what would you say are the main external risks to scaling sustainably in Nigeria as of today?
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, thank you, Larry. Thank you for building. Thank you, Oswald, for that lead. I will build on what you said. I think there are about three or four issues in terms of risk to scaling for our startups as we see it. building on what Oswald has said about experimentation, if a startup does not have the right attractive proposition in terms of product market fit, if nobody needs your product, even from their own view, you cannot scale. So having a product that is attractive, that has the right fit in the market is the first one. The other one is that In many instances, for example, if you look at things like Ride Elite, for example, if you are a startup, you are not the only one. You might be going into a crowded market where there are already two or three players. So it's not just enough to have a pro market fit. The customers on the other platforms will be asking, why must I leave where I am to come to you, to come to what you are offering? So unless you are differentiated, in what you are offering, if there are one or two other players in your category, it's unlikely that you are going to scale. That issue of being different is not something we talk about. We only talk about product market fit. But we don't talk about being different. Do something different within your category. The third one that we see is about even if you are the... you are the first person in the category, first business in the category in terms of a new market. You have to compete with the existing behavioral of people that you want to convert. So, for example, like in payments, if you want to do cash, if you want people to switch to cash, they are going to ask why, if you have onto your platform, is my life going to be better off on your payment platform if I drop my cash? If not, the MSME, for example, will not come on your platform. The other one, which is unrelated, is the pressure that we see today in terms of if you have large effects cost on your business, we can drive up how you price product. It can push your pricing beyond what I would call the affordability threshold. In a poor country, if your products are not affordable, you are not likely to scale. So those are the kind of four things which are potential external risk to scaling sustainably as we have seen it in the last period. Thank you.
SPEAKER_04:awesome awesome thank you very much i mean emojis emojis if if our speakers are making sense to you give them great emojis emojis and of course the lagos business school is offering a full-fledged course you know on managing tech business and i'm sure If you check the Twitter handle of Lagos Business School Nigeria, you are possibly going to be seeing the link to that course that gives more information about the course and why it is important for you as a tech entrepreneur to do this course, to enroll for this course. So you might want to check some more details on the platform. And we will want to continue with more questions. And I want to go to Onye Okonji. so how do you drive growth while keeping acquisition cost and unit economics in check
SPEAKER_01:i think this question is very great because um if we had all the resources that we needed for everything then you know we don't have to be you know checking you know the unit economics and some big thing that people check on like pitch decks and things like that but um i'll give you a practical example of One of the things that we did very well early on was to ensure that we focused heavily on organic growth because we wanted to be able to see how far that would take us and be able to ensure that the product was something that had a good market fit and was a solid solution to problems that was facing in terms of lending and stuff like that. had a lot of referrals and community engagement but the longest time that's what we floated on and so um if you want to gain speed under your wings you want to be able to put some monies into marketing and so after a while that's what we did to ensure that we can go further but our earliest users were um word of mouth marketers people that had used our products and it came from the efficiency that and confidence talk about it came from the efficiency of the solution um another way we have kept you know acquisition costs low and um in check um is the growing of our own home tech and tech solutions so one of the things that we saw in the market was yes the white label solutions for um back end work for us but we realized that you'd be paying us unnecessary software licensing costs if you were buying or if you were renting, as the case may be, versus if you build your own. And we looked at both ends and decided that over the long haul, it'd be better and more efficient for us to build. And so that's what we did. It allowed automation, it allowed flexibility, know from loan processing to customer feedback keeping our overheads in general very low thank you
SPEAKER_04:awesome thanks a lot for that and uh i'm gonna come back to to you again okonji on some things that you mentioned but i'd like to quickly move to um mobile rg i've been seeing pure life pharmacy i mean i mean the first time i saw pure life pharmacy was in yabba somewhere and uh And I've seen how the business has sort of grown. So what would you say, what role would you say tech has played in expanding your operations without losing control of the margin itself?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, hi everyone again, and thanks, David. Just a brief context on what we do. PureLife Health is a group of companies, and in summary, we're like a, I'll call it like a primary healthcare company that's at scale. We're using insurance as an add-on to subsidize healthcare for the marginalized African. And our major products would be our pharmacies and, you know, our outpatient clinic and our technology as a leverage. About the question, I do say this to my friends. I say that in this new age, I firmly believe that fully traditional businesses in their purest form are becoming very rare. And this is because it's almost, I think it's almost impossible to do business in this year, 2025, without having some form of technology. And we see people now embracing technology simple apps like whatsapp local vendors embracing logistic partners like global you know for service delivery and using like very different forms of simple tech engineering service to scale their business it's also very easy for technology to be a cash burner and not generating revenue i've I've suffered this error, you know, in the very early years of my business. But in our case, as of today, I would say that technology is like the backbone of our operations. We've been able to develop, I call it a figital model. That's a physical and digital model, or we can call it like a brick and mortar model that combines the best of both worlds. And giving direct examples, we're using systems like EMR records, ERPs, you know, to ensure seamless patient data management. We've also been able to leverage technology to manage our supply chain efficiency. We see this value in real time, right? Because it's a tool that's sort of reduced our turnaround time from a whooping three days That's three days times 24 hours. So just under three hours of our service delivery. So I think really that technology is a very crucial enabler of growth for companies, for my own company as well, as opposed to people thinking that it makes them lose margins. It's made our own costs more predictable and our operations more scalable. So I think technology can serve you if you understand how to use it.
SPEAKER_04:Awesome. Thanks a lot. And I'd like to, I mean, just a quick follow up on that. You mentioned that technology, you know, has been a cash burner and that you've had that experience yourself. And I'm sure that that experience in itself is not something that is strange to a lot of tech founders, you know, as of today. So how are you able to, you know, navigate that experience? you know, challenge. And are you able, where you are, were you able to sort of maintain capital efficiency with managing technology, you know, as of today?
SPEAKER_00:Okay, I think at the beginning, it was more of like a FOMO, right? Everyone was shouting tech, tech, tech, you know, that was some four years ago. And we were like, okay, you know what, we've got to jump on this. How can we be on this moving train, you know, the bandwagon and all. And one very bad, I mean, it cost, an error that cost us a lot of money was, there was no architecture. to like the technology that we're going to be building. Let's look at products as you building a skyscraper, right? You definitely would need a floor plan. You need an architect to come put structures together. You speak about it and you're 100% sure that's exactly what you want before building. But we went all head on using some junior teams. And in fact, I think we had to change teams twice at the point after we had burnt cash for a while. My management team and I had to, you know, put things on pause for a while, sit back, look at, you know, where we had made these errors. And this time we did ensure that we had a full-on architecture of, you know, what we're building. We also realized that as much as you need a tech, like, or a software engineer on your team, a product manager is as important, right? And this is not me speaking of any technology person. I I think that they are just too focused on building and coding to be actual leaders. So it was important for us to get product manager on the team to put everyone in perspective. And also just putting a cap on whatever cash you'll be expending and ensuring that... Over time, you're able to build based off on them. We ensured that we worked with milestones, and we didn't go outside the cap of the budgets that we put aside for technology. We're still learning, to be honest. Technology is one aspect, I think, for non-tech founders like me. It's been a journey, and we're still learning, but I think we're better now.
SPEAKER_04:I can imagine the path of North Tech founder. Yeah. All right, great. So thank you very much, Mubalaji, for giving us more insight into that experience. I appreciate that. Emojis, if you are picking from these emojis, emojis. I'd like to move very quickly to Oswald. Oswald, I mean, I followed your work, and you are really big on policy in Nigeria and how this policy in itself has sort of shaped the ecosystem, That's been a lot of adoption of your work here and there. We can't tell the story of Nigerian's tech ecosystem without mentioning your name, particularly when it comes to policy. I'm going to ask you, what systemic constraints are most limit profitable tech scaling? I mean, it could come from the perspective of infrastructure, regulation, policy in itself. Can you dive deep into helping a regular founder understand the impact or the constraints that could limit them from running a profitable tech business?
SPEAKER_03:Okay. Thank you very much. Thanks for the compliment. Now, I'll start with this. And I tell this to founders every time I meet them. And the statement really goes somewhat like this. It's important that you know the policy regulations that guides the business you intend to be in. So if you are going into education or tech education, it's important that you understand the policies and regulations from the different ministries and agencies that guide education and also that guides the digital space. What I find a lot of times from founders is that you have this great idea and you start to develop the idea and you go ahead and execute the idea. And in executing that idea, you may start to see some But at some point, you're going to hit policy or regulations that would affect your business. Or even more interesting, I think my big bro Olu has heard me say this before, it may be that a new regulation may be developed just for you. because your business is so far out of line from what the regulator was expecting because you haven't studied the regulations and you haven't studied the policy. What I tend to tell founders and government people as well is that the disruption that startups do and we encourage, so venture people, investors, General spectators, we want more startups, right? We want more startups to happen on the continent, and we want them to disrupt existing processes and improve our lives and improve the economic basis of how things are delivered, health, how health is delivered, how education is delivered. We want them to do that. But what you must understand is that disruption is not understood by the policymakers, right? The policymakers see displacement. When you disrupt, they see displacement means something has changed. And when something changes to a policymaker, the only tools they have in their toolkits is to form regulations to help guide or stop. So this is why you see certain things lead to a ban, lead to some kind of policy or regulation that seems, I hate the idea, friendly, that seems unfriendly to the business you're trying to do. So from that starting point, it's important that when you're going into any new venture, you also take in consideration. As you take in consideration your coding, or if you're a non-tech father, pulling that team together to code for you, you're also looking at what policies and regulations exist and what is the temperature of the regulator in that area. You don't necessarily have to approach them, but you have to start understanding it so it's built into your business model. Then another thing that's important to understand, and this is what happens to a lot of investors. I say this to investors a lot. You know, the idea that our young founders have and old founders have is a seed. Now, that seed is going to yield fruit. The question now becomes how much fruit, you know? And that seed is what we want to nurture, right? The water essentially is the investment, right? The water is going to be poured on that seed to help it yield fruits. And if people tell you about investment, some kind of formula, how much water you put on the seed is going to give you X amount of outcome. If you invest 10 million, as an investor, you are expecting that it's going to be 10 million times what? Some people say 10X, which is fantastic. You're able to get 10X. Well, what we tend to ignore is the land, the environment. The environment is the policy environment. That's where the seed gets planted into. So if we don't pay attention to the environment where we are planting that seed, it doesn't matter how much water you're going to plant into it. It's not going to get the ultimate yield that you want to get. Essentially what happens, and you hear this from investors all the time, you thought the idea was great. The idea sounded brilliant. It made sense. There was a market for it. You can see the markets. Obviously, my idea is to package water. Those people, they are thirsty. If I take this water to them, they're going to buy it. They're going to drink. But how come I'm only getting 2X? The reason why I'm getting 2x instead of 10x or 15x is because of the policy environment. And I think both the founder and the investor don't pay enough attention to the policy environment. And this is part of the reason why it's the area I've started focusing my time in. So I'll stop there for now.
SPEAKER_04:Wow. That's deep, man. Emojis, emojis, emojis. That's powerful. Thank you so much, Oswald, for that. So I move to Olu. From experimentation to product market fit to differentiation to affordability and on and on. What would you say are the key signs the business is ready? What are the considerable signs a business must consider to say, oh, we are ready to shift from growth to profitability?
SPEAKER_05:Thank you, Larry. My short comment will be essentially the way you framed it. I like the way you framed it. When a business has sorted out its product market fit, now it is growing. And just sharing experience from fintech to telecoms and banking. One thing that you can see when a business is shifting from growth to profitability is that you can see very clearly and significantly that the revenue of the business is growing significantly faster than its cost. The way I like to illustrate is that if you put it on a graph, your revenue lines are significantly below your cost and you could see if you project it, At what point, given your trajectory of revenues and maybe a couple of new initiatives you can do, when are you going to cross your cost line? And if you are consistent from that point onwards, you are a very profitable business. It applies both to tech, to banking, or to a new initiative in telecoms, that kind of a model. But something else which I think I should mention is about this issue of moving from growth to profitability is you will see... a business that has a monthly recurring revenue from the base of customers that is acquired that are sticky. You have sticky revenues that are predictable. So what this means is that if you are running a leaking bucket business in which your customers are not loyal, it's unlikely that you are going to hit profitability from your growth. It will be like walking on a treadmill. So Monthly recurring revenue, how many customers, what is the size of the monthly recurring revenue related to your cost? And what's the base of that monthly recurring revenue? Old customers should be growing more revenue for your business. They should be using more products and services. When you have that, and that base is growing, related to your cost, we should be fairly not be held down. I like the way Mobology and Oye put it, manage your cost down. If you do that very well, you will be clearly on the path to profitability. Let me keep the intervention short at this point. Thank you.
SPEAKER_04:Awesome. Emojis. Listeners, if you are here, emojis. That is the only way I can know that you are encouraging our speakers and I am encouraging myself. Emojis. Thank you very much. So look for that very, very apt emoji. know um insights shared i moved to anywhere also but yeah i mean i know i know like i know so i i recently you you secured um sec approval and reported 115 percent year-on-year growth right how did you how did you balance aggressive growth targets with regulatory compliance and operational controls during that debt financing round. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. How are you able to create that balance in itself, vis-a-vis regulatory compliance and your growth targets?
SPEAKER_01:Thank you very much for noticing us and for complimenting us. I think that this wasn't done of course it was done over time, right? What people see is this announcement that we've gotten our SEC license and it's great, it's headlining and all of that, but what you don't see is the two years of change that was put into advocating for ourselves, into ensuring that we're meeting the right people, talking to the right people, doing the things that they have said um do to ensure that you know you're set compliant right you'd have to you know of course form a new company set up um departments that have sponsored individuals within them that are active and valid on their platform so these are some of the things that you know you're doing behind the scenes before set comes up on board and it's like oh yeah you know you're sick approved now um so what are some of the things that we did in terms of ensuring that we're on the regulatory um good side um again some of these things would have mentioned but ensuring that we we also had the supports we needed from like the um illegal team that does this as their day-to-day work Because if you don't have the capacity in-house, then there's no point delving into it alone. You have to follow the rule of popular parlance. So we employed a legal team that this is the work that they do on a regular basis, getting people to get their compliance and check Some of my team members had to also ensure that they went through the process of becoming sponsored individuals to ensure that we're on the right side of the law so that we didn't have to go through the market to look for sponsored individuals who would obviously be quite pricey. And for a business that hasn't done anything in the market to create revenue, you want to be able to keep your structure as lean as possible while trying to get regulatory approval. So these are some of the things that we did to behind the scenes to ensure that we're on the right side of the law.
SPEAKER_04:Thank you. Thank you very much. So I mean, just to write on that, what would you say are top key lessons from this that you think founders who want to seek SEC license can pick, can take from it?
SPEAKER_01:Three, a lot of patience. A lot of patience. I think that there's no two companies that would have the exact same experience, right? Our experience was vastly different from other people that this same legal team has helped in the past, right? And that, I mean, I'm not saying that two years is the standard. It's not. We were caught in between a political regime change right so that you know bugs were and um well erased and set up again in between this whole time so there are there's a client call for patience because whatever happens in between your you know requesting for this license and it coming out you can't help it is outside of your control right um there is also you having um ensuring that you have the patient capital too. You must be patient, your capital must be patient. If you have, like for instance, when we put in the funds that were requested of us for this approval, if that was the only money we thought, then we would have packed up Sikamwa at that time because there was nothing to fall back onto, right? But this is not the case. We had patient capital, We as ourselves, we're doing other things to ensure that, okay, in the market, we're visible, right? You can see that this is a proper financial company. We're actually doing what we said we'll be doing, which is helping SMEs to get the funding that they need to push their businesses forward, right? So we're doing all of that. We just went ahead with our business. What else can I pick out of an experience? Getting the right people. oh that is so important i think that um interestingly interestingly um we got some of the people that we needed and and we had to get like those guys that sit on the bench i don't know what they call them but i'm trying to make it for boris and say well you know those guys that sit on the bench too we got those guys too and unfortunately um you know one of the people that we got on the team actually died and so that became a lesson for us to always work in deputies into our own processes because you'll be banking on certain things to happen you know the way you've projected it you've forecasted in such and such time you know you get this and you do that and you start to make money and returns and all of that it doesn't happen like that all the time right so your plan a has to have a plan b and a plan c to just ensure that you're not losing your mind as a founder and you know that when it eventually pulls through you have a business to run
SPEAKER_04:awesome awesome so from having to get a team you know which you comprise of the lawyers the set guys and all that to run this to being very patient to having patient capital and of course having a deputy are key key lessons that um or factors that one must hold when it comes to this. And of course, we understand that this is not unique to all startups and as such, it might be different. But of course, thank you for those lessons shared. I'm sure that it will be valuable to somebody in the audience. We are going to move to leadership and people strategy. You cannot scale a tech and a good business without leadership, without people strategy. And I'm sure that for know mobility for you know for one year and for all the speakers i'm sure you at every point you will have to factor people into you know running your business and all of that so i would like to go to mobility how were you able to attract and retain tech talent in a traditional sector and also very quickly you can add to pure life drill care hubs across Africa. So what unique incentive or cultural practices have you introduced to marry healthcare expertise with agile digital skill sets? I'd like to take that on the line.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. Thanks, David. I'll say that it's the magic question and the secrets that I always say is just make the mission meaningful and the impact visible. You know, and so I like to push back on that traditional sector quotes in its sense. You know, I had mentioned earlier that really, let's face it, traditional businesses in that, you know, in its context where it's like regularly described is in the sense that it's been completely non-tech. I almost, like they're all almost extinct now. And so speaking about my business that's in its context is described as a traditional business. I'd mentioned that we're heavily reliant on a lot of like EMR records, enterprise resource planning, website, you know. So like technology in summary is like a, it's a nice to have, it's no longer a nice to have, you know, it's a must have, you know, in this age and time. But yeah, the secret is just making that mission visible and making the impact meaningful for the team. Because any tech person, you know, would want to solve real problems, right? Not just build another flashy app. And that's really what I do. And that's what my team also communicates at Pure Life. We show the tech team, you know, exactly how their work translates to the lives impacted, you know, how this fancy code you're building, It's helping someone, you know, deliver their hypertension meds in a very remote area in Abelkuta or, you know, how a digital tracker reminds a patient, take their HIV prep meds, you know, saving lives, you know, so it gives them that sense of purpose and, you know. I think autonomy is also one thing. We try as much as possible. I will say I try as much as possible, to be honest, because I think naturally I'm a micromanager. But yeah, we try as much as possible to ensure that there's no micromanagement, you know, just accountability and feedback. Plus, we've built a team culture. I think team culture is very critical. That blends the structure of that health with innovation and tech. And I would always say that it's not perfect technology. um but we are we keep evolving
SPEAKER_04:awesome same culture i mean that is that is one one thing that misses a lot from you know startups that are scaling because they get so immersed in that growth process that they forget that the people also matter and which is why you know team strategy sort of plays an important role but i like um Mr. Olutu, quickly touch on team culture and at the same time, you know, portray us a bit on how should performance and incentives evolve as companies scale?
SPEAKER_05:Very, very interesting, very key question. I think one of the most important transitions for all of us as we scale is to move from i mean just i mean when you look at i mean how we have evolved all of us if you are in payments um the headline thing that you talk about uh gross transaction value uh those in e-commerce will talk about dmv um and in many instances at the beginning that's all that we celebrate we are processing um something billion dollar transactional platform sometimes without being resolved clear on how does it translate to money, to revenue for the business. Those GMV and GTV metrics are very good PR stuff. And I think one of the most important things a business should have, especially skills, is a good CFO who work with the business to focus everyone on, okay, so these GMVs and GTVs, are we making money? One of the things I would also recommend is, put it simply, everyone, if you run a business as your business model, you also need to know what's your revenue model. How do you make money? And the performance incentive of the business needs to shift to how you make money. So, for example, like I was mentioning, if monthly recurring revenue, for example, is very key for you, among a base of customers to predict a stick revenue on an annual or a monthly basis, it means you need to realign your performance incentive from just how much transaction will have been moved to things like monthly recurring revenue per different levels of different officers of your business. So I don't want to complicate things with a lot of the jargons that we talk about, but probably should mention it. A good business that is scaling must have metrics for its people around how its customers have been engaged. I speak a lot about B2C because that's what I've done most. So how many customers are coming to do business with you on a monthly or a daily basis? Are you tracking it? Who's responsible? There must be clear accountability for those metrics in your business. So essentially, work with your CFO very clearly what's the revenue and profitability model of our business and build your performance incentives around those revenue and profitability model. And as you go along, things will just get better and better because everybody is very clear on a monthly basis whether we are making money or not in the business. Thank you.
SPEAKER_04:Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. I mean, just to quickly touch on your time at Ope. So from your time leading Ope Nigeria to advising startups at LBS, what compensation model would you say best aligns with long-term value creation for fintech teams?
SPEAKER_05:The first thing is a business must first have scale to be profitable. I mean, to even be profitable because without it, it's not. So, The first top line in terms of measuring performance is the base of customers that you have in the business and the level of engagement in terms of daily active users or monthly active users, I will track it. Each product manager, if it's a sales team that is driving to like merchant business, my pos's on the field how many agents are using it are they using on a daily basis those tracking must be built into the performance incentives of both the sales team and the product managers at the back end so that's why i described understanding how you make money and working backwards in terms of the operational metrics uh around either your platform your ps machines and your products uh aligned with those things so those are the kind of things that uh um at all pay for example at the very early beginning the first joy was about gtv uh but very quickly we moved from gtv to beginning to measure to measure our tick rate our DAU and our FBU and tracking it down by the system, by the product manager in terms of driving what we did. Because without that, we would never be able to know whether we are working for someone else or whether we're just working for NIPs and not working for our shareholders. Thank you.
SPEAKER_04:Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you very much. I mean, this is, you know, this is Lagos Business School, you know, in Stanford, MIT, and INSEE style, and which is why managing the tech startup business is a wonderful course. And something interesting about this is the fact that we haven't seen any institution design a tech course for startup founders. And I think Lagos Business School has taken that pain to design this course, managing The tech startup business, you know, for founders to get to learn all of the insights shared by the founders in here are real life experiences. I mean, these are highly experienced people. And imagine now sitting in class to learn more about this through the managing the tech startup business course, you know, with Lagos Business School. So I will say that visit the Lagos Business School page to see the link to get more information on their website. And consequently, you should enroll for this course. So thank you very much. I'd like to move into enabling structures for scaling a tech-enabled business, really. Because the realities are beyond people, experimentation, people strategy, team, and all of that. we have to be able to build the right sort of structures that allow our businesses, tech businesses, you know, to scale. And I want to ask Oswald very quickly. So what role would you say government or academia and industry should play in supporting scale stage tech businesses? And just to touch on that, what models of collaboration could better support scalable innovation?
SPEAKER_03:Okay, that's an excellent question. So the ecosystem has different players. I think when you speak to a founder, I mean, I was a founder. If you ask me who makes up the ecosystem, I'll point to myself. So the very first step is understanding that the ecosystem goes beyond the innovator, beyond the founder. And government is a key part in that, in the ecosystem. But also in the ecosystem, there are other players like lawyers, ESOs, and academia. Now, academia plays a big role because not only do they guide the thinking and the thoughts, they also help in the production of additional resources to help support your business. So if academia is not designed to support startups in the sense of, you know, the different courses that will help a founder understand the market and continue to grow on the growth path of a founder of a company as they scale, then the founders will always be at a deficit, right? And if there are no additional resources and people that can come in to partner in that business that are being developed by the academia, somebody to come do research, somebody to come do CFO, the founder will always be at a deficit. So that's what the academia has to play. And ultimately, you know, we pray and hope that the innovation that happens in the private sector will partner with innovation and research that happens in academia to give us a stronger research platform where we're not churning out great ideas. I mean, globally, when you think of areas where ideas are developed and commercialized, it's usually in the university area. And I think that's why we naturally have the, it's going to start happening around the LBS campus and the URDC is already happening in Yaba. Government is ultimately, like I said, the policy makers, the environment is controlled by government, the policies and regulations guide the playing field. They set the tone of what is going to happen, what can't happen. And it's important that private sector players and public sector players are partnered to understand what the commonality of why's are. Why are we setting up this business? What does this business mean? And not operating in silos or are not exactly in the same space. I think when you allow government to create policies on their own, not only do they create those policies on their own and potentially those policies do not work for the direction of the business, they may end up becoming competitors to the private sector. So you will find, and this happens, if you look around, you will see that the regulator or the policymaker has not only created policies to guide the environment, but he's also created entities that compete with the private sector from the same market, which shouldn't be. So that really happens in the absence of the engagement between private sector and public sector to be able to create the marketplace in which these ideas will flourish and grow. So it's important that, you know, everybody understands the role to play. You know, developing policy is not a government-only activity. It's an activity that must happen within collaboration between private sector and public sector. As I stated earlier on, you know, what the private sector may see as disruption, the public sector may see as displacement. So the only thing that prevents that from taking root is collaboration and coordination between the private sector and the public sector. And what you will find is that when you lack coordination within the public sector, it's always going to look like government has no plan. And that's where you get that feeling like SEC has announced one thing, CBN has announced another. That's a lack of coordination within government. And a lack of coordination within the private sector also creates a destruction of value. So it's important that all these parties understand their roles to play. If we want to be able to get the real outcomes of our ideas, the real outcomes and fruits of the seeds which we are all planting, we need to understand the foundation of it is a collaboration, understanding that we all have roles to play and we should allow everybody to play their roles and encourage participation of all. Thank you.
SPEAKER_04:Great. Awesome. Collaboration plays a very important role. I agree absolutely with you. Thank you very much for that insightful thought shared. We have about four minutes left to the end of this session, and I would just like to go around the speakers in this session just to ask one more question, and it's the same question. I'll start with Onye. What is one common mistake to avoid when scaling a tech business, and what will you do differently if scaling your company again?
SPEAKER_01:Okay, one common mistake is to confuse traction for product market fit. You know, we've all been, you know, founders are at that point where we're tempted to chase expansion after a good quarter or two, right? Real scale, you know, demands retention, keeping your eyes on numbers, internal systems to weigh, to support the weight of the growth. Advocates growing gradually. because experience over time, it makes for more seasoned founders and seasoned products. So that one mistake would be confusing traction for product market fit. Thanks. Okay, and then you said, what would I do differently? Was that your second question?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_01:I feel like I'd invest in building people and leadership pipelines much earlier, investing, building our in-house tech platform much earlier, investing in internal systems, just putting up those structures much earlier because it's something that has to be done anyways. And the earlier the better because that sort of builds resilience that has to be built in the scaling time and season much earlier so by the time you're getting into the time when you're scaling the business you know all of these hurdles uh move because you've built in deputies you've built in um systems that are just sturdy and can carry the weight of growth
SPEAKER_04:awesome thank you very much so mobile what do you think um about one common mistake to avoid and what would you do differently in scaling your company again
SPEAKER_00:I think one of the biggest mistakes I've seen with tech businesses, I'll try to go pretty fast because of time, is confusing traction with product market fit. Sometimes just because you've got really early adopters doesn't mean you have you know, a product that would resonate with your target markets. So in summary, like early growth does not necessarily mean that you validated retention or you validated revenue. And that's really true because I've seen a lot of companies, you know, get caught in the excitement of this early traction, forgetting to focus on the metrics that truly matter, like customer retention, like revenue growth, like customer satisfaction. So for us internally, we've had to go back with this design flows. That was how we came up with our omnichannel strategy to sustain the real demand. It's like you have, as a founder, you have to take a step back and really understand what your customers need and want, and then build a product that meets those demands, not vice versa. So the product market fit is not just about getting people to try your products, but getting people to stick with it. What I would do differently? I think I've learned that a resilient and aligned team is what separates companies that grow sustainably from those that really burn out, right? And when you're scaling fast, it's easy to really get caught up in the excitement, focusing solely on your metrics. But I've Realize that company culture and the team dynamics is just as important as these metrics that I have described. It's just as important as your product development, as your customer acquisition. So if I were to do it again, I'll prioritize building a very strong company culture from the get-go. And this for me means investing in talent development, creating opportunities for growth, and also just creating and enabling an environment that allows people to speak up and hear feedback. So there's something about also having a diverse and inclusive team, right? A team that has not necessarily different ways of thinking, but not also going out of the vision. Research has really shown that these kind of teams are more innovative and they make better decisions. So yeah, those are the things I would consider.
SPEAKER_04:Awesome. Thank you so, so much for that insightful talk. you know, contribution. So, permit me to take another five minutes of your time just to round this up. So, I mean, I know that we have our audience here that want to ask questions. Shergo, do we allow questions at this point? I will take like two questions if you have questions so that we can, if you have questions for any of the speakers, ask questions, just two, and then we can round this up very quickly. All right, Larry, please. Can we take Dr. Austin? You said what? Dr. Austin. Dr. Austin. I said, can we take Dr. Austin? He's on the call, please. Dr. Austin is the CEO of Lilly Hospital. Can you speak up? Thank you. Dr. Austin, go ahead, please. Hello, Dr. Austin. Are you there? Okay, Segu, can we take the next question? Dr. Austin will catch up with us along the line.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, please. Thank you.
SPEAKER_04:Do we have any more questions? Okay. It seems we don't have any more questions. I want to thank you so much, Mr. Oluwakumu.
SPEAKER_05:Sorry, Larry. I think what could... could just emphasize that just looking back, bringing financial discipline early into the startup business is very important. It's not something we pay attention to, especially for the early generation startups that raised a lot of money. It was just about, I think I like the way mobility of your input, attraction, growth, growth, growth. And when the engineering internal revenue model, the profit model of the business is distorted at foundation, because the financial discipline was not in it at the issue, it's very difficult to fix. A whole lot of the projections will be expectations that are outside. you that may not be within your control. So that would be something which I would just leave on the table. Bring financial discipline early into the business, even when you're not profitable, but you should still be able to see, okay, I can see a path ahead in terms of operational excellence and profitability. Thank you.
SPEAKER_04:Awesome. Awesome. Thank you so, so much for that. That is actually the crux of any startup that wants to survive for a long time. I would like to pass it to Mr. Oswald if you have the parting words for today. So
SPEAKER_03:I think I've said a lot of it already. I think it's key that we all understand the environment that we are trying to do business in, government policy. You know, one thing that occurred to me one time when I was talking to young entrepreneurs, you know, I say policymakers also go to university with you. So it's quite possible that the policymaker is a classmate of yours or is a classmate or somebody in the policy office is a classmate of one of your staff. But I don't think we even consider it that way. We just kind of draw a line and think that those people are other kinds of people. But they're in university as well. So it's very quite possible that the DG or somebody there is your classmate, the director is your classmate, and somebody on your team is probably classmates with somebody on that team. The young people in policy offices are the ones that actually draft the documents that may destroy your business. So it's important that you get to know them. Getting over the people who are creating policies and regulations that determine the playing field where you do business. Awesome. Thank
SPEAKER_04:you. Thank you so much. And I'm very excited about this session. But I'd like to say that Lagos Business School has a program that helps you to dive deep into how you can scale your startup. You know, the course is Managing the Tech Startup Business. You can get more information via the Twitter handle of Lagos Business School. And sorry, Larry
SPEAKER_05:Madrito, the course is on August 26th to 28th. It's like a mini crash MBA in three days tailored for tech startup, August 26th to 28th. Thank you.
SPEAKER_04:Awesome. Thank you very much. That being said, Thank you very much for making this session, speakers and to all listeners. Thank you so much. And thank you Lagos Business School for organizing this session. We shall bring this session to a close now. Have a great night.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you, David and everyone. Good night.
SPEAKER_04:Thank
SPEAKER_05:you. Thank you.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you to
SPEAKER_05:our
SPEAKER_02:listeners. Good night, everyone. Thank you, Larry. Thank you, everyone. Good night.