Y Combinator Startup Podcast - #98 - Shola Akinlade

Episode Date: October 16, 2018

Shola Akinlade is CEO and cofounder of Paystack. Paystack helps businesses in Africa get paid online and offline. They’re based in Lagos, Nigeria and were part of the Winter 2016 batch.Shola’s on Twitter @shollsman.The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon.***Topics00:26 - What is Paystack?01:06 - Shola's background and previous company4:26 - Paystack's YC application6:01 - Meeting his cofounder7:26 - Interviewing at YC10:21 - Joining YC as a Nigerian company10:56 - Differences between startups in Nigeria and the US13:26 - Nigeria's payments market15:56 - Paystack's growth19:26 - Expanding to other countries and hiring25:26 - The best part of doing YC29:26 - Crypto developments in Africa30:21 - Creative Joe asks - How difficult is it to get into YC?30:56 - Educating US investors32:06 - Paul Israel asks - What gaps do you think still exist in the Nigerian fintech space?33:01 - Nelson asks - Are there any conventional startup advice that did not work for Paystack as their target market is Africa?35:21 - Nelson asks - What are some important lessons he learnt while building Paystack?37:46 - Nelson asks - What are some applications he would love to see been built on top of Paystack?39:56 - Building for Africa42:16 - Nestor Ezeagu asks - Do you think something like GoFundMe could work in Nigeria?42:46 - Car Joyy asks - Can I receive payments as an MVP ecommerce site before registering as a company?44:06 - Achyut Shrestha asks - What’s your tech stack?44:41 - Jordan Jackson asks - What are the biggest cultural differences that you account for in UX and product design?48:41 - Shola's outlook50:36 - What he misses about life before Paystack52:51 - Paystack in five years54:16 - Music recommendations

Hey, how's it going? This is Craig Cannon, and you're listening to Y Combinators podcast. Today's episode is with Shola Akenla. Shola is CEO and co-founder of Paystack. Paystack helps businesses in Africa get paid online and offline. They're based in Lagos, Nigeria, and they were part of the winner 2016 batch. You can learn more about them at paystack.com. And Shola's on Twitter at Sholesman. All right, here we go. I think many people, like, kind of know about Pestack. but can you give us the one-line explanation? Yeah, we're a payments company. We help merchants in Africa accept payments from their customers.

So businesses will connect to pay stack, and almost immediately the customers can pay them with the credit cards, debit cards, and different payment methods. I know you said one-line description. No, that was a perfect description. We're kind of live in Nigeria, and we're trying to just go into the markets very quickly. Nice.

And how long have you guys been around? We launched in January 2016. Okay. And so before that, you were also a founder, right? Yes, yes, yes. I can take it back a little. Yeah, I think you should. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, yeah, grew up in Lagos, grew up in Lagos, Nigeria. I spent all my life there, actually. After college, I studied computer science. After college, I worked with Einiken, the Bayer Company. I did it for two years. And then I left. I left because I thought I was, I just thought I should be, I'm a maker. I should be making things.

Okay. Were you pushing code at Heineken? No, no, no. I was management trainee. Oh, okay. Exactly. Oh, man. Okay.

So I wrote my co-founder then, Maya. We taught Dropbox. I was 2007, 2008. We thought Dropbox was cloud. And cloud in the margin markets, like, was a good concept. I don't know. I was naive, I think. And so we said, you know, what if someone builds like a Dropbox on premise that people,

you don't need cloud? You don't have brought that and all. So we did it. We called it Pequiro. We put it up on Sosforge. Sosfuge was very big then. And I think it went well. We had over 200,000 companies using it. It was available in six languages. So it went very well. I did that for about five years. And then banks in Nigeria started reaching out to me to help them build software. So I built software for about three banks. And quickly I said, you know what? this payments like I always knew the state of payments wasn't where it should be but I didn't think it was going to be me so but just working with the banks just I don't know I just figured you know if there's someone that can figure out payments it probably will be me because I had built

walker software before and now I just have access I understand how the financial system works so started pay stack very quickly spend about one year just doing the underground work, had a wait list of about 300 customers, and I was calling all of them just talking through what they wanted and building for them. And then one day, one of my friends actually sent an email, copied all the YC founders. It was late because Nigeria is nine hours. I think it was nine hours I had or eight hours. So it was about 1 a.m. I saw that email and said, hey, YC, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This is FaceTime. You just sent that email and copied all. And copied all Oh, everybody, Sam, Michael,

everyone. And I'm like, what is this? And then, well, like, I slept. And then I woke up in the morning and Michael had responded, Michael Cibble and said, hey, shall I tell me more about pay stack. Like, whoa. So I spent about five hours, right, to call post the best email ever, which worked because Michael responded with another one line.

So we had back and forth. They asked me to apply. I applied for YC Fellowship. And I didn't get. actually. I think it was August. So immediately asked me to apply again for the YC. I think it was October. So I applied. Thankfully, I got in. We became the first Nigerian companies to get into YC. Now I think there are over 10 other companies that I've gotten in just two years, which is really amazing and exciting. Yeah. And we launched Faceback. And it's good so fast since we launched.

And you guys just raised again. Yes, yes. We just raised a series A, a million dollars from Stripe and visa. Man. So yeah. Congrats. Thank you. So I think a lot of people are curious who, yeah, are probably from Africa about what your YC application looks like.

Yes, yes. What were your stats? What were your metrics? And that was the first thing I released, you know, like, because people, I honestly, when I started my first company, my Akern News profile, I think I opened it in 2008 or 2007. So I actually applied for YC then. I probably, I didn't expect to get you. With your hosted Dropbox?

Yes, exactly. Oh, man. I should have looked that. Please do. So, like, I didn't expect to get into because there was no reference, like, why would the Nigerian company get into YC? But very quickly, I realized that the YC structure is actually optimized for just finding the best companies, you know? So my application was very simple. On the interview day, I actually remember they asked us how much I'd we processed that month.

I said $200. Like I said it shrifully. And it didn't matter, you know. Now, last month, we did over $20 million. It's just three years, you know. So, but I think application was really simple. It was just clear. Just wanted to say what we were.

Yeah. And what you're building right now, is it basically identical to what Pacek, what the application for basically? Exactly. Nothing has changed. Really? Yes, yes. It's been, it's the same.

vision we knew payments was broken. I think it's still broken, but I think we've made a lot of progress just trying to figure it out. Yeah, and how did you meet Ezra? Oh, we went to school together. We went to Babcock University together. Okay. After school, we lived together. He had worked on a payments company, actually, that didn't work out.

And then, you know, so when I wanted to do payments, it was obvious I had to call Ezra Rock. So you just built a prototype in Pippenance. him? No, no, no. I built it. I actually built it. I had customers. And while I was engaging,

I told you of the back and forth with Michael. Yeah, yeah. So one of the back and forth, Michael was saying, who else was working with me on the project? So I talk about Ezra and a few people. And I was like,

you know, is there someone that really, that you can take along with you on this journey? And I was like, yeah, of course, Ezra. I just called Ezra.

I'm like, this makes sense. Let's do this together. And he was like, yeah, of course. I didn't even wait for an answer. So it sounded very obvious.

Wow. Okay. And I think it was a very good decision because, yeah, just having two people connected with the same vision, just building this. We started moving faster and things just like getting better. And so you, when you arrived, so you were in the winter 2016. Yes. When you arrived in January. I guess you did your interview.

in November or something. Exactly, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, it was fun. It's my favorite story. Every time I talk about the pastack story, I talk about the interview day because we got into YC. We wanted to just see what was happening.

So we came in a day earlier and just came in to see what was happening. The first company I saw was someone just building a kind of shirt that never gets dirty. It showed us it had like dirty water. I don't know if they got into YC had a white shirt. It fought the water. They didn't get there. They're like, wow. I saw two ladies, I saw no health too.

I think they're going into WIC. They were building a bra that detects breast cancer. You know, like, it's cool stuff. Yeah, that's impressive. And people were asking us, what are you guys building? You know, like, oh, we're building parents. Some of these tribe builds eight years ago. Yeah, yeah.

But it was fascinating for people. And people were like, wow, this is amazing. Obviously, there's so many people in Africa. There's a lot of transactions happening. if there's any team trying to figure out payments there, I want to be their friend, you know. So we were really excited. I got at least two emails the night before I interview from people I met saying they thought we were building something cool.

So it was really good. The next morning, just coming into the interview, we were a bit more confident. Yeah. Okay. And what were the interview questions? Were they saying things like, why won't Stripe build this? It was very fast. I came on, we got on a very long flight and it was.

about 22 hours just from Lagos to San Francisco and I wrote out like my notes and I think I crammed everything but I only practiced it was just the first line as I just got it like hey tell us what are you guys working on like working on pay stack

it's a payments company we've made a huge leap over what currently exists it used to be about seven steps before it's now two steps and they're like show us So I had to pull out a laptop, we showed them like, wow, this is interesting. So I forgot all my talking points. So it went very fast.

Yeah, but it went well, I think. I remember also the access why we were not live. We said we just had a wait list. We were worried about fraud and all that. And they said, you know, they don't think we should put an artificial barrier to growth. if we're growing if people want it then open it off yeah okay and so i thought like that might have been a problem but it didn't matter and then we got a call in the evening asking if we wonder why it's like of course

yeah it was it was very exciting actually man and then so what was it like when you i mean i don't know nearly as much as you do about the Nigerian startup scene but like when you were just thrown in with everyone else in january no it was it was it was It's fun. So, WIC is pretty much international. For sure. I think a lot of people don't recognize that, but we didn't feel out of it. Actually, I thought I was going to have a problem. No, we got in, we met people from Ghana working on. I think she's from Chicago, well, like, she's originally from Ghana. So there's a lot of diversity in YC. So we didn't feel any. Okay. And so then what are there substantial differences in in any element of the startup scene in Nigeria? Hmm. I think a lot. Yeah. I think one of the things we just saw quickly was just the, I'll say, I don't want to say the age. I think in Nigeria, well, when I was when I was starting up, the kind of people that were building cool stuff, but really like in the 30s. in their 40s and their 50s.

So just come in here and seeing young people just doing amazing stuff. Young people that are done amazing stuff eight years ago. Like, you know, I remember Justin Kahn, for example. I remember watching Justin TV, you know, and just seeing him about 12 years of 10 years later. I still have wife.

He's still looking young. I'm like, wow. Everybody's still young, you know. So I was really shocked at how much how young everyone was, how connected everyone was. So that was shocking. I think the other thing is also just the,

I like to say, just the quality of the advice, you know, or the, you know, things are not as intuitive as they should be. Like how they say, that's my favorite,

like, oh, I see, that's the first thing I picked up, one of the first few things I picked up. Like, the startups, founders think they want to be, the way to network, like the way to get out there is to network and just be everywhere, you know,

but the way to build a strong network is to build something impressive, you know, and just learning that very quickly made me focus, heads down, you know, and it was helpful. Now I feel like I know the people I need to know without having to just be everywhere. That was me in college. I was like, oh man, how do I need all these things? Exactly. I was asking like, you know, the handful of impressive people that I met and they're just like don't worry about it just make cool stuff exactly exactly also I think the long-term view was also very helpful yeah which helped me um I think I remember a conversation I had I think it was Michael too just asking about what like what this would look like and he said it takes about seven years to build a solid startup anyway so you're going to have to do it for a

long time and so that was really refreshing for me to say you know I'm not going to make it in one month No pressure. Let's just do it every year. This is our third year now. And I'm looking forward to the next four years. Yeah. What does the, what does a payments market look like in Nigeria? Like how much is cash? How much is card? How does it go? It's a lot of cash. So I will say Nigeria's GDP is about 500 million dollars. Okay. Consumer spending is about one 50 billion dollars. Okay. And the population's like 200 million? 200 million. Yeah. So, but just less than 2% of consumer spending spends with cards, you know, um, just and, and even more, a lot of that is just people using their cards at the ATM to get cash out so they can spend it. So, um, yeah,

so I think it's still very, very early. Yeah. There's a lot of transactions happening. Most of them are still happening offline, but online transactions are kicking off. New business models have been created. And it's getting obvious that digital payments will win. So there's a company called Bypower, I think, NYC2, the selling electricity online, the use base. Like before now, before them, you would have had to go buy electricity like at a store. Yeah.

But if your electricity goes off at 9 p.m. on a Friday night, then you have. to wait till Monday morning. That doesn't make sense. So just the fact that you can pay digitally means you can always have electricity. Yeah. And there are multiple business models like that making it very easy for people to do things. So I think, and people are realizing this smartphone adoption is increasing, mobile penetration is increasing. So I think it's a good time.

It was really a good time. Everything is picking up. And we're just there just trying to connect the consumers with the Vajans. and remove all the friction because I think, and just to say why pay stack is extremely interesting. I think before now, a lot of the payments infrastructure was built for enterprise companies. And of course, enterprise companies like complexity.

I don't know why. So just detangling all that and just keeping things simple. It was the first thing we had to do, make it easy for businesses, accepting payments, figure out the cards infrastructure, understand why things are, why they are,

and doing all that. So yeah. And in terms of your growth, are you, are you trying to incentivize more businesses to pay with, to figure out a card system? Like,

what do you do? So I will say we've been overwhelmed. Like we haven't, since we launched space like, that day, January 11th, I can't forget today. It's been like,

we've not had time to even think. You know, but, but, but, So a few things we're doing very well. Number one, we know that we see these transactions. We see what is missing.

We see what's wrong. So we think the first thing to do is to make sure that transactions can happen. Transactions can be successful, which we're doing. The next thing is also just ensuring that the customer experience is good enough. If someone is trying to pay, we have to make that payment happen as soon as it can. If someone has a dispute, we have to figure it out. So we set a building. Well, the first company, I think was still the,

only company that has like an automated dispute process and all that. So because everything is connected, we tell ourselves that if someone has a problem with a transaction, that's someone that will never trust digital payments again. So we don't take it lightly. We try our best to make sure we can make it work. So yeah. So I will say in the short term, half of our strategy is just making it work. That's a good tip for every product.

The other half is building a community around our merchants. We think the ideal P-Stack merchant, we know why people are using P-Stack. We know people want to start and skill businesses. So how can we help them do this? We know just having a community, helping them with tools, with content, with events. Last week, last month we had an event with Facebook,

just teaching people how to sell on Instagram. You know, so, and that's on one hand. have multiple things we do in the community. So yeah, it's really make you work and build a community around the businesses so that it will be easy for people to start and scale their businesses. Okay. Is there an average type of business that you guys are? Now, no, because we have little, like we have people just starting out, people building

side projects. Okay. On one hand, on the other hand, we have airlines. You remember the airline. We have tax collections. We have bus tickets in, you know. So we have the, I think that's the beauty of payments. Everybody is affected.

Yeah. You know. And in fact, the bigger you are, the bigger the pain. So it's, yeah, it's exciting. Man. And so in terms of your growth over the past few years, were there particular features that made a big impact in your growth rate? I wouldn't say so.

I think it's still the same, just making it work. And even our customers have been growing themselves. So when I was doing the fundraise, I had time to look at the data. Yeah, of course. I saw that the first court

that launched in Q1, 2016, by Q4, 2017, they were doing 30X, their volumes. You know, I was even the lowest because other calls

I've been growing faster. You know, so like the businesses themselves are early. Yeah. And so, and everybody's growing at the same time. So I think it's really exciting. Wow. And so, man, when it comes to like expanding to other countries in Africa, I assume, and everyone else.

Definitely Africa. Definitely Africa. Okay. Are, do you just assume that their economies function in similar ways to Nigeria's or do you have to get someone on the ground to figure it all out? How do you do it? Oh, I think it's. two ways. So the first part is every

day we get people just ping us and say, when are you coming to Ghana? When are you coming? That's a good problem. So there's that. And there's the fact that we knew that this problem is like continent-wide and we know what we've built can work. Because payments is really simple. Well, I hope. Well, like the way we think about pay stack, it's like a

full-stack payments. What happens before the payments? What happens during the payments and after? So we've spent a lot of time thinking about this and these things work the same way in this markets. You know, the part that just changes is the local context. But I would admit that Africa is really, really interesting. My favorite expansion story, I used to be very excited that, you know, what, we're just going to scale across Africa. And then there was an opportunity to go to Egypt, Cairo, actually.

And we got to Cairo and we went with my friend, we got to the airport. We called an Uber, I think. I think it was Uber or Karim. And then it occurred to us that the Uber, the plate number was in Arabic. Oh, no. The cars are in Arabic. I can't read Arabic. I can't tell which is my Uber.

So it was like, oh, yeah, I'm not going to be the one to launch this like here. You know, so that was, that was really exciting to care. But like you said, I think finding the right people to help us figure this out will be very helpful. That's one of the reasons why I'm just thinking about a series A, we had to think about companies that have figured out skill, companies like Stripe, companies like Visa. If there's a company, the companies that have thought about moving payments from one place to another, it's these companies. And so we're like really, really going to have to learn how to do this in another country. Yeah. But we made a lot of progress with Ghana, which is really close to Nigeria.

Okay. Yeah, but I think as we go to other countries, it would even be more difficult. Well, the good thing is we understand this. We're ready to learn. We're ready for the challenge. This is why we created the company. Yeah. And that is why when people say, oh, why wouldn't an international company just come to Africa?

Because it's very difficult. This local context is difficult. And it really takes a team that believes that this is why they're here. This is why we created a company. You know, so yeah, so we're really willing to do the work and hopefully we'll see what will come out. So when it comes to scaling up, like what does your team look like? You know, are you hiring people exclusively from Visa or what do you do? So, let's talk about team.

That's like my greatest problem now. I'm like, I used to read a lot about when it was the CEO's work, always be hiring and all that. Like, I didn't realize that. I used to wonder, like, why would the CEO, like, we try to hire? But now? It's so, like, that's the only thing in my head. So I will say, right now we have about 36 people. This time last year, probably was about 15.

Two years ago, it was about five. So it's been very interesting. We have so many problems being thrown at us, like, across all corners. Right now, I'm actively looking for senior engineers. to help us figure some of these things out. I think it's a typical thing that happens in a startup where you don't really optimize so far down. You've built it,

but now you're having like millions and millions of records in your DB and you're wondering, should I switch it? But you can't even switch because the more problems going. You know, so like, and there's still more things to build everything. So it takes some skill. and some experience to figure some of these things out.

And just actively looking for people that are really ready for that challenge because it's not easy to just come help us figure some of these things. Yeah, I mean, my understanding is that you're looking for people from anywhere in the world to come. Yes, yes, yes. I think my goal, my vision is to build the best talent in Africa. I think there's so many talented people in Africa. and we want to have them around building for Ross. But also understand very clearly that because of where we're going to, we need some help.

We need people that have done these things before to show some of these things. I want to set a standard for engineering culture in Africa. How would I do that if I don't know if we haven't seen how it's done elsewhere? So we think the best case scenario for Ross is can we find the very, best people in the world, irrespective of where they're from, can they come spend time with us about a year or more?

Can they upskill people? Can we learn from them? Can they, for every one person we get, that's about 20 people that will be upskilled or even more, you know? So how can we find these people?

How can we learn from them? How can we become better than them? Yeah. You know, and all that. Because I think there's a lot happening, you know. The startups actually that do that now, you know,

but for us, In fact, we've talked about creating a boot camp, you know, can we find someone to help us run a book camp to just internal boot camp. Just help us off-school people because the problems are there. The real problem is do we have enough people that have the right experience to fix it? Yeah. And we can't like, I run this company on Google. Like I search, how do you do this? How do you know that?

But I think at some point it will get more difficult to do that. So like, is there someone I can just like, like, okay. can just be inside and just help us figure some of these things. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. You can, I mean, you can definitely email anyone who's done YC before, but even that. No, no. And also the YC community has been extremely, extremely helpful.

That's like the best part of YC. Like, I thought YC, the best part of YC was going through YC. Okay. At every point in my career, FaceDak, I've always thought the best part of YC was something else. So in the beginning, I thought the best part of YC was the 120K. very quickly I saw that the best part of YC was YC and then later

and now I think the best part of YC is just bookface just passively seen conversations happening and so some of the times when I see some of these things like oh I saw this someone talked about this three months ago can I search for it? Can I see the responses? You know so it's just it feels like

I'm building a company with about a thousand other people you know so it feels I don't know, it's really excited. No, I mean, everyone's in the same struggle. So they're just like happy because everyone's been helped out so many times. Exactly. Exactly. I know the network is really amazing.

And like you said, everybody's helpful, helping. Sometimes I want to, like, does this person really need to help me? Well, yeah. I think so. Yeah. And when you were talking about building a boot camp, like, are there boot camps? Yeah, there's a comedy doing it very well. And Della, I think they're doing very well.

well they find the best people. Oh, okay. And they do it for four years. Yeah, but, but, but, um, I, and, and I like that model. I think that will scale. Yeah. In the long term. Well, what I, what I, what I think, I paste that now, what I was saying is, can

we find the best engineers locally? Yeah. Can we find someone that can help us make them extremely? Can we find good engineers and turn them to great, an amazing engineers in as short as possible than short as three months. Because I know with engineering, some things, you just have to

have seen the problems before. You can't really anticipate some things. So just having someone, having a 10x engineer just sit with a team of five engineers. I think it helps everybody. Yeah. It's an interesting idea because

it's actually a common complaint I've heard that like companies get a lot of like junior, you know, great JavaScript engineers. And like they can make all kinds of blogs. Yes. But doing the more complicated stuff is harder to find the people. Exactly, exactly.

And I agree. I agree completely. And I think the earlier we start figuring this out, the better. Because I don't think our problems will reduce. I think it's going to get more complicated. It's going to get more difficult. So yeah, it's really just, I hope we can take on this challenge. I hope we can find the right people.

But yeah, if there's anyone listening, if there's anyone interested in just the challenge of building in Africa, building some of the best, just working with the payments infrastructure in Africa, building for some of the best businesses in Africa, please reach out to me. And we're willing to even help with the experience, just give a very good experience,

living in Lagos, help with logistics, help with accommodation, help them even travel, see the continent, So it's going to be a good offer. But let me just think, like, can we find the best people? Can we figure some of these problems out as soon as we can't? And can we just help businesses start and skill? I think it's awesome.

You got a ton of questions. People seem very excited to talk to you. Yeah, yeah, we'll make it happen. So I want to make sure I give them credit. But someone asked about crypto. You know, if people have talked about, you know, as crypto exploded in the past couple years, like, maybe it's in these less developed markets that it'll really take hold. What's, you know, you're on the ground. What's actually happening?

I think there's a lot of activity happening. I would admit that most of the activities around trading, you know, people are buying and selling very quickly. I think the right use cases are still just being formed. So I haven't like I think the righteous cases is just still being formed But right now there's a lot of trading activity Okay Happening okay So that so many people it seems like from Nigeria are also asking you questions

And then some of them let's just start with the basic stuff So Creative Joe Their question is how difficult is it to get into YC? What do you think about that? I think how easy is it to get into YC if you have a good business I think I think the YC process. I used to think it was difficult too. I think the YC process actually like selects the right people. I don't know how to explain that, but if you have like all the right components, it's

extremely easy, you know. I think the hard work is can you clearly articulate how impressive your business is. Can you just even explain what you're doing and can they understand what you're saying? Yeah. And were there certain things that, I mean, Maybe this was in fundraising too, where you felt that you had to educate U.S. investors about the market. A lot, a lot of times, a lot of times. I think it is what it is. Yeah. Yes.

But I think the right investors, like, they know what to look out for. And that's what makes YC exciting. Like, I told you, I was just processing $200. They didn't mind. Is that good? The questions were around other things. Like, can you build it? Why will you be the one to build it?

Like, what is your experience and all that? So I think YS is in that bucket of sophisticated investors that know the right questions to ask. So even if they don't have the local context, they know what to look out for, which is good. That's why I think it's relatively easy. I think founders need to focus on building the businesses such that when the opportunities come, it becomes easy for them to take advantage of those opportunities. Yeah. Yeah, I think in large part, people are looking for cheap.

codes and the only cheat code is to make something great exactly it makes something people once yeah yeah all right so paul israel yeah he asks what gaps do you think still exist in the nigerian fintech space whoa i think there's still a lot um i think there's still a lot i think just nigeria like we said is very big financial services in nigeria is very big um so i think there's still a lot um there's some opportunity for scoring, credit scoring. I know a few people are doing that now, but there's some opportunity there. There's still no like cash up very more. There's something around.

I know that there are also things happening there, but like there's still no. So I will say across all financial services industries, it's so hard to say this is the winner. So I will say because there's still no clear winner in all. parts, the multiple opportunities. All right. Nelson asks, are there any conventional startup pieces of advice that did not work for pay stack as their target market is in Africa? That's a good question.

Well, I think, I will say, I will say, I think, I think generally I've found the advice I received here actually more useful because I think building a business is building a business. Yeah. Building a business is hard everywhere. So I think that's the hardest part for me. Like finding people building the business,

what should you be doing? What are your priorities and all that? And I think that's like constant wherever you are. Okay. Yeah. So I would say, I would say this. I haven't seen anything that like didn't really really work, you know, maybe some things that are fundraising, you know. I think, I think things are more

difficult, I would say, but I think the principles are still the same. Yeah, I must have been in some other interview I heard with you, but you were kind of talking about the psychology there, but like more people were telling you like you couldn't do something. Exactly, exactly, exactly. That's that's it exactly. So, and I think I talk about it, just coming here, like, the psychology is, and I think that's changing now. Two years later, I think it has changed. But two years ago, like, when I told people I'm doing a payments company, like, people laughed at me, like, how your competition is a 14 year old company that is a billion dollar. What a billion dollars? Who are you?

Like, you know, I got a lot of that. And I'm sure people still get it that, you know, why will you be the one to figure this out? But I think that mindset is changing now. there's a team that is focused on solving a problem. Yeah. It's getting easier for them to just get access to whatever they need, you know. So I think I think that's helpful. So that mindset is changing.

I think the companies like Paystack and a lot of other companies in different industries, just breaking some of these barriers. I think it's getting easier for other people, you know. Yeah, man. You're leading the way for better or worse. Nelson had another question I thought was interesting What are some of the most important lessons

You've learned while building pay stack? Wow, a lot Yeah Yeah, I think Okay That's a very good question I think your team is very important I think

I think it's tied to the first question Around how That courage Like people will worry Like how were you How would you figure this But just in building PACEDack, I've seen that you can be courageous. Like, just pick a big problem and solve it.

But you won't be the one to solve it yourself. Like, you're good to have to find the right team to help you figure this out. You know, so just learned that quickly. Can I find people better than me? And I switched into that mode maybe one month into Pestack, like one month into IC. And everybody that has joined the team has been better than me. Because I started doing everything, customer success, front end, back end, design, everything on my own. Fundraising, yeah.

Exactly. You know, so, but like just started disconnecting that and finding the best people, people that can do it better than me. I think just learning that has really helped. Yeah, I think that's one. And then number two, I think is just around, I think is there's an ecosystem available. Like, so don't try to do it yourself, you know. just can you learn how to use the ecosystem to solve some of the problems you have? And do you guys think, do you think you've fundraised at the right time?

So every time we fundraised, like it came at us. Like, whenever I, so this fundraise, for example, should have just started now. Actually, September, that was when we set it up for because I came, I had a conversation. I said, I wanted to do it earlier in the year. into H.M. School. So just got into that mode very quickly. And so that, you know what, okay, I can spend the rest of the year just building up for like a September fundraise. Yeah.

And then things just happened very quickly. Yeah. So yeah, that's it. It just happened. Yes. Yeah. Okay. All right.

Let's do another, let's do another Nelson question. They ask, what are some applications you would love to see? builds on top of pay stack wow yeah so i think um i will definitely love to see like a like a p-to-p payments so something like cash up um more interesting um i think something for businesses too i really love so before pay stack while i was figuring out pay stack i really wanted to build something like wrecks actually yeah it's like um expenses employee expenses and all that I really, really wanted to build that. But I thought that, well, the foundational infrastructure wasn't even there.

So we have to start from, like, collections and this process. So if someone can build something for, like, expense management and all that, I think that will be exciting on pay stack. In fact, I had a name for it, expendly or something like that. I think I'd say have the domain. If you want to, I can give it to you. Yeah, so just a few things. Okay.

What about the market in general? because of all the startups that exist in the States, for example, like what would you love to see over there? Hmm. Interesting. That's a big question. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I think, wow.

Yeah. So I would say actually that most of these startups already exist in that. In some way. Yeah, in some country. Just maybe not at the skill. It's like being executed here. I was excited to see that where the world's building Stripe because I spent about three or four years just following Stripe

like all their workforce, everything on their documentation and all that. So I'm excited. But other than that, I think most of the other companies have some form. Maybe something like Apple, which is not. Yeah, yeah, maybe something around phone. Yeah, yeah, maybe something around phone. phone, something around games, something around. Yeah.

Yeah. But I will say most of the things have some phone. Okay. Because there were a handful of questions around just like how the market in Africa is maturing. Like what what's the state of the infrastructure where, yeah. Okay. So I will say this is a very exciting time to be building for Africa. Okay.

I think because there's a very young population. I think for context, in 19, okay, this is going to be very interesting. I don't have the numbers on my head, but I think in 1960, Nigeria's population was about 45 million. Italy's population was about 45 million, I think. And just going through 40 years or 45 years, Nigeria is 200 million.

Italy is probably still about 60 million of 40. It's still in that range, you know? So, like, and this is not just Nigeria. Countries are moving very fast. Like in the next five years, I think Nigeria is going to be even. more than the US. So the population is young, active, like they have access to phones and all that.

So if this is the right time to build for these people. Yeah. So I think the market is just getting getting there. And some foundational things are now being built. So the payments layer has been figured out now. Yeah. The logistics layer is been figured out now. Well, what does that look like?

Is there a train now? What's a road situation? What does it look like? Well, yeah, there's like, I think there's a road network. But I mean, like, yeah, like, what's the, what quality are we talking about? Like, are there? Yeah. But I think, I think, I think it's, it's, it can definitely be better, especially in Nigeria and Lagos.

But I think the comp is figuring it out. The exciting thing is about it's happening. Can we like just go, like, just going. against the constraints, can we, like, even if the roads are bad, can we find the best ways to just solve the problem? So I think the interesting common is figuring out logistics, three-hour logistics is coming called Max or Angie, I think. So I will say, yeah, so it's getting easier. People are figuring out payments. People are figuring out logistics. People are figuring out housing. And so whatever you want to build on top of this is going to become easier.

Yeah, okay. Nestor Isigau, is that a Nigerian name? Can you pronounce that one? Yeah, Izzyagu. All right, there you go. Yeah, yeah. Do you think something like GoFundMe could work in Nigeria? Yeah, there's multiple sites like that.

It's a common called Donate Engie, I think, already working. Yeah, I think you can work. Anything can work. Exactly. Easy. Yes, yes, yes. This next one, Carjoy asked, can I receive payments on an MVP e-commerce website before registering a company? Is that a specific question?

Yes, yes. We just launched. So when we launched Space Stack, we called on you had to be a registered business to use SpaceDak. Okay. But we just launched something earlier in the year called Stata Businesses. So yes, you can register a business with your personal details. So there's something called the BVN now, this is the biometric verification number that everybody has. Okay.

So it's made it easy for us to just identify people. So just talking about the former question about how things are changing. So the identity infrastructure is just being built. So imagine how long ago you guys at the US had the social security number. And now just three or four years into a BVN, which is not really a direct comparison. But it's the closest we have to identifying people. And so now you, in other words, you connect a personal checking. account or something like that.

Yeah, exactly. We can just get your BVN and we get your details. We can verify that. Okay. We can allow you accept payments for, I think, up to about $3,000. And then after that, you have to like register that business. All right. So the answer is yes.

Yes, exactly. And we got it a lot. That's why we launched the startup business account. Oh, right on. Yes. A shoot, stress man. And here's not, is that a Nigerian name? No, no.

All right. Great. All right. Eschresta asks, what's your tech stack? Yeah, so it's a lot of Node.js and sitting on AWS, yeah, we have View, JS, we have some Angular on the front end. Yeah. Yeah. So one or two PhD services. I think we have one or two Python services, too. Yeah. But it's primarily node.js. Okay. Modern internet. Yeah, exactly.

Jordan Jackson is curious about the biggest cultural differences that you account for in product design and user interface. Okay. Yeah, that's a very good question. So I think early this came out came at us very quickly, like when we designed a checkout form and we had like CVV, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, even expiry date, you know how in the US you just put like DDMM or something like that. MMYY.

Yeah. And people were putting the date of births. And I'm saying this because for most people, not most people, when we started, we started with early adopters, but we moved quickly from early adopters to people that are using the card for the first time online on pasteback. Like the first time you're using a card in your life online is on pay stack. So we don't take that likely. Like we have to do all it takes to make sure that.

you're making that payment when you hear CVV. Yeah. You've never had CVV before. That's totally fair. Exactly. That's like making easy. You know, so I think that's like, that's like, so designing the UX has been like, can we build from first principles?

Can we realize that some of those people, this is their first payments they will ever make online, you know, how can we make it easy for them to use? Yeah. So what are like the affordances? that you put in there, right? Is it like a video showing this is what that is? It's some like, just, we've played around with it. Yeah, a lot of our tooltips, to be honest, a lot around moving things around very quickly for them.

So just helping them up to the next level and showing them what it is. So it's showing, like having a diagram of the back of the card. Yeah. For example. And do you have to, what's the average internet speed? Is it similar to the states? I think it's fair. Oh, it is?

It works. Now I can't tell where I'm browsing up the U.S. I mean, Lagos, to be honest. It's also a YSICOMPIT to ZETI, figuring out Wi-Fi. And that's the point. Like, people are building stuff, solving all those problems. So there's no problems again. Well, there are problems more.

People are making progress and trying to figure out. That's cool. So you haven't had to do any crazy hacks around like latency or Wi-Fi. internet speed or anything like that. I will say we have. Okay. Because also when you're designing for like multiple people, you have to figure multiple things out.

You know, in fact, very quickly we moved past paying with cards because not everybody wants to pay with a card. So we allow people to pay directly with your bank accounts. We allow people to pay with USSD. USSD is, I don't know,

defaulting. Well, it's something like star 737, like you dial a code on your phone. Okay. And it's connected to you. It's connected to your mobile billing. Your mobile phone.

No, not really. Like, it's connected to your bank. So you connect with your phone provider, your bank account, and then you can pay through that. Exactly. Something like that. Yeah. So just realizing that people are different. Yeah.

I think very interesting thing about Africa and Nigeria specifically is how different. They're about 250 tribes, you know, so it's different. Like 250 languages. more than 250 languages, you know. So when you're figuring some of these things out, of course, the language is English, but the cultural, like, you have to just design for everybody. Inclusion. Yeah.

But it's exciting. I think these are some of these things. That's why we know that we're in a good business. We know that this is good to be a lot of work, but we'll get to do the work. We'll figure it out and we'll make it work. Man, total tangent. Are your family members as happy as you are? I think they're happier.

I used to be happier that this, man. Oh, no. Everything. Yeah, but I think things are really, really exciting. I think five years ago, this was my dream. To just be able to figure stuff out, to have all the, to have, like, without excuses. Like now,

I'm in a bad place. I see it because I don't have excuses. Like it was easy to have excuses. I say, oh, we don't have money. Oh, it's hard to raise money. I don't have people. I don't know. Now I have money.

Well, a little money. Some money. Yeah. A strong team. I have very good people supporting us. I have access. We have regulatory cover. We have everything.

So the only thing we have to do is just build, which is bad. So it's just really like. We have to build. There are no excuses. And I'm excited to be honest because I know like this is just going to go as far as we wanted to go. Yeah. Yeah.

And how do you keep yourself sane? Well, I think also just like moving. So I travel a lot for work. Okay. But it helps me because like when I'm in Lagos, like I'm just doing meetings back to back. when I come to maybe San Francisco switches to just coffee meetings and all that

when I go somewhere else like switches again so I'm able to switch it up like very quickly yeah so maybe just and then when I'm flying I sleep so that's the act

breaking like jet lag you just I just sleep all through the flight so whenever I get back I'm awake yeah we're there um it's fine funny, like, the excuses you may have had five years ago. Are there any elements of your life five years ago that you miss now, now that you're busy founder guy?

To be honest, I think it's just like building deeper relationships, you know. So I was flying in today, for example, and I just wanted to like, respond to catch up on like my messages. Yeah. When I looked at it, it was so overwhelming. I'm like, no, I can't catch up. No, I'm not doing this again. So I think just I could be very deep. Now I still have a few deep relationships, but five years ago, I could like really spend more time with people and all that. I wish I and I hope I would start doing more of that. That's why I'm looking for just more people to help me figures about these things out.

Yeah, but I think that's it. But thankfully, I think people understand. my friends on this land and so little opportunities we have we just catch up very quickly yeah do you find time to like exercise or go on dates or anything like that I'm married actually so that's good but exercise people would agree with me I don't know I don't know I try to want to exercise I don't really exercise when I'm in Lagos but maybe when I'm out of town I'm okay So it's like 100% work all the time and that's cool with you. That works.

Well, I have a 99% work. And you've been doing it for years. I think there are faces to this, to be honest. I think, but just at this very crazy face now. Yeah. And I recognize that my health is also very important. So and I tell my team to like, feel free to like just stop, you know. There's some times.

There's some meetings. I actually stop. I just text and say, you know, I'm sorry. I can make this meeting. I just can't. You know, so sometimes I do that way I just give up. Just tap out. Exactly.

I can't do this again. But like, and then once I get my energy back, I continue. Okay. So in terms of your personal and pay stacks growth, where do you want to be in five years? Wow. That's interesting. I think, I think the pay stack specifically, I think the payments problem is still very big. I think five years down the line.

I think there's so many businesses, there's so many people building interesting stuff in Africa. I want to look at the next five years and see Paystack actually helping these people figure some of these things out. I want to see the very successful companies over the next five years being supported, being helped, being powered by Paystack.

I think that's going to be exciting for me. Yeah. Because they're going to be winners in Africa and I really want to be the one power in this with us. So that's that's it. And I think if Facebook is successful, obviously I probably hope

I will be successful. Yeah, yeah. And then personally, yeah. So like my personal goals are really tied to the company's goals. I just want to say this work. I want to help.

Not even help. I just want to do my work. And I know that in just doing my work. work, a new generation of people are going to be able to do their own work. Yeah. So I'm in a very interesting. I'm a very interesting place. Yeah.

Thank. All right, man. The question I've been wondering this whole time might be my last one is like, I want some music recommendations from Africa. What's like that? What's like the good stuff? You know, I, I went to Vietnam, actually. Nice.

And I was thinking about it that if I ever. stop doing pay stack. I'll have to be a DJ because it's so easy to be an African DJ just suck or so, like the songs are very easy. I'll just ask that. Just send me like a playlist or something. Exactly. So I think it's just risky Davido. It's a very popular artist and a very interesting song.

See what Savage. Don't come mighty. Yeah. I don't know. Like the Nigerian music scene is really, really exciting. Yeah, man. The whole African music scene is fucking awesome. just discovered this like uh i think it's called analog africa it's this youtube channel that's just like pulling all these like lps from the 60s and 70s and putting it up they have some like even some like

black and white like music videos they're so good i love it i i i get inspired by just listening to some of these songs yeah man wow this guys are do well if i do more music then let's do this in tech yeah yeah absolutely has the festival scene taken like a hold there as well well i think a lot of things happen in december um i think that's the period where there's a lot of um really activities so yeah so if you want to visit yeah isn't there some like african burning man thing too oh well i don't know maybe there is yeah i haven't been out yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah all right man so if someone wanted to uh come work for you guys where should they go um i think because it's very urgent now just reach out to me

directly. On Twitter, Shollah, Sholl's Man and Twitter, but send us an email actually. You can just send me an email, shol up, paste like.com and say you had this. You had the YSy podcast. Yeah. But yeah, looking for the best people to just help us figure this out. All right, man. All right. Well, thanks for coming in. Thanks so much. Had a good time. All right. Thanks for listening. So as always, you can find the transcript and the video at blog.wycombinator.com. And if you have a second, it would be awesome to give us a rating and review wherever you find your podcast. See you next time.