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The next African story will be written by Africans, and there are people crafting the narrative now. Join Dotun as he hosts a series of conversation with people whose ideas and work is shaping the African future.
Shola Akinlade
[00:00:00]
Dotun O: Shola, it's good to have you on the show again.
Shola A: Thank you.
Dotun O: We're just talking before we came in here about the last time you were on the show when this podcast was still like a startup. Long time ago. We recorded on a couch in a small flat in Lekki now a lot has happened since then.
And I remember that episode. It was quite good and you were very brutal. You are very honest and you, there was a lot of lessons for people and I'm looking forward to this show as well. That's gonna be that learning and insightful for people that are listening. Maybe the best place to start, again, going by some of the stuff that we discussed before we came on live is since the last time we recorded a podcast with you , one of the biggest thing that's happened to pay Stack, of course a lot has happened, is Stripe. Acquiring PayStack .
Now let's talk about that exit. What does that mean for you, apart from your bank account bigger. What does that mean for you personally in terms of your motivation to continue to work? Because exits from the word connotation, you can exit the business. You build something [00:01:00] that other people find valuable and they're coming to buy,
You're still working hard.
What does that mean for you personally?
Shola A: It's shareholders that exit,
Dotun O: Okay.
Shola A: Like the exit word is exit the shareholders. But Thanks. Thanks for that and good to be here.
And thanks for that first podcast too, to be honest, because I feel like it was a good launching pad, even for me as a person, I think when we launched in 2016. A lot of people, I know I'm not answering your question, but let me set the context. I felt like I needed, there was a crisis of identity, right?
Because, and shout out to Jason Njoku, Mark Essien, Tayo, some of the biggest founders then were very vocal, people knew them, people learned from them. But in 2016, I didn't want to talk. I didn't feel like I needed to build my personal brand. I just wanted to work, , but of course when I meet people in person, I have things to say, but I don't want to be saying everything I have to say online, and I felt like [00:02:00] that podcast was like one of the first times I just talked to someone in person. They amplified it, and a few people started, oh, this guy, ah, this guy has some common sense, so I say thanks for that. And over that period I've learnt what the right balance is and yeah, and I think it's fine.
Back to the question, I feel like Paystack getting the exit to Stripe, I think it was very good. And for me personally, but I think one of the most important things for me as a builder, that I am, if one of the most sophisticated companies in the world can acquire a company that was built by us in Lagos here, imagine how much more can happen.
'cause I know I'm not the best, I'm just a random software engineer. Think about how much more of me exists here. And I say that for me was the most important part.
Dotun O: It's a validation [00:03:00] of the talent that exists here
Shola A: Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. But more importantly, I think if you ask me why, like you talked about motivation, which I think is important, right?
It's, it almost starts from like, why did I even start Paystack, and I think it was a personal problem. It was in this continent we have 17% of the world's population, but just 2% of digital commerce globally. So there's just a big problem. And I feel like that exit to Stripe, Stripe acquiring Paystack was an opportunity to continue to accelerate the solution to that problem.
I think Pay Stack was in a very good place. I had very good options. You had term sheets, series B, this, that, so it was more like just choosing the best path forward. Three years later now. I feel like it was the right path. In terms of motivation, like you said, I think the financial parts, while it was a [00:04:00] consideration, it wasn't the most important consideration, I knew that this is my work, this is what I want to do with my time.
I wanted to do it with good people. Exactly how we raised seed round and series A. Our series A was $8 million from Stripe and Visa, at that point comparable companies were raising way more.
Paystack in 2016 to 2020. In four years, had just raised only $10 million publicly.
Maybe about 12 overall, so I would say that it wasn't financial, it was just doing the right thing for the company. And I feel like it's been a very interesting journey.
Dotun O: There's a concept that you alluded to when we're talking around leveraging the compounding advantage that you have in an opportunity and making impact on it. There are many pathways that you could have gone through after the exit to say, I want to be this and that, but you stayed Paystack [00:05:00] compounding the advantage that you have
Shola A: Exactly. No. That's very funny. 'cause when I meet investors like you, they like, ah, when is your next company? Tell me about your next company. When you start your next company. I want to invest, I'm like,
Dotun O: remember the first text I sent to you. I remember that they actually, the WhatsApp I sent you after the exit was, Hey, when are you raising money for
is
your next thing?
Shola A: And I think this is something that I learned from a few founders that have also exited, right? Because as a founder, you were able to build something that was very impactful. People found it, impactful. People rewarded you for that impact you've created.
And for some reason it feels like you want to go and start another impact. Why? Why not just continue to, especially if you are motivated. By just making things work better. Why not just compound on that? Why not just use that as a platform to do more? What else will I do in this world? [00:06:00] Literally in this world that will be more impactful than Paystack?
Paystack has licenses from seven governments. Seven countries in Africa have told me, Hey, come help us fix our payments infrastructure. We have talent. We have a good reputation, we have good partners. We have Stripe who is building the global payments and treasury network for the world. We have everything we need to demonstrate that impact.
Why will I leave? Why instead, to who much is given, much is expected. And instead, this is a challenge. This is an opportunity to do more for a continent, per continent that needs it. We have 1.5 billion people here. If we make digital commerce work, there's so much opportunity we can unlock and that is why we started Paystack and now we now have a clear path to solving the problem.
Dotun O: [00:07:00] but,
Shola A: Yeah.
Dotun O: and I think it's a good way to, to segue into this or to ask additional question to that.
There's the path there are two sides to, there's the impact which you actually articulated well, which, which is you build a lot of advantage. You really want to continue to make that impact. Now you have more tools, more partnership more reason to continue to do it. But there's also the upside, the question around the financial or even material upside.
Do you still think there is still more upside for you given the competitive landscape compared to when you started now?
Shola A: Yes. Wh why? Why? If I was thinking about upside, why did I need to exit? I think. The point of a founder exiting a company and this is as a founder now, is deciding that this is enough financial upside for me. And I feel like a lot of founders miss that part, and even for me, when I was making that decision, when I tried to get advice, this is personal, this is very [00:08:00] personal. Whatever I say on this podcast, whatever you read on Twitter is not going to solve the problem. Every founder should look at their life and say, is this enough for me?
And for Ezra and I, that was the decision we had to make. After this, are we still going to hustle?
I don't want to hustle. After this, are my children still going to hustle? I don't want my children to hustle. After this, are my grandchildren still going to hustle? I don't want my grandchildren to hustle. Okay. It is enough.
Am I trying to be one of the top 10 billionaires in Africa? No. Why do I want to do that?
What does that help me do? I don't know. So it's a personal journey, and so for us, the financial part was a personal decision, which of course you benchmark it and you ask yourself is this worth it? Again, if I am going to do this for long, like I wanted to do, my goal is not to squeeze out [00:09:00] the best out of this, and if people find it surprising, we didn't use an investment banker. We got into this deal. Oh, Stripe, Shola, Patrick, guys. If we're gonna work together, it almost feels like how you negotiate a job. And I see it at Paystack where some people are negotiating a job and they want to get the best, they want me to pay them the highest possible salary out of context.
I want to give you the best possible value I can give you. And for us, it was about value. It was, this is the value we're bringing, this is the value we're getting, this is fair. If you can add more to it, please add more to it and let's just all move on. And investors who actually supported us in the early days, people that looked at us and said, yo, guy, I don't know what you're doing.
I don't even think you can do this, but I like how you're going about it. Take this. All of them got sizable rewards, so why would we [00:10:00] not do it? Why would I want to get the maximum? In fact, I would've failed if.
If after doing building Paystack every day, waking up, rushing up and down, doing all this for seven years or five years, and it came down to how much money can I get from this, that would've been a failure.
This was not about maximizing the financial returns, if that was it. There were multiple ways to maximize. In fact, you don't start a company because you want to maximize.
Exactly right. So I think for me it was maximizing a few things. It was a, just making sure that we are now in this position, we're doing something that just sets a good example because we also didn't have a lot of examples. It was so funny, where when I was trying to get advice and I called the YC guys and we're talking, ah, okay, actually you should be able to talk to any of these other founders that have exited.
Ah, okay. I don't know, who can I [00:11:00] call? I don't know. And I called a few people, but the list was very short, and so I would say for me, the first part was, Hey, let's just, we found ourself in this place. It's same way to literally 2016 when we got intoYC and YC says, let's take 120K for 7%.
And people are arguing, ah, 120K, 7%. I'm like, why? I just want to get into YC, I just want to move. I just want to roll. If you make it a mathematical conversation, you will win the maths, but you will lose your soul or whatever it is you want.
Dotun O: there's a lot of things to unpack in what you just said. It seems. You look at things using different criteria and different mental models and money and maximizing financial reward is the least of it.
Even though it's important
it might be good to just dwell on this a little bit so what is the value framework for Shola personally? When you're making those kind of decisions that have some commercial connotation, what do you rank? Some people say family or
Prestige. [00:12:00] What is it for
Shola A: Yeah. Surprisingly, I just rank peace of mind and happiness. I rank, I think one of the things that got at Paystack was just clarity, I got that clarity that there's a founder company fit. The kinds of companies that founders can start. And there's some other kinds of companies that a founder cannot start. The first thing I try to fix is just like, does this work for me?
Is this going to create problems for me down the line
Dotun O: that you're not capable of
Shola A: Yes. Yes. Or is it just going to be complicated, and so I'll say, I don't like complications. I don't like stress. Someone said, actually, Oo, said I'm hardworking, but I don't like stress.
And I'm like, okay, that makes sense. I work very hard, but if you're gonna stress me, you won't see me
literally,
I'll run away. So I think a that initial clarity on just, I just want peace. I just want to be happy, is the first part the second thing is, does this [00:13:00] help
achieve my ambitions? Again, the thing about FinTech is it comes with competition. There's no FinTech company you start that you don't have competition. In fact, we got that very early, right? And and one of the very early things that did to me was you start understanding what are you competing against?
And very quickly I realized that it has to be against my ambition.
It can't be against any other person
Or any other thing. Because you will miss it. You will miss it. There are good people. Like I said, there are good people in Nigeria. There are people that can do stuff in Africa. And that's where you having clarity on what your ambitions are is good. And I know there's some talk on Twitter about investors harassing founders for not being ambitious enough. And I got that a lot too, people think I'm not ambitious, and I'm like, I have my own ambition, right?
My ambition is not, if you're judging my ambition by, do I wanna build a unicorn?
Of course I'm not that ambitious. If you are asking me are we gonna fix this payments thing, trust me, I will fix it. If I [00:14:00] find somebody that knows something in payments that I don't know, trust me, I will know it. If I find a company that does or ships something in payments that Paystack cannot ship, trust me, we will ship it.
So that is my ambition. I am a craftsperson. I come from this continent that has historically not been able to catch up with the rest of the world across multiple areas. Of course, thankfully in some areas, especially in arts and culture we're doing very well, but in the technical craft, we've struggled.
We can't make planes, we can't make, I feel disappointed. Why can't we make rockets? But thankfully computers, the internet is free for everyone. The laptop I'm using is the same laptop Facebook engineers are using. So that for me is an opportunity to accelerate and just do as best I can do to catch up such that
this
[00:15:00] this area I pick, I would invest, I will commit, and it will be
clean. It will be perfect. It will work. That is my ambition. If someone is trying to pay someone in Mali, today, I don't even know how to pay somebody in Mali, and you nowt want me to, I'm not done. There's work to be done. Burkina Faso. , I've never even been to Burkina Faso. I don't even know how they receive payments there.
So there's work to be done. That is my ambition. And even if I see somebody else doing it it's good. I like it. I love it. But the one I don't like is when you come and meet me and say you raised 8 million, this person raised 15 million or you raised that valuation of 22. This person's, I'm like, why?
I didn't wake up to have a better valuation. Than the
Dotun O: than the next guy.
Shola A: Trust me, the easiest thing to compare someone at Paystack, is 'ah, Paystack, this feature, you guys don't have it. Ah, you have triggered us.[00:16:00]
Dotun O: because
Shola A: We will
Dotun O: to repeat.
Shola A: do it. But if you tell us, oh, this company raised at this price, this company is priced at this good for them.
That's good. I don't want it. I want what I want.
So the second one is just like being clear about what your ambitions are and just competing against your own ambition and. Being honest about it, because I also feel like we've used the competition in FinTech to become a better company.
I think if there was no competition we'd be a worse company or we wouldn't have been as good as this. So I would say, be honest with yourself. When I see people compare me with competition, I'm open-minded, but I quickly ask myself, do I want this or not?
Dotun O: Does it fit into your
Shola A: Yes. Is this something that I want to do or is this something that I just, ah, let them win this one. I want them to actually want them. In fact, there's some things people do, I'm like, I actually want you to win this one so you can leave the second one for me. So that's second one is just like [00:17:00] clarity. I'll say the third one. It's just the people,
People have made sacrifices to join your company. .
People wake up every morning, people do all these things. The least you can do is to just consider the people there. So again, A, consider the fit . , B, mission, does this align with the mission? And C, does it work for the people?
Dotun O: The people aspect that you mentioned is a good way to segue into the next question. A around this. What does exit mean for you? Be very clear for you personally, but what does it mean for your people?
Because they will have different mental model compared to you or different life situation especially for these guys that started day one and they're still in what does that mean for them?
What is the upside or the mission for them now post exit?
Shola A: I think the good news is that, like me, a lot of us did this for the craft, and the second good news is like during the exit, everybody at Paystack got
rewarded for that. And [00:18:00] more than the expectations. And maybe that's why sometimes it's good to under promise and over deliver, because at least for the early people, I remember painting a best case scenario to them in numbers. And for everybody I painted a best case scenario for, this was way, way more than the best case scenario I painted for them.
So I'll say that's the second part, but three also, we're partnering with Stripe, and Stripe has a lot of longevity as I can imagine. The powering tech, and so I think the upside from Stripe still continues to be there. It's almost like the best of both worlds where you build Paystack, you get the upside, maximum upside from Paystack, that transitions again, you start another one.
And more importantly, the core motivation is can we just do good work? Can the work we do this year last for the next 20 years? Are we building a legacy , and when I say legacy now this is not personal legacy.
It is am I contributing [00:19:00] to making something better? People work at Paystack because they want to do good work. And so even as the founder myself, I have to make sure that we're doing good work. If I can't guarantee you good work, then maybe , we shouldn’t even work, so , I'd say that I have not heard of any motivation problems. If anything, people are very excited about the opportunity to just continue to do this work without distractions. It almost feels like the distractions continue to reduce, we don't have to do this. No investor told us this to do this.
We just have to work now, and if we don't get to work, we challenge ourselves, we blame ourselves. We're like, ah, we messed up. We get back again. It's a good place to be where you can't even blame anybody, and you're just hustling it out and you're figuring it out. So I'd say surprisingly, there's a lot of motivation across the people, at least from what I see
Dotun O: There are a few founders that have started their business led it to IPO and [00:20:00] post IPO. So you talk about the pantheons of founders like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, who had started Day zero and they developed as a leader Post IPO. We don't have a lot of IPOs in Africa. We don't even have any IPO tech.
Let's use the Stripe exit as an IPO, and you're still leading the company from day zero to post exit.
There are lots of changes that will happen. There are lots of transition that you've made personally. Lots of development. One of the challenges that founders have is developing at the pace of their
and being a different leader at different time and applying different ways of leading.
Two questions that I want you to answer them together is how has Shola developed from 2015 to now and the shift has happened, what changes are you making with your team with regards to managing, retaining the talent, both day zero guys and the new guys that you're bringing on board
Shola A: Thanks for that. I think that's something that we don't talk about enough, [00:21:00] but when you start a company as a founder, you're encouraged to have a co-founder that compliments you.
And so both of you start and you start complimenting yourself, but as the company scales, both of you are weak, literally.
Dotun O: You cannot cover everything.
Shola A: exactly. And so I think that transition to building a solid leadership team is a very important transition. And it's also one that is easy to get wrong. My transition started from just like Ezra covering up from me personally and it helped me a lot just having someone like that. But with time, started building out that leadership team and just learning from them. Like Emmanuel Quartey just coming and just showing me how you tell stories from first principles,
I used to tell the stories at Paystack before Emmanuel joined, but no I'm, and then you just get more people, right? And people help you. How do you deal with investors? I don't know. How to do board meetings. I've never done a board [00:22:00] meeting before, so I would say that just building up your team and then learning from them or working with them is important.
And that's why also there's the right person to join your leadership team. I'm very lucky that my leaders are people that build with me because I feel like sometimes you just bring a leader and the person, okay, you know what, this is my way. I will do it. And you as a founder, you don't even learn.
You just go, and the person just does whatever they want to do. But I feel like my leaders have been people that we've just found how to, is their problem, is their work, but we do it together. They carry me along. I see the lessons they're learning and we just do that together. So I'll say my personal learning has come from just having the right leaders, having the right team, and just learning from them and just observing them, watching their mistakes and seeing all that. And I think that transition has been good. I feel like one of the biggest struggles I had, and I actually struggled to make this transition in 2018, 2019, [00:23:00] because I remember that was a very hard period for me.
I used to wonder that, oh, how will this person feel if I layer them? And layering is like you bring someone on top of the person that used to do the work and I used to pity them, and I used to panic will they accept it?
Shola A: But at some point I got good advice that you're actually depriving yourself, you're depriving the person and you're depriving the company of the skills that is required to grow. And heard that there's good kind of layering and there's bad kind of layering. Bad layering I just come and say, oh, this is our new CFO. Everybody
Dotun O: runs report to him. Exactly.
Shola A: Good layering is talking to the person that is leading finance and saying, yo, this finance thing is getting complicated oo we are in Nigeria now. We just launched in Ghana, we're launching in Kenya, we're launching in Egypt, we're launching in South Africa.
It's getting complicated. Do you know how to do IFRS in Kenya? Have you been to Egypt? And we have to [00:24:00] hire people there. When we hire these people, we need to build a culture there because you're not just hiring them, and so we're moving from one jurisdiction to multi-jurisdiction.
I feel like we need help, but you can try to do it if you want. Do you think it's something you want to do? We can check on this again in three months time most likely that's what the answer will be. So we give them three months to try to figure it out. And in three months time, I want this thing
Dotun O: it's not working.
Shola A: we're still struggling with this thing o, but
Dotun O: you can see the gap
Shola A: I think.
Exactly. I think we should look for somebody, I think we should look for someone together and we should talk to a few people and let's find somebody that will do it. And guess what? If they don't do a good job, we'll push them out. I'll bring somebody else. I think that's better than you keep doing it. And then we're now in a position where we have to make a call on you.
And they start seeing it. Even for them from their career especially if you're on the career path, that is not like a founder. From your perspective, from the [00:25:00] perspective of that person, it's actually better to work with a rockstar. It's almost like training.
Yeah. You're getting trained on the company's funds. You see all these people come in front of you, you see them do it, you see them succeed, and then you just ease into it. Exactly. I'm going to tell you the story. Don't laugh. The mistake I made when I was hiring, and I haven't talked about hiring, was I just hire people from companies.
Oh, this person has worked in this company. They must be good. Let me hire them. And then I hire them. Ah, this person is this how they work in this company? I don't know. And it's the same thing. I see it even where you want to hire somebody, but.
the person just does the interview by just telling you what their boss
Dotun O: Is doing.
Shola A: And so in reality, you've interviewed their boss, but the person that shows up to work is this
Dotun O: without the covering of the boss and decision making of the boss.
Shola A: Exactly. And I see that, and it's a big mistake. It's a big mistake from the company's [00:26:00] side. It's a good thing from the employees side
Dotun O: How do you optimize against that?
Shola A: I guess it is two or three ways. The first one is I refined my interview process a lot, where we focus on the problems we focus on, no hypothetical questions because it's easier to solve hypothetical questions by just putting yourself in your boss's mindset, ah, how will my boss solve this?
But before I open a role. I must have had problems in that role because in fact, if you don't have problems in that role, you're hiring too early. And so think about the top three problems we're having and really center the recruitment around those problems. Oh, this is a core problem we're having.
We're trying to scale, like how would we do it? Say this is this finance problem, now how would we consolidate our accounts? Or what about the taxes, what about transfer pricing? We go deep deep, deep till the person says, I'm not doing it again. Until the person shows me that they are actually good, so I'll say you have a very clear understanding of [00:27:00] the problem you're bringing a person to solve, and you go deep into it. The second one is reference checks. You figure out who the person has worked with and you just talk to them again, why did they leave? Understanding the fit, especially for leaders. Like where are they in their life? What are they trying to do? Because some things you will figure it out together, are they good people to work with?
Are they going to solve? Sometimes they don't solve the core problem, but they solve my ability to not think about the core problem.
Dotun O: solve your stress problem.
Shola A: Exactly. Exactly. So are they gonna solve this problem and all that? So I'd say that is it. I've dance around your initial question, but problem, yes.
Dotun O: Is a follow up question about your philosophy of hiring. You've answered
Shola A: Exactly.
Dotun O: is good, but I and that, thanks for that. But I still wanna go back to that layering, which I think is interesting because this is the friction point between startup and scale up.
And a lot of leaders. Struggle there, that your own angst. 2018, [00:28:00] 2019 is very common. What I've seen in leaders that are scaling company,
Shola A: That's correct.
Dotun O: I don't want to use fundraising terms, but from scale, from startup to scale
Shola A: Exactly.
Dotun O: How do you manage the emotion? Yes.
Important, the motivation
Shola A: Yes.
Dotun O: and the skillset of your early guys who you started this thing, they got the vision, but they, but their skillset is not there to where your company is going to you yourself.
You're developing as a leader, you can't layer yourself. In some cases founders need to be layered in some cases, but you can't layer yourself, but you need to layer these people. How do you bring them together? How do you bring these layered guys who have different culture
Shola A: Exactly. Yeah.
Dotun O: Who have different motivation and in many cases they are earning far more than your
early day guys. and and you mentioned about the good and the bad layering, but I want to dig deep into. How did you then get over that for
Shola A: Exactly.
Dotun O: Exactly.
Shola A: I feel like the biggest problem about it is not even the person you're layering. It's their friends, is the other people in the [00:29:00] company.
In fact, it's the other people outside. People will message someone on LinkedIn and say, oh, I just saw no, people will message a friend. I just saw this new person has joined the company. Is it not your job?
So a understanding that there's some social aspects to this, and it's not rational, but if you have a role and you bring somebody else, this person's friends within or outside the company are going to want answers.
Yeah. And so a is a,
Dotun O: very,
Shola A: firstly just be very transparent about it to everybody, especially in the company. you just say first things first, this is how we think about these things. B. Different people have different paths for their career, and don't feel bad for your. If anything, feel good for them.
Don't feel bad for your people when they have a new boss. C don't put your impact. It's, a lot of people measure their impact in a company with [00:30:00] how close they are to the CEO. In fact, I've tried to hire people and they say, oh, I need to be CEO minus one CEO minus two. I didn't even realize it was a thing.
Yeah. That's not how you measure your impact though, because anyone that's even CEO minus one already, you're in trouble. So I'll say that there's a social part of it that can be corrected with this, like clear communication. Just say, this is it. This is how we think about stuff. This is how you think you should think about it.
This is that. So just address that and don't try to be rational about it. Just address the social parts. Now on the rational parts of it, I think the person coming in has a lot of work to do. But you bringing the person in also, I had to be direct with my people to say, hold me accountable to the first 90 days.
If I bring somebody in and after 90 days they're still there, just trust me that this person is doing their work. And trust me, that is not a problem [00:31:00] if after 90 days. . Just trust me.
Dotun O: And you make the tough decision to let them go.
Shola A: Exactly. Because people can see. If you do a good job with the first one, you earn the right to do the second one.
If you do a bad job with the first one, you stay on it till you fix it, and I feel like that's the mental model that founders should use to layer people. And from the employee side if you're not happy, talk about it. And if you're not happy, you can also leave the company.
Sometimes companies get into trouble because they hold onto to employees that don't want to be there. Mm. And so sometimes people measure pay. Ah, pay stack. People don't leave Paystack People have left Paystack. So many people have left Paystack, but I measure it by the people that want to be at Paystack, though I really hope that they stay, but , if Paystack is not the right place for you for multiple reasons. It actually is good so that we can be friends. You talked about it this morning. Yeah. [00:32:00] So that we can be friends so that you can come, like we, we talk about our current employees, but we also have a very strong alumni network.
And when I say alumni network, like our people that live Paystack, are still friends internally, we still catch up. We still do a lot together. So it is okay when people leave Facebook, people leave Stripe. In fact, as a founder
There's a time.
I used to measure, I used to think I failed.
When people leave the company. I was just like, oh man, why did this person
Dotun O: Because you take as a personal stuff for you that
Shola A: But then it just occurred to me one day, why are there so many ex Googlers? There's so many ex Stripes, people leave anywhere, man, this is not prison. If it doesn't fit, don't force it. Don't force it. Have the right conversations, have the hard conversations. Let people know they can come back. Let people know you can go back to them. Just have, don't run away from hard conversations. And I think it would help.
You talk about that layering and having that social [00:33:00] aspect, you think about that first, but then you, that doesn't stop you from making the hard decision. A lot of people struggle with how to marry both.
Dotun O: Exactly. Which is, I have to be a hard leader and make tough decision quickly without the social
Shola A: Exactly.
Dotun O: You're known to be a nice guy, but you're also the tough leader.
Shola A: Yeah.
Dotun O: Yeah. How do you marry the empathetic leader? And the tough leader that you have to be in a competitive space.
Shola A: No I think it's important and I think that's what a few people get wrong. Being nice is different from being fair.
I will never be unfair to anybody. . But if something is not working, if you're not doing a good job, I owe it to myself. I owe it to you to be direct about it and to try to solve it. In fact, I tell people, if I don't believe in you, I tell you I don't have confidence in you.
I don't need to hide it. I'm not being nice to you. You don't deserve a boss that doesn't have confidence in you but [00:34:00] it's how you deliver it.
How you say, you know what? This thing we're struggling with. We've struggled with it for two years. It's too much. I don't know if I can continue.
I don't want to continue, I can also just tell them that I don't like this conversation I'm having. It's not, I don't, it's not comfortable, but we have to have it.
And surprisingly, people get it. The people that you need to get it will get it.
Of course there are people that just no, what are you saying?
Dotun O: And they take it personal and
Shola A: They take it personal and all that. And sometimes you just realize that perhaps this person didn't deserve my niceness. If they can't take my honest conversation, so I'll say that.
You can be nice about honest conversations. You don't have to, you can be nice and fair. You owe the person not to be unfair to them. And if you think you're being unfair to somebody, catch yourself. Fix it. If the company's not dying tomorrow, it's okay to give people two months extra.
But will you give them two years extra? [00:35:00] No. And when you do that two, months extra, you put a cap on it and you hold yourself accountable to it. And sometimes when you even make mistakes, we talk. And that's the hardest part that we don't even talk about is there's so many jobs in this world that you make mistakes for a living.
Writers make mistakes for a living.
But for so many roles, there's just
Dotun O: You learn, you.
Shola A: Exactly. So you are not, I tell myself like, maybe I'm overthinking my capacity. Why do I think I can make wrong decisions? So why am I blaming myself for making wrong decisions?
Am I the smartest person in the world? I made a wrong decision.
I made it. It's fine. But guess what? I will never make this specific wrong decision anymore. There might still be new wrong decisions, it
Dotun O: make new mistakes.
Shola A: Exactly. I don't mean malice and to the other side too, right? When people do stuff, did this person, did they just not know enough or were they trying to be intentionally [00:36:00] malicious? And I think all that clarity, I've used the word clarity a lot, but I think maybe that's the answer to your question on how can you be nice and still be brutal.
And I think it comes from clarity. Like I know what I'm doing.
Dotun O: Some of the best founders that I've seen that I've worked with, what differentiate them from the other founders, it's not just that they're brilliant or they're smarter, or they're the best engineers, it's the clarity of thought. If they can get clarity of thought on the product or the customer or talent, you'll be ahead of everyone. And I think that's what is coming out here. Clarity of vision. Because a lot of people will bring a lot of opportunity to you. Yes. But if you're not clear, you'll just jump and there's clarity
Shola A: of execution.
Dotun O: Yes. It
Shola A: allows you to fail fast.
Dotun O: On the subject of clarity of thought, that it would be good to get the opportunity you're scoping with Sporting Lagos.
So again, to give some context, Osarumen was mentioning this too, my producer just before we came on board,
And he made a very good thread between Paystack and Sporting Lagos. And I know you and I discussed that the first time I came [00:37:00] to see Sporting Lagos match. It's not just the charity and people think that, oh, this guy's got money and he's now doing charity. Can you talk us through the opportunity with sporting Lagos?
Shola A: No, thanks. Thanks. I think maybe good to talk about the why, right? Because we talked about Paystack and how I feel about the impact of Paystack. Knowing that I'm going to continue to go deep into Paystack. It quickly occurred to me that
I need to still do stuff for my community. I'm from Lagos, I'm from Nigeria, I have some level of financial reward for the work I've done, I have to do stuff, I need to pick a part of the community that I can do for the next a hundred years, and it would just be a long-term agenda. That will be fine. And football and sports quickly became the answer to that because it's accessible. It's easy, it's simple.
We have all the talent. There's not enough opportunity. We're going down globally. It's getting [00:38:00] worse, so it's this thing that we used to have, we used to love. We don't know how it's gonna end up. It is confusing. Nobody wants to do it. Everybody thinks there's corruption there,
Dotun O: so you see it from the problem perspective. Again, your typical engineer,
Shola A: It was a big problem. But it also had longevity. A lot of sports brands over a hundred years, and one thing we should also talk about, because at that point I was also hearing that tech people don't build enough cathedrals. If you think about the arts guys, in the early days, they built this, whatever they call them, Picasso, all these guys, Vinci da
Dotun O: big ra that out last generations,
Shola A: And so I started thinking about it that, okay, while I'm not trying to build a cathedral, but history doesn't have to start in 1976. Why is history always like old? Can we start as a class of 2022 and build something for the next hundred years?
And let the tech ecosystem just come [00:39:00] together and say, we built this thing. In a hundred years, literally people will go back and say, oh, there was a time these guys, they did this. They won. They became the best team in Nigeria. They became the best team in the world. They did this, they did, like they built these facilities, they did this because we're actually gonna build facilities too.
All that thinking made it obvious that Shola, you need to do something, but also it needed to be a community project, started sporting Lagos and just created the concept of founding members and just said, oh, guys and Bankole, shoutout to Bankole. We just recorded a video like this. It was very easy. They was like, this is what I'm trying to do. I'm looking for founding members. We got 700 founding members. And I'll say about 500 of them are tech people. And there's a cultural part to it where we just knew that a lot of young people were not connecting with Nigerian football anymore. It's let's build a first team. Let's get young people to connect with it and let's win.
Let's just be the best team in Africa in the next three to five years, or the next five years. And we started that. We started from the second division two years later now. [00:40:00] Thank God we won. We're now in the first division, the tournament. I saw you, the super eight tournament. I don't know. We won that tournament.
That
Dotun O: I saw that. Yeah.
Shola A: of the best teams in Nigeria, seven of the best teams. We won that, so I think we're on the path to, I think in three years time, confident that we probably will be one of the best teams in Africa. So that was a big part of the project where just do it win, refine every 90 minutes and just win.
And the second part, which is very dear to me, is the talent development part. I feel like this problem will take tens of years to solve. In 10 years time, we're gonna have a court of the best footballers in the world, but I need to start investing in it now. Can we find the best young talent, the best 17 year olds, 16 year olds, 15 year olds, and invest aggressively in them, and take it down to 13, 6, 5, 4.
And so that's what we're doing on the academy. We launched an academy earlier in the year, we have a court now, we send them to international clubs, go and spend three days in Rangers, go to Man [00:41:00] City, just. Give them all the right exposure and teach them, not just football, but how do you think about academics?
How do you think about character development? It's almost a 10 year project, so let's do this podcast in 10 years time and
Dotun O: definitely
Shola A: how we're doing. Let's know how we're doing with some of this work. And that's also why we acquired a club in Denmark, because you need to think about pipeline. I just talked about pipeline and the pathway, because the biggest problem in football today is opportunities. This is a skill that is very accessible. And the problem with accessible skills is that there are so many people that can do it. There's so many people that can play football, literally, and there's just not enough opportunities for them.
So when you have something that has so many people but few opportunities, you start seeing things like exploitation, you start seeing middlemen, you start seeing a lot of inefficiencies. And so for us it was important to think about that pathway and we will think about multiple [00:42:00] pathways, but we also wanted to have a very solid European pathway.
And so that's what, that's one of the things we're doing in Denmark. So go back to the talent and that's the second part. And then the third part was just facilities, right? Let's just build, because sometimes football has gone from those days where you used to play in sand, to where seven year olds everywhere else are playing real pitches.
And so how would they
Dotun O: with the right
Shola A: And it was a laptop example I gave. I think one of the things that helped me so much to compete globally was just the democratization of internet and computers. It just became easier that a 15-year-old or 16-year-old in the US did not have any advantage over me.
50 years ago, it would've been different. That person could have gone to Stanford to read. I would've had to, I don't even know how to get to Unilag or Ife, so the advantages were getting democratized, but it's not like that in football. And so we wanted to see how do we democratize this?
How do we provide the same infrastructure they get abroad in Nigeria? So [00:43:00] that's what we're trying to do. I think for me, it is important that this lasts long. B, it is important that we figure out the talent part, like we find the best talent, and C, it's important that we provide the right opportunities for them.
Opportunities will come in different ways. It's college scholarships, it is tech learning because you meet so many 14, 15 year olds, I just, the only thing they want to hear about is football. And so we tell them, yes, you will hear about football, but even lawyers, even any industry, if you go to university, you still have to do other subjects around it, right?
It's never one subject. So you'll come, football is what your major is, but there'll be a minor, and we can start using some of these things to bring people in. We're gonna partner with people like Sim and Miva Open University and they will be able to take courses, they'll be able to get a degree, but we'll also advance their football skills.
So I think that's how we're thinking about, [00:44:00] it's still super early. I would say we're like 1% of the vision accomplished, but there's time. I'm also not allowing Sporting Lagos stress me. In fact, I tell the team, Sporting Lagos is fun for me.
It's supposed to be fun. It's not my day job. We're gonna use some of the startup principles, but I think the biggest one around it is just like we won't be like desperately, like quick. The ambition is different. The ambition is a very long-term ambition. It's excellence, it is talent and it's opportunity. And I guess that's where it connects to Paystack, literally.
Where can we just do good work? One of the things that helped me at Pay Stack was when I got to San Francisco first YC day, they just said, guys, what we like to tell people at YC is that you have to do this for seven years. You can't build a good company in less than seven years. Even if you are a genius, it's gonna take you a long time.
Dotun O: It's the time input,
Shola A: It's exactly you're gonna do, you're gonna make incremental progress for seven years. If you don't think you can [00:45:00] do that, this is the time, this is the time to stop.
Exactly. And it's true. At Paystack, eight years later, I still wake up to customers.
Texting me,
Dotun O: And you have
Shola A: wake up to employees. I still wake up, I still check Twitter. I still search for Paystack every day. What are the people complaining about? What can we fix? I still do all that.
Eight years later, the same thing. I come from a country. It has 200 million people. I know that I don't have any special talent. In fact, that was my biggest problem when I was growing up. I was like, what is my talent? What is my, you go to church and they're like, everybody should discover their talent.
I'm like, I don't have any special talent, so how am I now in a position where I'm making a lot of progress. And it was clear that you just had to spend seven years working on the same thing and making progress. Nigeria is a country where, or Africa is a continent where I guess the world is like that.
If you stay hard enough on [00:46:00] a problem for long enough time,
Dotun O: you get
Shola A: you are going to be better than every other person. And so I guess that's why it's also important to choose good problems. I think when I give the advice of choosing good problems, I don't talk enough about explorations.
The good problems will not just come to you. It's also okay to explore. But what is important is the clarity that means am I exploring or am I doubling down? Even before Paystack, 2014, 2015, that was my exploration. I was, I tried Bravo payroll, I tried expend, but I didn't, it didn't come out of my right.
I was just exploring and I knew I was exploring. And when Paystack came, I spoke to a few people. Oh, all ah, paystack. Every other thing, getaway, pay stack done. So I'd say that it's okay to explore and it's okay if your exploration period is longer than somebody else's exploration period is fine.
Just know what you're doing. Once you find something that works, switch, [00:47:00] double down. Go hard at it. Go hard, hard, hard. Make progress every day.
Dotun O: Accumulative progress. At least
Shola A: Don't stop. And it'll be so hard to catch up with you. Yeah.
Dotun O: My last question about Sporting Lagos is, you bought a club in Denmark from the outside, one can see the link.
The same coaching philosophy, the same back office management.
Shola A: That's,
Dotun O: that looks obvious from the outside, but is there any deeper stuff here beyond just that link?
Shola A: It's a hundred percent a talent pathway, but the more I get into football.
Now, the way I'm saying that, there's actually multi-cloud ownership and it's a thing. But the second part of it is, the first thing I wanted to learn from Aarhus was, this was a club that started in 1947 the year my mom was born .
In fact, I was telling someone yesterday, the worst thing that happened to me at Sporting Lagos was when I realized that it was not just going to be my money. I thought it was going to be my money.
I was spent, I realized very quickly [00:48:00] that I would have to bring a lot more. And so the ability for young Nigerian to go to Aarhus, which is the second largest city in Denmark acquire a club.
Dotun O: that as
Shola A: Started in 1947 and be accepted. It's hard. It's very hard. And I didn't realize it, and I go there and they all just are very excited and they're happy shout out to our technical director Paul, when I go with Coach Paul and we just talk to other clubs and they're like, ah, we've struggled to do business in Nigeria, but we see how we can work with you.
One of the things that happened to Tech in Nigeria was that we had good advocates.
Shout out to Michael Seibel. When Michael Seibel tells an investor, ah, I know this guy Justin Kan, like it was wild. An investor will do an email intro to me. By the time I'm on the call, it's just so easy
Because
someone had [00:49:00] advocated for me, someone had told them that even the first intro to Stripe founders came from Michael Seibel.
. I realized very quickly that, I'm not just going have to spend money on this.
Shola A: I'm gonna have to advocate for
Dotun O: build the ecosystem.
Shola A: talented people. I'm gonna find the most talented people. I'm gonna be an advocate for opportunities. I'm gonna have to say, we have this thing, come and see it . And I feel like. The more we have more people advocating for people, the more opportunities we will create. So I'd say, for me it is a pathway, but it's also an opportunity to become an advocate for the numerous talents we have in Nigeria.
I think for me it's about integration. When we talk about the academy, and I haven't spoken about it a lot, but my vision is I can get the best 16 year olds in Nigeria and I can get, I can think of age 16, I can get the best young talents in Nigeria, right?
But when they're 16. Priority is integration. So between age [00:50:00] 16 to 18, these kids are gonna go travel, go to Denmark, the Danish guys will come to Lagos, you'll have friends such that at 18 today what happens? There's so many footballers that have not maximized the opportunity because they travel abroad for the first time.
When they get a contract, it's too cold. They don't have friends, they don't like the food. They just, they at football, you have to be a hundred percent because you're playing against people that are a hundred percent, and so for us that age 16 to 18, which I think is very important and that's why sometimes you see and that's another thing broken with Nigerian football, right?
It's almost very too grassrootsy. The rich kids are just rich. Their parents are doing all that. The grassroots kids, they're struggling. They get the opportunity, but they struggle a lot. So I think the goal is really start from the grassroots at 13, give them scholarships, let them spend time.
In schools around by 16 they become Aje butter. So at 16 everybody in the sporting Legos program should be an aje butter quote, I guess [00:51:00] quotes for the people that dunno, aje butter is you just have to be like a little more,
Dotun O: you have to be posh. Using the British
Shola A: from 16 to 18, even way more integrated such that when you travel to Europe, you are not feeling Yeah.
Dotun O: out of place.
Shola A: It's what it's man like. It is. Yeah. And I think that's what we're trying to do. There's a story about YC don't think I've told you before. When Ezra and I went to YC interview we're trying to prepare for the interview. So we reached through throughout a lot of founders. I went to Mark Essien. He helped us.
So when it was time to talk to oh, how can we prepare for this YC? I, oh, don't worry. Just when you land, go to a shop. Go and dress
Dotun O: or
Shola A: give you good and bad advice at the same time, don't let 'em know you're from Nigeria. Talk to all people. Let them know how they speak.
Learn Ali. You know how old talks And so when we get to, so it get there early, go to YC a day before your interview, go and talk to people, pitch to people, let them know how you speak. Fi, figure it out. So it was exactly what [00:52:00] happened. So we got to YC interview was like a Wednesday. We traveled on a Monday.
So on Tuesday we actually dressed like we came for the inter, because you wait at the interview till they call you in. So we dressed like in fact wore like a four hoodie, Ezra, we just went. And so we got in on Tuesday and we were just with people and Oh, where you guys from? I'm like, oh, we're from Nigeria.
Oh, I thought you were from Washington. That your hoodie is from my college. I'm like, oh, I didn't know it was working.
Dotun O: You're
Shola A: so funny. And we pitched and pitched that day. And so many people were so excited. You know the story. I tell a lot about how we met the people we met. We met people building shirts that never get dirty.
We met someone, that was the day we met someone building a bra that detects breast cancer. And so when they tell us what they're doing and they ask us, what are you guys working on? I'm like, Ezra, tell them it is not my, it is not from my mouth. That they'll hear that
Dotun O: So that has been solved.
Shola A: eight years ago. They're like, we're working [00:53:00] on payments for Africa.
They're like, oh, Africa. How many people are in Africa? We're like over a billion people. What? That is massive, you guys. In fact, I have emails from at least two people that messaged us that day that, oh, guys, it was good meeting you. We think you guys are gonna be successful, blah, blah, blah. And so that day was. So good for us, such that the next day, our real day, we were just, ah, we've done this before. So we just went into, we just went into the, oh, again, all the things we've done, all the feedback, we gotta be delivered. So I think it's almost the same thing for footballers where we give them those easy opportunities from age 18, 16 to 18, and then at age 18 they're just like everybody else.
Yeah.
Dotun O: I'm gonna ask my last questions because I know we, you
and I last time.
Go and go past time, but there's something that you want to, I want just to layer that now on this sporting Lagos team, and it stuck in my memory when we were in the car long, a few weeks ago. He said, you believe that Nigeria's [00:54:00] going to win the World Cup
Shola A: Exactly. Yeah. And
Dotun O: And one of, part of the vision is that. Maybe three or four players that win that work will be from
Shola A: Yes. Correct.
Dotun O: sporting Lagos Academy. I think that's half. And that's a very good, very
good way to anchoring your vision,
Shola A: exactly. No that's how we think. And it's not far fetched. As one of the academies we really like Right to Dream Academy started in Ghana and the last World Cup, six of their players were in the Ghana team.
So I think for us it's how we think about success. This is a community project. This is not a VC project. This is the way we win our exits is when Nigeria wins the World Cup with a lot of talent that we have invested in. Yes. So yeah,
Dotun O: hopefully this, my last question would not take time and this, and it's a good way to end this podcast
payment, generally has been solved to some extent, but there are still new frontiers that that people need to build on top of. And we are seeing the [00:55:00] emergence of offline payment, merchant acquire business scaling. First of all, how far have we come along Paystack in the original vision and what comes next?
Yeah. That's so interesting and so annoying at the same I feel like we had a vision, we wanted to fix payments in Nigeria or in Africa. We made a lot of progress, but it is not enough. And to tell you more about the size of the progress: today, Paystack does more than 40 times what Nigeria was doing online when we launched, and online payments we do overseas.
Shola A: 65% of online payments in Nigeria. So there's progress. It's wild progress. We're live in seven markets, there's is all that progress, but the size of the problem is just so gigantic
Dotun O: keeps expanding
Shola A: and the dimensions, we have to execute on.
Keeps just it's like you're [00:56:00] stepping into, oh now I have to do this, now I have to do this. And what is next? For us, we want to continue to focus on the infrastructure. We just shipped direct debit, where you can now connect bank accounts, and that took a lot of work.
It also took working with like NIBBS, just to make sure that you can connect bank accounts and you can link them and you can charge them, and all that. There's a lot more infrastructure that needs to be built, and we are building all that. The second one is, very interestingly, a way to connect markets. I won't launch the product yet, but if you're registered in Nigeria, you should be able to just launch a product in Kenya or in South Africa.
And so we're doing a lot of work to just keep Africa borderless. I think for me, the biggest problem with Africa is the number of lines. Every time I look at the map , I just see so many lines, oh, there's so many lines. And then you go to other continents, the lines are not as thick as the lines in Africa.
And unfortunately the lines we have. Also in different forms, like languages, currencies, [00:57:00] visas, policies and all that. And I feel like we can do more, even as Paystack to solve it because we're doing a lot of work in these markets. How do we just take it a step higher so that the borders don't exist for founders?
And if you have a company in one of those markets, it feels, and my biggest example for that is when I buy something on Amazon, even if I'm in New York, I don't know if it's coming from Mexico City. I don't know if it's coming from California. I don't know. They don't even tell me. I guess they tell me if it's coming from far.
But if it's coming from the US I don't know. It just gets delivered. It's almost the same way. We have to be able to remove the lines such that people can just do business in any way, anyhow. And that's something that I'm personally excited about
Lemme keep it to those before I sell too much.
Dotun O: Keeping Africa but less seems like a very good mission for a startup to actually be.
Shola A: Yes, but exactly. Surprisingly. And I think that's where, and that's why founders don't need to overthink it,
Because I could have started with that vision, but the [00:58:00] way you execute that vision is different.
And now, and that's why if your problem is good enough, you will get new it experience why Microsoft and Apple just keep getting new problems
Dotun O: It doesn't have to be too grand.
Shola A: Yes. Because now I actually can now keep Africa borderless. 'cause I have licenses in several markets. I have teams, I have bank partners, I have all that.
Now it becomes easier to do if I tried to do this seven years ago, I probably will still be stuck. I also feel like back to ambition, right? It's not bad to start small. It's not bad to think of it as a staircase, just do the first one as long as the overarching vision. And I think we were lucky, to be honest.
I wanted to start as recurring payments for Africa or something like that. And people just told me no, keep it as payments infrastructure for Africa. And so we kept it simple, but in 2017, people were shouting at me, why is Paystack not everywhere in Africa? I'm like, I haven't even done much in Nigeria.
I don't even have all the, [00:59:00] why are you pushing me? Why are you stressing me? Why paystack have this feature? The people you know? And so it's okay, once you have defined a very clear overarching vision,
It's okay to execute it step by step because each successful execution puts you in a better position to do the next, and I feel like now some of the things we're doing, we're only able to do it because of something we did two years ago or three years ago. And I feel like more people should just build step by step. .
Dotun O: We're gonna end our podcast with my fire round question. I ask every of
Shola A: everyone. Okay.
Dotun O: two of them. What view have you held in the past that you no longer hold?
Shola A: Let me do that. In the context of Paystack and expansion I used to think that the way we execute Paystack in other markets will be the same way we executed it in Nigeria. Now I'm like, no, Paystack Ghana is gonna be far away from Paystack Nigeria. Paystack Kenya is gonna [01:00:00] be different.
And so now I'm coming to realize that it's okay to have different forms of your company in different ways. I think that's one. So I'll do I'll have say it twice. So that's the product answer, the people answer. This is gonna be tight. And I've never said this before. In the early days of Paystack, I used to think I needed to work with my friends.
I used to think I needed to work with people like me, and now I just realize that actually, no, it's just shared values. We don't have to be friends to work
We just have to value the same things.
Dotun O: What book are you reading now? Oh, have read lately
Shola A: The book I am trying to read now, there's a football book
it's called The Away Game. And so there was some guys that came to Scouts in Africa and they realized that Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, those three countries have more 13-year-old boys than the top 20 countries in Europe, literally. So let's just come to Africa, go to Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, let's [01:01:00] get the best 13 year olds and track them, over a long period.
But I also like Radical Candor a lot. That's the one that has stuck with me recently. And I think we talked about it a little here. I think if you show someone that you care deeply about them, it makes it easier to give them good feedback or negative feedback.
People talk about, oh, sandwich, all those things, but like the best principle for being just like radically direct with someone is for them not to worry about your intentions. I do care deeply about everybody that work with me, and I make that clear either by talking about it, in my decisions and stuff like that.
And that makes it extremely easy to be direct and to just say, I don't know. I don't like this. Any opportunity that exists to just let people know you care about them and whatever conversation we're having is not because of my lack of care, I think is good. So that book was very good.
Dotun O: Thanks Shola for [01:02:00] coming to the show again. And I'll put in a calendar in a few years time.
Shola A: Yes,
Dotun O: on sporting Legos and paystack.
Thanks again for coming
Shola A: Exactly. Thanks for having me.