An unlikely founder-funder equilibrium

Building And Dealing: The Tricky Rise Of The African Tech ‘Founder-Funder’

By  |  August 10, 2021

It’s the year 2015 and Founder duo, Shola Akinlade and Ezra Olubi, are still getting the hang of making a tech startup work. At the time, their company, Paystack, was a fledgling creation borne out of some tinkering with a credit card, a computer, and some code.

As the story goes in his own words, once Akinlade found out what his credit card could do with a computer, he showed it to Osita “Oo” Nwoye, a friend and well-known provider of startup advisory services.

Upon seeing the demonstration, an excited Oo let out the following words: “Yo, guy. This is a company. This is Stripe.” Oo was to eventually play a key role in preaching Paystack to some of the individuals that became the startup’s earliest investors, way before the now-robust Nigerian payments company took off.

Five years and USD 200 Mn later, it so happened that Paystack went beyond building a “Stripe for Africa” to literally become “Stripe, for Africa” following the landmark acquisition that got Africa’s tech scene buzzing last October.

Most Read


Nigeria’s Prominent Startups Mull Local IPOs In Unlikely Push For Elusive Exits

Nigeria’s tech companies are at a crossroads. With global IPOs once seen as


Catalysing Change: Acumen’s Journey to Transform Africa Through Patient Capital

In 2001, Jacqueline Novogratz had a bold vision—to rethink how the world tackles


Wealth-tech Sees Boom In Gloom As Nigerians Seek Haven In Hardship

Linda Ikechukwu, a Developer Advocate at Smallstep, vividly remembers the sharp realisation that