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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.
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[00:00:00] Dotun O: Dare, welcome to Building the Future podcast. It's a pleasure always talking to you
[00:00:04] Dare O: Thanks. Thanks for having me.
[00:00:06] Dotun O: I wanna start by talking about something I used to tease you about, which is you are an African colonizer, corporate colonizer. You have a big ambition to cover the whole of Africa with this big vision of yours. Onafriq Actually in the name you move from MFS Africa to Onafriq
[00:00:23] Dotun O: but even for people that have not heard you. is very obvious that vision is about connectivity across the whole of the continent no country left behind.
[00:00:33] Dotun O: Can you tell
[00:00:33] Dotun O: me about that, your thought process, about how you're deepening the network through expansion and also through MA
[00:00:40] Dare O: yeah. No, thank you. I know you always tease me about colonizer. I like to think about border eraser, and one of the motto of is making borders matter. the idea behind this is just following more or less what our life has become. And I know you travel across the continent just as I do, [00:01:00] but, and I can tell you it's becoming less and less.
[00:01:02] Dare O: Easy or more and more difficult to tell the difference between Lusaka and Kampala and Accra and Lagos. Lagos probably more noisy than the rest, and how people live their lives, especially the young people and their aspiration and the way they dress, the way they talk the way they eat, the music they listen to.
[00:01:19] Dare O: So we already seeing this irrelevance of borders across the continent in many places and telecommunication in general and transportation have made this possible. Travel across Africa. Flying across Africa is not perfect yet, but it got a lot easier in the last 15, 20 years.
[00:01:38] Dare O: And then of course calling anyway, in Africa that we don't even think about. Yeah, we are having this conversation. You're sitting in Lagos. I mean, Joburg didn't bother us my point is, if you think about the networks that we're seeing the telecommunication network and the transportation networks are already making borders irrelevant across Africa and are already bringing people together.
[00:01:58] Dare O: The thing that is missing is the [00:02:00] payment network. And that is necMpesary to really realize our ambition around the trade, around the continent, and really this ambition of creating one market. You know, As much as I do that, every African founder putting deck together to fundraise will tell you about the 1 billion plus people that we are, the young population and so on.
[00:02:17] Dare O: But that's not a true market until you can actually easily communicate, easily move, and easily pay As Onafriq, we've been on that last piece, and that has been the ambition and the vision that is driving us is to indeed facilitate the emergence of this Pan-African network. That will make it easy for people to make payment to each other, whether it's businesses or people or government.
[00:02:40] Dare O: As easy as it is for us to make phone calls. Now. Now the way we went about it is not that we will build that network ourselves, but we will combine existing networks. We will stitch them together. So this will be possible. And it's not dissimilar to what happened in telecommunication network.
[00:02:57] Dare O: It's not I know, we see Mt and everywhere and we see our orange [00:03:00] and we see with our phone, but the truth is, even MTN in Nigeria is actually a distinct network from MTN in Benin. And the reason you can make the call between MTN Benin and MTN Nigeria is because those network have been connected.
[00:03:11] Dare O: They have been, glued into one network of networks. So that's how we think about it. And when you think about it that way you know that no country is too small. Especially if you think about trade in bigger things or things you can say Zambia is small, but Zambia is absolutely crucial to D Rrc, and so if you want this network to be useful in the RC, it needs to include Zambia. And you can think maybe Gambia is very small, but it's not. If you are in Senegal, and you can think Central Africa Republic doesn't really matter. But it does if you're in Cameroon So for us, that's how we think about it.
[00:03:43] Dare O: And because you are thinking about this as network of networks, it has to be the whole continent. the same way that, we haven't said today that, there are some countries you cannot call or some countries they cannot call from. So really the thought process is really that one is to think about it, think about the world [00:04:00] in which anyone on the African continent can take it for granted that they can pay anyone else or be paid by anyone else in Africa or in the world for that matter.
[00:04:09] Dotun O: Interesting. So this interoperability of payment network as seamlessly as we know it for phone network, where I can call Vietnam and I don't have to think about the difficulty of making a call in real time because there are network or networks that are interoperable and connected together.
[00:04:28] Dare O: There is an important element here also, which is whether this network should be online or offline or both. our acquisition of Baxi Nigeria in 2021 raised fewer eyebrows and people are like, wow, this doesn't really make sense, but it makes sense to us because we realize that the GTP of Africa is actually offline.
[00:04:45] Dare O: That for this network to be useful, to be relevant, it has to have an offline component, it has to augment what the trade is like. if you are in Lagos, that the trade is in the market. The online portion of our trade is [00:05:00] still very small, and Nigeria would probably be, one of the highest, I think South Africa.
[00:05:03] Dare O: If you just look at e-Commerce, South Africa is the highest of the continent, 7% of commerce. So you can only think about what it is like in Chad or in Guinea Conakry or in Madagascar. So while we talk about this network, the starting point has been for us to connect the mobile money networks because those were the first relevant network at scale.
[00:05:22] Dare O: every country you go to, at least in Sub-Saharan Africa, you will find two or three mobile money networks that are relevant in their market and at scale. And we've done that, but we remain very convinced that it's beyond mobile money. It's actually the mobile money agent, and it's the people, it's the shops, it's the markets, Azure and Lagos.
[00:05:44] Dare O: It's, and Benin. our network needs to touch what's happening there for it to actually be relevant. So that's also why, we think about this as a true network of networks, but it has to have the mobile money, it has to have the banks who are becoming bigger and [00:06:00] bigger and more and more relevant.
[00:06:01] Dare O: They are making strong comebacks across the continent. And then it has to touch what we call agents or, merchants people who are actually in the offline world.
[00:06:09] Dotun O: Maybe it might be useful to break down Onafriq in terms of what you do, who are the major customers here, because there are different interaction that people have beyond Onafriq, especially given a lot of the matches that you've done. But at the top vision level. Who are the major customer that you wake up serving and how you create value for them.
[00:06:30] Dare O: it's a great question. We have group of customers but we still look at them in two categories. The first ones are mobile networks or mobile money operators, we'll call them banks. And these POS agents, which you can call them ES and so on. And those, we put them in a separate category because they are part of the network.
[00:06:52] Dare O: They're not just client of the network, they are part of the network. So Mpesa in Kenya. Is a client because they're connected to our [00:07:00] network for outbound transactions out of Kenya. You can pick up your Mpesa, your phone and then make a payment, into Uganda, into Rwanda and so on and so forth, using our network.
[00:07:09] Dare O: In that sense, Mpesa is a client, but Mpesa is also part of the network because through them we can terminate transaction in Kenya as well. And we are selling the fact that we have that connectivity to Mpesa to other people. that's why mobile networks are both for us. Banks are the same, Ecobank Bank you can use your Ecobank app anywhere in the continent and make payment to any mobile wallet or across our network.
[00:07:31] Dare O: So Ecobank is a client from that perspective, but Ecobank is also part of the network because we can terminate transaction into Ecobank account. The agents in Lagos. Is the same the someone with backseat P os today regulation permitted. You could show up at that person with your Mpesa account and take cash out from your Kenya account
[00:07:51] Dotun O: Interesting. So you could use your Mpesa account to terminate payment with the account in
[00:07:56] Dotun O: Nigeria.
[00:07:57] Dare O: Yeah. As we speak, we still need to cross some [00:08:00] regulatory hurdle before we can make this active. But technically yes, you can do that today. so in that sense the agent augments the network but the same way the agent can also make a payment to Ghana, can make a payment to Cameroon.
[00:08:11] Dare O: Then there is a second group, which is money transfer operators who are. Clients, Western Union is a client war Remit. And in the zes group are clients. G Money Trans in South Korea is a client.
[00:08:23] Dare O: So we have all these money transfer companies around the world who are clients that connect to us, PayPal and you name it transfers, MasterCard and all that. And then the last group is something we call Enterprise, but within IT is actually two groups. It's global developmental organizations.
[00:08:39] Dare O: So you may turn the UN agencies, your World Food program and so on, who are clients for large disbursement, one fund and so on, so forth. And then other payment service providers. The likes of the local, atropy, e Ebanks and so on, so forth, who will rely on our network to extend services to their own clients.
[00:08:59] Dare O: [00:09:00] So you can see that in all these groups except for the agent. it's a B2B service. You have to be able to also implement APIs. You have to have a team. You have to be able to run an element of treasury. You have to have some level of sophistication around, financial services.
[00:09:18] Dare O: That's why we call them partners and not clients because these are the people who make the network what it is, and then make it. Real for the men and women on the street. So without them Mpesa, without MTN, without Orange Tel, move and so on and so forth, it would just be a concept. But what we managed to do, and I think we've done well, is you can be in Togo and pick up your move phone and make a payment to Benin on an MTN and you don't even know we exist as Onafriq and you don't even think about it.
[00:09:50] Dare O: You just assumes it works. And that's the beauty of it and that's why we call these people our partners, because they still have to do quite a bit of work from the infrastructure that we're [00:10:00] building from the API connectivity for all the things that we put in place to translate this into really tangible use cases that, the businesswoman in.
[00:10:10] Dare O: Can make use of and deal with someone in Ghana or deal with someone in Nigeria or here in South Africa.
[00:10:15] Dotun O: the analogy that comes to my head from Telco is like Helio Towers and everyday man on the street does not know that Helio towers exist But Ilio Tower is fundamental to them being able to make a phone call in Lagos and somebody receiv it in Sokoto because they have those styles in those places.
[00:10:33] Dare O: Absolutely. The closest analogy in the telecom world will be companies like bs. I don't know if you've heard of them. and when you are making the phone call between. Benin and Nigeria, the actions is that BS or someone like BS is actually the one running the interconnectivity between those networks, and they also get involved in rooming, But you're absolutely right it's important to us that we continue this as a partnership because again how do you connect people in Liberia? The brute [00:11:00] force way is that, yeah, you create an app that extend all the way to Liberia, right. and have everybody on. We, I don't believe in that. I think it's by working with couple of players in Liberia, and currently we work with MTN and work with Orange, work with the Ecobank GT Bank. Few players and we, handful of players you can actually reach, millions if not tens of million or a hundred of million of people.
[00:11:20] Dare O: And that has always been our approach. So when we engage with these clients, is really in that spirit of partnership to make sure, we can continue, extend the network and make the network useful.
[00:11:29] Dare O: Now, it's not always easy and you have the realities of unit economies and fundraising and profitability and hold.
[00:11:38] Dare O: So we argue about, FX rate, we argue about transaction fees and pre-funding. And know, it's a real hassle sometimes, but if you step away from it and you look at what it is that we're building, you can start seeing a picture emerging and the picture of just call it railroads for payments.
[00:11:52] Dare O: Just something that is very much invisible, but absolutely critical if we are going to get trades up on the continent. And if [00:12:00] we are gonna use that as a way to move people to prosperity.
[00:12:02] Dotun O: One of the interesting concept to me about startup is that most startups are a reflection of the temperament the passion the character of the founder. You are collaborative in your approach.
[00:12:16] Dotun O: Your temperament and your instinct is collaborative.
[00:12:19] Dotun O: And it's interesting to see that reflect in the way you build the business because you mentioned there is a way to do it and one of the way to do it is to say, we're gonna be this mega payment hub across Africa, get licenses everywhere and B2C, get people to know on a free and the founder and try to connect payment in Africa, which is a noble vision and something to do as well.
[00:12:40] Dotun O: So we wanna be the PayPal of Africa. Everybody can connect and pay. Through this, but you said, no, I'm gonna take a different approach. I'm gonna get there. Using a collaborative partnership approach, connecting existing networks together.
[00:12:54] Dotun O: My next question is around, this also extends beyond just connecting existing network.
[00:12:59] Dotun O: You are [00:13:00] also taking the same approach with m and a acquiring existing companies. I want you to walk me through your thought process, actually, the team thought process and how you convince your board as a startup that is still raising money to acquire Bionic Cap backseat and CTP and get them, even though sometimes their model is a little bit different from what you're doing, but to get them, and I'm gonna talk about the how you integrate the business and the challenges that comes with that.
[00:13:27] Dotun O: But walk us through the thought process and the thesis behind those acquisitions.
[00:13:33] Dare O: Yeah. Look, I think the mission is really the North Star. . And so once we all agree that it is what that we wanna build, and trust me it's easier said than done to get everyone to agree on the mission and stay agreed on the mission. 'cause you get tested, The reality of running a company does catch up with you every now and then
[00:13:57] Dare O: but that for me is the starting point. Like [00:14:00] you have to have enough star, which is really the re that, and if we agree on that, we can always fall back to that.
[00:14:07] Dare O: So we can disagree about how we get there. We can disagree about everything else, but we have to continue to agree on that. To continue to be, this entity with all the stakeholders.
[00:14:17] Dare O: I insist that we do that well then it becomes, okay, how do you do it? And you mentioned the collaboration. I have a few advantages as a founder. Number one is that I worked almost 10 years before I started this business, and three, four of those years has been with MTN, which was a fantastic school at that time, which gave me a really good sense of what it meant to run businesses across the continent.
[00:14:41] Dare O: what is the same and what is different. And that already humbles you around your ability to build a consumer brand around the continent. I don't think many people actually realize what it is.
[00:14:53] Dare O: And I was lucky that I saw it from the inside, so I was already humbled by that.
[00:14:59] Dare O: [00:15:00] Like people who go and try to do that, they have the naivety of not knowing. And sometimes that's what you need, that you don't know how difficult it is, what will actually help you. But this one, fortunately, unfortunately, I knew how difficult it was.
[00:15:13] Dare O: The second thing is, I usually talk about judo.
[00:15:17] Dare O: I used to do judo when I was younger, and there's something in judo, which is use the force in your favor. So if, someone throwing themselves at you, your response is not to throw yourself back, but to lean in. And I think that. Has always guided a little bit how I think about solving business problems.
[00:15:32] Dare O: It's just, can I use this thing that are coming at me in my advantage somehow? And that will give you a bit.
[00:15:38] Dare O: When I was starting, I just came out of building MTN mobile money for MTN itself in number of countries. And I saw we were doing and what were the challenges and what was going to be next.
[00:15:49] Dare O: So it was obvious to me that the thing to do was not going to be to build a consumer proposition that will compete with those players. But I was [00:16:00] convinced that for that vision to realize, which is Pan-African network, that there will be a path possible to collaborate with them. And it was going to actually be the easiest path.
[00:16:09] Dare O: Now when I say easiest, it is not easy. Because getting that collaboration, getting all the complexity, getting that going across so many market, if you think about it long enough, you won't even start that as well. 'cause it's just so complicated. But it was still the easiest way to go about it.
[00:16:25] Dare O: And to then leverage the power of each of these people that you will not outspend MTN in Ghana when it comes to educating people about financial services and more and so on. Just not possible. And if you are able to do that well, you still have Togo to do and Cotedevoire and Benin and Nigeria and you're still making your way down to South Africa now.
[00:16:47] Dare O: But there is someone here in South Africa that can also spend a lot of money. And there is someone in Kenya, there's someone in Mozambique, there's someone in. So from that perspective was for me to say, okay, if all these things are going to be true, your best [00:17:00] chance is to leverage it and not to go against it.
[00:17:02] Dare O: and of course you have a lot of, real things you have to think about to say, Hey, where will the long-term value be? Will the long-term value be with the person who faces the consumer? Will you have some level of pricing power in this? If you project it 10, 15 years?
[00:17:17] Dare O: So there are some fundamental of strategy that you have to think about. But you also have to remember that the game is dynamic and what the picture looks like today may not be what the picture looks like in two years and not the picture looks like in five years.
[00:17:29] Dare O: the long term perspective has to be in your mind, but it's just not possible and not realistic that you will solve everything today and things will just stay static all the way. So those are the consideration for me back in 2010 and say, look if I can get a network going, there is some element of value you create by creating a network and then it becomes defending it and augmenting it Now I can tell you, I initially thought it would take us three years. It took us seven years to actually get the network going
[00:17:58] Dotun O: To get a network live [00:18:00] or to get it going at scale.
[00:18:01] Dare O: to get it going, you can just imagine how to get a network going and here is a network of networks. So it was, yeah it's we hugely obviously underestimated what it was going to take, but we managed to stay the course and it took us seven years. It's only by 2017 that we really start seeing some traction in that.
[00:18:22] Dare O: And then obviously we got behind that momentum and so on. Now the thinking is not different when you go m and a because it's just I. How do I accelerate this? The only difference here is your partnership is going to be much deeper that, it's not just commercial.
[00:18:36] Dare O: You're literally gonna live in the same house, and then it goes to culture, it goes to character it goes to understanding the other side, the other founder understanding their dream and their aspiration, and whether is that reinforcing yours or is going against it. And can you work together?
[00:18:52] Dare O: Do you see the same future? It also helped that we've done this on time where. There was a little bit of enthusiasm, momentum in the [00:19:00] industry and in the ecosystem. So it helped us. I think those conversations are a bit tougher in the environment that we are now.
[00:19:06] Dare O: But back in 2020, 2018 really, when we started thinking about this all the way to 2021, I would say the environment was also favorable to us. You can have all these ideas, but timing could be home. So we had this idea, we were prepared for it, our culture allowed for it, and then the timing was right.
[00:19:23] Dare O: And we've been able to take advantage of it. It was not all easy one thing is to do the deal, another thing is to integrate the companies. But I will say we got lucky. Yeah. That the timing was good.
[00:19:33] Dotun O: Let's. Double click on that post merger integration. You've actually merged, or you've bought two companies, and one of them has about 100 people. when they were acquired, which is a big, sizable team, and as well in a different country that you don't have huge presence in.
[00:19:50] Dotun O: What are. Challenges that you had to address that was shocking to you and what are the key things that your team in these different way, you [00:20:00] pass your team as well? 'cause I assume that there'll be some changes in the way the executive teams are now calibrated and who is reporting to who, what are the key things that they have to go through?
[00:20:10] Dotun O: And the third layer is the companies that you match with their leadership.
[00:20:15] Dotun O: the challenges for them that you observed that they had to go to? And I want to draw this as transferable lessons for other people who are considering merger.
[00:20:23] Dare O: yeah, look, Dotun actually, between 2020 and 2022, I wanna say we signed the first term ship for acquisition in December, 2019. That was, and we closed the last acquisition in June, 2022. So within, call it two years, two and a half years, we acquired four companies.
[00:20:41] Dotun O: That was crazy.
[00:20:42] Dare O: It was crazy. It was crazy. And then different companies, so when we acquired Bion, we were about 65 people in there, in MFS Africa and Bionic was about 20 people. I. size wise. Then from there we acquired Backseat. So when we acquired Backseat, we were maybe [00:21:00] 150. 120. Backseat was 300.
[00:21:03] Dotun O: No way. I said I even doubling. More than doubling. quadruple yourself.
[00:21:07] Dare O: And not just 300, 300 Nigerians. Just
[00:21:10] Dare O: keep that in mind.
[00:21:11] Dare O: So that was a bit of a shock to the system. And then we went on and acquired GTP, which was about 80 people in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And in between we acquired Simba Pay, but that was more aqua hire.
[00:21:22] Dare O: It was much smaller, probably less than 10 people. So looking back, in. Integration and lessons that I've learned and I learned different from different pieces on Bion. I think I learned that we probably took too long to take hard decisions when it comes to taking product. and I think I probably prioritized too much too long the cultural integration and did not take hard decision around because I think there were some element of platform that we could have rationalized much faster right out of the gate.
[00:21:55] Dare O: It may have made the integration harder, it may have derail things a little bit. [00:22:00] I don't know. We won't know, but we certainly end up paying a lot of price for it. Because one of the things we acquisition, someone comes from picking acquisition, tech companies, is you have to always have this idea of bit of a platform in mind, right?
[00:22:12] Dare O: So the easy things, we did easier things I will say is just that, you just keep things the way they are. And there could be good reason for it. But if you are, a wallet company you're providing wallet, do you need two platforms for a wallet?
[00:22:26] Dare O: How do you manage your connectivity? API. So there's some hard choices I think, that I don't think we made well when I look back. So we ended up having to pay for it. We ended up making them, but we could have done that a bit earlier with hindsight.
[00:22:40] Dare O: The second one. So on that was my biggest lesson from the Bion acquisition on B. I don't know. I think, yeah I think there was a lot of the, it was a complex deal. It, the transaction itself was complex. So that one will go a bit technical, I would say. But I think with knowing what I know now, there probably there were [00:23:00] ways maybe to simplify it.
[00:23:01] Dare O: So really on how the transaction was put together and those things. Again, sometimes they look like nothing, but you just end up paying for it. You just end up they start, they then catch up with you and it makes complication. And I think the way we structure, the way we align some of the things.
[00:23:17] Dare O: With hindsight, I'll do them differently now. So that I would say is, it has more to do with technicality of, corporate finance and m and a and so on and so forth. But I learned a lot. I, I am I'm Yoruba from Benin and I have familiarity with Nigeria, so I always felt look, I can, and I've worked in Lagos, I've done things.
[00:23:39] Dare O: But with Baxi I got a bit deeper. I had the opportunity to actually spend more time in Nigeria and in Lagos in particular, a bit in Abuja. And I learn a lot more, I think, and also culturally, that actually they are things that you can only really realize two level down from the surface, [00:24:00] sometimes even three level down from the surface.
[00:24:01] Dare O: And just the hassle and the incentives and what drives people. I had some sense, but now much more than when we did the deal. And I think, and because with that, and again, that's why I will say look, if you wanna do an m and a in Nigeria if you don't have that yourself, it's important to have people around you who have that.
[00:24:27] Dare O: Because it actually, it will, it can also save you a lot of things in the future, but it can also help, it can secure your success much more. And these are really non-obvious things like what drives, what make people come like to the office. If they come to the office. It's not, there, there is some element here in South Africa, I will say, of the middle manager I call it, and probably similar to around the world there, organization there run on middle managers.
[00:24:59] Dare O: It [00:25:00] really, and there's some, there's an element of pride of just being a middle manager and that's what you are. And the middle manager at IBM, if you can just picture it, that's what it's, I don't think it's like that in Nigeria. The motivation, what drives that middle manager can be quite different.
[00:25:19] Dare O: And if you don't fully understand it, you will make the wrong choices, the wrong assumptions, and so on and so forth. So I learned that through the Baxi,
[00:25:26] Dotun O: So what drives the Nigeria? What is the equivalent of that in Nigeria? I'm curious to know.
[00:25:31] Dare O: I think survival more, more than I've seen anywhere else. And if you don't understand that survival, you won't understand some of the choices that people will make or will not make. And in other places it's not as acute that. Survival mode.
[00:25:48] Dare O: That was quite unique for me but I think the biggest one has been GTP, the US where I had to find other tools as leader.
[00:25:57] Dare O: I, a lot of my leadership has been based on [00:26:00] connecting with people that I can connect with people and we could disagree, but we will find a connection And I rely a lot on that, that, there's some set of things that are important to both of us and we can go there if things get difficult.
[00:26:13] Dare O: I couldn't operate like that in the us it took me a while I thought I could work just easily across culture, but I had to really go back and relearn and listen a lot. just trying to find how to operate in an environment where is actually quite difficult to find those set of things.
[00:26:30] Dare O: You know, when I'm working with a team in Nigeria, we will all understand that, look, we know in our environment that things are not working and our work is to make those things better.
[00:26:39] Dare O: When you go to Tulsa, things are working things are running. So why would someone come to the office? Knowing that the whole business is about changing lives and make things better, thousands of kilometers away, they cannot even see it. So what do you rely on? how do you connect and how do you connect them [00:27:00] to the mission?
[00:27:00] That has been something I had to relearn a lot. I have to humble myself a lot to just really learn how to do that and that all of us hugely underestimated it. We hugely underestimated Yeah. What it would take again, the US give you a false sense of familiarity 'cause you've been to New York and San Francisco, but it wasn't like in the movies that I can tell you.
[00:27:20] Dotun O: of things. Striking to me is how fast your company grew. Startup grow really fast and some startup have grown that way from 65 to 500 within a short time organically, but you did it through m and a, which created a different layer of complexities around culture integration.
[00:27:36] Dotun O: I think you mentioned some of them, but you one, I want to shine the light on is the leadership. There are some set of leaders that started with you, that you could fit yourself in a room, you can have a weekend together and talk about things. But as you start having these new layers of leadership, some of them might not have that.
[00:27:51] Dotun O: How do you manage those changes and how do you keep motivation on for especially those people who are no longer now reporting to you? Because there's [00:28:00] another CEO from a different company they're acquire with now the C level of re reporting to. How do you keep that going, especially given that you're now in multiple countries?
[00:28:09] Dare O: Look, first I have to say it's still a work in progress. I'm still figuring it out. For sure we have navigate. If you look at our ESCO now, it's completely different from what it was in 2021, so you look three years later I'm the only one who was in the ESCO in 2021, who's still in the ESCO now.
[00:28:26] Dare O: the good news is all of the people who are in the ESCO then, except for one is still with us today. So we have been able to do this in a way that was not disruptive, where we didn't lose institutional role and so on. And I put that on the fact that. We are mostly low ego people. And really it goes back to the mission, as I mentioned, and I've been lucky that really a lot of people who joined the company in the early days, a lot of people who continue to join the company and build it have really low ego.
[00:28:55] Dare O: They can get on with the job. And I'm thinking about, people like Rachel Bashar, [00:29:00] Philip Ni, Sharon Lan, who were here in 2010, 11, 12, and an now not even in esco. And you will think, okay, this is, the motion or whatnot, but we know it's not.
[00:29:11] Dare O: It's about what do we need and what do we need is you have to realize that your job as chief commercial officer of a company that is trying to grow from a hundred thousand dollars to a million dollars is a completely different job if you're trying to grow from $1 million to $10 million. And another one from $10 million to a hundred million dollars.
[00:29:29] Dare O: is still the same title, but these jobs are actually really different Now. What we expect sometimes is people will also change and be able to do those jobs. And some people will, some people won't. Some people will to a point and some people won't. Some people won't enjoy it because again, it's a different job, right?
[00:29:48] Dare O: And that has been a bit my guide to say, Hey, this person is able, willing to change, to do the job Now it's the same job, you can apply the same to C-F-O-C-T-O, the [00:30:00] csuite CEO as well. It's true for myself. And then depending on the answer, then we will make different decisions.
[00:30:06] Dare O: Now, we don't always get it right because as we grow especially company of our size now where do you go and find the people who can do it? in other ecosystem, you will find people who have done it in other startups and they will come with the entrepreneurial spirit, but have done it a few times, and there's a market for that.
[00:30:27] Dare O: In Africa, our market is corporate. So once you get to a certain level where you find people who have done from 10 to a hundred million in revenue is corporate. but people who have done their career in corporate are built a bit differently and they operate a bit differently.
[00:30:41] Dare O: And how you bring that in, with a lot of the good and minimizing the bad. It's also a bit of an art. It's not, and again, I don't know if it's still, the jury's still out, but I think for founders, that's really what it is about. It's about recognizing the inflation points just a bit in advance.
[00:30:57] Dare O: and then make that assessment. Can my [00:31:00] CFO go for the next Right. and is my CFO willing to go to the next? Right. and even having discussion, because we see a lot of burnout. We have had through burnouts, because we did not ask the question to say, do you even want to go to the next one?
[00:31:12] Dare O: And it doesn't mean you have to leave the company. there could be different roles, but the next round will look very different from what this round looks like. And I think it's important for founders and including, for the CEO itself. And I always tell people in the company that look.
[00:31:25] Dare O: There will be a time I will leave. I said, when we get to a hundred people, it will be too big for me to be even happy, so I will need to go. And I think the time is coming. We, getting to a point not going necMpesarily, but not be the CEO we certainly approaching that because again, as I said, it's two things is your willingness to do it and your ability to do it.
[00:31:43] Dare O: And we have a simple rules when we are hiring, we call it better than us. So we have to hire people who are better than us. once you start getting to a point where, yes, there is a market of people better than us in that position right now, then you have to do something.
[00:31:57] Dare O: those are the questions I ask [00:32:00] myself. But the answers are not always obvious. Certainly implementing them is not always easy and you still have to, Deal and grapple with the emotion that goes with it and the people, and how we impact the whole organization.
[00:32:13] Dare O: But it helps that we allow ego people so we don't have to feed that.
[00:32:17] Dotun O: you mentioned the growth curve that happens to individuals a different state of the company because the company is growing fast. And one of the things that I'm grappling with a lot this days, is velocity of startup is always faster than velocity of human growth.
[00:32:30] Dotun O: No human should grow as fast as startups because startups supposed to grow really fast. And that causes a lot of effect on team members and the founders. And you mentioned even for yourself as well, that initially you thought your capacity is unread by you managed to move it.
[00:32:46] Dotun O: What are you signs that you're looking for to be able to know whether you're prepared for that next round and what are the changes that you have to make to get yourself ready if you are willing to go?
[00:32:55] Dare O: For where we are now, what will be more important in the near [00:33:00] future is predictability. you get to a point where. That is a really important aspect. It was not that important in the early days because you're just trying so many things so people will have tolerance for things to happen. just you're trying but then you get to a point where that's no longer okay.
[00:33:20] Dare O: It's actually better to let go of some ideas that looks really interesting, but can create more chaos in the thing. Then to just go with the boring idea that will just be predictable. So all things considered. I think that will become something very important in the future.
[00:33:36] Dare O: And that also requires a certain way of managing. So that's what I'm seeing in the future. And for me it's more okay, will I enjoy that? Can I do it? Can I do it best Or are there people in the company outside of the company who will do this much better than I can?
[00:33:51] Dare O: So that's the kind of question, and I have asked myself the same question few times along the way, say, Hey, for what's in front of us, what is more [00:34:00] important? I can tell you out of our, 10, 17, when we managed to really get that what we call maybe product market feed or, we got the network going.
[00:34:08] Dare O: We had to exist. what was going to be important then was to really take our full place. And that was going to require really growth and was going to require, I. When I say growth is country expansions, you have to be, willing to go to Liberia and turn on, all the countries and just make big strides.
[00:34:28] Dare O: And that's also a different stage, because you will be uncomfortable the whole time, and I say whole time is like seven years. So that's also take a different type of person and a willingness to say, Hey, I'm actually gonna do this and I'm willing to do this and I can do this well. But I think where we are going as a company is a little bit different where we are now, we still want growth, but we want a whole lot more predictable growth And which means, your risk management, which means you, how you make decisions, because now you have to actually think through things. A whole lot more.
[00:34:58] Dare O: And that requires [00:35:00] not just one person, it requires a different team, it requires a different mindset. It requires some element of culture to, to go with that. Now, you have to do this in a way that you don't lose yourself. You don't, lose the soul of the company and you don't also kill what makes the company successful in the first place.
[00:35:17] Dare O: So you have to be aware of those things to know that those things needs to be protected. Because even in a hundred years, those are the things that the magic source. But then you have to be willing to rethink and reach out for everything else.
[00:35:30] Dare O: That's the phase we are going into as a company now. And I think different founders, different, companies are different phase. I think it's helpful for the founder to recognize where the company is and then make sure that what is the job of the CEO at the end is just to provide resources for the company to execute the plan.
[00:35:47] Dare O: Of course, define the plan, but then once you recognize where you are and where you're going, it's about finding the resources that can help you to actually go through that next phase.
[00:35:56] Dotun O: You've gone through many rounds. This is 15 years coming now, I'm sure that a [00:36:00] lot of personal growth development that you have to do yourself.
[00:36:02] Dotun O: Can you walk us through that? I'm trying to ignore the future for now. Okay. What did that do? What are the changes that you had
[00:36:09] Dotun O: Personally and investment
[00:36:10] Dotun O: in yourself to get here?
[00:36:12] Dare O: oh man. Yeah, I can tell you a few. One that comes to mind is how I even communicate in the company. So I'll tell you like, my happy place is product. If I can have a job I will work as a product manager or something. I really enjoy thinking through product, play with them and imagine what they can be and drive toward that.
[00:36:33] Dare O: So I used to do a lot of that in the company I would just go to people working on product and so on, We are very collaborative as a company, as the culture is really speak up. Just say what you think and we invite people, to disagree and all that.
[00:36:46] Dare O: So I always thought, look, if people don't agree with me, they'll tell me. then I realized it's actually not true as the company grows that there are things that if I say people will actually just go with it. ' cause I'm the CEO right? And so I have to [00:37:00] stop and that was painful for me.
[00:37:01] Dare O: So I have to be very careful about, Making comments or, jumping into some conversations. And again, I'm still not sure till today, if I'm always able to do that. 'cause sometimes I just can't help myself. But I. I became much more aware of that and know that, look, that's okay when we like 60 people, 70 everybody knows, we all hang out together and then they would tell me to get lost if they don't agree with me and so on.
[00:37:23] Dare O: But when you're like 500, 700 people, no, actually some people will really treat you as the CEO and when you say something, that's what it is.
[00:37:32] Dare O: So that's kinda one thing I have to learn and restrain a little bit, how I am naturally to be able to do that
[00:37:39] Dare O: I know who wrote which line of codes back in 2015, and I can just go to this person and say, Hey, you know what, this quote that we wrote back in thousand 15, we need to change it this way to say this way. And again, that's okay a certain size, but not at the other size because there's so much more now that can actually unravel if you do those things.
[00:37:57] Dare O: So I have to learn not to do that. I [00:38:00] have to learn to just work through the system as well. Always paying attention not to kill what makes us successful, but adapt, to that. And then the age also catch up with you. I used to hang out a lot with the team. We used to, go out and so on.
[00:38:14] Dare O: No, I can't do that so much anymore. The next day is so much more painful. , and that was quite helpful also in creating bonds with people. So once, once you spend a night out in Lagos with people you create some bonds. Now I go to Lagos, but I can't do that anymore.
[00:38:29] Dare O: Just, it's just so much harder for me the next day to operate. So I have to learn to still connect with people without that aspect. And I can tell you many more, but yeah, there, there've been a lot of changes, a lot of growth.
[00:38:39] Dotun O: The trick to hanging out in Lagos is you do the last day you are leaving. So do the last night and then you can sleep on the plane.
[00:38:45] Dare O: The Joburg flight is like late at night, so you have to suffer the whole day
[00:38:49] Dotun O: With jet lag? Yeah thanks for that perspective. I
[00:38:52] Dotun O: I'm gonna end my interview by just asking you about fundraise and you've been one of the successful long running startup in Africa. [00:39:00] That has also been very good.
[00:39:01] Dotun O: with attracting the right capital to fuel the growth. you've been through many circles of the ecosystem when people don't trust, people don't even believe in Africa as a place to put money in.
[00:39:13] Dotun O: Then there was a lot of rush,
[00:39:14] Dotun O: Overblown, valuation So you've been through that. What has been your learning and what has been what you so far to actually get a lot of partners and the investors on board to invest all through the cycle
[00:39:25] Dare O: yeah. No, look it's true and it is time. I'm reflecting quite a lot on that. And there was a great article, by the way, by Steven d from DFS lab, earlier this week on the whole ecosystem. And I will recommend that. I think intuitively something that I've recognized the time is longer in Africa.
[00:39:43] Dare O: The example I used to give people before is, uh, when you're building a venture in Europe or in the US or other geographies is like Formula One is how fast can you go? Really? That's the spirit, at the heart. And I used to hear this in, 2010, [00:40:00] 2000, 12,014, trying to raise money in the US and the speed at which people wanted you to move was making me really uncomfortable.
[00:40:08] Dare O: And I was discussing with Rachel at that time, my colleague and I said, for us it's more like the party DA car, and the thing with the AKA is you need to know. When to go fast, when to go slow, when to stop completely, when to dodge. And I think that's, what the article that Steven wrote capture as well is that time like that, if you misunderstanding it, if you miscalculate it, you'll spend money for nothing on the continent.
[00:40:33] Dare O: bruteforce won't help you. And we outcompete many people in our early days simply because we understood the time much better than them. I joke with people, I'm like, sometimes you just have to know that putting nine women won't give you a baby in a month. You just have to go through the time and that understanding of the timing is absolutely crucial in successful fundraising, but also running.
[00:40:56] Dare O: Business, on the continent.
[00:40:57] Dare O: And that's one of the lesson I hope we all learn from the [00:41:00] experience of the 20 20, 20 22. Because money won't just make you faster. There are times that we will, but it won't always. So that notion of timing and rhythm is an important one.
[00:41:11] Dare O: The second one is that, it's all about relationship at the end. money flows over relationship and you have to put time in building the relationships so fundraising can never be a stop start project. Okay, now we're doing a fundraising project. It's a function and you have to always be in there as a CEO, again, your job is to bring resources so people can execute the plan.
[00:41:33] Dare O: And money is. Top of that list, is money and people most of the time. So I tell all the founders I meet that never stop fundraising. It's not active. Yes, every now and then you have some acceleration in it, which is you actually doing around and all that. But what makes that possible is the relationship you build.
[00:41:51] Dare O: And that cannot be stop and go. You can't say, okay, now I'm building relationship and now I'm stopping and next year I'm starting again in June, building [00:42:00] relationship. You have to stay in market, you have to continue. And that has proven to be one of the things that, it was a good decision to do that.
[00:42:07] Dare O: Now, the last thing, which I will say is I haven't seen many people being really successful on the continent because they wanted to make money by starting a business.
[00:42:17] You have to have a lot of courage, a lot of patience. You have to be gifted with something, some unique insight and all that you have to have something, If you have all of these things and you wanna make money, it's easier to go and work in corporate and you'll make money. Because there's still a lot of talent gap in corporate that if you actually have these things, you'll make a good career and you'll make money and you will do this in a more certain way.
[00:42:41] Dare O: If you think about it probability wise, it's a much better path.
[00:42:45] Dotun O: I am very predictable as well. You can, you can
[00:42:48] Dare O: and
[00:42:49] Dotun O: the future of
[00:42:50] Dotun O: it.
[00:42:51] Dare O: Absolutely. So for you to go venture route and raise other people's money, you have to be convinced about something. [00:43:00] There have to be that conviction and I think sometime it was lacking in what we saw, it was lacking.
[00:43:05] Dare O: And I think we have to go a little bit back to that. And that's, for me is one of the tests. Now I do, I do a bit of angel investment and is just. Will this person actually stay at it? And I think you are the founder. You have to ask yourself that question first for me.
[00:43:20] Dare O: It's so part of the contract, the moral contract that you're signing with your investors that you will stay the course of course. It's gonna be difficult. And I still never, I never seen Plan A worked anywhere in Africa, maybe elsewhere. So whatever you are showing me today on your fundraising deck, I know it's not going to work.
[00:43:40] Dare O: I know that you probably know it too, but will you be willing to go the extra mile to go through any it changes to go to the next plan and the next plan and so on and so forth? Because when you get it wrong, you get it wrong. For a lot of people, our ecosystem is still so fragile that the precedent have outsized impact. No matter how small they [00:44:00] are, people will point to them. And we are now in that environment where, ah, look at this one, look at this one, look at this one.
[00:44:05] Dare O: So my lesson out of this, and my appeal is that we do ask ourselves those questions and be really honest with ourselves, how we engage with investors and that we build honest relationship based on strong conviction. And once you do that, and when you allow time to play out I think good things happen eventually.
[00:44:23] Dotun O: Yeah. And on a line, all of that is good execution as well. And if you execution
[00:44:28] Dare O: Oh,
[00:44:29] Dotun O: are doing, then that, that
[00:44:30] Dotun O: is, that's a given that, yeah.
[00:44:33] Dare O: Actually I used to think it's given, but let me tell you, it's competitive advantage, actually. But yeah, hopefully you can test that quickly, right? If someone can execute but it's absolute hygiene factor. If you can't, you can't just hope you know, that things will just happen.
[00:44:50] Dotun O: Good. I like to end my podcast with two fire and question that I'll ask you quickly. The first one is, what view did you hold before that you no longer hold?
[00:44:59] Dare O: I used [00:45:00] to not think marketing was that important, to be honest with you. In B2B setting. I used to think you can do minimum day and be okay. ' cause what was more important was to build direct relationship with your clients.
[00:45:13] Dare O: cause it's B2B and how many really do you need? I don't think that's true. That was a mistake. I used to also probably, Respect a lot the view of investors.
[00:45:22] Dare O: Now I realize they run a very different business than mine. And what they're telling me it's about their business, and I need to talk to people who are running my business. And sometimes those things coincide, but sometimes they don't.
[00:45:34] Dotun O: That's painfully true. I'm an investor. That's painfully true.
[00:45:37] Dare O: I also used to think people would do their job. Like I start my career in management, consulting and, people just do their job And I worked for MTN in the early days. It was really small and people did their job. And when I started we were okay. Company was small enough, people did their job. But I started learning that actually people don't always do their job. And that has to be part of how you're thinking
[00:45:59] Dare O: I never used to believe [00:46:00] in Zoom, and I used to believe in person. Covid. Covid taught me differently. And you and I have, we this conversation online now. So yeah And of course you have to be willing to evolve your thinking, especially in the view of new facts. You do have to evolve.
[00:46:13] Dare O: And
[00:46:14] Dotun O: Yeah.
[00:46:14] Dare O: I try to do that.
[00:46:15] Dotun O: Good. Which book are you reading now or have you read lately that has most impact on you?
[00:46:22] Dare O: Oh, I am reading now something called demon Copperhead, I think by Barbara Kings lover. I read her book the Poisonwood Bible many years ago, and I absolutely loved it. And then someone told me about this one, and I'm going through it like, it's so good. It's a fiction, book, but I would recommend it.
[00:46:41] Dotun O: Actually, I love founders and or investors who are in fiction because a lot of time people just neglect it but Fiction teaches us a lot more than we actually give
[00:46:51] Dotun O: it, credit for. I just finished reading again. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe fantastic book. And I'm reading No Longer at ease, which is the, actually [00:47:00] going through the trilogy.
[00:47:01] Dotun O: I'll achieve it. And it's amazing what
[00:47:03] Dotun O: you get from those kind of books.
[00:47:04] Dare O: Our things fall apart has to be, I don't know, in my top 10, we have to go for it at school. I think it's so foundational for Africans in general. There was not equivalent, but in the francophone world, there's a book called La Ambigu by chair Hamidan Senegalese, I think there is an English translation the ambiguous Adventure.
[00:47:22] Dotun O: It is been a pleasure talking to you.
[00:47:24] Dotun O: I know this is gonna be a fantastic conversation. We could have had it in Johannesburg but we have in now, thanks a lot.
[00:47:31] Dare O: Thanks so much for having me. It's been a pleasure as well.