#80: The End of the Afrobility Podcast - Until We Meet Again…

Summary

Podcast Summary: Afrobility #80 – The End of Afrobility: Until We Meet Again…

Date: June 20, 2025
Hosts: Olumide Ogunsanwo and Bankole Makanju
Podcast Theme: Stories and analyses of African technology companies

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Overview of the Episode’s Main Theme

This landmark episode marks the heartfelt farewell and reflective closure of the Afrobility podcast after five years, 80 episodes, and more than 200 hours of in-depth stories about Africa-focused technology companies. Olumide and Bankole take listeners on a voyage through their motivations for founding the show, recount lessons from past episodes, reveal behind-the-scenes moments, share insights about Africa’s tech ecosystem, and discuss their own personal and professional evolutions shaped by Afrobility. They also outline future directions and leave listeners with empowering final thoughts.

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Episode Structure and Timestamps

• Why We Started Afrobility (02:14)
• Lessons From Past Episodes (18:34)
• Behind the Scenes & Unfinished Stories (230:18)
• Reflections, Closing Thoughts, and the Road Ahead (237:00)
• Seminal Recommendations (247:12)

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why We Started Afrobility (02:14–18:34)

• Personal Passion and Need for African Tech Discourse
  • Olumide: “For me personally, I’ve always liked technology since I was a child... it just ended up being something we experimented with. It ended up being bigger.” (02:20)
  • Bankole: “It was a way to force me to stay connected with Africa and Africa tech.” (03:03)
• Information Gap in 2019/2020
  • Bankole: “It's hard to imagine now, but when we started, to find a coherent story of any of the startups... it just did not exist.” (04:22)
• Serendipitous Partnership
  • Olumide recounts meeting Bankole at McKinsey Lagos in 2012, bonding over tech (and Chelsea Football Club!), and later continuing their catch-ups between the US and Nigeria—where the idea of the podcast was born. (05:43–06:52)
• Meta-Affrobility:
  • “It’s weird to be talking about Affrobility on Affrobility. That’s meta.” — Olumide (01:13)

2. Lessons From Past Episodes (18:34–224:28)

Podcast Format Evolution

• Early experimentation: from sector overviews to deep company dives.
• Settled into either discussing a specific tech company in-depth or exploring a sector.

Unexpected Public Response & Community

• “I expected to be screaming into the void… Apparently there’s a lot of nerds on the Internet. Find your family.” — Olumide (12:51)
• Listeners would reach out, await new episodes, and share feedback, revealing a hungry audience for nuanced analysis of African tech. (13:30)

Personal and Professional Growth

• Preparation and depth: Prepping two-to-three hour episodes was a “whole chasm” beyond casual conversations. (13:28–14:43)
• Changed self-perception: “It changed the way I thought because without Affrobility, there would have been a Firedom book... led to its own substack, which led to the Affrobility Substack. Everything is recursive.” — Olumide (15:23)

The Founding of Afrobility & Name Oddities

• The founders share hilarious alternate names they nearly used, like Tech Agbada and Tech n’ Moimoi. (08:13–09:20)
• “Thank God we dodged that shit.” — Olumide on almost naming the podcast Dev Africa. (10:32)

Key Themes from Company Deep Dives

• Fintech as a Foundational Sector: Episodes on Paystack, Flutterwave, MTN, Interswitch, OPay, Wave, etc. highlighted why fintech repeatedly emerges as the first scalable vertical—low physical infrastructure, high digital penetration, and room for creativity.
• Ecosystem Impact Stories: Paystack’s acquisition by Stripe unlocked investor and founder enthusiasm; Jumia’s IPO made global waves; Sendwave’s exit showed the importance of founder profile for ecosystem influence. (see especially 21:04–24:26)
• Unique African Models: Success from asset-heavy logistics (M-KOPA, Twiga), agency banking, and “super apps” like OPay, which blend fintech, mobility, commerce, and more.
• Telcos as Tech Powerhouses (MTN, Vodacom, Safaricom):
  • Telcos not only provided connectivity but evolved into mobile money and fintech, sometimes dominating new verticals at the expense of open competition (see M-Pesa/Safaricom).
• Sector-Specific Hardships:
  • EdTech and HealthTech face monetization and distribution pains, often struggling against ubiquitous free alternatives (YouTube, ChatGPT).
• Failures and Cycles:
  • Stories like Swvl, 54Gene, and Gokada illustrate brutal startup cycles, underlining the need for resilience, adaptability, and, often, the right macro timing.

Trends and Horizontal Learnings

• No single founder archetype: Success stories include a diverse mix of ages, backgrounds, and even levels of technical experience. (225:00)
• Partnerships & Distribution Key to Scale: Giving up equity (sometimes painfully) for access to markets and distribution partners fueled most African unicorns.
• “You gotta feed the people that want to eat there and it can't feed them.” — On how startups sometimes fail to be big enough for their backers (182:07, re: OLX).
• Business Model Innovation & Timing: Sometimes, success was being in the right place at the right time and tuning to the “wave” — as Zain/Airtel did in telco, or as many fintechs did with the cashless push.
• No Hard & Fast Rules: Sometimes asset-heavy is right, sometimes asset-light; it all depends on funding and market moment. (228:31)
• Perennial Regulatory Challenge:
  • “If something works, government’s eye will be big on it.” — Bankole (234:23)
• Survivorship > Genius: Endurance through headwinds, pivots, and crises mattered just as much as and sometimes more than grand original ideas.

Memorable Quotes/Exchanges

• “If you’re alive long enough, eventually you’ll succeed.” — Olumide, on company ‘survivorship’ (179:52)
• “No real archetype to the founder—everything is time and place. You’ll be hurt if you did something because someone else said you should.” — Bankole (228:31)
• “Nothing makes me happier than opening my podcast player, shout out to Pocket Cast, and listening to an old Affrobility episode... I pat my own back.” — Olumide (14:45)
• (On a listener grateful for a Jumia investment) “First of all, that’s not what I... I’m glad you made a lot of money. I did not even... I don’t think this was a positive investment [episode].” — Bankole (22:42)

Funniest & Most Poignant Moments

• The ongoing joke about never properly introducing themselves on the podcast (243:59)
• “Episodes where I realized that like my Nigerians, there are no mates...” — Bankole, riffing on differences between India, the West, and Africa. (51:20)

Closing Circle of Themes

The episode brings the podcast full circle—starting with fintech, ending with fintech (Cellulant), echoing sectoral centrality and signaling unfinished business in Africa’s tech evolution.

3. Behind the Scenes & Unfinished Stories (230:18–237:00)

• Episodes never made: Ambition to cover stories like Moniepoint, major banks (GTB, Zenith), or Dangote, but ran out of time.
• Production Bloopers: Lost recordings, tech snafus, and some tongue-in-cheek “insults” from listeners (“Olumide laughs too loud!”).

4. Reflections, Life Impact & Farewell Messages (237:00–253:24)

Impact on the Hosts

• Identity Transformation:
  • “Affrobility made me think more about the creative—the joy I get from creation... If not for Affrobility... my life’s trend line would’ve been towards more leisure activities. Now, it’s firmly creative pursuits.” — Olumide (242:31)
• Connection & Community:
  • “What I’m most proud of is really all the different people who have gotten value out of it.” — Bankole (243:30)

Long-Term Curiosity & Open Questions

• Role of stablecoins & regulation (Olumide: 233:07; Bankole: 234:23)
• Agency banking & cheap labor: formerly skeptical, now intrigued by its fit in Africa.

Empowerment and Call to Action

• “You can just do things. You really don’t need permission for a large amount of things. You can just do things. But that comes from a place of personal agency.” — Bankole (246:00)
• Olumide’s closing: “Affrobility has been an amazing project... exceeded what I planned. I feel gratitude. I’m grateful and thankful I did it with Bankole. I look back at it very fondly.” (249:42 onward)

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Notable Quotes & Timestamp Highlights

• “It’s weird to be talking about Affrobility on Affrobility. That’s meta.” — Olumide (01:13)
• “I expected to be screaming into the void... but apparently, there’s a lot of nerds on the Internet. Find your family.” — Olumide (12:51)
• “Survivorship, for me, is so important—it shows that the company is able to withstand shocks.” — Olumide (179:52)
• “No real archetype to the founder... Everything is time and place.” — Bankole (228:31)
• “The people who do it, they know why. Not for the faint of heart. That’s my main thing.” — Bankole (230:18)
• “Affrobility made me think more about the creative... The trend line of my life is firmly towards creative pursuits now.” — Olumide (242:31)
• “You can just do things... it comes from a place of personal agency.” — Bankole (246:00)

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Timestamps for Core Segments

00:00–18:34 – Why We Started
18:34–224:28 – Lessons and Insights from Each Episode
230:18–237:00 – Behind the Scenes, What’s Next
237:00–244:43 – Personal Reflections, Community Impact
247:12–249:42 – Seminal Book Recommendations
249:42–253:24 – Final Reflections and Sign-off

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Book / Resource Recommendations

• How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World – Harry Browne
• Maximum Achievement – Brian Tracy
• Firedom – Olumide & Simone
• Anything You Want – Derek Sivers
• The Book of Why – Judea Pearl

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Summary for Newcomers

If you haven’t listened to Afrobility before, this episode is an energetic, honest, and wide-ranging masterclass in African tech entrepreneurship, business models, and how macro context shapes outcomes—from fintech to health, telcos, and the power of persistent adaptation. It charts not just the sector’s growth, but the hosts’ personal developments and the blossoming of a pan-African (and often global) tech creator and listener community.

True to their word, Afrobility’s legacy will live on:

• The archive remains available.
• The Substack will host occasional new reflections or articles.
• The host emails will stay live for future feedback, questions, and connections.

Final word:
“Just do things. Don’t let the wait for permission or perfection stop you. You can just do things.”
— Afrobility, signing off (246:00)

Transcript

[Olumide]

Foreign. Welcome to Affability, a conversation about African business and technology. Today, we're going to talk about Affability. We'll explore the Affability Store across the following areas. First, why we start Affability. Second, lessons from past Affability episodes. Third, some behind the scenes. Fourth, future plans after Affability. And then fifth, we'll end with our closing thoughts and outlook. This episode was recorded on June 8, 2025.

[Bankole]

How are you doing, man?

[Olumide]

I'm alive and fresh. I have a fresh haircut, so I'm

[Bankole]

ready that you cut yourself, right?

[Olumide]

Of course. I wouldn't pay a human being in this world to cut my hair, even for free. No way. Anyone touching my hair.

[Bankole]

You guys only cut his own hair. And on that note, welcome to the final episode of Affability.

[Olumide]

It looks so good. If you found this episode in your podcast stream, you may be a bit surprised by the title. Yeah, but that's how we're doing it.

[Bankole]

I guess that's how we're doing it. The whole point of this episode is to put a bow on Affability. I think we can talk about how we ended up in this position as well. But it's exciting. It feels very celebratory for me. I spent a lot of time listening to the episodes and the past, some other things. So that's super interesting. So really fun.

[Olumide]

It's been a journey. So I think this recording is the middle of 2025. I'm starting middle of 2020. So it's been five years. It's actually funny that I remember when I wrote the script for this episode and I was looking at, like, how do we organize it? What do we talk about? And I wrote the script almost two years ago. And it's weird. I wrote the script because normally Bankohli writes the script for some reason. One time I just woke up and I was like, oh, how should we structure the last episode? And here we are. So the way the structure is, is why we started. So we're basically doing chronologically why we started some lessons from past episodes, behind the scenes and then future and then overall thoughts. So it's sort of like, it's weird to be talking about Affability on Affability. That's meta.

[Bankole]

I love it. But hey, I love it.

[Olumide]

Here we are.

[Bankole]

I love it.

[Olumide]

All right, so it's a bit sad, but I shall. I shall show some strength as we try to proceed with the episode. Because I actually remember it was very emotional when I was writing this episode. Seriously, I remember thinking, okay, that's the one thing for me on this episode. Yes. Yeah. I said the most important thing for me on this episode is to not cry. That's what I thought when I was writing the episode two years ago. So I think I'm gonna make it. I feel strong. I'm ready.

[Bankole]

I love it.

[Olumide]

Okay, so why we started? Affability. You want me to kick off this?

[Bankole]

Yeah, why don't you go?

[Olumide]

Okay. So it's funny, I actually wrote a blog post about this on our sub stack. So I can. I can do the audio version of that. But I think High Level Ban Kweli has its own. His own reasons. And our reasons are probably similar. But for me personally, I've always liked technology since I was a child. So because I like tech, computers, Internet, the whole industry, the companies, I probably sort of a natural outgrowth of one of my passions that I happen to share with someone else. And because I had that passion and because I had a friend that had the passion, it just ended up being something we experimented with. It ended up being bigger. So I can give the full story later, but I think at a high level it just started with like some passionate interests.

[Bankole]

I think that was it. Olum and I used to talk, just catch up. Because we worked together for a long time. And when we would catch up, I think maybe a testament to how uninteresting our individual lives were. So there was just nothing else to talk about. When we would catch up regularly, we just end up talking about tech. And I think that's kind of one way it came up as well for me. In retrospect, why was I excited to do it? I think that's how we ended up. Two big things. One, it was a way to force me to stay connected with Africa and Africa tech. At this time, I had moved. I don't. I was. I'm still in Nigeria multiple times a year, but I had moved to the US I was working in US Big tech. And most of the problems I was facing were very like American focused and American consumer focused or American business focused and centric. And I. And I just couldn't feel. I did not feel as connected. And as a strong sense of man, I know a lot of things about Silicon Valley or whatever, but not so much about Nigeria tech at the same level or the high standard. So it was a way to force me to stay connected. Like if I'm going to record something, I have to at least prep so I don't embarrass my family. So that was one. It was just like a forceful Function. Yeah, just don't embarrass your family and if I have embarrassed my family, I apologize.

[Olumide]

You give a full refund.

[Bankole]

It's hard to imagine now but when we started to find like coherent story of any of the startups that had raised a bunch of money, it's just 2020. So Paystack had raised I think 10 million in 2018. We'll talk about that in a bit. And flutter it had raised but to just find a coherent founding story of their business, their business model, how big could it get? What are the kind of scale, what other lessons could we learn from other similar competitors in other markets? It just did not exist. Which is strange to imagine now. It was more in the conversations where we would have and we would just not find the material anywhere. I think it's just like we just at least we just thought. I just thought that it should exist. Like why isn't anybody talking about this stuff? It's pretty fun and interesting even to just talk about it. And that's why we did it.

[Olumide]

Yeah. And I think our backgrounds are uniquely positioned in that we work in tech. We went to business school where Africans. We used to live in Nigeria. I worked in McKenzie but so sort of like affability Africa tech and business. It would require someone who, who's interested in business, finance, economics, interested in tech, hopefully has some experience, some knowledge and is actually excited about the topic. So we a confluence of factors, that is where we are. Okay, I'm going to go through in some depth the founding story. Bank, you can interject if you want to add additional information or if what I'm saying is incorrect. Hopefully it's not incorrect.

[Bankole]

Hopefully it's not incorrect.

[Olumide]

This blog post is on the Internet. Okay, so I first met Bankaly when I was working in McKenzie Lagos around 2012. So 13 years ago we had a bunch of mutual interests actually. So it wasn't just tech. Now it seems like it's just tech. Back then we're both very into Chelsea now. I have no interest. We used to talk about Chelsea and tech and different conversations. So much fun. And because the office was so small When I joined McKinsey Lagos it was like 22, 23 people. But because a lot of people worked off site really in the office at any time there were like seven, eight people except for Fridays when it was like 15 people. So it's small enough where you could can actually have discussions and there's so much space and there's a lot of people around you. So we got along. We're Bonding. We're having all those conversations. And then eventually around 2014 I moved to San Francisco to Mountain View to work with Google and eventually Bankoli also moved. So I had monthly video calls with my closest friends, including Bankoli. Because now I'm living in a different country, I'm living in a different city, my friends are moving. I thought it was a good way to keep in touch with friends. So Banco had our video calls and we chatting. But conversations that came up during the video calls were almost always about okay, so this is happening, this tech.

[Bankole]

Oh my God, did you see this Fundraise like oh my God, did you see this?

[Olumide]

Yes. And we had a lot of shared interest strangely enough also around Pixel phones and phone technology which we can get into later. Shout out to Samsung Z Fold. I'm on team Samsung Z Fold now but maybe I'll come back to the Pixel one day. And then during our conversation we started to analyze business models of companies strategies. This product, this launch, this is happening.

[Bankole]

That sounds way. That sounds incredibly lame. You know that this is like oh, during our regular catch ups you're like is it.

[Olumide]

It sounds amazing.

[Bankole]

Is that business model scale? I don't know, is it lame?

[Olumide]

It sounds amazing. I guess, yeah. If you're not interested in something, it would sound uninteresting to an outsider. If two people told me they were talking about collecting insects, I'd be like well that's a bit weird. But hey, they're into it. It is different interests, different values, whatever. So I understand how but for me, amazing conversations. So eventually as we were to analyze more and more tech companies we had an idea of why don't we analyze African tech companies. So the whole goal of affability is we were going to record five test episodes and just see how it is. Send it some friends. When we actually started recording we didn't even have a name which I think is so hilarious. We just started recording. So I'm going to go through the list of names we considered. So I'm going to go through all the names very quickly and then thank God we picked afraid some of these names are horrendous. So here are the names. Afrocleptic, you can use that.

[Bankole]

And there was no chat GPT at the time by the way guys, this was all pan. This was bread and water guys, this

[Olumide]

was all like yeah, this is yeah you Afroclectic. Afro Dev Afrique. That sounds Francophonish. I like it. Afronastic was all you like a NAS album. Shout out to to Illmatic. Afrolytics Sounds like we're a data gathering platform. Dev Africa sounds like we. We have a company with developers. That's weird. Dev Tech Africa, AKA dta. The name is so bad. Let's just call it dta. Oh, that's funny. Tech and fish Tech and Moimoi Bancoli. This one. I made a comment. So. Yes. Tmm. Tmm. That have been.

[Bankole]

That would have been dope, though. Take a moment. Dope on a T shirt. Because every time people think of me, they think of Moimoi. Oh, for the uninsured. Momo is basically. Yeah, Momo is dope. Look it up. I'm not even going to try to explain Momo, to be honest.

[Olumide]

Okay. Tech Agbada. This is so good. I put a comment. This sounds ridiculous, but I like it. I'm buying that.

[Bankole]

I'm buying that domain name right after this, by the way.

[Olumide]

Okay. For our European American, Agbara is like a Yoruba traditional outfit, which is like a big. It's like a big.

[Bankole]

A tunic. It's not a jacket. It's like a. It's a tunic.

[Olumide]

Thank you. It's a tunic. That's the word. But it's very, very big. It's meant to be oversized because you wear stuff underneath it. So you have like two layers and then you fold the arms. I would have been hard to pronounce.

[Bankole]

Yeah. Because GB for America is not.

[Olumide]

Yeah, it's not. It's not Afronomics. The name was taken already. I sort of like it. It's broader. Yeah. It was already gone. Aftb. This was actually the placeholder name. Africa Tech and Business and then B and O. Bancole and Illuminate Tech in Africa. O and B Olumide. Whoever goes first. That's like Hewlett Packard. Flip a coin, see who goes first.

[Bankole]

We didn't have.

[Olumide]

We didn't have that. ATB Africa Business Tech. Very close aftp. Africa Tech Podcast. B O T. A pronounced it as butter. That was so Bancol and Illuminate Talk Africa.

[Bankole]

That was a fun one.

[Olumide]

Butter and then Afrobildi and Afro bites. Fruit bites. Sounds like a cooking show.

[Bankole]

Solid name. Solid name. We loved it. Domain name was available. Crazy in retrospect. Signed up everywhere.

[Olumide]

We got it. Although Balcol is being all cool now. But here, here's what happened. So I came up with him. After building, I told Bankoli, I love this name. You know what Bank Holy said? I don't know. I think I'll sleep on it. It may grow on me. His first choice was Balcony's first was Dev Africa. Thank God we dodged that shit. That's what you said. Do you remember?

[Bankole]

I don't remember any of that.

[Olumide]

Thank God I documented. You said, I'll sleep on it. I think it'll grow on me.

[Bankole]

Yeah, affability did grow on me. It did grow on me.

[Olumide]

Yeah. I mean it's like revisionist history now. It's hard to even imagine any other possible name because we're psychologically wedded to all the history of that name. But apparently that was not the only stuff we had. Okay, so we launched 2020. I had a LinkedIn post, which is funny. I said, I'm excited to announce. I put your full name, bro. I put your full government name, dude. I'm excited to announce Bancole Makoju and I just launched Africa tech focused podcast called Affability in parentheses, aimed at telling stories and analyzing African technology companies and business models. It's funny, like, so that's the quote. That's my LinkedIn affability launch post 2020. We've stuck to our original mandate very, very closely. Like it's. We did exactly what we said. We do tell stories and analyze African tech companies and business models. Very rare. We had a. A vision and we did it.

[Bankole]

Yeah, it was, it was. I think the journey to this point has been a lot of fun. But. But yeah. What was what was expected or unexpected? Maybe that's the thing

[Olumide]

when we started.

[Bankole]

No, I guess in the journey, maybe not when we started. In the overall journey. If you think about the last fives are privileged. What parts were expected or unexpected.

[Olumide]

Interesting. Okay. Okay, Let me summarize the journey and then I'll answer. Okay, so just to summarize everything we said, Malcolm and I used to have a lot of conversations about tech going as far back as 2012, 2013, 13, 15 years, 2019, 2020. We decided to do some Africa tech. We had some test episodes, we put out, we got very positive feedback. We picked a name, we launched and it was basically just like a rocket ship since then. So that's the summary. Now to answer your question, what was expected? Unexpected. Unexpected was I never thought Affability would become as big as it ended up being. Yeah, because it's hard to. Because if you asked me in 2020, it's a very niche interest. So I didn't think that many people. I didn't know there were like thousands.

[Bankole]

I expected to be screaming into the void is what I thought it was.

[Olumide]

Exactly. I didn't know there were tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people interested in listening. It's also because it's so detailed and long and like, it's basically for nerds. Affability is for nerds. But apparently there's a lot of nerds on the Internet. Find your family.

[Bankole]

I think my expectation for you, my expectation was more to your point. It was more that, well, this is a niche thing and maybe there's like a couple of people like us who work in tech, who live in us also want to be connected, who benefit from listening, but, you know, maybe nobody listens at all. I think it was in the realm of possibility that you would get like five listens or something. We're like, yeah, it's cool. We're having the same conversations, whatever. It's fun.

[Olumide]

I still have fun.

[Bankole]

Exactly. Yeah.

[Olumide]

Me and my five new friends.

[Bankole]

I think it was, I was unexpected the public response that we got. I feel especially over the last five years, we have a great group of listeners who have, who listen, respond to episodes, email individually, drop feedback on a regular, consistent basis. Over the last couple of years. I think that people take time off of the days to look forward to episodes. If we. When the schedule starts to slip and people like, you guys haven't dropped anything, like, I'm like, wow, you noticed. I think that part was unexpected. The other part that was unexpected is how much, like how much as the, as the time progressed it was just ended up being like a lot like, and I mean a lot of work for me personally is like I felt like I knew what good or great look like and always trying to like get there and get the next thing and really sit on a story or really sit on a narrative and figure out what it actually means. I think I also underestimated that. I think is there's a gap between. There's a significant gap from going from this regular ad hoc conversations that you have with a friend once a month where you think about topics to like preparing like a two, three hour episode on a company. And that that gap is not a small gap, it's a whole chasm.

[Olumide]

Right?

[Bankole]

Yeah.

[Olumide]

Nothing makes me happier than opening my podcast player shout out to Pocket Cast. Yeah, I just listen to an old affability episode. It's just like, I mean, it's just so good. Pat my own back. It's just, it's just so interesting. And I listen to myself and I'm so excited and I'm like, wow, okay, this was 2022, how I was thinking about this topic. Okay. Another unexpected thing is I didn't realize it would change the way I perceive myself so before affability, my self perception was, so I'm working at this company, I'm working at Google. I'm a Googler. But then after affability, I just started to have more and more creative interests. And yeah, it basically changed the way I thought because without affability, there would have been a fired on book.

[Bankole]

Yeah.

[Olumide]

And without the fired on book, there wouldn't been a fired on pot blog. Yeah, without the fired on blog substack, there wouldn't have been an affability substack. So it's weird. Like, so affability led to firedom, but then fired up led to its own substack, which led to the affability substack. Everything is, like recursive. But the big thing is I thought of myself more as like a creator, a writer, a podcast, a researcher. So a whole separate identity than what I had before. So very empowering from a self.

[Bankole]

It was a. It was a super. It was a great way to, like, do this creation, like creating things and making things exist. I think that that part was a good. Because a good. Was a. Has been a great exercise in that.

[Olumide]

It's this weird. You have this weird feeling, shout out to my fellow creators, like, you create something. And then. And then I would go on the website to publish it. And you click publish. And then you refresh. You're like, oh, my God, it's actually on the Internet. It's on. Anyone in the world can listen to this shit.

[Bankole]

It never goes.

[Olumide]

Incredible.

[Bankole]

Yeah, it never goes.

[Olumide]

It's just there. Yeah, yeah. And our forbidden page is interesting that Alphabet.com has all the episodes on one page. So actually, when we started designing the site, when I was designing the site, there's an option where you can paginate it. You can be like 10 episodes per page. I was like, oh, no, fuck all that. 100. So all the episodes. 180 episodes. You can just scroll down after we do listen to everything. It's. It's wild just to see that. So what was unexpected for you since you brought up this question?

[Bankole]

No, that was what was unexpected? I think the scale of it.

[Olumide]

I said expected. Oh.

[Bankole]

Honestly, what was expected for me was we're gonna do this. It's gonna be a lot of fun. We're gonna just talk about these companies. We're gonna have like eight people who care about it. Like, it'll be like, what else? Eight people will be in, like one group text. We'll all be like randos. It'd be one guy from, like, Phoenix. One guy who's like a second order friend. And we were like eight to 20, you know, like eight people of us. And that guy would tell his other friend, it would be like 10 or 12, and they were like 20 people who, like, make T shirts, you know, those, like, niche Internet communities from early Internet, basically. And, like, the Internet comes. I was part of. In the 2000s, like, one of those communities of people, which is what I expected. Like, hey, we're gonna find 15, 20 people who are gonna care a lot about this stuff. I'm gonna message us all the time. They're gonna tell us about stuff. We're gonna tell them everything, and we're just gonna make it for ourselves. That's how I thought about it. That's honestly what I thought. I'm just gonna do it.

[Olumide]

But yeah, another man. There's something. The question is giving me so many. So a lot of. Another unexpected thing is all the side stuff you have to do in addition to recording and preparing for the podcast, so. Preparation, of course, recording. But it turns out. So we're like. We started Affability. What does that mean? Well, we need a logo for affability. And then I was like, how do I make a logo? So I've gone all these different. We're not. This whole two hours of like, how do you make a logo? And now the Affability logo is beautiful, but there are some ugly versions. I feel like I should do a substack post about this.

[Bankole]

Remember?

[Olumide]

But even that, like, how do you do that? Then we need a website. How do you. How do you do a website? So you do. So there's a website, there's a logo. Okay, do we need some sounds? Sound intro. Intro. There's a whole skill set around a podcast that I developed.

[Bankole]

I didn't realize also, even just the ongoing stuff. Do you remember when we used to assign who would respond to emails?

[Olumide]

Okay.

[Bankole]

Was just like, you respond to. You responsive. Because you just get emails and be like, I can't. This is a lot of work just to sit down and respond to emails the whole day. This is just a lot. But that's. That's a. It's an insane time. But anyways.

[Olumide]

Yes.

[Bankole]

Cool.

[Olumide]

Okay. So with that, we're gonna do something. So prepare your. Your smoothie, your soda, your water. We're gonna do lessons from past episodes. So we're gonna go through every episode. Bank only wanted to do 10, but I wanted to do all of them. So we're gonna go through every Affability episode, and we're gonna touch on Some key learnings, takeaways. Interesting. Basically some thoughts on every episode. So this is gonna take a while, so get ready. I'm very excited. I have a lot of energy for this.

[Bankole]

Let's do it.

[Olumide]

Ivanko, you ready for this?

[Bankole]

I'm ready. Let's go.

[Olumide]

Let's blitz it.

[Bankole]

Let's go.

[Olumide]

Okay.

[Bankole]

Oh, my.

[Olumide]

So this part is just gonna be like pure vibes per energy. All right, Episode zero, intro to affability. This was like the intro episode. It's not even a real episode. It's like two or three minutes. I just think, like, I re listened to it and we just sounded so, like, optimistic. What the fuck is going on? Like, what are we doing? It sounded very, very.

[Bankole]

We're just like, we're doing it. We're doing it. You know, we're innocent. We're doing it right now. Like, it was more like, I'm a podcaster, guys. Let's go.

[Olumide]

Right?

[Bankole]

Yeah.

[Olumide]

It basically set the framework and foundation for what we ended up building. And it's nice, actually. It actually has a lot of downloads. For the longest time, it was the most downloaded episode. I was like, of course it's gonna be the most downloaded because it's so short. Apparently it didn't last long. Now people don't care about the intro. They go straight to what they're interested in. Okay, episode zero, next episode. Episode one, African fintech.

[Bankole]

Yeah.

[Olumide]

First of all, it's. It's an atypical affability episode in that we didn't have our standardized format. But it ended up being a very useful episode because it helped us realize that we can either talk about companies or sectors at this point. We didn't know. We're like, whatever the fuck, let's just talk about fintech. But it turned out that our model going forward was either to do a deep dive about a company, founding history, whatever, or to do a whole sector. Sector episodes are incredibly difficult to prepare for. But back then, this was just an easy. We talked about all the major funding announcements from, like, 2018 to 2020. And it was a good episode because a lot of the companies we highlighted, we ended up doing deep dives on them. And it turned out the fintech was one of the most foundational, fundamental areas in tech that got a lot of money.

[Bankole]

And it wasn't obvious at the time. It was just, I found this episode, if I look at the things we talked about, it was the beginning of blitzscaling. I didn't. Nobody had raised that much money, but it was the Chinese companies that were coming in hot and OPE was doing all right or food or everything. And yes, I'm pampered by transient. I was like. Because it was really. In retrospect it was, it was the best of times. We just didn't know. It was blitzkaling, zero interest rates. You know, it was the best of times. They were like, ah, business in Africa is tough. You think that's not tough? Everything was easy. Capital was flowing in retrospect. But yeah.

[Olumide]

Yeah. And it turns out fintech is one of the areas and sectors that initially gets a lot of funding because it can scale very, very quickly. I typically don't need that much infrastructure or hardware. So it makes sense. The fintech. A lot of people make fun of it but just logically like you and I can make a fintech business that depends on some partnership APIs, get some customers. If we raise a bunch of money we can even like offer them free or discounted things and just scale. It just ends up that if everyone does that eventually becomes difficult. But initially you can gain early traction and growth. I wish I could say the same for health and education, but we'll talk about that later. All right. Episode 2 Jumia.

[Bankole]

This was, this is the one that put us. I think this is the one that got us the most inbound at this. Up until this time.

[Olumide]

I mean only three episodes in, but yeah, it was a hit for sure. Jumia was a super hit.

[Bankole]

It was a super. It was a hit from the jump. It was one that recorded like oh no, we're. We are actually naturally like we're big on. We're big.

[Olumide]

We're big on the interwebs. Yeah. Like on the triple dope, you know

[Bankole]

who we are type stuff.

[Olumide]

Yeah, yeah.

[Bankole]

And.

[Olumide]

And this is when we started to settle into our format. Although funny enough at this time we didn't have small wins and recommendations. It's so funny. Like your mind gets used to things being a certain way. You're like, oh, it's always been that way. No, we didn't have recommended how the. Do you have upper billion. No small wins. But apparently that was the thing back then. And the Jumia story is fascinating because number one, it's public.

[Bankole]

Yeah.

[Olumide]

So there's people who have actual money involved. Number two, there is the most amount of money every of any Africa tech company. And the number three is just a very well known company. It's a little bit of E commerce, a little bit of things didn't go well. Then the founders left. Up and down, up and down. Yeah. From Rocket Internet to Unicorn ipo. Yeah, that's the.

[Bankole]

It was. It was, I think back to dreamy itself is at this time. It was very different from the Jumia you see today. I think this was when I would have. I remember I had somebody at work come up to me, somebody I didn't talk to, I didn't work with, come up to me at my office, tell me, oh, I saw your podcast on Jumia. I'm an investor in Jumia and I'm doing well and I've made a lot of money. Thank you so much. And I was like. And I was thinking to myself, like, first of all, that's not what I. I don't think I said, you should buy Juvia shares. I don't think I said, I'm glad you made a lot of money. I did not even imp. I don't think this was a positive investment.

[Olumide]

Yeah, this is a positive comedy podcast. We're telling jokes.

[Bankole]

I don't even think I had a positive spin on the story. So I don't know what you heard. This is one of those strange things. Like, we're like, positive on Jumia. What did you hear? And it was like, no, no, no, it's fine. You know, it's like the PayPal of Africa. And like, I don't know what. I literally was like, dude, I'm. I'm trying to get a snack from the micro kitchen man. So see you around. But that was a. It was an interesting episode.

[Olumide]

Yeah. Jumia story is fascinating to me. And the story isn't done yet. I think right now they're on the let's get profitable, let's not focus on top line revenue growth, but let's focus on margins. So profit margins, which basically means they're focusing on fewer countries, fewer product lines, fewer sectors, and even fewer lines of business. So let's see how it goes for them. I have so many thoughts on it, but maybe in. I was going to say maybe in a future episode. There's no future episode. Yeah. Shout out to Jimmy. I think the great thing about this episode was we talked about the rocket Internet beginnings.

[Bankole]

Yeah.

[Olumide]

And then we talked about the founding story. I would talk about how they were scaling when times were good and how they had to retrench and change their strategy. So it's like a. It's like a great Amazon of Africa story.

[Bankole]

Yeah.

[Olumide]

Any other thoughts?

[Bankole]

The last, before I move on is I'm looking at the investor list and they all build man Summit partners, a bunch of the other guys, they've all like mtn, they really had a really blue chip set of people who were capital and they were like, yeah, we're not doing that anymore. Really early too, so.

[Olumide]

Yeah, yeah, but does that mean anything? Oh, it means investors will just hold it.

[Bankole]

No, but it means that the people with the most information were all leaving pretty early even before now is what I'm saying.

[Olumide]

But it's a public company. We should all have the same information.

[Bankole]

I have a bridge. I have a bridge to sell you. You want to compare, you know, you know how there's, there's a. There's public accounts and there's management accounts that. Management accounts, public accounts. They actually don't have any relationship between them. It's actually like, I know, like, it's like there's no. Because what. So management, management account on the world. How do you manage your accounts? Oh, I'm. I'm just telling you. This is just, this is just, this is just a fact. Like if you think, wow, Jumias executives are looking at the public accounts per quarter to manage that thing and letting it ramp up every month. So anyways, that's by the way.

[Olumide]

Okay, so episode two, episode three was Transient. Which is better known for their major brands, Techno, Infinix and Ital. We'll go with it. So from Shenzhen, China to dethroning Samsung and Huawei in Africa, just a fascinating story on so many different levels. Number one, they go under the radar because their corporate brand name is not as well known as their other names. Number two, because they focus a lot on feature phones. Now of course it transitioned to smartphones. For people that are my friends in my circle, they don't pay any attention to them. I don't have a single friends use the uses of freaking feature phone. What for? But if you look at the actual data, actual sales, they're big, massive player, they're growing. And for this episode specifically, they made a lot of customizations to adapt to the specific market needs. They were doing music, they were doing dual sim, they were doing specific screens, they were doing educational, education stuff, they were selling. Is it. So they had a good way of like good go to market strategy, good feature capabilities. And because they had been in the market for so long, they really knew how to focus on pricing. And regardless what anyone tells you, lower income people really, really care about pricing. Yes, dual sim is nice. Yeah, free music is nice. But the phones were really cheap because they had a vertically integrated and they also had differentiation across the three different brands, which means techno can sell something at a different level than Infinix and Itel. So the transient story is interesting for me because of the learnings of trying to customize your needs to customize your product to the market, but especially on the pricing side. I think the biggest customization they did. Don't let them bullshit you. It's just like they had low prices and good distribution, which is very important.

[Bankole]

They are, they're a Chinese upstart brand. So if you like the Xiaomi Oppo, Huawei, like no, they're like they got really scrappy, shipped a lot of phones and built a bunch of services on top of it. And I feel like since then. So Tranche and Pompeii, I think Pompeii, I don't know if it's wholly owned by Tranchan, so somebody will email me and correct me without a doubt. But.

[Olumide]

But it used to be wholly owned at least.

[Bankole]

Yeah, but Pompeii is their fintech so they're really doubling down on the services. I think hardware is incredibly low margin and incredibly competitive. But they have a services business and I think they just launched a debit card a couple of weeks ago as

[Olumide]

at June 20, recording this debit card.

[Bankole]

They're doing well.

[Olumide]

They do virtual debit cards.

[Bankole]

They do, they do no physical card, they do lending. They do a bunch of things now.

[Olumide]

Okay, so when you say they launch the card, you really mean they launch banking services then on top of the

[Bankole]

banking services, a card specifically. Exactly. So Pompeii is pretty. Pompeii is the way I hear about transient a lot given that I don't have a techno phone.

[Olumide]

Yo, it's a friend of mine was telling me that they got their ESIM through Revolut and for me, like I love, I love telcos, I love the industry, mass infrastructure, service pricing, data minutes. And I also love fintech. So the overlap, I was so excited. I was like, oh, yo, show me your phone. So the first question I asked is how much are you charging for E? I don't know. Wait, what? How many minutes? So obviously the person wasn't, but I just love the fact that how can you reduce churn, increase stickiness, increase arpu by offering additional stuff on top of the cell phone service? I was intrigued by that. Especially like if a fintech is offering ESIM services, it means there's now a blurred line between telco and fintech because the, the telcos are offering financial services, the financial services company are offering telco services is just all mismatched which means the customer should have more options and potentially better pricing. Okay, I love that.

[Bankole]

All right. Three, ride sharing. That'll keep us moving.

[Olumide]

Okay. Okay. Episode four. You mean also any other things on tangent, let me know.

[Bankole]

That's it.

[Olumide]

Okay. So China best phone seller customized the market doing well. It will be interesting to see future how smartphone adoption affect the way they think about sales because I know there's a lot of also low cost Samsung phones and other players, but I don't know if the differentiation is enough to help them in that evolution. We shall see more options for the market. I haven't used a transient phone. I have no plans to use one anytime soon. Shout out to Team Samsung, Team Pixel. All right. Mobility Tech Uber, taxify. Others Ride sharing. Ride sharing continues to be something that befuddles me a little bit. I found some research that some of the ride sharing companies make more money from developing countries than developed countries. Like, how is that possible? How is that even possible? So it turns out even if they charge you $30 for a ride in San Francisco, New York, because they need to pay such high taxes and because they need to pay the driver a higher amount, the net, the actual margins may be worse. So the whole industry is weird to me because it has a bad reputation. A lot of drivers don't like it. The drivers want more money. Sometimes the users don't like it because they feel like they overcharge and sometimes they're making losses for quite a long time. So I think I like the industry. It's probably shaken out to be duopolis oligopolies. We should increase the margins. I like the episode because I think it's important to have that also in developing markets. And the business model is interesting to investigate.

[Bankole]

Yeah, it was, it was very early. They were talking about. I think I was looking at my notes, they just launched cash payments for ride sharing. This will come up as a trend in a lot of our other episodes. But the impact of government regulation, it's really tough because you can't just plan around it. And they try many different things. They launched Uber boats and different kind of issues that they had to face. And we're like Uber boats, Boots boats. Like a boat on a. On the sea in Nigeria. Yeah, but they had.

[Olumide]

I forgot about that. They had a boat. Yeah, yeah. Yes.

[Bankole]

But they had so much, so much, so much government regulatory issues on the motorcycles and stuff. And just super stressful.

[Olumide]

Yeah. Another thing about this episode which I forgot to mention is we took some time to talk about transportation in developing markets and just the intrigue of. So you have one option which is A taxi, way too expensive. Most people want to use a bus, which is cheaper. But in addition to a bus, you may have bikes. And then is it privately run? Is it publicly run? What's the relationship between the private operators? So private. There's more innovation. They go faster. But sometimes they better for the government to also assist because there's some natural monopolistic things on some specific routing and then also taking trains public freight. I think the whole industry still has some potential to adapt. So curious to see how this evolves, especially on the bike side because there's car sharing and bike sharing, so. TBD Episode 5 Naspers oh my God. I was so excited during this episode. I learned so much. Shout out to Naspers, which is basically a conglomerate, most notably known for their Chinese investment, which made them basically an investment platform.

[Bankole]

This is probably one of my favorite episodes in part because I learned so much. I knew some things about Naspers before, but I didn't know it as a set, as a coherent thread. What has happened since then? It's very interesting because I think Bob Van Dyke should actually confirm this. Bob Van Dyke is no longer at Naspers.

[Olumide]

Yes, yes. He's left.

[Bankole]

And a lot of the X.

[Olumide]

They have a new CEO.

[Bankole]

Yeah, a lot of the expansion hasn't really panned out. So they double down on food, double down on. On ride sharing, double down on the bot stack overflow, which hasn't been doing well because of LLMs. So they just haven't had. They've. They've taken a lot of money. It's basically like the money they made from 10 cents and they've really tried to turn it into more things, but doesn't seem to have panned out so far or yet. And they still have a conglomerate.

[Olumide]

What an amazing story. So Naspers, they started in print media, so newspaper publishing. Eventually they invested in 10 cents, ended up in a bunch of different businesses. Food delivery.

[Bankole]

Yeah.

[Olumide]

And just an amazing story of starting in traditional media. Eventually they IPO'd. They went on the stock exchange in a European country and just what an incredible story of some perseverance, some luck. Kuzbecker. I mean, the episode is just so exciting. It's also interesting to think about the capabilities needed as an investment firm and looking for ROI and returns and invest other companies versus being a purely operational company where you have your own divisions and you have your own profit margins. And Naspers does a little bit of both. They're primarily known for their investments, especially in Tencent, but they've also made other investments. In fact, they did full M and A, but they also have ongoing businesses that they run themselves, especially like on the media side. So they actually have media 24 and other things. And what an interesting company. So I would highly recommend to go back and listen to that episode. It still has a lot of downloads, but for me I learned a lot and just the impact of like we had the whole Kuss joke on the episode. So shout out to Naspers. I still track them closely.

[Bankole]

Yeah, yeah.

[Olumide]

They have the highest market cap of any African company in the world, which I didn't realize until we did the episode. And the reason they had a high market cap was their market cap was tied to the value of $0.10, which was growing like gangbusters in 2020. 2021.

[Bankole]

Gangbusters. I, I, I, I was very, A lot of the wealth was also like really concentrated in South Africa as well, which was interesting compared to, compared to many other companies. So I was like, man, this is like a really big company, really massive tencent shareholder, but just very, extremely South African, you know, listed in South African Exchange, which was an interesting from like an African perspective.

[Olumide]

Yeah. At some point I was criticizing them for not doing enough African investments, but later on we found out they did do some African investments that didn't turn out well. Yeah. So they sort of retrenched and said, well, our hands have been bitten once, we're not going to do it again. So they did a little bit. I think they could probably still do a little more at some point. They started an African fund that was run by one of the female executives. I think they sort of run that, they shut that down. So cbd, how that goes. But Naspers has a lot of money and African companies want a lot of money. So there's a match at some level. The only problem is they think about investments as a global play. So why should they restrict opportunities to just the continent if the companies are not as good? So from it, from a purely emotional perspective, you could say let them invest more Africa, but that makes no sense because they need to make money and it's basically where they're going to get the most, the highest amount of returns. Which could be India because they invested in Swiggy. It could be China, which they invested in Tentac, it could be anywhere. So it makes more sense to pick a global perspective. It's sort of like I had a friend the other day, no, not years ago, and he was saying he wanted to go to this restaurant because it was black owned. I was like, bro, I don't know how to tell you this, man? I don't give a fuck who owns the restaurant. If the food like. Sorry, but if the food is shit, like, I go on Google reviews, I go on Yelp reviews. Sorry. Like, I love African people, but quality over ownership. Sorry to be the one who says it, but I'm not subsidizing your shit. Okay, Episode six, Safaricom on that sour note. Strange, strange segue, but go ahead.

[Bankole]

Episode six, let's do it.

[Olumide]

Safaricom, it was like. Everyone refers to it as the impressive episode, bro. Safaricom is bigger than mpesa. But I understand, I understand the heat.

[Bankole]

Yeah, we're talking about.

[Olumide]

The reason I love this episode was.

[Bankole]

Go ahead.

[Olumide]

Ah, please, no.

[Bankole]

So we talked about, we talked about Safaricom, but even when we talk about Safaricom, it was hard to not talk about M? Pesa a lot. And really the history of M? Pesa. I think this is interesting because when we record this, when we recorded this, I contrast with how we thought about MPESA in the episode or the general public perception of M? Pesa, which kind of aligned with us in. Let's call it 2020, to how Mpesa is being seen now as just like a. Like a vampire squid on the. On the neck of Kenyan Fintech.

[Olumide]

A leech stalking everyone's blood, sucking every

[Bankole]

blood in versus intentions. More like. This is so cool. This is mobile money. And now it's like, make it stop. Please stop charging me all of these fees. Nobody likes them. It's fascinating.

[Olumide]

It was our first telco, so interesting. But then also the most successful mobile money play. So we spoke a little bit about mobile money, the importance in Africa, the business model, how it's suited. I like Safaricom because I think they made an important breakthrough in making mobile money and encouraging the financial industry in Kenya. However, now that's turning a little bit negative in that they have massive government ownership, they have a massive foothold, therefore they have outsized power and it may actually be slowing down the ecosystem. But I love the story. I think they were also trying other businesses. We went to some of those other businesses. I think they're going to do social media at some point. The other businesses aren't panning out, but I think with data prices blowing up and the need for data and the need for Safari for M? Pesa and the financial services you can build. M? Pesa is not just sending money. You can also do loans and lending. I think they already have a lot of headroom. Also, there was a complicated. We went into Vodacom and Vodafone and Safaricom. And I just love that whole corporate structure. So the corporate structures, the primary parents is Vodafone, the subsidiary, which is primarily in South Africa is Vodacom. And the subsidiary of Vodacom, which is primarily in South Africa, in Kenya, is Safaricom. So Vodafone, Vodacom, Safaricom, and then they all have different interesting ownership states across the board.

[Bankole]

Yeah.

[Olumide]

And M Pesa was finally spun out to be its own thing. Justin. Safaricom, but it's actually owned by Vodacom. Just the whole corporate structure and ownership. I loved, I loved that.

[Bankole]

I love it. I love it. It was a. It's a pretty cool story. If you want to know about Safari Command, mpesa, it's the one I would listen to because we talk about M? Pesa, but not really focus on M? Pesa, but really everything else around it, the ownership structure, all these things. We definitely covered it there. So it's a great way to figure out the why behind like, the. What you're seeing. It's very clear they're going to continue raising those fees if you just take a look at the ownership structure. Because everybody's listed on public and publicly facing and all the investors are asking them on all the different stock markets about this asset. So it's gonna. It's only gonna go one direction.

[Olumide]

Yes, indeed. Episode 7 Internet Access and Tech Censorship why African Governments are Restricting the Internet, man.

[Bankole]

Yeah.

[Olumide]

This episode was technologically interesting and that we spoke about the Internet, the history of the Internet, Internet, Africa, government control. Why government wants to censor, Control the Internet, implement restrictions, especially freedom of speech. So from a purely philosophical, sociological perspective, it's such an interesting episode. Strangely enough, it's our least downloaded episode. No one gives a fuck. But. But it's very important, especially as. Yeah, you think democracy is increasing. Freedom of speech is increasing, yes, but it's uneven. Which means in some developing countries, not just African countries, the government wants to do more aggressive censorship, which almost always includes Internet and app blockage. So it's interesting just to think about that episode and what it means for regulation, not regulation from a government perspective. I liked it.

[Bankole]

What I loved about that episode was understanding how the Internet works and the mechanisms by which governments, if they want to, are able to block or control the Internet in their country. I think most people who have a mobile phone don't really consider, like, where is. When I, you know, watch a video on YouTube, where is the video itself stored? Where is it coming from? How does it get to me?

[Olumide]

Right.

[Bankole]

And who, who controls the tunnels for want of a better analogy by which it comes to me and you know, oh, I'll just use a vpn. It's like, what do you think you're blocking? You know, like, it's like, what do you think you're blocking with your vpn? So it's like, it's an interesting.

[Olumide]

Better move to another country.

[Bankole]

Yeah, exact. Exactly. It's an interesting. Like, it's like it depends on the level of censorship you are facing. It's like, if you think it's VPN censorship, don't worry. People that you can use a VPN to bypass, they're not trying to block you, they're not serious people. So even amongst VPN there's levels. And so understanding how the Internet works is a great way for this episode. And I think I remember leaving this episode a bit like sad and down because I do feel the trend is towards more censorship, not less and more control. And really the nature of the Internet, I think in African countries. Yeah, and the nature of the. At least Africa is the way I looked at for this episode. And the nature of the Internet is such that it is actually possible, not like impossible. I think most people. Most people underestimate how easy it is or how possible it is. Maybe it's not the word for governments to control the Internet in their countries.

[Olumide]

It's very, very possible. And I think people don't remember when we recorded the episode, I said, like, in most countries, not just happening countries. Globally, there are three to five telcos and there are two to three smartphone operating systems. So that's it in your country there's three telcos and then the operating systems is Apple and Google. So all the government needs to do is go to telco A and be like, block this service, block this app. Done. Tell Apple, Google they have to remove this app. Done. It's literally as easy as that. Now, of course, it's more complicated in that Apple and Google may not want to remove the app. The telco may delay, you may have dual sim, but at the end of the day there's only two counterparties. Either they go to the telcos or. Or they go to smartphone operating system. And that's it is the Internet and the app service. The service runs on the Internet without one of the other. You're completely screwed. And at the time when we said this, it turned out later in some years in some countries, in India, for example, they banned TikTok. And how easy was that? Oh, they just told Apple and Google, TikTok can't be on the store. And that's it. It was gone. It wasn't. So it's. It's one of the things where the Internet is so complicated. There's so many different layers of abstraction. By the end of the day, you need the service to a carrier. I need the app through the smartphone operating system. That's it. And TikTok is still banned till today, which is unreal, by the way.

[Bankole]

There are multiple choke points for the Internet. I think that's the part that, of course, that was insightful for me. Like, it's not. It's relatively trivial to change or block and things. And every now and then, every couple of months, there's a country that shuts down the Internet, blocks access to one single app. Happens all the time.

[Olumide]

Right, but why do you think the trend is up, though? I think the trend is down, though. Why do you think Internet access will increase? Because if there's more democracy, more freedom of speech, that would point to the trend being reduced over time. It sounds like you're saying the opposite.

[Bankole]

I don't, I don't. I think there's a. I don't agree that there's more democracy and freedom of speech. I think.

[Olumide]

No, no. I'm talking about the trend line.

[Bankole]

Yeah. But I don't. I don't agree. I don't agree that there's more democracy. Freedom of speech in a sense of consistently where there have been incredible amounts of protests or social unrest, blocking Internet is the first thing that, that comes up in the news. It's like for these countries. So even when there's. Even when it's a ostensibly democracy, there's like, oh, let's. People are sharing fake stories to inside the public on Facebook, block Facebook or whatever. It's kind of like the next thing that comes up. So I'm not optimistic. I think it's a response. It's a response to protest. Not so much a. Not so much in the India TikTok example, which is much more. Let's call it strategic from like a country protection perspective or market. This is more like strategic.

[Olumide]

I thought you were going to say ideological.

[Bankole]

Maybe ideological. Maybe ideological is fine. But I meant, I mean it in terms of what will any of these markets do if everybody comes out to the streets and like, there's a risk of incredible social unrest. I think that's like, that's. I'm not optimistic that they would be like, we would never do that. But hey, okay, I could be wrong.

[Olumide]

All right. I love it. When we agreed to disagree. That's. We're going to talk about the fintech lending episode later. That's the one where we had the biggest disagreements. But this one, our disagreement is just minor. I just have a more positive view on it. Okay. Reliance Geo Episode 8. Oh my God. Ah, Reliance. I love this episode. So it gets me so excited to even just think about this episode. First of all, first time we did a non African company. Number one.

[Bankole]

Yeah.

[Olumide]

Number two, Reliance Geo. Yes, it's a telco, but it's the story of Reliance and its impact on the Indian sector and how that could affect Africa and if you could have Reliance moments in Africa. So there's like multiple moments. We're talking about the GEO moments. Do we need a GEO moment? We're talking about Africa tech and India tech and we're also talking about the impact of visionary leadership and costs and money on technology. So it had so many different layers. And I love the episode so much.

[Bankole]

I also loved going through the story and the idea of what happens. It was basically the Reliance gesture is a thought experiment. What happens if you take something and drop the cost by 20%? Like it's like, oh yeah, or by, by 80%, sorry. And you're like, yes, you get more of it but. But by how much? And then you actually have like a real time experiment. So that was the first thing. The second one.

[Olumide]

Right.

[Bankole]

The second takeaway which we talk about when we talk about the Airtel episode when we go to telcos is how much this, this expansion by Reliance and Ambani family in India really changed telcos around the world. Not indirectly in like, oh, here's a strategy to employ because nobody's that crazy or that rich. But in like a we have no money.

[Olumide]

Crazy and rich, you need both.

[Bankole]

We have no money to compete with Amban in India so we're going to just bleed out from the other markets just so you can survive back home. It was a very constant thread. So it would be like, oh, why is Airtel so terrible? Yeah, they're not investing in infrastructure because all their capex is in India and it's a parent company so they can't do any Capex in Africa. So for a while it's going to be rough or you know, they're going to not invest in Capex as much or they're going to outsource a lot of their capex on network management to understand. Yes. Because if you look at the Airtel global level, they're looking at the market sizes and where they need to invest and they can still lose some market share in Nigeria but they cannot lose any market share in India.

[Olumide]

Yeah, I love the episode because it hits on a recurring theme across affordability in that in a lot of developing markets, including India, China, Africa, South America, there is a lot of low income people obviously. But then those low income people also need services. So how do you provide services to them with a business model that you also make money? It's very easy to say provide all the services, but the business provider, the entrepreneur, also needs to make money. So this story is yes, they reduced the telco cost by 80, 90, 95, 99%. But because they did it with a new infrastructure model, they're actually still able to do it in an affordable, profitable way. So, so I love it. It's the win win. Yes, the lower income people get all the services, but the business provider also makes money. So the idea of it wasn't just that Mukesh Ambani had all this money and because of the money he blitzscaled is that he invested in a new way of technology, a new infrastructure for the telco that was lower cost that enabled him to do this. So listen more to the episode. But they did a lot of backend infra 4G 5G stuff that was lower income, lower cost because they invested at a later stage that enabled them provide a business model to work for lower income. And I think that's across, across all affability episodes. How do you provide business models that make sense for lower income people such that both parties are happy, the counterparty business provider and the actual customer, honestly,

[Bankole]

maybe even take a cynical interpretation, is actually just need to have money. Just I feel like there's a lot of words like just be rich and be willing to go where people will not go. The Ambanis put $34 billion of debt to build out the network without raising any equity. They took either their money, collateralized, whatever it is. However, it was over $30 billion to build out this network and then they built it out and then they cornered the market and then they now took in equity investments at a new valuation. So they didn't do any of that like early morning they're like, no, come in later when it's complete.

[Olumide]

Right.

[Bankole]

I feel like if you spend 30,

[Olumide]

I don't want people to have that takeaway. Because some business models, the support, lower income people don't need money necessarily. So the key to me is yes, you could do the money stuff, but something. So for example, let's look at M Pesa, right? A lot of everyone uses impassa in Kenya, even If you're poor. But that's not because Safaricom had billions of dollars. It's just the business model is lower cost. So I hear what you're saying, but I think that's just one of the takeaways and it's a secondary takeaway. Not all business model innovation needs a lot of cash. If you have that interpretation, why is anyone starting a business? There are very few Reliance Geopockets in the world. Yeah, but I like your view.

[Bankole]

Yeah, I think business model innovation like Reliance jio, the reason why those people like difficult to serve is that it costs a lot of money to serve them.

[Olumide]

Exactly, exactly. Unless you come up with a business model that makes sense or a different payback period.

[Bankole]

That's it, a different payback period. But in that paper period you need to be eating. I feel like you can have if you have a long enough payback period and be like, look, I will give you $100 of capex today. You give me 30 cents a year for the next how many years and I can wait. But in the meantime I need to be paying rent, paying staff, paying employees, paying my salary.

[Olumide]

I need to eat, I need to eat breakfast.

[Bankole]

I need to be a founder flying business class to London. So, so who's going to do that unless you have the money up front? But yeah, I do. I do agree that the business model innovation and it, like I said, the cynical take for that, what you're calling business model envision is basically just have somebody that's going to give you money to eat until you make it back. That's basically it. So either you spend 34 billion up front, but you need to eat in the interim. It's just 2013, 2014. They've been building this stuff out. You think they've made $34 billion of profit since 2013? Like no, I don't think so, but they don't. Buddies are clearly fine. They had a big wedding. They're not suffering, they're not suffering for cash.

[Olumide]

They didn't raise a good fund.

[Bankole]

Me pay for their son's wedding. Business model innovation, yes, but it's also like it's called being rich. It's called, it's called, it's called being rich. Having a helper.

[Olumide]

I love it.

[Bankole]

It's good having a helper.

[Olumide]

It, it's a, you can learn so much from the episode because in many ways if you're living in America and you look at developing countries, you always want to compare the service A in America versus service B in India. But it turns out that India is a better comp for Africa tech than America is for Africa tech. So that's why I like this episode. We're not comparing Uber in San Francisco to Uber and Lagos. We're comparing like a telco service provider in a country that has similar characteristics to Africa. So that's why you will see we'll talk about it more in the Airtel episode. I like the India comparison. I think they're better. Even Latin America is even better too. But anything but for America and Europe.

[Bankole]

I also think this was one of the episodes and we should move on. It was an episode.

[Olumide]

I mean, we love it. We love it.

[Bankole]

So episodes where I realized that like my Nigerians, there are no mates. Like, it's just, I think people, when you said we can compare, it's like we can kind of compare because I play basketball and I can squat and jump and shoot and so Steph Curry two squats and jumps and shoots. So we're like, no, I'm saying comparison

[Olumide]

than comparing to Europe and America is what I'm saying. I'm not saying it's that similar. It's all about what are you going to compare to. No, you can't. Like the European markets are sold. They're on a different plane.

[Bankole]

No, I agree.

[Olumide]

I agree with it.

[Bankole]

I know.

[Olumide]

I agree with the comparison. America, I guess.

[Bankole]

I did not. I did not. I, I personally misunderstimated the, the different stages that they're in.

[Olumide]

Correct.

[Bankole]

Like it's not even. Yes, I would even. Maybe it's not even. Anyways, let's not, let's not rabbit hole on this. But I was, I've been, listen to the episode. Extremely, extremely, extremely optimistic about India broadly. But maybe that's just my own bias. Moving on.

[Olumide]

Okay. Hey, cough cough. Episode nine ope. From web browser to fintech to scaling Africa super app. It's just, it's fascinating. Opay. At that time, I didn't realize how big OPAY was until I just started to see they have unbelievable fundraising ability. They're deep in fintech, which is one of the easiest areas to grow. They have massive market penetration. And now that I'm just coming from Nigeria, last month, almost all the Uber and bull drivers use OPA. And I was like, why using OPay? Just have a regular bank account. They're like, oh no. Opay has 99.999 instantaneous payments. Yeah, sometimes use GCB. Someone sends you money, you don't get it. The person is in the car, they said they sent you the money. What Are you going to do so? It turns out if you really want reliability and real time payments, OPAY also has the product chops, which means they have fundraising skills, good product features and they have the patience, an unbelievable combination. So shout out to ope.

[Bankole]

There was also a fun episode at the time. OPE was also decided to. To really. They were probably the first company to really show us Silicon Valley in. In Africa. They were the first company to really show us. You don't know what's going on. You don't know what's going on. They just came. We have 400 million, they came. We have car ride sharing, we have food delivery, we have payments, we have. At the same time they said there's no problem. This employees app, we have everything. And they came and they spent a ton of money and seem to have infinite amounts of money. So that was like a. Interesting thing to observe at the time because they nothing was. They came to win and crush and I think over time the ambitions moderated a bit. But they definitely were one of the early blitzkillers.

[Olumide]

Correct. Blitzkillers and super app. Because before this episode, yeah, we spoke a little bit about msa, which has some super app characteristics, but this was the first African tech company that had proper super app ambitions. They had opa, Fintech oride Oshare ofood. They had a bunch of different things and in fact they were calling themselves a super apps. It wasn't just that they had the features, that was their whole marketing skill. So my colleague said over time they retrenched a little bit. I think at the time when we did this episode, their valuation was around 2 billion. So they were already a unicorn twice over. Now it's around 2.75. So you can see that the growth hasn't been that much farther because they had some retrenchments, but they're still a massive company even five years later after recording. So op, let's continue how to see how they evolve, especially as the fintech payment side gets more competitive. Like their core business is actually very, very competitive. Also this episode is interesting because we talk about the Opera browser, what Opera wanted to do. Yeah, it's a. We always give a lot of interesting contextual information on affability, which is sometimes superfluous. But I love that shit. Episode 1010.

[Bankole]

Yeah, I like the M10 because M10 was or is ubiquitous everywhere, everywhere in Africa. But I love the founding, like the initial story with apartheid and one thing with South African businesses is like the same seven or 12 people, seven or 12 investors building them up and how they, how they became. I think you look at M10 today and say, of course MTN is big and of course M10 is everywhere. But intentionally to be expansionary as they were. I think it was just a fascinating part to go through the history of MTN here.

[Olumide]

I agree 100%. Just their appetite to start in South Africa and just grow. And they were not just grown within Africa, they also had some international expansion.

[Bankole]

Iraq, Yemen.

[Olumide]

Correct.

[Bankole]

Afghanistan, everywhere.

[Olumide]

They were the riskiest. You know what, you have one of those passports that you say with this passport I can't travel anywhere. Those countries you know yourself, if you're listening, those are all the countries they're in and just their ability to. We have some expertise in dealing with difficult markets in Africa. Therefore we should also have expertise in dealing with Yemen, Afghanistan and just like next level. Also they started to diversify outside. Just telco.

[Bankole]

Yeah. And back invested in Jumia earlier.

[Olumide]

Exactly, exactly.

[Bankole]

They did a. They. They did something for travel start. So they, they've been trying like they have had incredible ambitions from the jump beyond just being a telco.

[Olumide]

Yes. And they're basically the most successful and biggest. And also. Oh, I forgot to mention, this company also got us a lot of listens because MTN is publicly traded. So we were. I think this is our first Reddit mention, if I remember properly. I was like, oh, nice, we're on Reddit. I love Reddit. So see how fabulous on Reddit was? Fun. Shout out to McList episode. Also because they're publicly traded, we could talk a little bit about some of the actual numbers. So it was one of the first publicly traded companies we did in addition to Safaricom. Yeah, that's episode 11.

[Bankole]

Yeah. And Regis, like there's no money in telco. You should pity them.

[Olumide]

I mean, it depends on how you think about it. They're spinning out their fintech businesses and the fintech business is already bigger than the actual business. So if you count that there is money, if you count as a separate business, then maybe not. So it depends on how you think about. I think about part of the same business because MTN Momo needs the telco. They're spinning it out, but they still have the ownership. So there's money, if you believe in that. But the core business data is increasing. But then the cost to serve as the data and the infrastructure for the 4G 5G is also increasing. So I don't know about that business.

[Bankole]

Yeah. Okay.

[Olumide]

Very expensive.

[Bankole]

By juice 011.

[Olumide]

Yeah. Byju's in Africa. Edtech I love this episode in that I say I love every episode, man. I guess, I guess I do. It's similar to the Reliance Geo episode in that Reliance Geo great example of what happened in India. What can you learn from Africa Tech? Yeah, byju's great example. Well at the time, great example of education in India and what can you do for Africa Tech? Our first EdTech episode, the Importance of education and just the Baiju story it ended up being horrendous. But at the time when we recorded completely horror story. At the time when we recorded it seemed like a fairy tale story of founder vision, able to execute, able to enabling. Thousands, thousands, hundreds of millions of Indians have educational services at a low cost way. Made a bunch of sense, raised a lot of money, great reputation. Now let me talk about Africa Tech and I'll talk about the unwinding of the story. The key thing for me was education is so important. Obviously the problem is education has been so devalued in that anyone with an Internet connection could almost learn anything they want on YouTube for free. Right? So then the business model is always like yes, your service is fine, but literally everything's on YouTube for free. Okay, you don't want to use YouTube. What about EdX Coursera? There's so much free educational content now. You may say it's not free, you need to pay for Internet. Yeah, I know, I know. But it's basically free because the people that have Internet can get it. So education is always a challenge to me because who's going to pay for what? It's almost like it's the will to learn that's the problem. It's not the availability of information, it's all there. And let's say you don't want video right now with ChatGPT everything's also there for free. So combination of asking ChatGPT on YouTube it's almost like I pity education startups because you're going against Google, YouTube and you're going against OpenAI ChatGPT. I'm not saying it's an impossible market to win. There are different parts of educational tech you could do LMS learning management services for schools, you do different pieces. But the consumer facing educational piece is a massive challenge. Yeah, that's what I learned from the episode. I'll talk about byju's unwinding later. But Manka, I wonder if you had any thoughts on those ed tech peace in Africa?

[Bankole]

I. I don't know. We'll talk about it more when we talk about U lesson. What I can pull out actually is if it is distinctive. I don't know if the edtech consumer experience is separate from the consumer experience broadly in these markets. It's just like consumer businesses are just hard in general and selling to consumers.

[Olumide]

The difference is some of those consumer businesses don't have YouTube and ChatGPT as competitors. It's just hard. It's hard because people don't have money. But it's not to have money and to have those kinds of competitors. I mean YouTube literally you can learn right now how to build a house. You can learn anything you want.

[Bankole]

There's a really thoughtful article. This is way after my time in Unilag, but apparently a couple years ago where there is a series of Indian tutors that a lot of people in Nigerian universities follow to learn about their class content. So they're popular guys that, that, that are Indian youtubers that do classes on YouTube for like Nigerian content. Of course that didn't exist when I was in college.

[Olumide]

Wow.

[Bankole]

But I thought that was super fascinating. So to your point about like why would that person pay even at a high school level if you can find a really good instructor on YouTube that is engaging in the comments that responds to you and all of that do things for free and it's part by advertising revenue to them. So. So they're like perfectly fine offering that service and capturing and offering you newsletters and material. Building a community around Thermodynamics.

[Olumide]

Right?

[Bankole]

It's pretty tough, right?

[Olumide]

Yeah, very tough. And also the trend line of features capabilities of OpenAI, Chad GB Gemini is just going to increase over time. So even the second competitor is getting stronger across a horizontal play. So it doesn't matter that the person isn't using it for education. The fact they use it. Even if you use YouTube for stand up comedy, the fact you already use YouTube means it's a very easy transition to use it for an adjacent feature set. Anyway, we've talked a lot about that. The Baiju's part unwinding. It's been well documented. It's very unfortunate what happened. We're not going to spend a lot of time on it but it turns out that a lot of the things we spoke about on the episode in terms of how well they were doing, got unwind in the future and now they're basically bankrupt, defunct. There are a bunch of lawsuits. All the investors have pulled out. They're having, I wouldn't say they're having issues. The company is basically completely screwed. So it's not they're having problems. They're having incredible Existential problem. So it's a bit sad, but the lessons that we mentioned are still valuable. It's just the company stories turned completely sideways.

[Bankole]

Yeah, it's not. It's not looking Good, bruv.

[Olumide]

Yes. Episode 12 Innovation Hub CC Hub, iHub Others I. I love these kinds of episodes where I learn about new things. Just the fact of having incubators, accelerators and encouraging startups to grow, giving them advice, giving them mentorship and then what's your own business model? There was also an acquisition of cc. It's just interesting from so many different angles. Like Nigeria, Kenya acquisition. What's the business model? Are they providing just space? No, I'm providing space and Internet. Okay, Are you providing mentorship? How do you cover your own costs? Do you take an equity stake? I learned a lot and I love the fact that these businesses exist to encourage founders to live up their dreams.

[Bankole]

And the CC Hub founder is now the Minister of Technology in Nigeria.

[Olumide]

So yeah, what a story man.

[Bankole]

What a story. Yeah, it's good. It's like a success story in of itself because you end up establishing your the hub or yourself as like a hub for technology ends up being like the first place that people think about when they think about tech, right?

[Olumide]

Airtel Africa. So Banko, I think you're already talking about Airtel previously you want to consider.

[Bankole]

So Airtel is also just competitive telco across Africa and emerging markets. One of the, one of the things that are interesting for me from the episode I talked about in JIO is how much they are, how much their investments in Africa kind of coincided with their increase in investments in India because they had to invest to compete. So context is JIO dropped prices drastically and instead of stealing drastically, still selling their customers like you had telcos shut down in India that could not just compete or exist if you had. Because what JIO did I buy good. The same kind of infra that already exists, same kind of towers you built entirely new infrared that was honestly relatively cheaper and correct for, well, better bank for your bulk $34 billion.

[Olumide]

Also we should explain to people why it was because when you enter the market later, right, you can take advantage of technological progress such that you're actually quote unquote lucky the technology has progressed such that you can offer 4G and 5G services primarily over the Internet with less infrastructure and even the infrastructure you buy will be cheaper. So they used lower cost infrastructure which was cheaper. They use more partnership and they just use more. So they scaled faster. So they were lucky that they had a bunch of money to invest later. It's like if you want to buy a computer in 2026, even if you spend $500, could be better than a $5,000 laptop from 1997. That's just the way technology moves.

[Bankole]

Yeah, I saw, I saw a receipt for a computer I bought in 2015 from Dell. Was a Dell. Dell Compare 2015. It was a thousand one hundred pounds. And I was like, this is nasty.

[Olumide]

Yikes.

[Bankole]

This is nasty. Like I wouldn't.

[Olumide]

Yeah, you're like 512 megabytes of RAM.

[Bankole]

Yeah, like this is terrible.

[Olumide]

And I was like, this is so cool.

[Bankole]

I was like, this is like it was a super high end. I remember agonizing over it because I was going to business school. Like, this is the best computer in the world. Not helpful, but. Et al.

[Olumide]

James.

[Bankole]

Great, great telco. Because I've also had a slightly different strategy of outsourcing a bunch of their services, especially in Nigeria as well. Smart.

[Olumide]

Yeah. But also just to emphasize. Yes, listen to the full episode. Even though we say Airtel, Airtel, really the company was Zane and all the positive comments we make, most of them accrued to Zayn, not to Airtel. Airtel just bought Zayn and Zane was in about 15 countries. They bought them for around 10 billion 2010. So yes, we call it Airtel. But Airtel entered through an M and A. And the Zane founding story of the founder and the history and the M and A is just, it's an. I really want to go into it, but we got to keep going. But the key thing to know about this story is growing and being able to succeed in tough markets and using that to expand and then eventually an exit for Zane, which was where Airtel came in. But the founding story of the founder, I think he was in a place in a war, in a shootout, a helicopter story. I mean crazy, crazy story about Airtel

[Bankole]

Africa and then Zane and.

[Olumide]

Yes, exactly. Yes. But yeah, shout out to mo Ibrahim. Episode 14 Health Tech Health Tech.

[Bankole]

This was also. You'd be like, yeah, healthcare isn't great in Africa. You don't get any points for that.

[Olumide]

It's complete. It's better with.

[Bankole]

You don't get any, any points for insight for that. But then you put some numbers to how bad it is. You look at infant mortality, maternal mortality and then you look at like wait times and time for healthcare. Like this is nasty. I think like six hour waits in hospitals on average it feels like wow. That feels shorter to me.

[Olumide]

Wow.

[Bankole]

But yeah, it was very interesting and we got to like who's building stuff in this space? And there's stuff that's happening, but you just don't find at the same level of scale, maybe some of the consumer issues that we talked about earlier, people just don't have enough money. And healthcare around the world is typically not paid out of pocket. It's typically either public insurance or private insurance. Even developed markets and those just haven't gotten the right scale.

[Olumide]

Yeah. The great thing about this episode is even though the industry is horrible and even though the outcomes are bad, you can see that the founders have a bigger ability to make a dent here than education because. So, for example, paper filing, they have all these paper names. Bancoli goes to a hospital, they're like, what's your name? Ban Kole Makonju. Let's find your file. What the fuck? They literally have to go to a file cabinet, pull out the file search. Waste of time. Helium help digitizing that. No one has insurance, Reliance help doing that. So I just feel like this sector is exciting because there's a bunch of startups doing stuff and I can feel the impact. So I, after this episode, I got a Reliance HMO plan for my parents and I was like, oh, this thing actually works. It even has. The futures were so good. Even I was like, I should get it. I mean, I'm only Nigeria three, four weeks a year. I mean, it doesn't make sense to pay. But for example, they had, they've retrenched on some of this, which is annoying, but they had a gym service twice a week with the plan. They had a spa service where you could get a massage once a week. They had a haircut. They had all these things like, this is great. My health insurance should have that in America, like spa service, gym service, haircut, what Discovery vitality. In South Africa, yeah, they've, they've retrenched now where you can't pay for one month, you need to pay for three months. They cut off some of the services. But the point still remains that this health tech sector piece, we looked at East Africa, by the way, I think this is when we started to do the different geographical splits, north, east, west, and just the impact of it. I, I'm really optimistic that this space continues to grow and they offer more services. I'm also looking for like the breakthrough on the insurance side. It's what we said about business model innovation. No one wants to offer it because like, how much are you going to charge? No one wants to pay for it, how much you're going to charge. And they don't even understand that, like, I'm paying you and nothing is working. Yeah, it's insurance. Nothing is supposed to work. It's supposed to be a payout in case of a bad outcome. But if there's a customer education, there's business model evolution, there's something that needs to happen. But I'm very excited about Africa Health Tech.

[Bankole]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

[Olumide]

15, 15. When we started this episode, we started the episode and I said, orange. Malcolm said, wait, what? We're not calling it orange. So it's like a blooper for the audience. Literally. Like, because we never spoke about the. So the way affability works is we have a script. Back then we used to go back and forth. I would do one script, bankalo do another script. Eventually we split responsibility. We're bank losing all the scripts. But we're not talking about the companies. We're writing in a Google Doc. So when we start, I think Berkeley expected we talk about orange. I'm like, nah, bro, we're going all bougie on this shit, bro. We're doing orange. So orange, francophone, francophone, telco. And so at this point now, dude, we're telco kings. We don't like three or four telcos. And the story is just the evolution of. They were former French monopoly. They came into Africa, they started to grow. They're quite big in francophone Africa. They haven't really succeeded outside of francophone Africa. And then they started to do a little bit of fintech services just like everyone else. But a cool story because we spoke about like France and French monopolies and francophone. The relationship between the francophone countries and France. So some brief historical, contextual stuff. That was cool.

[Bankole]

And also they ended up being important for a future episode because there are key competitors to Wave mobile money.

[Olumide]

Yes, yes, yes.

[Bankole]

Depending on who you ask, Wave is in their launch or otherwise.

[Olumide]

Right? I mean, we'll see. Yes. In some ways we'll. We'll talk about that when we get to the wave 1 i16 Iroko TV. It's funny because some years later someone told me, oh, we send the Roku TV episode to the founder. I'm like, bruv, you didn't send it to the founder. They've already listened to the like, you're not doing me a favor. Like, Jason has listed this episode already. So anyway, Roku tv.

[Bankole]

Great.

[Olumide]

Our first entertainment tech episode.

[Bankole]

Yeah.

[Olumide]

And just the story of living in the uk. He wanted to do something different.

[Bankole]

It's almost like. It's kind of sad, right? Because it's like there's not many people that are trying to do the same thing. Maybe for good reason, but. Sorry, go ahead.

[Olumide]

Right. But we also did multi choice, so I guess it's two, right? Well, yes.

[Bankole]

Fair, Fair.

[Olumide]

Yeah. It depends on how you do entertainment versus. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, just I just love the founding story. Wanted to do something, he found a partner, they did it. And they've also made some decisions that you're like, wow, why do they do this? Is because it's Africa tech broad. They need to do things that are different. So for example, they have no free trial period. Right. As soon as you go, you pay, you start getting. You're like, wait, wait, what about Netflix gives me a free month because they know the way Africans rule, but will have that on day 29 they will cancel it. Yeah, number one. And then number two, they sold off their studio arm. You're like, bro, why are they selling off their in house studio? That's their differentiator. Because they need money. So it's like you can't do the way you're doing Netflix in house studio. We're blowing money. They needed money so they sold it to I think Canopus. They made some money there. They don't have free trial. There are few nuances in their products which make them a little bit different to Netflix. But the founding story, the product offering, interesting episode. I would say business model innovation, except they're now focusing on the diaspora regular prices. So I don't think so. I'll put it this way. They tried business model innovation to reduce the price and offer to Nigerians and Africans, but it turned out those guys don't have the willingness to pay. So they pivoted their business model to just offer it mostly to people living outside the continent at the same price. So right now it's like $10 ish per month, 90 per year, 35 for three months. So it's basically the same price as Netflix. So I wouldn't say this business model innovation, but they tried that in the past.

[Bankole]

Yeah.

[Olumide]

So cool episode to listen to if you want.

[Bankole]

It's actually very. I mean I feel like I know why, but it's interesting that given the amount of people and the amount of TV and entertainment, I guess the Internet is still in some of that. But we don't really have a big tv. The real leapfrog TV entertainment like as a many African countries to go straight to Tick Tock and Instagram because it's like, why don't we have TV? I mean growing up you at 8:00 clock, you watch Super Story or something.

[Olumide]

At 8:00pm I like to watch TV.

[Bankole]

Yeah, but. But all of a sudden there's somebody who's 12 or 13 or 14 watch TV as much as. Or even 15, 16, 17, Instagram. So it ends up being like this thing where you're competing against this really well funded, which you're not comp. You thought you're competing against, I don't know, Africa Magic, but now you're African magic on multichoice. Now you're competing against like Tick Tock and Instagram, which is. Or Netflix even, which is crazy.

[Olumide]

Yeah. Luckily for them, they would say their content is differentiated such that they have their own market, niche, market, niche and that they focus on Nollywood and African content. And even though Netflix, we're saying all the right things, we're going to do more African content, they massively retrenched two years ago. They let go most of the team, they reduced the budget. So in a way, yes, they have those competitors. But if you are someone from Kenya, the move to London and now you're 44 and you want to watch a Kenyan movie, a Nigerian Nollywood movie, it's probably better to use your local TV than search on YouTube.

[Bankole]

Yeah.

[Olumide]

Because YouTube is not going to have the same quantity. The quality is going to be caught weird. It's not going to have the same release schedule, it's not going to have the same. Is. It's probably better to use that. I'm not saying this for sure because I've actually seen some bootleg version on YouTube, but it's not the same.

[Bankole]

What a cynic will say is that's a rosy version of reality. The reality is that everybody's. The vast majority of people have time chopped up in a tiny bit that is kind of by what's available and what's present and the amazing like customer acquisition and engagement teams at each of these companies that that desire of I want to watch a Kenyan movie will be intercepted like multiple times before you get to the app for youroku TV to get there and scan. Like something will intercept you multiple times before you get there that you're not even going to go and sign up. That, you know, like it's hard enough for people to, I don't know, do their homework instead of watching TikTok. Like, like how much more like going to a different app that are supposed to have better Kenyan movies. Netflix doesn't have zero Kenyan movies. Right. We have better Kenyan movies, a different subscription. It's just like that gap feels a bit large. I might be wrong. Maybe people who love the movies love them a lot. But my intuition is there are so many people trying to steal that. Like the Netflix button is right there on remote. Like you press the button, it gives you a recommendation, it starts auto playing. Like I guess like the growth teams. A lot of these companies, yeah, you're

[Olumide]

watching this whether you, you have time for that.

[Bankole]

The good teams in this companies are crazy. Like YouTube has, like, you want to watch a real. You want to watch a short. You want to watch a short video, you want to watch like a 10 minute clip from the movie instead of watching the whole movie. So you just get the jokes and you move on with your day. Before I even download the Roku app, click it, sign up, log in.

[Olumide]

Okay, so you heard it here on Affability. Bankola is telling Jason and Joku to shut down Roku tv. Shout out to send out the hate email b dot com. It's funny.

[Bankole]

I'm just saying it's difficult.

[Olumide]

So I start, you need to.

[Bankole]

They need to demonstrate value. Demonstrate value in a way that like, I don't know, Crunchyroll has to demonstrate value control. Does anime. Anime.

[Olumide]

Shout out to anime. So yeah, YouTube is so good. I started to do a lot of yoga last year and I'm at this specific country in the gym and I realized, oh my God, there's no SIM card in my tablet. Because I do it on my tablet. So I don't have data. I go to YouTube, you tell me. Don't worry, we've pre downloaded every.

[Bankole]

What the.

[Olumide]

It didn't even ask my permission. It knew I was watching all these yoga videos. It downloaded everything. I did all the classes with no Internet on my tablet. Do you know how insane that is? I didn't even know. And it even picked the amount of space based on the space available my tablet and the SD card. I looked at the weighted average of the available space, downloaded it, filled it, and all the videos were there, ready to play crazy.

[Bankole]

Just one example, and I'm saying those are. That's. That's gross.

[Olumide]

Lord have mercy.

[Bankole]

That's growth. Okay? Like, I feel like growth is, is an art form, but it's an expensive art form. Like you invest in growth of a

[Olumide]

base, but also based on data. Growth teams are using data. Don't say art form. People get angry on this podcast. So growth teams use a lot of data.

[Bankole]

I guess I meant, I meant vocation. Maybe that's what I meant. Maybe art form is not what I mean.

[Olumide]

Okay?

[Bankole]

Yes, it's a discipline. It's not like a vibe. It's not a feature. It's a discipline.

[Olumide]

No, it's a job. Now, what do you mean vibe?

[Bankole]

So I'm feeling you cannot compete. If you want to compete with those guys that are doing growth there every. They have really smart people trying to intercept your every thought.

[Olumide]

Right.

[Bankole]

It's not, it's not even, it's not a factor.

[Olumide]

I, it's a thing.

[Bankole]

I remember leaving consulting, I think to myself, oh, hiring consultants like that seems like crazy. If you can just have a talent in house. I was young. You have a talent in house and be like, no, you, you don't understand. These people are trained over years at the highest level to sell these things. You talk to one or two a month, or one or two a year. They do it multiple times a day. You will lose.

[Olumide]

Yes.

[Bankole]

If you become a person of importance, the best thing is to not talk to them. Because if you talk to them, you will hire them. That's just how it works. Like they're just, they're pretty, they're pretty good experts at this thing. It's, it's a, it's a skill set. It's not like, oh, it's not a conversation, like it's a mission.

[Olumide]

What you said, what you said about consultants, I always tell people, whenever you see any steady state ecosystem with entrenched players, don't just come there saying, oh, this person is stupid. Why are they doing this? The fact it's steady state and the fact is entrenched means there's a logical like, yes, you're making fun of the CEOs. There's a logical reason the CEOs of Barclays is hiring consultants. It's not because he's stupid. There's some reason. To you it may seem stupid. Oh my God. Trust me, you just don't know. You just don't understand. Because then think about it. Think about it. For him to become the CEO of Barclays, he's made so many good decisions. He's a smart person. Just cause you're misunderstanding, like, oh, why are they paying McKinsey 5 million? Why don't they just use Barclays employees ass or stay, stay where you're at. You're operating at a different level and

[Bankole]

I feel like that's why.

[Olumide]

Let's just say you don't understand.

[Bankole]

That's what I feel that especially in products and startups, sometimes it helps to not know your competitors because you can be stupid enough to try something. Once you know enough, you'll be like, those people are, they're crazy.

[Olumide]

That's how they do it.

[Bankole]

People say stuff like oh, like the same thing. Like investing in sidebar but investing in like individual stocks. But like people like oh, you don't do it because you don't have the time. You're not smart. It's like no, that's not actually the problem. It's like the people on the other side, like I know who they are and I've started classrooms with them. I've like read their documents. I've been in those rooms. I'm not betting against those people. That's like saying let's go and fight, right? And you know the people that are going to go and fight, like I'm not going to go and fight those people. It's not about me, it's about them. Like just that like they have, they have, they're twice my size. They are big. They are, they do jiu jitsu. I'm not going to go and fight and be angry, you know, and people like oh, let's just go invest.

[Olumide]

That's how investing in individual stocks is a really bad idea for most retail consumers because you're doing something as a side hobby that someone's full time job and they're getting compensated at a million billion dollar level for that full time job. So imagine you, you're competing with LeBron and you're playing basketball on weekends. Like that's the coolness of you invest individual stocks. There are people in Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley. Their job literally is to do that.

[Bankole]

200 IQs from the best schools

[Olumide]

on weekends. Let me invest in Nvidia. I pity is it that one people

[Bankole]

are saying that like oh Tesla, Tesla is doing well. Tesla is, I believe in Tesla. Their cars are. What does have to do with anything. I always are going to sell more iPhones. IPhone 16 is coming out. What do I do with the stock price? I don't know.

[Olumide]

Yo. When you understand the investor psychology but you realize most people are doing it for intellectual simulation and entertainment. They know deep down like are you sure you're buying and selling at the right amount of time? Are you sure you know what you're doing? They're just doing because they're interesting long term. And I are not just saying this. All the studies long term show individual investors typically perform worse than the market index because they're coming in and out, they're dancing and out of the market.

[Bankole]

Some people don't even know that I know some, maybe someone's not even. Some people actually Think that, oh Lord, that they can actually like pick winners.

[Olumide]

And then why aren't you working in Wall Street? Then why are you working at a bakery? I don't understand. If you believe it, if you, if you believe you can make the best cookies in the world, why are you working as a mechanic? If you believe you can invest while you're not working?

[Bankole]

Somebody told me, I'm just, I'm just getting into options. I was just terrified.

[Olumide]

I had to just keep it finished, send them, send them fired up. They're finished. They start getting into options. Do you know what options trading is? You're taking elevated risk on an already risky basis anyway. Fine. I'm going off on a tangent.

[Bankole]

It was the day I sat in an options class in business school. And I knew that I knew two things that day. One, I don't understand it. And I will never understand it. I passed the exam. It was fine. I understood it, by the way. This is relative. I don't understand it. And, and I knew that this is confusing. That was one. Two is I saw the payoff charts because you draw this when you, when you learn the trade options, depending on how you come in. I got you draw this. They can get somewhat complicated pair of charts where you combine different kinds of options to show how column puts, how much would be in your, how much you win or lose in different scenarios. And when you see the way some things move and how some things change, you then know the second thing. One is the only thing you don't understand is to that there are actually scenarios that you can fall on a knife or you can catch a knife anyway without doing it. Like once you enter that place, it's just like a Final fantasy movie set. So not only is it confusing is that there's actually people just getting robbed and killed everywhere. So you're like, guys, this is actually ridiculous. I want none of this. But people are like, people wouldn't know like, oh, it's confusing, but I'm learning it with real money.

[Olumide]

I think this is a good segue to 17 interest rate since we're talking about finance topics. So Interswitch was one of the pioneering fintech companies. Companies.

[Bankole]

Yeah.

[Olumide]

I, I, I like the story a lot. I love the story because the founding is very unique. Founded by a bank consortium.

[Bankole]

Yeah.

[Olumide]

Which in a way is very, very similar to the founding of Visa.

[Bankole]

Yeah.

[Olumide]

So a consortium. But then the consortium handed over the project to Mitch. Mitch became the CEO and they just grew and became one of the pioneering payments company. Now over time, the product innovation has lacked a little bit. They haven't really expanded. I think Bank Holly said they had like 98 to 99 of their revenue from Nigeria. So they're not really so. So I give them a lot of credit for being one of the initial pioneers and for making an impact. But I would say if you look at it historically, their product Future Innovation is really lagged behind the competitors. But still a great founding story.

[Bankole]

Yeah. They also one of the earliest LS like PE Fintech plays and we saw a lot more with DPO further down the line. But Episode and the POD online but they were pretty early there. That was.

[Olumide]

Yeah. And another funny thing is also the ipo. So at the time they were rumored to have their IPO in 2019 and 2020. 2021, 2022. Now no one talks about it. Let's see where that goes. But it'll be curious to see if the IC do ipo. What market the IPO on. All the rumors were for the London ftse.

[Bankole]

We'll see.

[Olumide]

But let's see. Do you have any thoughts on either this specific company IPO or African companies IPO in general.

[Bankole]

Honestly, congratulations are all involved. I. I feel that the people that give them money have a different pill.

[Olumide]

It's funny.

[Bankole]

Yeah, it's like a. It's like a funny response. Do you ever. Do you remember the Miller Modigenelli like theorem? Like the returns don't really matter based on how we. How we how if it's funded by equity or debt. But it really just depends on like it. It evens out basically.

[Olumide]

Ah yes, yes, yes, yes.

[Bankole]

It's like a conservation of. Of energy theory for finance but which is kind of not true in practice like everything in finance. But I always think Interswitch is more like the people that give them equity and I give them debt. As long as they're happy then who am I to. I don't think it matters that much for the ecosystem. What matters is the money doesn't make sense. So it doesn't matter how the money comes out. What matters that the money comes out, they're able to do something with it.

[Olumide]

Right. The reason I like it is there's more transparency on day to day performance because you can actually see the stock ticker. You're like oh it went down 7%, something bad happened. But when it's private, like who knows? Like yes, their product innovation is slowing down, but are they doing well? Are they doing badly? Who knows. But it's all opaque black box. So I like it for the transparency perspective in Terms of, like you said, the payouts to investors. I mean, who knows? Who cares?

[Bankole]

Yeah.

[Olumide]

If you list the episode, they had a bunch of PE investors who came in and out. They sold the bank Soldier shares. It's very complicated. I don't even care about the payouts invest. I just want more transparency so I can track it. Like tracking Fowry's performance gives me a sense of their market performance. If Fowi was private, I wouldn't know how they're performing. So shout out to Interswitch. And then next we did Flutter Wave. So that's actually a good. It's good we do those two companies back to back. Flutterwave is like the new Interswitch. They are a payments company, payments platform. But they were founded way later, around 2014. One of the first YC companies from Africa. Great founding story. A bit of a. Like, were they founded by a bank? Maybe, maybe not, who knows. So Olivia Olivide Oguso said maybe they were founded by a Mac, maybe not. Or maybe they just had a really good partner. But all we know is Flutterwave has done really well and in fact as of today they may be the most valuable fintech startup coming from Africa and maybe most valuable startup. So they're doing quite well.

[Bankole]

Yeah. Fun, fun. Fact from when I record that episode, looking through my notes is I was in the top. I got to Division 2 in FIFA 21 online seasons. I played, I used to play it, but not as much. I still love FIFA online season. It was very relevant, fascinating. It was. But now I'm individual one and I'm like, like a boss, but as a separate thing.

[Olumide]

Well, I have a lot of things. So the Florida refounding story is fascinating, controversial also, they've had a bunch of challenges in terms of they've had a executive turnover, CFO quit, CEO quit, they got another cfo. They were charged with some shit in Kenya. They had a lot of employees who gave some negative information around the way they're stuck. Equity was granted, then revoked. So a lot of negative negativity in the press. Luckily for Flutterwave, the reputational aspect doesn't affect them as much because they're B2B payments platform. However, I will say the reputation as of today is way worse than when we recorded in 2021. Way, way, way worse. Especially compared to Paystack.

[Bankole]

Yeah, yeah, okay.

[Olumide]

Yeah. In fact, they're sort of like the doppelganger to pay Stack in that they started in the same place, but they're the counterfactual of what would have happened if pace that continues to happen, continue to grow independently.

[Bankole]

Yeah.

[Olumide]

Yeah. Episode 19 our first roundup. Episode 2021 roundup.

[Bankole]

Roundup. Yeah. I thought that was a fun one. I did like doing this with everybody else working and in like I guess creating for Africa tech. So it was a good, good, good chat and conversation.

[Olumide]

Yeah, a good roundup. And then eventually we ended up doing more but this was the first one so we called it 2021 and beyond. But we looked at 2020 and we didn't have any co hosts. Every future roundup would have some co hosts or other fellow creators. Episode 20 Paystack so we did do paystack and floodwave back to back. Damn. Paystack to me is the most incredible, is the most incredible story in Africa tech, especially Nigeria tech. I'm sure some South Africans will have some misgivings about but for me in terms of the most incredible criteria, the criteria I use to pick the most incredible is impact on the ecosystem. And in terms of impact on the ecosystem, it's very clear no company has had an impact on the way pay stack an impact. Because number one, first of all the story is like a fairy tale. Like two technical founders, they go to yc, they build a company, they grow, they stay true to their vision, their product is helping people because enable people collect payments. So it's good for the user.

[Bankole]

Relatively, relatively capital efficient.

[Olumide]

Exactly. And they have some local investors which is also good. They exit, well publicized exits. Those investors, especially the local ones now see the ecosystem with more money and because they have such a good marketing team, there's also fairy tale video and hype and the whole thing is just like, I mean it's just a marvelous, marvelous three marvelous video from the ex and stuff. It was, oh my God, we played it. It's crazy.

[Bankole]

I love it.

[Olumide]

Yeah, they found market product, market fit. As soon as they started, they grew like gangbusters. Were capital efficient, they had some local investors, technical team, well spoken founders and yeah, they exited. They're still in the game. I mean they're basically stripe Africa now. But what a great story for the ecosystem.

[Bankole]

The best feel good story ever. I love it.

[Olumide]

I know. You lesson, you lesson our boys. We're talking about education before at the, I mean it's an audacious story. Right? At the time, at the time I didn't realize first of all there was no chatgpt 3.3.5, 4.4.5 so that wasn't a competitor. At the time it seemed as though their pricing and specific ecosystem focus and differentiation was enough. Now, as I spoke about a few minutes ago, I'm just not as sure. So what does u lesson do? Right. They offer video courses that enable students pass their exams and tests. So in a way, it's very, very, very similar to Baiju's. In fact, if you look at the UX, that's 90% same UX. But the point is still, what I was saying before, like YouTube has all those courses for free. They're already using YouTube. Yes. You may say if I'm primary five trying to learn geography, it's harder to find it. Like YouTube has a discovery issue in that it's not as easy to just find what you want. But is that enough to pay though? I don't know.

[Bankole]

It's also.

[Olumide]

And they've started to face some challenges since then.

[Bankole]

To your point about the discovery, it's like primary five for Nigeria, from firm five for Kenya or grade five for Tanzania or something. And I feel like those differences kind of matter if you're trying to pass an exam.

[Olumide]

I understand.

[Bankole]

But that said, the, the alternatives have been much better. The second challenge related to the alternatives is if you think about it, if I taking a class on, I don't know, the first law of thermodynamics, like Ulusen can record a video, but also like Indian development recorded because the love thermodynamics happens to be the same in Nigeria, Germany and India, right? So it's supposed.

[Olumide]

Supposedly.

[Bankole]

Yeah, apparently. Right? So it's now like, where do you get to that? Well, how do you get to that distinction? Is it like better because it's professional? Is it better? Like, I don't know.

[Olumide]

And I think what's the threshold of differentiation is what you're saying.

[Bankole]

Masterclass, which had the classes of these videos where Steph Curry teaches you how to shoot and stuff, it's like they have the same issue. Udemy vs Udacity. Udacity has much more polished videos. Udemy is just a random dude using Loom in his video, right?

[Olumide]

And you're like, shout out to loom.

[Bankole]

And then you're like, what is the distinction? Yeah, Udacity is much cleaner. You can do the exercises in the, in the browser and stuff. Udemy is like, bro, open your own browser, open your own Python. Run this thing on the side. If you see an error, click this link, go to this help page. You know, you know, But Udacity is all in line. They give you the code editor in there, they give you the errors in line. Is it more meaningful? But I don't know, but one is like, you can get classes on Udemy for 10 cents, 99 cents. That's the hundred of dollars, thousands of dollars, you know, they make, they take different bets and build a different size of business. And I feel like you listen to that situation. The alternatives are pretty good, you know.

[Olumide]

Yeah. Especially the examples you gave. You can at least say those are targeting developed markets. So there's a high willingness to pay. So for example, lynda.com now LinkedIn learning.

[Bankole]

Yeah.

[Olumide]

Like, would that succeed in Africa? It's like no one is paying for that. But, but the difference is like, I don't know how to say this, but YouTube and charge me really, really good and free. So I wish them the best, but I just, I just don't see a way around it.

[Bankole]

I'm sure nina.com is a great exit actually in retrospect, because I think it

[Olumide]

would be pennies, of course.

[Bankole]

Oh my God.

[Olumide]

Oh. Ah. No, they sold at the right time.

[Bankole]

Oh my God.

[Olumide]

Perfect. And I think it was almost 2 billion. It was a lot perfect. Yeah. I don't think. Was it all cash? I mean, if they got some equity out of it. Jesus, that have been so sweet.

[Bankole]

I know.

[Olumide]

Because that LinkedIn equity is now Microsoft equity, which is why they, you understand,

[Bankole]

the game is the game. The game is the game. All of a sudden it's just like, like, you see that meme of like, mommy, how do we get so rich? So your father [e-mail].

[Olumide]

that's funny. I'm sure the edtech entrepreneurs will tell me, oh, don't worry about it. We're going to introduce LLMs into our platform. I'm like, yeah, yeah, you can introduce it. But the problem is still like they're using the platforms indirectly anyway. Like if someone gets used to using a question and answer format for learning, it's even easier for them to switch. So you think you're tying them to your platform. But I actually think it's the opposite. If you integrate it in such a way that they're using a modality which mass which matches the user flow of those competitors, they're going to switch anyway. So I disagree that. Oh, let me just sprinkle some LLMs on my thing. Unless you're doing it in a way where the user journey. User flow doesn't match a question and answer format. I think most startups were very, very surprising. Long term, the horizontal player is going to catch the entire piece, maybe not the whole pie. There's some verticals that make sense, but not every Vertical. Everyone believes a vertical is the best. Not everyone is Expedia. Expedia made a shitload of money in verticalized search. Everyone else was screwed because Google got that. But Expedia is very, very different because the monetization on booking a hotel for $500, that 10, 20%, that's a lot of money. That's not the same thing for education. Like that primary five person, when they pass the test, what are they going to do? That's the end. Like your customers are churning at a crazy rate. It's not like Expedia. They book travel forever. So there's like a lifetime value.

[Bankole]

And the supply is also like a long tail for hotels and stuff. It's a long tail. So having a good source of like random hotel in like Kwara, which Expedia has, is actually valuable because the Quora Hotel cannot set up their whole marketing to find somebody going to Kwara. Only Expedia has that. So Expedia is going to charge for that. And that long term means that they can do vertical stuff because the market is super fragmented. But other than that, nothing.

[Olumide]

Yeah. And by the shout out to the travel sector, there are a lot of companies, but really it's just booking.com and Expedia Group. Everything's under those two umbrellas. Honestly, booking Group was formerly called Priceline group. There's just two companies. So don't believe. Use hotels.com, bruv. Hotels.com is Expedia, use Travelocity Broads Booking. There's just Kayak in the whole market. I love it.

[Bankole]

Let me.

[Olumide]

Kayak is obviously owned by them too.

[Bankole]

I saw this meme that cracked me up. So Airbnb launched Experiences a few months ago.

[Olumide]

Somebody posted like not a few months ago. It's like five years ago.

[Bankole]

No, no. Yeah. They relaunched it as a whole thing. In the future of Airbnb, like a few months ago, somebody posted a chart of the price, stock price chart of airbnb and of booking.com. i says one of these guys, the Silicon Valley thought leader, one of the CEOs. And I'll just, I'll just have you guess which is which. Airbnb is not tracked, is not trading above its IPO price five years ago. But.

[Olumide]

Right.

[Bankole]

But he won't stop. You know what? Just let it go.

[Olumide]

Yeah, yeah. Also maybe they were overvalued in the private markets. That's not necessarily a take on their business because even if they're doing well, they need to match the initial valuation hype and write that until they're back in the growth phase. So it's not necessarily something that impacts. It's not necessarily a telling factor of the business model.

[Bankole]

I can't work for Airbnb again. That's what I'm saying. You never know where my life will take you. So if I gotta talk rubbish, I love Airbnb so much. Moving on.

[Olumide]

On that note. On that note, episode 22 corporate VCs and South Bank. Oh my God, what an episode.

[Bankole]

So.

[Olumide]

So you can see from these threads affability did something. I'm so glad we're on this journey together because yeah, we're tying together different threads. Right. So what happened with byjus in education? We're trying to tell the story of byjus and how that could apply to education in Africa tech. What's happened on this episode? We're trying to tell the story of SoftBank and how. Yes, SoftBank was a telco aka operational company. They became an investment firm. Investment Fund, Vision Fund 1, Vision Fund 2. And then we use that story of a corporate VC CVC and how we need CVCs in Africa or do we need CVCs in Africa? So the whole story of this episode is SoftBank. I love Masayoshi son. I love SoftBank. This is one of my favorite episodes but it's more important part is corporate venture capital and basically the investment story of African tech and what it means for companies to invest in startups.

[Bankole]

And I don't know if I don't. MTN was the one that was doing a lot of it at the time but. But I don't just see that many of them doing. Still doing it now a lot of

[Olumide]

them don't do it. Historically banks and telcos have had the most amount of money in Africa tech. So we expect them to do it. But a lot of the banks and telcos were either. Well, banks they have balance sheet issues so that's a separate. Let's not. Let's do that. The telcos were burns and then the company that you expect to do some of this naspers also had a bad experience. So CVCs are just not really a thing exp. Except in. They dabble in and out. But it hasn't really become a big thing in Africa tech. But I don't care much about it cuz cvcs are they really serious? I prefer professional investors anyway. But it's good to have more money than less money.

[Bankole]

Money is money. I'm joking. Money is money. Even the best, even the money where they will give you the money and the person that deal Free money has now left. Free money can be invested. The person that gave you the has now left. A new person comes, new person is just asking for updates. So they just leave you alone. You never know. Like. Like I think Salesforce, one of them wrapped up their ventures arm recently because they just couldn't hire.

[Olumide]

Oh really?

[Bankole]

People Not Salesforce, one of them like slowed down. I can't remember which one it was.

[Olumide]

Okay.

[Bankole]

It's just hard to keep the talent and reward the talent that is able to find good deals. So they would just go to like, I don't know, benchmark. Make a lot more money.

[Olumide]

Of course. Yeah. Because it turns out man, there's so many things where do we even go with this? So it turns out if you remumerate if you pay your venture capital workers the way they would get paid in an investment firm, your company more than they can end up making more money than the CEO. So the CEO may be like you bro. This person in the venture capital are making $65 million a year. Yeah. He brought you 15 billion. I don't care about 50 billion.

[Bankole]

I want my money back. Exactly.

[Olumide]

It's funny. On one hand, historically the sales function leaders have earned more money than the CEO. So it shouldn't be such a surprise. Someone earns because the sales bonus, the sales quota is linked to sales if you sell.

[Bankole]

Yeah.

[Olumide]

So it shouldn't be such an issue. But it's still different in this case in that the investments period returns are so drawn out you can't directly match. I had the sales deal. I got this income. This is going to be 220 for 10, 15 years. So it's a harder story to tell. And CVC is just hard for that reason. I still think some big companies should have them because they enable you see M and A potential Just for that reason is important even if you don't want to get returns.

[Bankole]

Yeah. Okay.

[Olumide]

23 Stock Stock Trading Wealth Tech Part 1 ended up doing well tech episodes. We already spoke a little bit about this indirectly. The whole goal of this episode was to talk about consumer stock trading apps where a person living in.

[Bankole]

Those were the best of times.

[Olumide]

Yeah, I remember this episode. Just funny because we started with like some India context and Robin Hood context. But the context for this episode was just like people have excessive money now. How do they get international returns? It turns out that I love the nature of like democratizing investments and enabling a child, a young adult in Uganda not be only able to buy Ugandan stocks and to be able to buy Vanguard stocks of America footsie stock. So I love the idea of it. I don't love the fees. Some of these companies were charging 1% fees. Crazy shit. And I also don't like the fact that they didn't try to nudge the educational aspect to tell people, hey, index funds, educational learning. Not just oh, I want to buy this stock, like you're buying this stock, but do you even know what you're doing? So I don't like those two parts of it, but I love the democratization part.

[Bankole]

They raised a lot of money too. Oh my God.

[Olumide]

Of course, of course. How hard to make money in this place because I think those 1% fees will eventually go close to zero. But I saw some of the companies were now offering B2B services where they integrate with like another platform and then on that other platform you can trade stocks.

[Bankole]

Yeah, a lot of them, a lot of them are actually not doing as well anymore. But no point naming names.

[Olumide]

Yeah, it's not a long term viable business. Eventually if you offer stock trading, you might as well offer Neo banks. New bank's not going to make you money. You might as well offer lending. We'll give you more money. You might as well just offer everything. And then like Ruby, you offer some services. Exactly, some services. You know they're not going to make you any money but they're there to reduce churn. So the reason you do a new bank is not because like there's no money in Neobanks but you do it to reduce churn. The money's on the lending and crypto side. So you have to offer as many services as you want. Basically we called it the FinTech OS and then hope that your highly monetizing products are enough to offset the low monetizing one. But of course you just can't offer stocks. Like that's not a long term business. Which gets us very nicely to neobanks.

[Bankole]

Episode 24 yeah, I liked, I like the Neo banks because at the time I think I was even just switching out from GT bank into like one of these new banks as well.

[Olumide]

This is what I learned about Cuda. I was hyping Cuda like crazy on this episode.

[Bankole]

Yeah, I think it was just like Nigerian consumers were just thirsty man. Like existing banking services were just really terrible. But now a lot of the banks are. Actually I was in Lagos a couple weeks ago and I had to go to a bank and I only open an account in the bank because my friend works there. Again, maybe my own having left Nigeria many years ago. I'm like, I don't even want any other bank issue unless I know somebody that works there that I can call. And I was telling him like, hey, I need to unlock my app. Are you, are you in the office? It was like, it was like, dude, I was like, yeah, I can see you and say hi, but also really fix my, my account. I was like, okay. And then I was like, oh, I'll be there in the afternoon.

[Olumide]

Come.

[Bankole]

And I was like, I was driving past, I walked into the bank and I was very impressed with the service and like, it was very smooth. So it's obvious that services hopefully on average have been better. This was Probit bank services and average are better. But it was just nasty what this fintech was coming into. But it kind of mirrors what you see in the US where initially it feels like unfathomable now, but initially in the US is like the new Neo banks, the new banks. One competed based on great apps. Now everybody has a great app and

[Olumide]

sometimes very low fees.

[Bankole]

Yeah, yeah. It would be like, oh, man, the app is so good. And the bank of America app sucks. No, the bank of America app is world class now. And that's what's happening in Nigeria also.

[Olumide]

Don't forget. It's the same mistake I made that in retrospect, I learned is those apps look bad because they have so many features they need to jam into the ux. So when I started using Cuda, I'm like, oh my God, this is so simple and clear. But now they've added so many features. So it's not that the apps are bad. It's not the UX is bad. Is that the more features you have, the more. It's a balance of the simplicity versus showing off the features and then to a user it looks more complicated and worse, but it's just like you have features you need to surface.

[Bankole]

Exactly.

[Olumide]

And if you've ever worked on product development, there's specific areas in the UX flow in the journey that is better to increase usage. So they want you to use it, you want to use it, but they need to surface in a place that's visible, which looks like clutter. So those new bags that look good, like when I started to use let's pick on Cash app. Cash App didn't do so, of course. The user interface, it just, it was just for sending money. When they started to add the card crypto, you're like, oh, it's looking more complicated. It's the feature set.

[Bankole]

Features.

[Olumide]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I, I agree with you. Although I Will say it wasn't just the apps were better. Some of them also had way lower fees. In America, for example, we should use a developing country, but let's use America. If you use the wrong bank atm, you're completely so like your bank, your bank will charge you to use that ATM and that ATM will charge you. So your bank of America will charge you $3.50. That charge, that bank will charge you $4. So if you took out $20, but $20, now $11 because there's a foreign. It's like that is enough reason to make someone angry to open a new bank.

[Bankole]

Yeah, exactly. Anyways, but new banks were. I think we're way more optimistic on the episode. I think.

[Olumide]

No, I wasn't optimistic.

[Bankole]

I think they haven't ended up being.

[Olumide]

I've never been optimistic about these things

[Bankole]

end up being like they are. They're in trouble. I think, I think it's.

[Olumide]

It's not, it's not. Yeah. It's not being a new bank by itself. If you keep on advertising to people, right. Lower fees, lower fees, lower costs, how are you going to make money? So of course like the whole point is eventually to add some features on top of it to make money. That's why you've seen let's pick on Cuda Bank. That's why they're now saying we have savings accounts which they can do arbitrage with government debt and do that. We have lending which they could do, make more money, eventually offer other things. But neo banks are still important because users are very unlikely to churn from their primary salary accounts. So it's incredibly important not to have a neo bank but to have a salary account. That's why if you use. In fact we don't need to give a specific name. In America there's a bunch of neo banks where if they see you've done a direct deposits from your salary, they offer you way more features because they know that's the anchor. No one wants to go to their company, their job and be like, oh let me change my. They just want to stick with one. So that's the crux of it. Get the salary accounts and then offer differentiated features.

[Bankole]

Especially in Nigeria. I don't even know that I knew how to do it. In Nigeria

[Olumide]

your job will tell you we have these banks and that's the bank. Go and open a bank with them.

[Bankole]

Anyways, next episode.

[Olumide]

So next up is crypto trading after we spoke about Neobank. So in a way the crypto trading platforms are sort of similar to Neobanks Both. Both things are sort of merging into one.

[Bankole]

I would even say less similar because I was looking through the, I was looking through the notes because not many of them are still like existing today in the same kind of form. Like the crypto world. Rush is kind of done. I think some of the new banks are still banks today. You could argue about the long term prospects of the banks, but they're still there. The crypto platforms are just not like bitcoins. You know, yellow card definitely still exists. Loans still exist. I think bitcoin is not here. There's a lot of them that are not there because crypto is. Doesn't have the same, I don't know, gambling framework as it did when we recorded this. Same with stock trading.

[Olumide]

That's fair. So episode 25 was about crypto trading exchanges, basically where a person, a regular consumer, not a business consumer, would go and buy crypto and then hopefully the price would go up and they'd make money. So these were platforms in between, middleman platforms trying to get a margin. Unfortunately, I think most of these platforms, they trade based on the market hype and market momentum. So when bitcoin price goes up, they get a bunch of users. When the price crashes, it goes down. At the time I said they were similar because a lot of the new banks seem to want to add stock trading functionality. A lot of stock trading platforms eventually would want something to reduce churn, which was the salary count. So it seems to be going the same direction. But I guess you're saying the survivorship likelihood is lower, which makes sense. They're in a cyclical economy, they're rolling with the waves of crypto.

[Bankole]

Yeah. And there was so much. And if I look back at how we talked about it and what the biggest companies were, there were companies that were building things using crypto or crypto, like Rails, but a good chunk of them were more focused on the trading part and have gone the way of the stock trading setup we talked about earlier, which is people want to invest when the stock market is going up and to the right, as it was in the post Covid era for about 18 to 24 months post Covid in 2020. But now that that's not happening, people are less likely to. People are less likely to invest in crypto and also because rates have gone up in the developed countries. Right. So there's less capital looking for returns. So the crypto hype has sort of cooled quite a lot. And I don't hear a lot of people talking as much about exchanges and Buying and buying and trading crypto. There's still a lot of holding. Crypto Crypto is over $100,000 in June 2025. As we record this, it's not like crypto bitcoin is not going up. However, I just don't know if it's as top of mind in Africa tech right now as it was in 2021 before somebody attacks me.

[Olumide]

Yeah, when we did this episode 25 the whole goal was to separate crypto into different parts. One part is infrastructure crypto, basically B2B infrastructure crypto which is using Rails and using the technology to solve business problems versus just consumer trading platforms. So we mostly spoke about consumer exchanges platforms. But there is another part of crypto which is utilizing like instead of using traditional financial Rails you save money and you're faster to execute using crypto Rails. We didn't talk about that on this episode as much but that I think has more long term potential because it's like we're paying cost X, we're going to pay a lower, we're going to pay Y which is less than X. Now there is some regulatory stuff you'll have to think about but I think infrastructure crypto to reduce costs, increase efficiency, make a lot of sense. The crypto trading part for consumers, I mean I've always hated it from the start. I'm still not a fan but they are different use cases completely.

[Bankole]

So yeah we focus conversation on crypto trading exchanges but I think the non trading uses of crypto so I'm thinking of bvnk for example is one that they've really focused on. This cross border trade and payment settlement type transactions is much better use. The trading platforms haven't really reached a skip velocity here.

[Olumide]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I always feel bad show my criticism for it. But like I said a few minutes ago, it's not that I don't like it is that it needs to be paired with some education so the person understands the risk profile, the risk appetite, the asset allocation and like short term, long term how to get in and out. It's not just go and buy Bitcoin and hope for the best. That's a very risky strategy and risky strategies normally come with a lot of downside that the users don't expect. All right, I think we Both root to 26 right? Yeah 26 agritech.

[Bankole]

This was, it was a, was a fun one sector. I remember it being intense to record and also somewhat depressing when you confirm some of your biases with like actual data of the gap between where we are where we could be on agriculture,

[Olumide]

just like health tech and education tech.

[Bankole]

It's like health education. The second reflection looking at this episode is there isn't a. There are many startups, there are not many, I choose my words, there have not been many as many success stories in ACTEC relative to his commensurate with his relative importance in the ecosystem. Right. There's just not many of these. The right size of many of the right startups and some of them, even the last couple of years we talked about them. Either this is a criticism I've read somewhere, artificially boosted by non capitalist capital or and when that dries up for many different reasons, they're just not able to stand in their own two feet and then they face the same kind of challenges as, as the other setups we talked about earlier.

[Olumide]

Yeah, it's like if we were to do a ranking based on popularity slash high pt Fintech has the most amount of popularity and also the most amount of investment dollars. And then you'd say it seems as though healthcare has some momentum because we have some biggish players, but then education Agritech would be behind. I'm not talking about just investment dollars, just the investor sentiment around it. So. But this was a sector episode so we went through all the different regions, all the different markets. Overall agriculture is important. Obviously people need to eat because the primary consumers for a lot of the business models tend to be farmers. Farmers have low willingness to pay. Then the business model innovation becomes they're not going to pay you directly, but they do have something worthwhile which is their harvest year yield. Like how do you set up a system where they win or, or they're

[Bankole]

a voting block for government. They have something worthwhile, the harvest yield or their votes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Olumide]

So, so basically like what's the win win situation where even with their low willingness to pay, they can get some upside hopefully with like better harvest, higher yield, more, more money and then you can also get some money. That's why a lot of the businesses ended up doing how can we give you loans or how can we give you better seed fertilizer? So the farmer would use that to increase the yield and then the person would get money back based on the outcome. So like a win win. However, like you said, it's difficult because a lot of the farmers, number one, they have substandard. They're just starting from such a, they're starting from such a low base. The plots are small, education is low. They may not understand that technicalities may not Be able to speak English may not understand the benefit of using better fertilizer, better yield, let's say they understand it because it's to their benefit, but then you have to wait until the yield comes out. What if there's like a natural disaster? They need to get insurance. All these complications which make it harder. But I think there's some potential for startups to make a difference there especially I remember we looked at Apollo who is doing something potentially interesting. I didn't like the, the ones where they were sort of gamble ified and you were paying to get high yields. Those ones were. I don't like those. But the ones where they were offering the farmers either education, better fertilizer, more tools, access to seller markets, I like those. But let's see how the whole sector evolves.

[Bankole]

So maybe to wrap up my thoughts, is is this one of those sectors that's more like healthcare where it's. It's either expensive or government pays, you know, which is like the US or the UK and agriculture, even in the west where it exists, it's like incredibly subsidized. Incredibly, yes, incredibly subsidized to it on healthy degree. Even as the number of. I don't see Americans involved in agriculture is at its lowest level in 100 years. And maybe that's the only way forward is more, less capital, more government. But that's a slippery slope as I hear myself say those words.

[Olumide]

Yeah, I don't know, you may be correct. The problem is government efficiency, government skills. Government output tends to be poor and shitty in developing countries. So even if that's the outcome, I don't know if it would work well in countries where the government is inept. It may only make sense if the government is actually functioning properly. Because if the government, if you over rely on the government when you know their expertise is low, you can have even more problems. Like for example, if you're bad analogy. But let's roll with it. If you were about to take an Uber and the Uber driver is drunk, it's probably better just to walk the three hours. Yes. He may get you there safely. The fact is drunk is bad. So African governments, developing country governments, even if they're the right solution, better just go the long route then just risk your whole life. So that's my analogy and I'm sticking with it.

[Bankole]

That's aggressive.

[Olumide]

Don't drink it.

[Bankole]

That is an aggressive analogy. But God bless you, my man.

[Olumide]

Okay, 27 take a lot E commerce in South Africa, bro.

[Bankole]

Yeah, I, I think Take a lot was the one that has this success story. Supposedly it's not over yet at the time compared, at least compared to Jumia at the time. Yes, of course being in like a big market where there was much more infrastructure for them to bolt onto and build an E Commerce that are similar to Amazon or USPS in the US or in any of the developed markets they've been into. And they built off that to build off that base to build different kind of customizations for their relevant to their market, pickup points, a number of things etc, integration with retail. And they have built that to become at least a big successful business in part because of the investor, investor pool as well.

[Olumide]

Yeah, it's like almost the. It's similar to Jumia but then also completely different and it's more different than similar. So the biggest differences are for almost all of their history, I think even till today they're only in one country. So take a lot is only in South Africa. Number two, they're acquired by Naspers so early that all the numbers then become like. It's hard to understand how they actually do it because they're no longer public, they're now privately held subsidiary of another company. Which means technically Naspers doesn't need to disclose as much information as you would think from Jumia which needs to cause it's like, it's like a business arm. Right. They can give whatever information they give. And then I don't know if on one hand South Africa is already big, it's already developed so they didn't need to do geographical expansion. On the other hand, I'm not sure if that's a long term optimal strategy. I will say from when we did this episode they did seem to be doing better than Jumia but I'm not sure if long term what that means. E Commerce makes more sense in markets that are more developed and have more infrastructure to build on, which South Africa definitely has. But I don't know TBD on how that whole thing goes, especially with the Amazon South Africa rumors.

[Bankole]

I will say, yeah, Amazon has already launched there. I will say that of course if I were on the take a lot side I would say oh no, we've seen the people that did Pan African expansion. As a matter of fact, we actually do have an alternate reality. We can tell you that for sure that is the wrong path is what they would say.

[Olumide]

But that's a timing thing now.

[Bankole]

Yeah, there's always excuses but it's if you're alive and if you're dead, it's like the guy who died is like oh man, I was so unlucky. But like, yeah, but you're still dead. But yeah, it's. It depends on who you ask. All right, cool.

[Olumide]

E Commerce. Any other general closing thoughts on E Commerce?

[Bankole]

No, I, I do, I think E commerce. Is it time to call it? Would you call it like E commerce is not. E commerce in the western form is dead. You just call it and be like, it doesn't work.

[Olumide]

I'm just not sure of. That's easy to say. The hard thing to say is what's the what? Timing makes sense. As they say. All technology makes sense if you have the right time. Is the timing 1 to 2 years, 2 to 5 years, 5 to 7 years, 15 to 25 years. It's obviously not a hundred years, we'll all be dead. You know the timing, I can't be wrong because of it.

[Bankole]

The timing is part of the answer. If it's one to two years, I think the timing is definitely part of the answer. And we can only answer 12 years. When you. When at least when it comes to technology, at least confidently, is it fair to say, look, they've had a lot of money and everybody's had a lot of money and 10 to 15 years to try out this stuff, there's nothing they've not tried. There's cash on delivery, cash without delivery. Like build your own payments infrastructure. Build your own warehouse. Don't build your own warehouse slightly so to it like have people order for you, come to your house and take your orders like and then bring it back to your house to deliver it to you with credit with buy now, pay later. Like it's. They've tried everything and doesn't seem to have scaled. So maybe we should call it. Maybe we should just stop banging our head against the wall and we cannot turn tin or lead into gold. Maybe that's the. Maybe there's a scientific limit there. It's like five years away from turning lead into gold would be interesting question, you know, see how it works out for him.

[Olumide]

Yeah. Anyways, E Commerce is like a good representation of B2C consumer markets in Africa. People don't have money. So obviously the little money they have is going to be for food and for rent and for other massive, massively needed core must haves. Is E commerce a must have? Definitely not. Because they can just go to the market and buy it physically. And in fact they already used to go into the market. So I don't know at what point the willingness to pay, ability to pay switches that from like a nice to have to, must have. Or if there's some business model innovation that nudges people to do it even if they don't have money. The problem is, yeah, I'm not sure if the costs are similar. Like if it's more expensive, why would they do it?

[Bankole]

And also they have also this competition for user behavior in the Omni retails and the Wasokos of the world that are basically making it cheaper and cheaper for the mom and pop shops to compete with anything online.

[Olumide]

Yes.

[Bankole]

And to get a better solution and making it cheaper, making the bar to entry to become a mom and pop shop very low. Because you can just sign up for a Wasoko thing if you get the right location. So all of a sudden E commerce becomes also like facing headwinds from that direction as well. And they contribute low labor costs where it's not like time is not relatively that valuable. You don't have alternative uses, alternative economic uses of your time that are available for most people and the people who can. The time difference between a physical store versus a digital store is not significant in parts of the West. It's actually significant. Get in your car, you live in suburbia as most people do. Drive 15 minutes to a store, drive 15 minutes back, that's 30, 45 minutes. Walk through a store versus doing on your phone while you're doing something else. I think that time difference is not significant in. In many parts of at least Nigeria. So we'll see.

[Olumide]

I love it. I feel like we should go on to the next episode. But I. There's just. There's a whole philosophical conversation around. If you ask me when I wake up and I'm like not fully alert. What is the definition of E commerce? Immediately my brain will think of Amazon type models. I would define E commerce as me going to a platform, website, app, whatever the fuck, and ordering what I need. But then E commerce actually has broader definition about optimizing commerce and trade with technology, in which case it applies to everything. Wasoku Trade Depot. Which means we could almost get a lot of the same benefits even without an Amazon type type model necessarily. It's just a little bit different. It's not the way I would have defined it. Like an SMB ordering supplies of a website is E commerce, but it's not the way I think about it. It's more. That's more business E commerce. But it's all linked to the same. It's all trying to help the same thing. The only reason the SMB is ordering supplies from an app is to sell it to the end consumer. Anyway, the end consumer is still getting the good from the mom and pop shop. It's all linked to the same value chain. Incredible. Okay, I think we have to move on. Otherwise we'll spend an hour on take a lot of E commerce. Send Wave. Oh my God, the $500 million one I remember. I mean, I'll say the same thing I said at the episode, at the end of the episode, what Send Wave was doing remittances and then an exit. It all sort of makes sense. I just. You would think I would be much more excited about it because of the large exit value, but it's not. It didn't have a big impact on the ecosystem as paystack because they were a YC company with European, with Caucasian founders. And I love the, the grid of it. I love the story of it. I was just.

[Bankole]

But I was.

[Olumide]

I surprised myself.

[Bankole]

It didn't make anybody rich. Happy. It didn't make anybody, you know, rich, basically.

[Olumide]

Exactly, exactly. It's a good story, but it doesn't have the same vibes.

[Bankole]

We didn't feel it. We didn't feel it in the neighborhood. Like now, if I see Shola now, I'm in line for coffee. Shola must pay for coffee. I cannot see Shola. I can keep my wallets, for example, because you know that he has money.

[Olumide]

But I like it. It's a feel good story too, but it's just not the same. I liked the part of the story where they're in YC and they were pivoting, pivoting, pivoting. Then eventually they came across this whole remittances thing and like, what's the right quarter? And then how do we make sure our costs are optimized? What's the user journey? Interesting. Good exit a lot of money. Not the same feel good factor, but important because it enabled people send money with lower fees. So it's important for that whole industry.

[Bankole]

I think it's also for me. Aside from, aside from that, there's a side version of the story about timing. And now, like most of the very well funded startups are doing remittances now. I think Paystack is the only one that's not doing remittances. Like Moneypoint, Flutterwave, all the remittances now.

[Olumide]

Yes. And also Paystack is a B2B company, so they're only now touching, dipping their toes in B2C so it's understandable they're not in remittances.

[Bankole]

And tap. There's a lot of other, well Funded competitors doing remittances now. And it's just at the time, even when Sendwave was big and even before they got acquired, it's more like, oh, remittances is saturated, but it's clearly not saturated. And all of these companies are seeing angles Lemfi. They're all seeing like 8 points of market entry into the same business model. So I'm actually curious. It's much more interesting what, what I'm missing or what they're seeing seen or are they just doing me too? Are they seeing like, oh my God, if we win this, it opens XYZ opportunities for us or we just have to do this to survive with remittances as a whole. I'm curious. I. I don't know because if you're zeps, you're like, well, everybody's doing remittances now. Surely it can't be that hard if it's like if Moneypoint, Flutter Wave and and Tap 10 and everybody's doing startups that seem to be fine to do remittances and remitly is public like. Like, did somebody overpay for them or not? Or was it just like the right time and a way to buy the volume and market entry they needed?

[Olumide]

But TBD on the brand, yes. In addition to that, I love markets where it's perceived to have reached its maximum level. But then it turns out if you reduce the costs, the maximum level continues to increase and you actually don't know what the maximum is. This is that remittances because of the fees involved, like you were saying, it seemed like the market was saturated, but you can never know the actual saturation level until it's free Freeze. The actual only free tells you the actual market thing. So we spoke about a little bit too on Chipper Cash Africans sending money to other Africans and like, oh, this is a small market. Like how much money can you make from this market? If you reduce the fees, you reduce the transaction friction. The sky's the limit. A lot of markets can be massive if you reduce friction and reduce costs. So who knows? So shout out to sendway for what they did. Important for the ecosystem. And now Reminis is like you said, said it's like a. Everyone needs to do remittances because everyone else is doing it. So where does it end? Episode 29 Be Cash bcash first episode with co host first Bangladeshi company. Incredible. So much fun.

[Bankole]

I have been. I have been. And also the first one we recorded twice.

[Olumide]

Oh Lord have mercy. Do we talk about that? Was it, Was it be cash we did twice or was it the other one?

[Bankole]

The other one.

[Olumide]

Anyways, I don't know either way. It was our first time with Shami. Shout out to Shami, our First co host. First Bangladeshi company.

[Bankole]

Yeah, I thought BCash was interesting and I think the part that I didn't even internalize as much was the ownership model with the local bank. I think that was the part that was kind of obscured in the story was like, you know, serious backers.

[Olumide]

The back holds it.

[Bankole]

Yeah. It's not quite like the same. Tough business, tough journey. Probably commensurate to making it in a tough market like Bangladesh, to be honest. Not saying that it was any much easier, but I do think it's like, yeah, you know, operating in the market with a bank guarantee. It's kind of fascinating.

[Olumide]

Yeah. I love these stories where you can look at the company and you could say this company made a massive positive impact on the whole country. And there are very few examples. And BCASH is definitely one of those examples. Like you can point, you can see a linear impact. It's the same thing with like Safaricom and M Pesa and Kenya. You can be like this company did this and not just the rich people, not just the middle class, everyone is feeling the benefits and this is one of those. So I love this story for that.

[Bankole]

It's almost like you don't tell, you don't tell your day to day story in somebody living in Dhaka without like mentioning big cash. And it's a tough, tough thing to build a business that is so integral to people's lives. I don't know.

[Olumide]

Right, right. It's actually funny I brought up the example of M Pesa because in this episode we spoke about, there's actually a bunch of similarities and they were looking at the M Pesa model when they were building it. And for those who are not familiar, list episode 29 the cash is basically like a person to person, consumer to consumer money transfer app. But it's now built a bunch of things on top of that. So it's trying to be much more of a fintech personal finance os. But the fundamental foundational level is for money transfers and personal transfers and it's specifically big in Bangladesh. So that whole episode was the founding story of it. All right, Paga, speaking of cash to cash transfers, PHP we should do.

[Bankole]

Paga is one of the OG fintech companies in Nigeria I think.

[Olumide]

For real?

[Bankole]

For real 9 and they're still growing gangbusters. Still growing up payment volume.

[Olumide]

I've never seen. I've still never met a single human being in my life in Nigeria that says let's let me use Paga. I've seen it now on POS's but no one has ever said let's transfer money to each other using Poggio in my life.

[Bankole]

They have multiple business models. We talked about this but. But they have, they've been able to still exist, still still try to raise, still trying to raise some money as well. So they've, they've been around doing the same super app things as many of these companies as well since 2009 I think.

[Olumide]

So super early and they survived shout out to survivorship. Important early company for the ecosystem. An important survivor story and also great showing of like founder perseverance experience. I'm just always. There's always a question mark for me around Paga because every time I look at their different business lines and the different types of products they offer, every single product they offer has at least five to six competitors and at least two to three very, very well funded, funded competitors. So it's unclear to me how successful they can be in the long term if they have competition across. Not just competition, they have different types of competition. New entrants, entrenched players and super rich players. So tricky. But they've survived so far and I wouldn't bet against them but they don't have an easy road at all. At all. So. So for example I was talking about. I've seen them in the whole POS game. That POS game has at least three big players so money points and opaque but it's actually a massive long tail. They also do consumer to consumer transfers that you can do for free with the banks. You can. That also has like five or six competitors and on and on and on and on and on and on. So I wish them the best but they have a, a rough road ahead of them.

[Bankole]

Yeah, I'm sure they have. If you ask them, they have like a niche or an angle in the industry.

[Olumide]

Yes.

[Bankole]

That they're competing against. But it's a very, it's a very interesting, they're in a very interesting position in the market. Like a day you could say like using a cloud analogy, there's AWS and Azure. That's kind of one or two. And then are they Google Cloud or DigitalOcean?

[Olumide]

It's kind of interesting as a close. Google Cloud is so disrespectful. That's hilarious.

[Bankole]

That's so disrespectful.

[Olumide]

That's like saying greatest rappers of all time. Nas, Tupac, Biggie. And then you say, you add like you're like wait, who's this? Who's this person? What? Digital Ocean? Google Cloud? Are you crazy?

[Bankole]

Google Cloud? My analogies are not good, but thank you, thank you. Google Cloud. Is that like. I guess I was trying to. What to your point about where do they compete in this. In this very crowded market with lots of payment companies. Are they. If you're not the market leader or second in any of these, like colleagues. They're not Psycho Flutterwave, for example, are they Google? Are they, are they. Are they a close third or are they distant fourth? I think that's what I was trying to. Maybe not. That's what I was trying to get at. Not so much. Are they Digital Ocean to AWS in size?

[Olumide]

That's not fair.

[Bankole]

You're right, I didn't mean that. But I meant that are they closed third, which is, you know, Google Cloud is generally seen to be third but they could be second or they should be second and they should be on a path to first and they have a path to like winning or whatever. Or I think like DigitalOcean which is like yo, we're doing some other stuff right now. Okay, if what AWS do there? We just tried our best. We're working for small developers. We have this niche use case that being easy to use. I. I don't know but somebody's gonna again email me or hit me for this.

[Olumide]

Yeah, I would love to hear from their own perspective what their key differentiators. I know on the POS side it's not acceptance rate or success rates. I know on the money transfer side it's not like transaction completion rates. And I know it's not like geographically based. Oh, they're very big. Anybody. It's something wishing them all the best of luck because I see an affordability episode 31 sports betting and gambling tech. Oh my God. Every time I just looking at the title I have nothing, nothing but disdain and disgust for the sector. But let's talk about it. I don't know what to say about stop gambling people. I mean, what else can I say? Maybe let's talk about it from the, from the tech side. I'll leave my my thoughts till the end. Basically these are platforms that enable people bed slash gamble. Now in order to sugarcoat it, some of them call themselves sports entertainment apps but it's basically gambling. And because people like to gamble, they actually quite popular. In fact they became so popular on the episode we spoke about government intervention to just nudge people Away from losing away all their life savings. So that's the sector.

[Bankole]

Yeah, actually, I think it's like incredibly profitable. My, my worry then and my worry now has been really about regulation. I actually notice, like people can gamble, people can drink. Good for you. But it's also that the gap, you hear the stories, you see the people for whom it controls and ruins their lives and you see all of those things and you know, they have no recourse In a country like Nigeria, I think that makes it very difficult and this is not unique to develop it to African countries, by the way.

[Olumide]

No, all countries. Gambling is huge. Vegas. What? Gambling is a global phenomenon.

[Bankole]

I think that even in the uk they just told all the Premier league clubs they can't have gambling shirt sponsors anymore. Because what is happening, what was happening is gambling companies can outpay anybody else. So I think at a point that 10 of 20 teams in Premier League had gambling sponsors because they were just like. Because the visibility of the gambling logo during the game reminding you to gamble, bet365 or whatever was so profitable to the gambling companies that they were willing to pay more than Samsung was willing to pay for the shirt sponsor thing.

[Olumide]

Wow.

[Bankole]

So, so it's, I think it's a strong sort of revenue. All different kinds of gambling, either live sports or gaming, which is like slot machines and stuff like that. But the, the regulation of it is a bit sketchy because of known regulatory capture gaps in Africa and it ends up being. Being a huge, huge external cost. So it's almost that these things need to be taxed aggressively.

[Olumide]

I agree with that.

[Bankole]

Account for, to account for the external cost. Like if you go, like in the US when cannabis became legal and then people go buy cannabis, people like. And then it would be like $5 and like $25 of taxes. Yeah, it's like one of those like the externalities are so high that like the city taxes, the state taxes, the county taxes it and they're like, yo, dude, this is just the price. You know, this is the real price. You know, if you think it's 10 bucks, there's at least $30 of cost that they incurs on the government that we have to find a way to charge people do it for. I think these companies need to be treated a bit like that where it ends up and that money being used to manage the externalities of gambling. I think that's my 2 cents here.

[Olumide]

I'll try to talk about some of the positives, then I'll give my real negative opinion at the end. So let's just call them gaming companies because that's what they like to call themselves, to be nice and friendly. So some of these gambling companies which call themselves gaming companies, I guess the positives are from a product perspective, you can see how they're engineering all the nudges, all the user flows to encourage people to do what they want. So there's a lot you can learn if you're a product, if you're a pm, if you're a marketing person. It's just interesting. Just like the colors, the lighting, the click area, all the subtle nudges. I found it because I'd never used one before. I used a few to prepare for the episode and I was surprised by. Oh yeah, of course. Like my brain prefers red and yellow. Everything is red and yellow. This is blinking. They want me to click here. If you click here and then they show you. It's just, it's. It's unbelievable to learn the level of psychological nudges all going on simultaneously because I could see colors, I could see click through. I could see pictures of people or logos or women or things I wanted. I could see. It was showing me there was little downside risk, which there was initially, but it knew that if I developed the habit, eventually the downside risk would go away and I would already be an addict. Just a lot to learn about. What else could be positive? I mean, I don't know. I guess that's all I have on the positive side, on the negative side, like I said, on an individual level, the probably weighted average outcome is negative. So probably not good to do on an individual basis. On a societal basis, the average outcome is also negative. So probably not good for society. But, but from a company perspective, definitely if you're a company, you should do. You're going to make a lot of money.

[Bankole]

So on an individual basis, this is a bit wild because I know what you, what you saying. On a real basis, some people enjoy it and they can manage it.

[Olumide]

Oh, of course, I'm talking about on average, the net is. Of course each individual can make a lot of money. I'm just talking about the average. Of course, if you're lucky, you may even, you may even. Your luck may even last for weeks. You can even do for three weeks and come out. But on average, the house wins society. The only time it becomes positive for societies, if the tax level is high enough to send the money into positive things. So I just don't know where that nets out. I do know that a lot of them were evading taxes because they say, oh, our headquarters is in Paris, our headquarters. So that's not nice at all. Then you don't get any positive societal benefits. I have mixed feelings about it. If it was just a tax on lower intelligence to give to everyone else, I would like it to. But the problem is it's not that sometimes you see the stats and it's poor people. So it's a tax on low income people to give to everyone else, which nets out worse for the low income. I don't. If it's just, oh, dumb people, of course, take their money and then we all get together. But I don't know. A lot of the stats I've seen show a lot of low income people. So it's like, then you're taxing low income people to get to everyone else which nets out and then they get less on average. I don't know how I feel about it.

[Bankole]

Okay, okay, you can stay on your high horse, can stay on your soapbox.

[Olumide]

This is the last step. I just want to emphasize for the people. I'm not saying, okay, we have to clarify my point of view on this. I'm not saying what people must do. I'm just saying what I think is a good idea. Right. It's like if someone asked me for their advice, I would say no. But I'm not saying they must do it. I just don't think it's a good idea.

[Bankole]

Fair.

[Olumide]

All right. Episode 32 Fintech lending lending platforms Intriguing, similar, but not as bad. These were platforms that were giving consumer loans. And they always say, we use data points from your phone usage, pictures, swipes, SMS messages. Overall, it sort of makes sense. I think the biggest thing I learned from this episode was trying to understand how they were doing the risk managements and profiling and credit risk. I'm just trying to understand how much risk were the lending platforms willing to take and then how much upside was available and then also the collection practice. I learned a lot on the episode.

[Bankole]

The thing for me was even reading this then and now is I don't know if all of this alternative data is that predictive, you know, and that's an interesting, less stated thing.

[Olumide]

You were already skeptical even on the episode. You were skeptical even then?

[Bankole]

Yeah, I think at the time. And now just working in AI and ML and knowing what it can do. And I'm like, these people are speaking with a level of certainty that as a practitioner, I don't. They're not speaking, they're operating with the level of certainty. As a practitioner, I'm like, Yeah, I mean technically, but like I wouldn't like bet the farm on this hypoth, you know, I wouldn't bet a farm on this hypothesis. It's not that convincing. But at the same time, if you look at how they've all gone by, they have all devolved to some form of traditional lending which is if you can pay back, we will pay you, we will give you more loans. Of course, basically the biggest predictors, how well you can pay back even then and now and how many people you text, how many people you don't text. Like they've, they've, they've hit the Nigerian, they've hit the reality of a low income population which is whatever signal you are optimizing for you, the lack of employment is going to cause them to manufacture that signal in volume which is like oh, they don't text that many people and they never run out of credits. Okay, don't worry, once people figure it out, you're in trouble. They will set up a long con for, for loan. I don't know if I shared this on the podcast. I saw a meme once where some influencer was, was making a video where he said, I want to tell you the secret of rich people in Lagos that you don't know because you are poor. You first of all start by borrowing money from Pompeii. You don't need money, start from Pompeii5001. They now go to. You now go to money point. You collect 10,000, use 5,000 to pay, pump pay and then use the 5,000 to enjoy. Then you go to another place to collect 15,000 because now they know that you can borrow and repay. You now repay back 10,000 basically going down the loop until you declare bankruptcy like 100,000 naira. Then you go back to your village

[Olumide]

again, start all over, start all over again.

[Bankole]

But you write it all the way up, you write it all the way down. Basically getting money, you know, out. Just an example of just tongue in cheek. But what people are using to circumvent this lending, lending, lending startups now not as much anymore. These companies are going wise to that. But the less things have been painful to learn and ask anybody working these companies, they've, they learned it but in a very, very painful way.

[Olumide]

Yeah, I have some thoughts on the different counterparties. So one party is the lending platform for them. The key risk there is just do I have enough trust in my data to give loans and what amount of loans am I willing to give? And then after I've given the initial loan and I have actual data on payback. How much do I trust? That interesting model probably needs to be combined with other monetization aspects like you need the full suite. If an app says you're just going to be a lending app, I don't trust it as much as an app that does a bunch of different things and lending on top of it it from the people getting the loans. Like I said on the episode like again, unless it's for an appreciating asset, almost always a bad idea because the interest rates are so high. If you get it on a depreciating asset, you're probably going to be screwed in the long term. So sort of like gambling but not, not as bad. But overall I think it makes sense. Lending is important especially if used in productive ways. I, I'm just, I, I look at companies that do lending just with a very, very wary eye. I think it can blow up so quickly and it'd be hard for me to trust any of the numbers. In fact if the numbers are increasing a lot and they're saying oh our NPLs, our non performing loans are this, we're growing at this. I look at it even more skeptically because if you're willing to grow so quickly, how much risk are you taking under the hood? So I like, I like it as a monetization way as part of the personal finance os but I'm wary of the risks involved in giving loans to poor people. Fundamentally seems like a bad idea and can be a good idea if done properly but very, very risky. Especially in countries that don't have proper credit bureaus, proper credit data sharing. There's a lot of risks involved but it makes sense.

[Bankole]

Okay, okay. Chipper Cash.

[Olumide]

Chipper Cash from remnants to unicorn. Crazy crazy company. Fastest growing unicorn in Africa. Tech. Yes. They're doing AI now. What's everyone is doing now?

[Bankole]

They had an AI day way before like Chip has been on AI. They do like Identity. They've done a bunch of, they do a bunch of stuff but yeah, I do. Lord, I, I mean you can say what you think because I, I can see your face but you, you already

[Olumide]

know how I feel about it. Every time I think I hear AI, I just think it's all 100% complete bullshit. Not just from Chipper, from all companies. The only companies I trust in AI number one is chatgpt Open AI number two, Google. I don't believe anyone else's AI message. Sorry to every company in the world. I only trust two companies. Everyone else can fuck off.

[Bankole]

So well, well, good for them. They have raised a ton of money, so they seem like they'll be around for a while. They have seen a lot of churn actually at the top levels.

[Olumide]

Unfortunately.

[Bankole]

One of my, one of my pastimes I'm recording this episode is to look at some of the people who have been speaking publicly about the company and see where they are now. I think a good number of their leadership is not there anymore, that they're doing other things, but maybe that's expected in startups. But you also have to think about the economics. Like people are not living open air to do other things, if you know what I mean. Even open the eye to anthropic. They're living, they're living big money for even bigger money, you know, living big meats for even bigger meat. So anyways, that's kind of like where we are. I don't think we're bullish about it then. And not much has changed, frankly. It's just the peer to peer nature of their business and how they define their roadmap, even at the time has not been compelling and definitely has not come to pass.

[Olumide]

Yeah, Chipper Cash, you can learn so much from the story because fastest unicorn in Africa tech history. So they went up very, very quickly and then they went down very quickly, very quickly. So you can learn a lot about what they did initially to grow very, very well, which is amazing. Fundraising availability. They expanded the size of the market, they did great marketing and then unfortunately on the way down when they had to do the layoffs, they had a bunch of difficulties. You can see the cascading effect of growing so quickly, taking all that risk and then as soon as you lose investor sentiments, investor hype, it can unwind just as quickly. So amazing company did a great job. Unclear what the future is for them, especially after they lost some momentum. However they survived, they cut back some countries, they cut back a lot of staff, they've also expanded. So if you use the Chipper Cash app now, it's not just about remittances. You can get a virtual account and get a virtual card, get a dollar card, they even give you some interest. It's basically personal finance. Os you can buy credit for your, your phone number. It has a bunch of things. It started from remittances, but it actually looks quite similar to Cuda bank, which we're going to talk about next. The only thing I'm not sure about is I'm not sure how many people use those other features. Every time I talk to someone, they only Think about Chipper Cash for references but when you look at the app, it offers so much more. So TBD the usage of the other features, they're there. I don't know of the usage like for me, I guess because I have a Nigerian bank account, I have a Nigerian card, I have an American card, I have zero use cases for all that. But I'm a unique customer. I'm not sure how much of the consumer base is using the other features. Which then means how much can they grow beyond remittances now that everyone else is doing that? They started as a major player in a growing market. What do they want to expand and no one is using their expansion features. What does it mean? The core market is now being competed away, is shrinking, they've lost some investor sentiment and no one is using them for the ancillary features. It's a tight position to be in. I mean literally everyone is doing remains. There's so many remittances players that they've even started to categorize across specific quarters like oh for Canada, use the one just for Canada to America, for UK to, to Nigeria. So the market is so big it's actually splintered now to sub functions. So I wish them the best but I'm not sure long term what they need to do to survive. They had roadmap stock trading. They had a bunch of things on their roadmap. So maybe some of those things will re reignite identity services as well.

[Bankole]

Yes, I did the Smile identity type feature based on AI.

[Olumide]

Yes, they announced that two years ago. I don't know how well that's going, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. The problem was SmileID was already so entrenched and that was your core business. I don't know about. I don't know how they would get the pricing to a point where people were willing to take the risk of people offering a service which was outside of their core business. But it looked like, like a smart idea. TBD on the success of that.

[Bankole]

Good luck to them.

[Olumide]

Okay, best of luck to all involved. CUDA Bank 34 I mean I love the company then, I still love the company now, but my love is from. I use it, I like it. It's similar to Chipper Cash in that they had a bunch of momentum, they took a bunch of risk, they started to face some challenges and difficulties, but they have even more difficulties in Chipper Cash because they don't monetize as well. Unfortunately, their core products and the core marketing hype is free, free, free Low cost, free, free, low cost. Which sounds good, but then what does that mean for your own money if you're always advertising as free? So they're now offering things that they can make some money from. They have the savings accounts which they can do arbitrage with the government things. They're going to be doing stock trading which has that. But I don't know if your core thesis is reduced cost for customers, it means your core thesis is reduced revenue for yourself.

[Bankole]

It's almost even that. I was also, I was also an early fan. I'm still a user of CreditBank and one of the. I remember it being like, oh, they have a very nice usable app. Well, everybody does that now and they have these things and like many people do transfers better. Many people do the features as just as good at least and you end up in these like you end up with this. Like the differentiation has gone away and they haven't been able to go upstream. They haven't been able to either continue to differentiate or continue to go different. So all of the things that they do, excuse me, all of the things that they do extremely, very, very well. A lot of things they do well. Other people have come to do those narrow things very well. So if you ask anybody in Lagos now, what do they use for transfers, they'll tell you. OP is one that always goes through even said what they use. What is the best app you hear? Everybody says the app is the best app. It just depends on which one you use because the apps are all pretty good right now. What is easiest to open. Everybody's have their own different stories. So they've almost lost a place in the consumer's mental model. They haven't done enough to compete on that and doesn't appear from using the app that they've been able to build out a strong monetization business on top of that at all. Even though they do have some of those features in the app. But it comes and goes and sometimes it's highlighted, sometimes it's not highlighted. It's not clear how well it's doing, but good luck to them.

[Olumide]

From a purely theoretical perspective, their business idea makes sense. Offer a free checking account and hope that people use that as their primary salary slash settlement account which will have the lowest amount of churn because people are getting their income from it literally and then offer services on top of that that add to the monetization and grow over time. The problem with that is a lot of people just have two or three bank accounts and just use cuda As a second bank account, actually their salary account. So it defeats the purpose of reduced churn. And then the second part of the growth stories, ad features on top of the salary account. But if people don't use those features, they don't actually use it as a salary account. Then you're stuck. You don't have the reduced churn. They're just using it to reduce the fees. They're not using the new features. They're basically just using you to get like as low cost as possible, which means you're getting little revenue. They can still churn because they have multiple bank accounts. Your competitors are not offering the same thing. So they're in a tight situation. I still love them, but it's unclear to me what are they going to offer that's going to make people use a product more. So let's say hypothetically they started to do remittances. Now they don't because remittances come from the other way around. But the problem is still, even if they did, why would you use it? Because I have like six or seven apps which would probably do it better, faster, cheaper, easier. Okay, let's say they started to do crypto. I could use it for crypto. Crypto has higher margins. But the fact that competitors have been doing crypto for so long, something doing two years, three years already have reduced costs. Why would I switch to it? Maybe I would if they made the cost super low. If they make the cost super lower. Back to square one again, you've reduced all the margins. You can't keep on taking margin out of all your products. Eventually you need to make money somewhere. The highest potential is lending, which I've seen they've been sort of dabbling in and out of. But it's unclear to me how much do they have the right employees and structure to do the risk analysis in such a way that actually makes sense. Lending only makes sense if you assess the risk properly. If you don't, then lending is actually worse. Counterintuitive. Like the whole point is to not blow up. So fingers crossed. I always done the best of luck, but God knows how well they're going to do. 35 multi choice. Your favorite entertainment. Second one after our friends.

[Bankole]

I think my, my main takeaway from here is still the same now is I think the Internet is eating up this business. And I saw recently multichoice subscribers is declining across the world because the prices keep going up, because the price of the license keep going up and they keep losing people to the Internet and the Internet services. Either free or paid or vpn. And a VPN free or VPN paid. But they end up trying to over monetize the people that they have. So they keep raising prices to make up for the growth which accelerates that decline. So just in like a weird knowing situation for, for like pay TV in Africa in general, like what is the future? I think it does not feel like a growth business. The Internet is really its entire business model.

[Olumide]

The future is they're looking to sell to canal produce for $3 billion. So the future is sell and take your money elsewhere.

[Bankole]

Yeah, they've been looking for a while but yeah, it's probably driving a hard bargain because you know, it's like just wait. The price keeps reducing. Do you understand? It's like an investment. It's basically like a, like a bond they are buying because nobody. There's no other buyers, bro. So either you sell me now for the price I want or we can do this this year or in two years. I'll still be here. So yeah, that's, that's not a Multi

[Olumide]

choice but it has some similarities to MCN in that a South African foundational company spreading its tentacles the rest of Africa and then using that South African basis to see what else they can do in other markets. Because South Africa is already a big market. It already has high willingness to pay. The rest of Africa has a lower willingness to pay. So how do you adjust the products in those markets to still make enough money as per your, your home country? MTN was the most successful because MCN now makes more money from Nigeria than South Africa. But Multi Choice not as much. They make way less money from other markets. So we'll see. Maybe the, if the acquisition does happen it's not even going to be like oh, there's a tech exits, we've made money. Multi Choice is just like, like a large freaking company and it's not going to be felt in the ecosystem. I'm curious to understand Canal Plus's strategy here. They're thinking we want an international diversification growth but I don't know if Multi Choice is going to get them. That will give them entry to the African market. So we shall see how that goes. Helium Health 36 back to health care.

[Bankole]

Yeah, back to health care. Elmworth is a pretty fascinating company. When we talked about it, I actually haven't heard a lot about them since they've been on the download talk about it. They've been on the down low. But just for context, Inland Health started off as a ehr, Electronic healthcare records Type company. Yes, they help a lot of companies. They had raised $12 million when we talked about them and helping companies store and keep this electronic data because historically in many African hospitals, a lot of the patient records were kept on paper. And which is like a strange thing even at the time when we recorded this podcast as well.

[Olumide]

Yeah, it's such an important company. They're doing ehr, like Bancoli said. Ehr, AKA emr. Electronic Medical Records, Electronic Health Records. Basically digitize the whole system, reduce the need for paper, increase efficiency, and then hopefully with the amounts of time and money you were spending keeping paper documents now being digital, you can use that for something else. It makes a bunch of sense, especially because it's like it's one of those things that it's just so obvious. Everyone needs it, everyone wants it. They seem to be doing okay. Like we said, no one has heard from them as a while. Strangely enough, the 23andMe CEO was one of the investors. And now like 23andMe filed for bankruptcy. They're going through their own shit. They're not that connected because it wasn't. The company didn't. But it wasn't 23andMe was 23andMe CEO. I just thought that was an interesting connection there. One thing I learned from the episode was just ability to solve an a quote, unquote obvious problem. No one wants to use paper. They're just doing that because they're used to it. And then just using that to grow. They now have a bunch of different things. I think they were even giving some financial assistance and all these things to the companies. And the founders seem dedicated. They were able to raise a lot of money. Let's see how it goes for them.

[Bankole]

Okay.

[Olumide]

This was the first of like four different quadrilogy episodes. Next was M Pharma, which is like a pharmaceutical supply supply chain company trying to solve drug distribution. So basically decentralized procurements and supply chain in a platform that they offer to pharmacies. So pharmacies can get their drugs faster and easier and quicker.

[Bankole]

Yeah. And I did like this because I do like the informal story. Two things. One, the founder, Jody found the founder is very outspoken about what he believes. And whether you agree or not, which is good. I think founders being visible is good for the ecosystem. The second is more the transition to also like physical outlets. They've gone to actually have physical. Which is very rare for companies outside of having like a tech startup angle.

[Olumide]

Correct. They built their own pharmacies, actual pharmacies,

[Bankole]

acquired some pharmacies as well, so. So they've been managing that through the pharmacies and doing primary care to the pharmacies as well. So pretty strong story of starting from a strong base and using that to expand to I guess then business businesses around them.

[Olumide]

Yeah. It's because it's also so different. They were offering a platform that enabled pharmacies better, faster get their drugs, but now they're offering their own pharmacy. So in a way it's sort of competitive. But I guess you could say the bigger, the bigger picture is whether it's competitive or not. It doesn't matter because more people have more access to drugs.

[Bankole]

Yeah.

[Olumide]

And they give. If you look at some of the interviews, why did they decide to build their own pharmacy? They're like, well, we're in a developing country, we're in Africa. We actually need this. You can't just do. And that's been like a recurring theme across affability episodes. Asset Light versus Asset Heavy, which you need to do as it seems easy, obvious to Asset Light. Unfortunately in some circumstances it may not make sense. Then if you're going to do Asset Heavy in those quote unquote circumstances, what does that do to your margin profile, your story to investors, and what's the rationale for doing it? How long is it going to last? Are you going to do Asset Light in every market? And then what does it mean? Is there some middle ground somewhere where you do it? In some. It's just a complicated piece. And Pharma started Asset Light, started to build their own pharmacies and they felt it was something they needed to do. I'm just curious to see how that continues to evolve based on the specific company, the specific sector and how they think about that. I don't think there's a right answer. It's just what story do you tell and what is the rationale for doing and how long is it going to last? I love that whole piece.

[Bankole]

Okay.

[Olumide]

Is such a funny one.

[Bankole]

I think it's the first company that we talked about that went out of business.

[Olumide]

Correct.

[Bankole]

They had a strong thesis on adding African genomic data to the kind of like to the global research ecosystem. And that's 1 and 2. They had like a really big boost from COVID and doing Covid tests.

[Olumide]

Yes.

[Bankole]

But it did not see for some reason did not seem to be enough to keep them viable. There are all kinds of rumors I'm not going to repeat there. Repeat here. You can look up why 25th forging

[Olumide]

shut down comedy hour. Feel free to if you want to.

[Bankole]

No Not a chance. But I think it was a great company with great ideas. Really came Clutch during COVID I think the story was they had already had some of the equipment required for COVID testing as part of their regular course of business. They were one of the first companies to be able to spin out COVID testing. And I remember going to their office in Lagos for Covid tests in Lagos as well because they also had like a really quick turnaround but that wasn't enough to save them, despite how much it cost for the stupid Covid tested, unfortunately.

[Olumide]

But yeah, yeah, I mean, like you said, the business model sort of makes sense. Right? We're trying to use technology to boost diversity of genetic data sets to improve diagnostics. All that makes sense. Unfortunately, it seemed they had some business model misalignments. The shift to Covid made them dependent on COVID testing revenue. It seemed they had some issues with the burn rate and cost structure which seemed a little bit out of whack considering the revenues were lumpy. And the revenues should have been dependent on partnership revenues which are very, very long term in nature. But the COVID revenue made them seem like, oh, we get revenue now. But Covid went to zero. And yet eventually they went through a bunch of problems and layoffs. The company basically shut down. It's unfortunate. The high level idea sort of made sense. Yeah, It's a bit understandable. It's a bit sad. They had a mismatch of the revenue expectations and the actual actual growth of the company. Yeah. The first affability company we spoke actually went literally to zero. Like they've officially shut down.

[Bankole]

Yeah, yeah.

[Olumide]

It looks like the founder is doing something related now. In fact. Related. He's basically doing the exact same thing in terms of the diverse data sets. But I haven't heard a lot about his new company. Let's see how that goes. It's an important problem to solve. Someone needs to do it.

[Bankole]

So it'll be a bit tough. Tough pitch. Imagine you're back at the same VCs. Be like, hi, it's me again. Like, isn't it the same deck? Yeah, but different templates. Duh. That company was a different color. It's a different color.

[Olumide]

Shout out. This is BCG Green, not McKenzie. Big difference.

[Bankole]

All right.

[Olumide]

Okay. Providing micro insurance to underdeveloped markets to enable people get insurance and bite sized markets. It makes sense. Health insurance for low income people by offering them bite size insurance. Why not?

[Bankole]

Yeah, good for them.

[Olumide]

For me it just, it makes sense. It's business model innovation. Unclear how Big the market can be, but it makes sense during different markets. I like the fundamental idea of offering people things that they can afford in a way that makes sense to them, especially for insurance. I'm just unclear about how big the market can be because. How do I say this in a nice way? Okay. Because to me it just seems, seems as though there's only a certain amount of people they're willing to pay regardless of how you package it. Some people just don't care. So. So which means let's put, let's put, let's do some contrast. Contrast is to tick tock. Okay. Bad contrast. But tick tock. People want it, they're addicted to it. They can scroll forever. This is sort of like it's insurance. People just see it as a burden. So unclear to me how big the market can be. But fundamentally I like the story of someone in a richer developed market.

[Bankole]

Yeah.

[Olumide]

Finding a way to make a difference in lower income developing markets and trying to make a difference in a way that people can actually feel it in terms of health insurance. So high level. I like it. The actual operations. I'm not sure what's going to happen in the long term. It's a harder business than it looks from the outside.

[Bankole]

It is a definitely difficult business. But we got to talk about my favorite company, one of my favorite company of them all. Fari Go.

[Olumide]

Let's go. Fari what would it be?

[Bankole]

Yeah. Fari Payment service provider Payments Method In Egypt they've decided to build out to build out a consumer business as well from payment processing. They went public and at the time we're talking about, about them, they were doing, they were going gangbusters like it was basically like a success story for tech and they were listed in the, on the Egyptian stock market at the time. I should actually check the valuation as you actually even check the evaluation right now.

[Olumide]

Yeah. At some point it was like 2 billion, then 1 billion. Unfortunately it went down to like 800, 600 million. So they've had some challenges in terms of stock price but their impact is undeniable on the market.

[Bankole]

Yeah, I think we're at $1.9 billion now.

[Olumide]

1.9. Oh wow. Up and down.

[Bankole]

But that was four years ago. Right.

[Olumide]

So.

[Bankole]

So it's to be. It was 2 billion when we recorded this in 2021, October 2021.

[Olumide]

And it's still like so it's flat in four years. So to me the Fowlery story is similar to the BCASH story. You can see a linear impact like line to line. This company came in and they digitized and made payments and transfers easier for everyone in ecosystems. I love that they now have a bunch of competitors, especially on the B2B fintech side, payments platform side. So Fowry started off as consumer to consumer transfers which is more like PayPal and completely different to Stripe. Stripe is much more about payment processing on the back end for B2B's. So far we started much more on the PayPal side. But that payments platform side is also massive and potentially bigger than the consumer side because you can charge more, you can scale more. So unclear to me what they're going to do on the payments infra side because that's a bigger market. I didn't have a bunch of competitors there. But far is just an amazing story. They're a little bit old school, a little bit slow, slower, not really a startup, a little bit stodgy but it's important to have them in the ecosystem. I still think there's a huge market that can be made on the payment platform side. Across the. Across the markets is bigger than what can be done on the consumer side. So shout out to fari importance. Yeah, but still a lot of opening for startups. They don't have the same negative impact on the market that IMPESA has in Kenya.

[Bankole]

Yeah, and it's not perceived in the same way.

[Olumide]

Exactly. Not perceived. As I say, perception is reality. Perception becomes reality if you believe it deeply. Simply enough. Safe Boda Transportation Bike Bike transportation company Motorbike hailing apps. You already know about that.

[Bankole]

It's funny because hardest business in the world. Business in Africa is hard. Like I remember when this was happening, we're like oh Safe Buddha has an alternative market entry approach by going to tier two markets. But like tier one or tier two, tier five, it doesn't matter. Anywhere you are, Nigeria will happen to you.

[Olumide]

How easier a poor poor market man, that's hard to understand. It means you're going to a poorer market.

[Bankole]

They said oh no, no. Because it's poorer more people take bikes. So there ends up being a higher percentage of their wallet. The things that smart people can tell themselves. Anyways, anyways, you know it's like that Lakers in 5 meme. It doesn't matter

[Olumide]

yo, that's NBA

[Bankole]

CS 75. Anyways, that was that about Safeport. Just tough business. They expanded and they had to like pull back. We're spending too much money relative to how much they were bringing in and it continues to be a struggling. Continues to be a tough business to operate in.

[Olumide]

Yeah. Motorbike hailing Platforms are difficult, they're hard. I wish them success. Unfortunately for safe bodies just they started in Kenya, smaller market, they tried to do some expansion to bigger markets. Expansion didn't work out. The margin structure you'd expect could be higher if they're a pure platform. Unfortunately, sometimes they buy the bikes which messes up the margin profile. So I just don't know. I don't know. Let's see how it goes. I'm not optimistic about it. Definitely not something I'd be interested in personally and ever investing in. But it's important for the ecosystem, I think. I don't know. Personally, I think bus transportation is much more important for the general population than bike transportation. I just, I just don't care. So wish them all the best of luck. Andela42 shout out to team Andela. I can't believe it was episode 42. It should have been like episode one or two but we delayed it. We delayed it. I just, I really loved listening to this episode. Okay, okay. Actually first of all, shout out to Andela. What is Endela? It's a. It's a platform that connects workers, employees to companies who want workers specifically. They started with software engineers, technical talents in developing countries. So they connect technical talents in developing countries like Africa, Nigeria to employers in developed countries like Europe and America. And then they help them get lower costs, lower salaried employees that can still do the same job better or so. I love listening to it. It was funny. And they've been through a bunch a lot. They're like the. For a long time they were the poster child for Africa Tech. It seemed as though they're some sort of stable equilibrium now. But they've been through a lot, up and down. Especially after Covid.

[Bankole]

Yeah. And then they're now, they're now in a very different position. New leadership also like focused on like a much more senior, senior talent pool.

[Olumide]

Yeah.

[Bankole]

So it's a different kind of business I think instead of being like a, let's call it public benefit business, like, oh, we're going to take a bunch of young people, take a young people, a bunch of young people and educate them and make them employable. But that was not a sustainable, financially sustainable business for them. So they've changed that quite a lot.

[Olumide]

Okay, so that's Bancole's response on a serious note or unless serious though. Unless it's episode 42. So funny. My favorite part. First 30 seconds of the episode. So we had another co host. So we had E. Okay, so E. Founder. Founder Bandella. Founder of Photo Wave. So the episode starts.

[Bankole]

Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead.

[Olumide]

So the episode says, this is such a funny lie. Valkylie says, my birthday today. I said. I said, oh, my God, it's unbelievable. We're recording on your birthday. He says, wow, Valkoli, do you have a girlfriend who sanctioned this? I have a wife. She's not pleased about this. He says, well, tell her sorry, I don't mention my name.

[Bankole]

I remember that. I remember that. That was a bit challenging.

[Olumide]

It's the funniest, some of the funniest exchange in Africa building history. Tell her sorry and don't mention my name. Oh, bruv, that's a classic, classic episode. On a more serious note, first of all, I love that part. It makes me laugh so much. But a more serious note, pivoting from younger engineers to lower engineers, big deal for the company. Pivoting from much more Africa centric. Now they're much more just doing global match, right? Big deal for the company. They've had so many leadership changes over time. But it's just, if you listen to our episode, I'm not going to speak. Let's just say there's one person that remains there permanently in the background, running. So it's actually, it looks like they've had leadership and stability. We've actually had one leader the entire, like the same founding. I'm not gonna spoil it, but it's actually an unbelievable story of like just longevity and riding the waves of him and constantly changing executives able to raise money, pull the rabbit out of the hat, change the business model. This doesn't work. It's actually incredible the way they've survived because their business is extremely hard. The founders, most of them were in New York for a bunch of the, the time they made it happen. And it's just, it's one of the most unbelievable story stories in Africa tech. On one hand, Andela had depend on who you believe, between four and seven founders, let's just say six. So first of all, that's hilarious. Second of all, Andela is actually a combination of existing businesses. So he had a different business that he combined with this business. And just the fact they've survived for so long. They had like the Mark Zuckerberg hype moments. They had the moments where they had a bunch of lost revenue. They're still here, man. They've survived. They're doing their thing. They have one person behind the scenes. It's a great episode. I love it. Listen to it. There's a lot we can all learn from Mandela and shout out to them for surviving after all the pivots.

[Bankole]

Yeah. We also did an episode right after this, about 2022, I hope for 2022. So it was like a. One of the first ones we had with Justin from the Flip and Samora karaoke, who now has a great podcast and shout out as well.

[Olumide]

So listen to Samora's podcast.

[Bankole]

You should definitely check. Check that out.

[Olumide]

Yeah. So in this case we don't need to talk about that episode because that was also your end of year roundup episode. It was fun talking about it. It was particularly good having more people. Later on we'd extended to have even five people, but at that point it was Samora and Justin Norman, 44 Patel, Shammy again second.

[Bankole]

That was fun. Yeah. I think, I think one thing I take on this episode is, is through the eyes of Shami, who's a Bangladeshi woman, understanding that like how. What kind. How important Pata was in like a somewhat conservative system that allowed women to get by, get around and get by exactly kind of safely. Was it differentiated or anyway, that I was not able to appreciate in Nigerian context. So the balance of Patawin in Bangladesh is definitely very different from. Say something about like in Nigeria as well.

[Olumide]

Yeah. It's also a legendary episode because it's the most. Well, apart from this episode. Right. It's the longest affability episode ever. It's 2 hours 51 minutes. I think this episode is going to be almost 4 hours. But before we recorded this was the longest ever. And I loved it because it just shows the interdependency of markets. The Patel story, which is a bike ride sharing story, influence other bike sharing apps in other countries. So you can do like a linear progression to compare. Did this in this market. Pat thought it was important. Did this in this market. The same Patau founder went to another market and did this. So it's all just. It's all just connected. So. But specifically the connection is the founder of Patau, the Bangladeshi person, went to Nigeria to start kata. But if you ask him, the Patow idea also came from Gojek, which is in Indonesia. So Gojek birthed Patau, which birthed Gokata. I love that interconnectedness. Because what better way to start faster and grow faster than seeing what's already worked in similar markets? Why not? Why should you start from scratch if it's similar enough?

[Bankole]

Exactly. Okay.

[Olumide]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, at the time we spoke about it, I said it was a show now. They filed for bankruptcy, ended up being a complete show. They just had A lot of problems. As soon as I, I tried to test the app, the app didn't work. I just remember being shocked, like, how is this, how is this even possible? I tried another phone, it didn't work. On the second phone I tried a vp. I was in Nigeria, so I didn't need to use a vpn, but I use a VPN and two phones. The app wasn't working when we recorded. That's what could be a worse signal than that. Also, the business model was facing challenges. Just the Nigerian government doesn't like bike sharing apps so was banned. So they pivoted from bike transportation to food delivery using the same bikes. Problem with food delivery is completely different business model. So it's just they went through a lot of stuff. Very, very challenging.

[Bankole]

Tight margin.

[Olumide]

Yeah, they bought the bikes, which means they had the capital, like the costs are on their books. Yeah, a bunch of challenges. They filed for bankruptcy now, so they probably don't have long to go. They tried, unfortunately, didn't work out.

[Bankole]

Yeah. Max Africa 46.

[Olumide]

Yes. So what do they even do? The same thing, right?

[Bankole]

The same thing, yeah. So they're basically like a motorbike delivery. They focus on the B2B part.

[Olumide]

So why are they doing better than Gokada? Seems like they should be in the same shit. For all we know they could be. They could be just as bad. No one knows.

[Bankole]

That's why the next podcast I'm going to do is going to be public companies only. So that you can lie to me at least. Like I say, it's based on the lies versus based on the pr.

[Olumide]

Yeah, Max is focused more on like business delivery services, which is a little bit different than like consumer delivery business. Also Max was in the market for longer. They didn't have to pivot. The worst thing about Max is they had rent to own model for the bikes, which means they were also putting the bikes on their books. I don't know. The story for Max is still to be told. They're in a very similar situation to go kata. The only difference is they have bigger, more well funded consumer customers, business customers that could potentially pay for transportation. But I'm not sure if that makes it any better in the long term, but at least they're in a different sector. So.

[Bankole]

Okay. Vodacom.

[Olumide]

Oh my God, telcos. I love telcos. And the Vodacom story is just, to me it's unbelievable because we did MCN so long ago, but Vodacom and MTN together formed the nexus of like telcos in South Africa also We're telling the story. When we told the story of Safaricom we had to tell the story of Safaricom is partially owned by Vodacom and Vodacom is partially owned by Vodafone. So we already told a little bit of the story but now we went deep into it. So shout out to telcos comfort doing their thing. They have a little bit of. I mean they have some challenges that are unique in that they haven't had a successful international expansion outside of South Africa compared to mtn but no one has so they're not in as good as position mcn. But luckily for them South Africa is a massive market and because of the Safaricom connection that alone is almost like do you really need to expand? Like if you, if you own Safaricom in Kenya and you own mpesa, why do you care about other markets?

[Bankole]

Yeah, there's a web of ownership that is interesting if you want to nerd out on the stuff that to you can ask chargeability to create a web of ownership in Vodacon, Vodafone and a bunch of other telcos. Telcom as well. You, you would be. I think it's more like what is the beneficial relationship they have to many African countries and you can make money from something without operating there so to speak.

[Olumide]

Hell yeah.

[Bankole]

Anyways, that's, that's Vodacom.

[Olumide]

Shout out to Vodacom.

[Bankole]

Very strong, strong business.

[Olumide]

Okay, so 48 Telcom. I mean this to me is the is it's a legendary company for all the wrong reasons. At the time I said it, I'll say it again. The worst company we've ever spoken about on affability. I'm not the worst. I mean technically they haven't gone bankrupt. So you can say the worst is is 54 gene, you can see you could actually also say the worst is Kolkata. Those companies are. One is out of business, the other one is bankruptcy. But actually they're the worst. Why? Because if you look at the potential they had when they started I knew if you look at the industry they're in they shouldn't be the worst. But they're the worst for all reasons. Like in their home country they're either third or fourth in market share because of the government nature of it. Oh I forgot to mention their telecom. They came from like a legacy government run one. So they run inefficiently. If you look at their margins are low. They don't have any prospects outside of South Africa. If you look at their market share over time it's been declining. If you look at their switch to data. It's on for. I mean, mean it's so bad that there've been a lot of rumors about MTN buying them, Vodacom buying them. Terrible company. But fundamentally they're doing something important. They're offering telco services. They've survived I guess and yeah, it's just, it's fascinating to look at my notes of it just 90 negative bear case. Wow.

[Bankole]

I think they were, they, they're sort of caught in the middle a little bit in South Africa. So they're. Yeah, well. Cause in the middle is a bit of a compliment I think it's like they're caught at the bottom and they end up fighting a price war that they're not able to find fight. Unfortunately for Telcom.

[Olumide]

Yeah, the capital nature of telcos is that you need money to invest to make the towers better but if you don't have enough money your towers get worse which means your cell phone reception gets worse. If it gets worse you can't get customers which means you don't have money. So you're caught in a vicious cycle and the way out of the cycle is what other services can we offer? They don't offer any other services of any known. Okay, what other markets could we expand to? They're not in any other market so they have no international expansion, they have no feature differentiation. They're losing customers. Meanwhile the cost to increase the tower strength is going up over time. Basically screwed. Wish them the best of luck. Don't. Don't call me. Email bank call instead episode 49 globalcom

[Bankole]

customer expectations that keep, keep going up. Globalcom is a bit honestly in the same situation.

[Olumide]

The difference is Global Comm is in a bigger market

[Bankole]

but if you look up, yeah, you know that's, you're hesitating

[Olumide]

now Nigeria is 5x bigger 3 to South Africa.

[Bankole]

Not on the size. I've said the size does not matter. The higher they are, the harder they follow of 2020 it's like we are seeing aside from a higher base it's like yeah, you can fall very low in a very competitive market. So if you look at the changes in market share, for example Nigerian telcos I think Globalcom 9Mobile have seen a precipitous drop especially some of the regulation in Nigeria. Nigeria's telco market is pretty tough in many telco markets in, in, in the world, I think in the developing world at least you need government permission to change prices. In Nigeria you need government permission to change prices prices. Unfortunately I think Nigeria hasn't has Done only one price change in the last decade or in a long time. I think India has done five. Right. Even without Joe. So he allows the telcos to honestly make some more money. But the, the telcos in Nigeria are not able to do how that flexibility. Which is why over the last two, three years, if you're in Nigeria, you know this, the quality has just kind of gone because it's like if you can't make any money and nobody's going to make phone call, so they couldn't raise prices, so they just left it

[Olumide]

like a lot of water for that.

[Bankole]

So people be like, oh, why is, why is Airtel not going through? Hey, how much are you paying? You're paying the same amount. You didn't remove inflation removed paying the same amount. A tightly regulated product. People don't realize how much it is. Tightly regulated.

[Olumide]

It's so funny because in a lot of countries the government will say we need to regulate the pricing so telcos don't underprice. So it's hilarious that like you have, you have problems on both ways. Like because you're like, what do you mean underpriced, that's lower cost for the consumer. Of course you want them to underprice. They're like, no, no. If one telco underprices so much, everyone else goes out of business. They form a monopoly. So government is trying to protect underpricing and overpricing. It's basically an impossible problem to solve. How can you, how do you, how do you corner both markets? Either it's like, think about it theoretically, Economic Principle 101. How can you cover both sides of the spectrum? Cover Undercutting and overclocking basically means the government is setting the pricing, which means the market is much more difficult for all the participants. So I don't blame glow. I still love the founding story of like a leader in another sector with a lot of money. I'm a billionaire now. Let me try to make one national telco in my country Nigeria, that's won by Nigeria, and go against mtn, which is South Africa, and go against Airtel, which is Indian. But you're right, they're going to have a lot of challenges. Luckily for them, they're handling the transition to data pricing better than telecom, which means they're in a way better situation. Also because they're run by a billionaire, they have way more opportunities to try new things than telecom does. So they're not even like they're, they're

[Bankole]

doing way better than they're, they're privately

[Olumide]

held they're privately held. Yes. So correct.

[Bankole]

So only between them and God giving them money and their subscribers.

[Olumide]

Yo, that's a good segue point. Episode 50 Wave. Shout out to Wave Wave. This episode got so many downloads. It was one of our biggest. Was one of our most downloaded episodes.

[Bankole]

Yeah, great. At the time of release.

[Olumide]

At the time of release. So Wave, they're doing mobile money, AKA consumer to consumer ribbons. And they were founded by the same people who found sendwave after the exit. And they're particularly notable because they made a massive impact on francophone countries, most notably Senegal and how they reduced the prices there. Went against all range and seem to be making a lot of initial progress. So great story. Interesting disruptive business model. Even though if you ask me, a lot of it is just reducing the costs. I don't know, disruptive business model sounds super fancy, but it has lower costs and way simpler ux. So great story. I like the fact that even after the founders became rich from their Send Wave money, they still decided to continue to live in Africa and build another product for Africans. That touches my heart a lot. It makes me just think like, just unbelievable. You're not even from the country. You already, you've done, you've done what you need to do. It's unbelievable. My heart goes out to the founders. It's such a touching story. You're already rich. Go back to your own country and enjoy it. No, they're building another product now. Of course they're not, they're not putting all their wealth into Wave, but the point still remains that like, they didn't have to do that. So it touches my heart a lot that they're, they're doing something. Also francophone Africa hasn't gotten a lot of love and because of the way Orange has, you know, basically a monopoly, their prices have been out of whack. So I love the fact they're also doing it in a country in a region where people need it the most. Shout out to Wave.

[Bankole]

Yeah, I like, I like, I like the founder story. They seem to be like pretty down to earth and taking our money and doubling up, doubling, doubling down on Africa. And then they raised the $200 million that everybody was like, oh no, what is this company in Senegal? So, so I like them. They just raised the money once and they went back to building. No more meeting, no more podcast. They raised it once. They told everybody that if you want to come, you can come. They went. No, they went public with the money. So they know. So they tell. Cause even know how much we have. That's why. That's how you go to battles. You'll be like, I hope you know that t gave us 200 million. So if you don't have 200 million, we have like, we have 60 employees, we have $200 million. So if you have that money to spend, let's go. If you don't have that money to spare, and just be careful because we are Silicon Valley. We're going to build this whole thing up. So that's. I. I love. I love that way of doing business. Just come after them, Come after them. I loved it.

[Olumide]

The story is still evolving because it had such an impact on Orange. That Orange completely, like, they. They changed their margin structure, which is a fancy way of saying they reduced their prices. They've updated their software to be easier to use, better to use. Shout out to see what wave does it say. Especially because Senegal is so small. Francophone Africa, even collectively, still not that big. I'm curious to see their product future expansion and their international expansion. What do they do there? Do they want to go deeper in Francophone Africa or do they want to go outside Franco in Africa? If I were betting, man, I'd probably say just say just deeper, because the products they offer already have a lot of competitors outside Francophone Africa, so they're probably just going to offer more and more features over time. My. My eyes will be on that.

[Bankole]

GG classifies gg. I love Gigi. It seems like even what I think. I sent out the transcript for this episode recently and, oh, yeah, it's like a purely. It's still like a strong Ukrainian company. Look up all the people on LinkedIn. They're all like, in Ukraine and I'm like, get it? They just built this business and they're chugging along making how much they're going to make in Africa tech. I love it for them. Good luck.

[Olumide]

Yeah, it's. It's online classified space. And yeah, they've survived everything. They're still there. The great thing about this business, which I learned is you don't need that much. You don't need a lot of starting capital. You can just start. The problem is, because you're a marketplace, how do you get the flywheel in place? Buying side and the selling side. But they did it. They're still sort of surviving. Let's see how they. I mean, you can already see we're talking about episode 51. Right. Survivorship, for me is so important. It shows that the company is able to withstand shocks and to me, increases the probability that they will eventually have success. If you are alive long enough, eventually you'll succeed. Shout out to, I think from Charlie Munger, like someone asked him, how can you get rich? Just stay, stay alive long enough. If you're, if you're alive, log it off like me. You'll be rich. And then who else? Warren Buffett. I saw a study that 90 something percent of his net worth was after 45 or after 51 or some crazy like that. A lot of the compounding comes at the end, obviously, because off a different base. So regardless of how you put it, survive, survive, survive. 52 OLX Similar, right? Global classified. These guys actually went out of business.

[Bankole]

Yeah. But also, honestly, I think that I don't know if history will be kind to Dick Van Dyke and the guys at Naspers because they put a lot of money into a lot of questionable businesses. But sometimes having a lot of money is kind of like a curse because they did the food stuff and they did OLX and they had this really big thesis about consolidating this across markets as OLX everywhere. They didn't seem to be able to turn that into like a big enough business, unfortunately. Anyway, it was pretty sad.

[Olumide]

Yeah, this was one of the episodes that like we did full cycle founding growth, acquisition, consolidation and then exit. I think we also did it for Conga. It's funny because Conga is the next episode. Intriguing.

[Bankole]

Yeah.

[Olumide]

Funny to see how with hindsight bias, it's very easy for us to be like this wasn't going to work. But at the time, I don't know what the feeling was at the time. But just looking at it with the benefit of hindsight bags, it's just like everything was shut down. Strangely, Gigi is still working, so the business can sort of work. But if I remember from these two episodes, 51 and 52, Gigi always had number one, way lower cost base and then number two, they were just always bigger right from the jump.

[Bankole]

It's not so much you can't work, it can't feed the corporate at Naspers.

[Olumide]

Exactly.

[Bankole]

Work is relative. You got to feed the people that are wanting to eats there and it can't feed them.

[Olumide]

Right, right, right. If GG can run completely lean with X number of employees and wellx needs to run with 5x the same number of employees, it's not going to work out. Conga E Commerce you spoke about, you already shitted on E Commerce. What's there to see? Conga. I mean they started.

[Bankole]

Honestly, it was a. It was, it was. If you look at it at the time, it was just a fantastic story. Fantastic. Very qualified founder. But just, you know, Nigeria happens to be people, man. Nigeria happens to the best of us. And that's probably the simplest way to describe the Conga story. It's just a tough place to do business. And with E Commerce, it was just tough. They did not have the capital that the others had and obviously capital didn't even matter in the end. Comes for all of us is a question of when.

[Olumide]

I can remember this episode very. I guess because we're now on 53. My memories are becoming sharper and sharp. I remember recording for this episode and I was shocked by how much positive sentiments there wasn't. Conga. I don't remember that way. So shout out for the audience. But Conga E Commerce player in Nigeria was really popular around 2012, 2013, 2014. That was the hike of their popularity and they were primarily going against Jumia. And it's E Commerce in the exact way you would think about Amazon. A person goes on an app and orders some shit. The shit is delivered to them and then they pay. Unfortunately, the early momentum just fizzled away. The growth. The numbers didn't work out. They had a bunch of resets, laid a bunch of people off. Eventually everything was just completely basically shut down. I mean, I guess technically it's still in some zombie format right now, but that's owned by another company and they're using it just as a shell. I don't know anyone that uses it or what their revenue is. So think about it as not existing even though it's on the Internet. It exists on the Internet, but not in any. Any form that's usable by anyone. So unfortunate story. But I guess back what you're saying, the market is difficult. The founder tried his best, unfortunately was too early and it didn't work out. It's just. It's sad that this is another example of investors seeing a negative outcome and leaving because I think Conga was also invested by Naspers, right?

[Bankole]

Yeah.

[Olumide]

Naspers Swivel is.

[Bankole]

Yeah, yeah. Swivel is the. The king of them.

[Olumide]

99 capital loss. Okay.

[Bankole]

I can't even believe I was really bullish about civil or they just. They circle the drain so aggressively.

[Olumide]

The real winners in the Swivel story is the companies they acquired. On the way up. You see some acquisitions. Swivel bought this company 300 million. Super bought a company for 300 million. Swizzle is worth like 25 million. How did that happen in a year and a half?

[Bankole]

Imagine you buying a company that's what you have to ask. What kind of debt?

[Olumide]

I don't know. That's a good question. I don't remember. I don't remember. I do remember.

[Bankole]

Go ahead.

[Olumide]

They did a lot of. Basically they had a semi roll up strategy. Towards the end they acquired like almost four or five companies to do I think international expansion.

[Bankole]

Yeah. And I remember I'm looking at my notes. They. I was looking at the competition. Halan was a competition by MNT Halan. Those one went a different direction with their own acquisition. Everyone said we should do bus sharing. Double down. You know, you pick, you know I had two roads. Unfortunately they had a, they had a sales pitch. A compelling product that adjusts to the cultural behavior of a city.

[Olumide]

Anyways, bus transportation I think is very important. Unfortunately this wasn't the company to make it happen. I like the idea of it. I like the way they pitched it. They had a great grocery store. I think somewhere along the lines the expectation of growth and the reality of the numbers just didn't match. And man, the decline was swift and vicious. I remember I was tracking it because since they went public you can actually track the pricing on a daily basis. I think it was around a billion 900 million 800, 700, 600, 500. At some point it was basically zero. The app I was using just rounded it like zero. Just I had to use another app. It's unfortunate, sad.

[Bankole]

It's like Bird. Like Bird the cycle, the bicycle company.

[Olumide]

Yeah.

[Bankole]

How much is Bird worth? But like what do you want to know, man?

[Olumide]

So zero. And also they have a couple of bikes as a result of a spec. So they're not categorizing the SPAC disaster of 2002. 2003. Unfortunate. But hey, I still, I like the idea it didn't work out, but fingers crossed. Apollo Agriculture Episode 55 empowering smallholder farmers with Technology to help them grow Great idea.

[Bankole]

Raised a lot of money. I actually haven't seen any news about them recently. Yeah, I don't even know how well they're doing right now.

[Olumide]

Tbd. They're part of the same agri tech companies that we help farmers with money, AKA financing. We help them with tools, we help them with better fertilizers and then also if they need any educational learnings and access off markets, they did raise a lot of money, which means they have a lot of room to grow. They had a lot of extra momentum, a lot of good momentum. But let's see how it goes in the long term. I'm curious to actually see I wish I had more visibility to these companies. What's happening in between rounds? If you only see a snapshot between rounds, you may have a completely misjudged view of it. They were in Kenya, I remember, which is a biggish market. So.

[Bankole]

Cbd. Yeah.

[Olumide]

Thrive at Greek crowdfunding. I mean, it started off more on

[Bankole]

the Thriver Greek driver. Greek is what? I don't know if responding to what I said.

[Olumide]

Yeah, no, I'm talking about it started more on the crowdfunding piece.

[Bankole]

Oh, raise some money and then do that.

[Olumide]

Exactly, exactly. But eventually it metamorphed into basically very similar to Apollo Agriculture. But I never liked the crowdfunding part of it. But I like the Enable smallholder farmers do what they need to. I think the big difference is tavigreek raise way less money than Apollo and they're focused more on Nigeria. So that's the biggest difference. But at the end of the day they're doing something similar.

[Bankole]

Bloomberg's 25 African startups to watch in 2025. So Lord, good for them.

[Olumide]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know, I don't know. I. I'm always wary of those kinds of words of investing in farmers, investing in agriculture, investing in crowdfunding platforms. But I like the idea of supporting farmers and I like the fact that Thriver, Greek and Apollo are separated by geography. It means they can do experiments and learn from each other in different markets.

[Bankole]

Okay.

[Olumide]

Insure tech insurance.

[Bankole]

Yeah, yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's insane. There, there weren't relatively that many contexts, that many startups for insurance in Africa. So we looked at us across all the markets. Yeah, because insurance is not bought, it is sold.

[Olumide]

Correct.

[Bankole]

And that's. The things that are bought are not even able to get customers how much more the things that are sold. So we just saw, all we could talk about is how much the penetration and the premiums is just super low. And the only way to increase it has been a lot of government regulation that hasn't really taken off. Convincing people to pay for insurance is. Good luck with that.

[Olumide]

Reliance Health, Bima Health, Naked Insurance. Great freaking name. Pineapple Insurance. I remember thinking at the time the consumer facing ones, they had to just go rogue. Like how do we get customers come up with a crazy name, Let the app have crazy colors and marketing campaigns. Ooh. Out of homes campaigns which are like billboards and shit. Just curious to see how on one level the insurance market, the reinsurance market requires having a massive partner that can do all the data and analytics, the aggregation and risk stuff. On the other hand you need a consumer part to get all the consumers and then have a partner. So the insurance piece, I think it's fascinating from a affability perspective. There are two things going on. Everyone has a partner on the back end but everyone needs a funnel to get customers on the front end. So it's like two different businesses bolted onto each other. I like the idea of it because the consumers are getting access to insurance. I'm just not sure how the numbers shake out in the long term for profitability. So. And it's good we did this episode and then we. We eventually deep dived into 58 Reliance Health. I like the episode so much. I got Reliance Health insurance from my parents. What was the best deal ever until they jacked. They jacked their prices two months ago.

[Bankole]

No. Pretty solid business from the outside if you ask me.

[Olumide]

Yeah.

[Bankole]

When the other is just growing.

[Olumide]

I don't like the way they jacked up their prices. But understand the prices were, were too good. They also did some smart things where they increased the prices. Now with Reliance you can't pay per month anymore. You have to pay for at least three months, at least six months or get a year membership. And guess what? If you pay for a year they give you a 5% discount. Why the would I pay for a year to get 5% off? Guys, come on. Like the economics don't make any sense. I know what they're going for and I like the fact that you need at least a three month subscription because. Because it reduces the risk of someone only paying for one month getting all the benefits than bolting. Yeah. Yeah. Good business. Really good app.

[Bankole]

Yeah, really good app.

[Olumide]

Yeah, really good services. When I signed up for it for my parents, it came with gym services and a spa. So it's actually. It's even better than the insurance I sort of have now. So good. I was going to get it but I ended up not getting it. I wish them the best of luck. They just need to right size the revenue and modestation and pricing for the services they offer. But it's good to have insurance. Funny enough for them they're not doing micro insurance like like we spoke about for Bima. They're just offering regular insurance at regular prices. So it's not cheap at all. There's nothing micro about it. It's the full. It's so complicated. They have a whole spreadsheet over the services you can get at what limit, at what level, for how many people. So smart.

[Bankole]

Yeah. Okay. Round table. But the next episode we talk about

[Olumide]

is very quickly on the route. I sent this in a note to our substack. You can join our substack, by the way. Affability substack. The maximum amount of people manageable for any podcast is five. That's what I learned from this episode. Not that the round table. It's impossible to coordinate conversations. 4 or 5 is the peak number above 5 is just. Unless you want your podcast to be chaotic. So shout out to all the creators there. I think the max amount is 5. So shout out to Samora. Came back again, Justin. And then I think this one we added a mecca from Country Digest. MKOPA asset finance. You love asset financing, right?

[Bankole]

I don't know if I love asset financing, but asset financing feels much more tractable. You know how we say like you can love something, but MKOPA has raised a ton of money. So it's more like, yeah, I love asset financing. If you buy some assets and you grow appropriately. But asset financing will make you like the next Facebook. We can't be raising money asset financing to be the next Facebook. And MKOPA is raising money to be the next Facebook. Like, according to consequence, they've raised about $260 million. That's not, that is not, that is not asset financing. How I. How you may think about zero. So, so if you're raising $60 million, then if you think about what is the multiple on equity raise that you must get to like for a decent exit, it's a lot valuation, enterprise value on asset financing. That is cyclical. In the market, it's like. I don't know about that. Everything is good.

[Olumide]

That's why it's cyclical. It's not cyclical now. What are you talking about? It depends on the asset you buy now.

[Bankole]

No, you have. No, but, but in general, you have to keep reacquiring the same set of customers is what I'm saying.

[Olumide]

I thought you meant something different. Yes, yes, yes, of course they'll pay eventually. Yes, yes, yes.

[Bankole]

It's not like a subscription where like you sign up for Salesforce. Ostensibly you can be there for 60 years, but it is more like as

[Olumide]

long as your credit card is still there.

[Bankole]

Exactly. Trust Salesforce. But these guys is like you do a three year plan, four year plan for fridge, for a generator. So you have to keep acquiring, acquiring a customer every two, three years and raise to $60 million. I don't know. At that price, everything's got to be tight. You know, the shilling can go up or down. Your, your lawyer can't do anything. Like everything has been tight.

[Olumide]

Yeah. So some cool parts of this story first of all, primarily focus. Started off in Kenya. Initially focused on solar, basically electrical power, ways to do power. But now they're doing asset financing for everything. They have TVs and fridges and you pay on a as you go basis and then eventually you own the asset after paying for XYZ months or years. Cool idea. I'm not sure how big it could be. I just love the idea of business model innovation and having people pay in bite sized chunks for things. As long as it's done in a responsible way, not like the lending or gambling. Yeah, MFS Africa now On a Freak. We went back and I renamed the episode. At the time there was no On a Freak but cool name. I like the new name On a Freak. Sounds cool.

[Bankole]

I also liked, I also like mfs. I think MFS was both a payment gateway and a payment processor. And I do like the. The story of connecting all these disparate mobile money in particular correct traditional banking systems as well. So that part was pretty, pretty cool from the story but seems pretty straightforward. They haven't really been in the news a lot since then. Seems to be going and chugging along.

[Olumide]

What a smart idea to connect all the telcos of financial services to make interoperability easier across Africa. They did have a. A unique part of their story which was the M and A. They did a lot of M and A. Most notably they acquired an American company which is something we discussed. Hadn't really happened a lot on affability. So continue to wish them the best. I like the rebranding, makes sense. I like the diverse nature of the business. They're biggish in eastern Africa, they're biggish in southern Africa. They're biggish in western Africa, not really northern. And their business is just based on scale. Scale. Scale. Partnerships. Partnerships, partnerships. And their M A track record looks good ish so far which is quite unique. A lot of the companies they bought entrepreneurs then get senior roles in mfs AKA Onafrique. Wishing them all the best. I like the founder. I met him a bunch of times. Very friendly, nice person. I hope they continue to expand. I'm not sure on the surface level. The business model seems quite differentiated in that they're not like they're not pay stack doing payments processing. They're not flooded with doing payments processing. They're not OPAY which does a little bit of payment processing, a little bit of POS processing, a little consumer transfers. They're more back end infrastructure that quote unquote everyone could benefit from. So in a way differentiation is less of a factor. How however, I'm not sure what that means for their long term margin profile. I do know it's a scale business which means they may continue to do M and A. I do know they have a good track record of growing. I'm just unsure what the long term ceiling is based on the way their business model is set up today. But I like the business.

[Bankole]

Okay, next up is DPO Group. I like DPO Group because of the. Come on like the acquisition story.

[Olumide]

The exit the money. Get that money son.

[Bankole]

And and it was one of the first examples of a PE company coming in and going it through full cycle to get their money out. And like Helios intends to do with Interswitch at some point 30 years later or get get all their money out. I think Helios has gotten some money out from Interswitch actually large amounts of money have from Interswitch.

[Olumide]

Really wants to talk about Inter switch focus on dpo.

[Bankole]

I don't but, but DPO is just like a. A great business. Grew, acquired quite a lot of businesses as well and then built off of all the acquired businesses to grow their core business end up in a way that was super competitive and attractive to a foreign acquirer.

[Olumide]

Yeah. So DPO payments platform. Two things about this story that's unique to affordability. Number one, their M& A roll up strategy. We've never seen it done so successfully before. And I define successes like they started with intents to do it. They got the money from the PE firm. Well the PE firm had the idea as the founder later said, they actually executed. They bought I think two or three South African companies pay gates. They bought one or two Kenyan companies and they actually executed, integrated them and sold to Network International for a massive amount of money. So number one, incredible. A roll up strategy done so quickly, so efficiently in exit Number two, they started with a focus on the travel airline industry. I so I just love the vertical focus initially with customers that have a high willingness to pay because they're. They have money. And then eventually they just expanded and they did it with acquisitions and then the, the founder got his money and then he retired. What a beautiful. It's like a clean, clean story. Start with the focus, find a partner that's going to give you money for rollup, execute the rollup exits, sell and then retire. Just beautiful. It's all just nice and clean. Nice and clean story.

[Bankole]

Okay Yoko.

[Olumide]

Yoko. Pos. I mean I mean, I don't know how I feel about it. I remember we did the episode and then someone sent a message. Was it on Twitter? On one of our platforms. The person said, oh, yeah, the way to think about Yoko is company. Did they say, is the score of Africa. I'm like, what the. Did you listen to the episode? Like, you're telling me something. I. I said for two hours. Like, what do you think I said on the episode? I don't understand. Like, shout out to our listeners. You guys are amazing. But some people, they're. They're either not listening to the episodes or they're. They're summarizing in a way which I find hard to understand. Of course, that's the whole. That's the whole episode. It's a POS company which is similar to Square, but number one, the focus on South Africa. Number two, they need to think about ways to scale and grow beyond just offering a pos.

[Bankole]

Yeah, good luck to them. It's a tough business. It's a tough business, very competitive, and they have people coming after them up and down the stack. So it's a different difficult place to be if that's the only place you are.

[Olumide]

Yeah, yeah. They need to switch to online. They need to build a second attached business of online payments and other related things. Because your core business model has multiple issues. Number one, you're dependent on your Chinese supplier. So even the stuff you're selling is not even yours. You're just rebadging it, number one. Number two, because everyone else is doing it, you get in a weird situation where you can't really control the cost, cost of your supply because supply is based on the margins of your partner. And then number three, like, honestly, the margins are just going to reduce over time. Now right now they have a subscription business which looks good, but I'm not just sure about the long term of the business, but I'm sure they know about that and they're going to try to expand other things. So I wish them all the this episode where I'm gonna say take a Chuck every time I say best of luck on this episode. Twigger.

[Bankole]

Oh, ultimate best of luck. I think it's like a fantastic founder story and very simple and clear. It's like this value chain management. I think they've just struggled. Maybe it's how much they've raised. Again, back similar to the M. Kopa story, which is, yeah, you can do this, but you need to raise so much money to do this. Okay, maybe they did need to raise so much money but they end up putting them in a situation where it becomes hard and harder to return those, those numbers.

[Olumide]

It's better to raise a lot of money and go out of business slowly than not raise enough money and go out of business suddenly. At least you have more optionality in the former.

[Bankole]

Yeah, that's a, that's a said said. No owner of capital ever thinking about it's funny you would say that.

[Olumide]

Good for them. Yeah, yeah.

[Bankole]

Nothing else to add here.

[Olumide]

I, I, I like different aspects of the story. Number one, the founder was a fairly senior executive of Coca Cola and then he pivoted into trying to do something in this space again. So Twigga is they're transforming the food distribution space by connecting SMB mom and pop sellers with the agricultural supply chain. So basically connect farmers and suppliers of foods and digital goods and FMCGs with people that actually sell it. Right. Connect farmers and retailers to be simple. So I like that part of the suit. Just like someone in a corporate job exists, just wants to do something entrepreneurial different. I also liked the way they did their marketing and hype. If you watch Twigga videos, there's something so wholesome and touching and nice about it and the stories they tell around because in a way they're helping farmers who tend to be poor in Kenya and they're helping SMB retailers who tend to be poor so that you can tell the story is everyone is poor and we're helping them by cutting out all the middlemen because all the middlemen are reducing their margins and some of the middlemen are rich. Imagine a situation where everyone is rich from apart apart from the farmers and retailers. What's the fuck like the people who should be rich. Either like I'm making the good of the farmers this buy or I'm selling it. Everyone in the middle is just connecting me so it makes sense. Unfortunately, based on the recent struggles, it seems as though the business model is hard to make work from a monetization revenue side. I still like the story and what they're trying to do, the actual operational logistics and like making it work. I'm not close enough to know that. I just like the idea of there are two stakeholders who are the primary creators and distributors and they're not making money because people in the middle are taking all the money. Now I don't know if that's just the story they're telling, it's not true. But if it is true, I like it. I don't know how they're going to come out of the Holder and they've had a lot of layoffs, exec turnover. Even the executive I said who's the founder who started it has also left and we'll see how it goes. But High Level was a great story, great impact. But. But the actual operational day to day doesn't match that. So. Okay, so watch.

[Bankole]

Yeah, they raised a ton of money and they've started wrapping up a lot of these companies in the. In the same ecosystem. So they've merged with a bunch of these companies as well.

[Olumide]

Yeah, they're in the same space of like smbos. Like we go to mom and pop sellers and then we make their lives better by offering them tools, services. We connect them with the. In a way it's sort of. They are similar to Toga Foods except Wasoko is like newer, younger, but they're all part of the same SMB os. They're going through some challenges as well. It just looks like the whole space is difficult. In fact, we can talk about 65 and 66 together. 65 is Wasoku aka so watch. 66 is Trade Depot. They're the exact same thing except Trade Depot is more Nigeria focused. Wasoku is much more Kenya focused. And what do they do?

[Bankole]

They make SM67, 60 sabi, which is more Asset Light.

[Olumide]

Correct. Except let's talk about everything as one group discussion. Thank you. We'll save ourselves energy. So Sabi is extremely similar to Trade Depot except they're doing Asset Light in Nigeria. Sabi seems to be doing the best out of all of them based on the amount of money they've raised. However, this whole ecosystem, based on what happened with Twigger, it seems to be a difficult ecosystem to scratch. I will say that I think Trade Depot and Sabi have a slight advantage in that Nigeria is 2, 3, 4x bigger than Kenya and it has. Okay, no, I'm not sure about the second CBE. Someone can fact check me. Email olympia.com I think the FM FMCG sector in Nigeria is even bigger than it would appear from the outside because when I was a kid you see all these people like the everyone is buying everything soap shampoo. It's just, it's. The informal sector is just such a big problem part of the market that they may even be more of an impact that can be had there. I don't know whether Asset Light is the way to go like savvy or not, but going through all these companies, it's clear there's something there. And they all seem to have more potential than regular E Commerce. Regular E Commerce is Amazon model A person orders shit online. This is SMB B2B E Commerce OS. So it's a little bit different.

[Bankole]

I think the fundamental thing I think about is what we're learning about all those business from Wasoko down to Sabi is that the operations are not cheap.

[Olumide]

Definitely not.

[Bankole]

Judging by how much they've raised, it should be a slam dunk for almost any of them. But we found that the operations are just super expensive in general. Right, that's what I found. Okay. There's a number of other fintech companies. I think 68 is branch co. Maybe

[Olumide]

we can do 68, 69 and 70 altogether actually because they're all lending, consumer based lending. I so we did a lending episode earlier and we spoke about it on this episode and these are specific company stories doing lending and in a way the story isn't that different. So Branch does consumer lending. Branch is a San Francisco based company but they do a lot of Africa stuff. Fair Money does consumer lending. However, FairMoney now brands itself as a Neo bank so they're trying to have a bigger pitch. And then Carbon was always a Neo bank but they also do lending. So a little bit similar, a little bit different. The key story for me here is I understand what they're trying to do. They're all trying to offer the personal finance os but they're doing lending because lending gives you the most amount of money. The farthest along to me seems to be fair money. Why they're in two big markets, Nigeria and India, number one. Number two, they've raised the most amount of money out of all these three. And then number four, they have consumer momentum on their side. Is that going to be enough? I don't know. I will say the fact that they're in India is just so intriguing from a fair money perspective. It's. It's incredible that they actually got the idea they launched and it seems to be working. The founder story there too is, is, is a cool one. Listen to episode 69. But the Founder was working in a venture capital firm, decided to come to Africa I think and then he did the whole thing. So that's to me is a differentiator. I don't know what's going to happen long term. I just love the fact of African countries been in other regions. If it works, love it, love it.

[Bankole]

Good luck to them. Time Bank.

[Olumide]

No, I have a question for you. We do time back so. So in a way. Oh yeah. Let's just add Time bank because Time bank is just like Fair Money which is a neobank, all these companies are related if you look at 68, 69 and 70. So Branch, FairMoney and Carbon, which one do you think is farther ahead in terms of what they're trying to do?

[Bankole]

So I don't know. What I was thinking about is a bit more, is a bit different. Which is, isn't it surprising or shocking that there does not seem to be any differentiation in either of these. Or maybe I cannot discern the differentiation in either of these. These. Like why should a customer pick Add Cuda bank to the mix and hell yeah. But exactly my point is like is that meaningful different? Like that's kind of like say Google Cloud differentiated in the back end. Why pick Google class of aws? No, no, no, no, no.

[Olumide]

Because it's immediately. So for example, let's say you, you need money, right? And you install all these apps. If fair Money gives you 100k and everyone else gives you 5k, you will use it. So differentiation is how much money are they going to give you?

[Bankole]

So yeah, but is that, is. Do you. I guess, is that all of those. There's room for differentiation. Maybe. I don't know if there's any practical room for differentiation. Like can FairMoney actually afford to give me 100k when everybody else has given me 5k?

[Olumide]

They've raised the most amount of money. Yes, you have to raise money.

[Bankole]

I don't know. I think I'm struggling even as a user who's not perfectly, who's not necessarily extremely happy with Cuda bank, for example. Is that like. I don't know. Definitely not a baseline user. But I also don't have a compelling reason or know of a compelling reason why I would pick any of this, any of these new banks because I just have one.

[Olumide]

Why did you pick pick your bank in America? Let's do that as a bad comparison.

[Bankole]

No, it's, it's, it's, it's a convenience thing but I've also opened other bank accounts in the US because Wealthfront have had highest rates on interest or, or this platform has a better like online only and lets me open a bank for some.

[Olumide]

Yes.

[Bankole]

With credit card maximum thing. But as amongst this, like these, these Nigerian new banks. I'm, I'm not seeing the immediate differentiation but anyways, that's, that's, that's, that's my reflection.

[Olumide]

It's a space I will be watching very, very closely and I'm curious to see what additional features they offer and how they market those features. At the end of the day I've Said it throughout Affability. Everyone wants personal finance os. Offer as much. Offer as many features as possible and then nudge the users to use the highest margin ones. So you need banking, salary, account, crypto, remittances, lending, everything. The only issue I don't know about that is how much money do you need to raise to offer those many features? Do your investors have enough time to wait? And in the long term, when you do all of that, would it have just been easier to just have done just lending since it's the most profitable part? I don't know.

[Bankole]

But to be the Time bank on Time bank as well. I want to talk about that because it's a bit more different, It's a bit nuanced because it's like. It's like more of a new bank platform a little bit, given how many countries they're in.

[Olumide]

Yes.

[Bankole]

And they also raised $250 million from Nubank.

[Olumide]

Unbelievable.

[Bankole]

Pretty fascinating.

[Olumide]

Yeah.

[Bankole]

So it's new.

[Olumide]

After our episode, after we recorded this

[Bankole]

is New Banks Immersion Marketplace, I thought this was striking.

[Olumide]

You know, someone sent me a message on LinkedIn and the person said, oh my God, you called it. I'm like, holy. Did I say that? Are you sure?

[Bankole]

You said that.

[Olumide]

But Time bank is special. But I don't know if their specialty is because they're actually differentiated or they know how to raise money. I don't know.

[Bankole]

You're asking if. If somebody's tall because they're a basketball player. A basketball player because they are tall.

[Olumide]

Yeah.

[Bankole]

Anyways.

[Olumide]

No, no, hold on, hold on. On Time on one hand, if you listen to episode 71, Time bank, you could see that they differentiated by offering offline and online combined strategy. So they had banking innovation by offering more ways to access it.

[Bankole]

That cool device. They had a cool, like atm, like, device that was like a bank.

[Olumide]

Yeah, but then what's that? Anyone can do that. I don't know. The differentiation just to me just seems

[Bankole]

like, do I miffy. Easy now. Everybody don't see the playbook. Maybe they've seen it. We've talked about it on the podcast. Four years ago, like, go and copy it. It's clearly not easy to copy. Right. If it's working, you know, it's a copy and those markets, you know, is get into.

[Olumide]

So also Time bank was in different markets, not just South Africa. So they had the differentiation.

[Bankole]

They're really big in in Southeast Asia.

[Olumide]

Could be episode 72. Empowering SMEs with digital payments and banking solutions. It sounds

[Bankole]

the square of the Yoko of, you know, What?

[Olumide]

I mean, yes, yes, yes. Sounds like every other company. But in this case you're much more similar to Yoko. Yoko of Nigeria.

[Bankole]

Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll see. We'll see how. How well it goes. Because they're really going deep down into this, like, what's it, what's the language like the actual hardware. Hardware piece as well.

[Olumide]

Yeah.

[Bankole]

So. And they raised $30 million, right.

[Olumide]

And they said, oh, in addition to just POS, we offer quote unquote banking and merchant solutions to our partner. So they seem to be aware they need to offer more than the pos. The POS is a strong entry point. Point. It does have all the issues I mentioned earlier. Let's see how it goes for them. They've raised 30 million. They're Nigeria, which is a big market. It's just going to be tough, man. They have a lot of competitors in that space. If I were an SMB. Ah, actually I think you said there's one. Affability episodes. SMBs are having the time of their life now everyone is offering them different services for free or close to free. What a good time to be alive if you're an SMB.

[Bankole]

And then fx.

[Olumide]

Such a unique episode. FX is so different than everything else we covered on Affability.

[Bankole]

Yeah, yeah. FX was pretty striking. I think I like the story, but I do. One thing I keep in mind is the fact that it was. It's not really a traditional startup. It's more like a. More like an interswitch than it is like, I don't know, a P stack because.

[Olumide]

So you want to start with saying what they do, what do they do in commissions?

[Bankole]

FX is a commodities exchange, amongst other things. And they.

[Olumide]

What does that even mean in English? If I'm listening to this podcast, I'm like, what does it mean? What's come up? What's a commodity? What's an exchange? I imagine someone listening after three hours asking these questions.

[Bankole]

Yeah, anyways, as a commodity exchange. And I, and I do think that what they've been able to do well is really own that space. There are many people there, but they also have access to incredible amounts of capital. If you look at their board and their cap table and their founder, so to speak. So good for them.

[Olumide]

Yeah. What they're doing makes sense. They're connecting different aspects of the value chain all to come to one place especially. I like the offer training and cross credit to the farmers, then they offer investment solutions. It sort of makes sense. They're in their own unique lane, so they have the benefit of lack of competition. But then they have the downside. Every time you hear lack of competition, it almost always means, wait, why is no one else in that market? Is it because the rainbow at the end of the fountain is small? I said this about another company a few minutes. So I. I understand what they're trying to do. I have no idea what that's going to be mean in the long term. I think a commodity exchange is needed. I just don't know how much money you can make from it from a venture perspective. So let's see how it all evolves then. They actually, they don't. They're not in the news a lot. They're not. They're not. When I was doing research for. Even as part of the research inside Baseball for Africa, I have a whole list of like, research sites I go to, and one of them is literally just YouTube. I just go to YouTube. I type name of the company and I was like, wow, FX is. They don't have a. The YouTube presence was minimal. Some interviews with some of the execs. But they're doing something important. Unclear what the potential upside is in the long term. It could be high or it could be minimal.

[Bankole]

Okay, let's talk about Move now. MOVE is one of the more fascinating companies I think when we talk about them. They were doing purely like leasing, the kind of Uber's primary leasing partner in Africa and financed a lot of cars in Uber in Nigeria. Got pretty big that way, I think over the last 12 to 18 months. They're now the operations partner for way more in I think three of their markets at least, which is pretty significant.

[Olumide]

Yeah, it's shocking to me in many ways because Move. Oh, okay. Let's talk about their pitch. So the moves pitch to a driver is. So you are a driver, you're already working for these companies, but we'll provide you financing. So it increases the market market pool of available drivers. So if Uber could only get X percent of the population because only X percent have access to cars, they can now get a number Y which is way bigger than X. It makes sense. But is that the same thing is managing a fleet? I'm not quite sure because the skill set to offer financing is around how do we understand the credit risk, the value of the asset. But managing a fleet of cars is a little bit different. So what they signed up to do for. For Waymo fleet management is different than providing financial opportunities to entrepreneurs. But I guess if you squint, you could all look at it. I'm so happy for them. It just seems like a massive opportunity. Waymo is about to go big with all their launches. I'm just curious to see where this company goes. The company's had, in a way, it's unique in affirability in that you can assign a lot of their growth to the amazing partnership they had with Uber. But then it's amazing to see they're going beyond that to help have even a second bigger partner. The disadvantage of having one primary partner is you have partner dependency risk. They can screw you at any point. Now they have another partner. So fingers crossed. I don't know. I don't know what to make of the way more thing. Another thing about that, there's a rumor

[Bankole]

that they're about to raise $300 million. I thought, wow, good for them.

[Olumide]

Yeah, it's definitely a company to keep your eye on. They seem to have an unbelievable ability to access new markets with new business models.

[Bankole]

They expanded into UK pretty early as well. Financing as well. Okay.

[Olumide]

They're definitely on it. From the outside, it just seems like they're on it and they're determined to grow. And what else could you want from a founder? Grow, grow, grow, grow, grow.

[Bankole]

Okay.

[Olumide]

E transact 75 pioneering digital payments solutions. So they're basically like Interswitch but a shitty version of Intersw.

[Bankole]

They are public. They do primarily one kind of business and they're owned primarily by Access bank and then HSR Global. So they're. They're as a 2022. So Access bank own 24 of the company.

[Olumide]

Yeah.

[Bankole]

And Interest Global owned some of that. So. So yeah.

[Olumide]

What's the reason we said they never like hit. They never hit the same highlights as Interswitch?

[Bankole]

They basically make a lot of their money from like mobile airtime sales. That's pretty much where a good chunk of the money come from. And then collections on behalf of Telcos. So about 7 of the revenues from airtime sales, by the way.

[Olumide]

Damn.

[Bankole]

So they. That's kind of what they've been doing for a long time.

[Olumide]

But they're not selling the airtime themselves. They're just a middleman for other companies to resell airtime.

[Bankole]

Exactly. And they make a good portion of that and they've kind of had those relationships for a long time. However, that's not really the growth area that pista comfortable we're going after. So, you know, they also do some collections as well. But those companies are going after the collections also. But hey, at time it's always going to be big.

[Olumide]

Always.

[Bankole]

And each. And that always also has A good so they still make, they still grow conveniently but if you look at their market cap or their like growth, it's not good.

[Olumide]

Yeah they're like a stable company doing their own thing which on one side is positive because the stability is likely to endure on the other side. What does it mean for growth prospects? Are you looking for growth? Are you looking for. For stability? If you're looking for stability, maybe. If you're looking for growth, probably not. But not as not Telcom levels of bad they're doing something, they're making money. But it's just like when a company's been around for a long time I give them a lot of positivity but when I look at their business and their business or things they're the like I'm not sure what the growth potential is. I look I. I add a question mark to my positivity. So that's the e transact piece IHS Tower 76 Optimizing telecom infrastructure across Africa what an interesting. I love this episode. It's like telco adjacent. They're not a telco but they lease towers to telcos.

[Bankole]

I love that the founder has kind of grown all this like consulting to towers to building to operating to attracting capital. Ah yes the story and it's now he's now he's now the guy. He's one of the most knowledgeable people in this space. Also became a Nigerian citizen as well. But. But he's on top of the stuff man. I think, I think I'm very impressed with the businesses built here.

[Olumide]

I remember this funding story just now. You triggered a memories. The, the. He had the background for it. He was doing something as a network engineer. He worked for a consulting company and then that consulting company got a contract and then they were able to. It's. It's just I on one hand just from a purely my personality type skews towards liking efficiency and maximization and there's something about tower sharing and optimization of towers which just appeals to my nature. It just seems like a waste of money for every telco to build their own towers. So it appeals to me in that side they went public Remember the story has all this like they were owned by. Was it. Was it MCN was there it was. I forget now they had an equity ownership in a company and then the company gave the tower contract another company. It's. It's a cool story of I I advise people to listen to this episode. You learn a lot about the way telcos work. We went to some into some technicalities about the way towers work, the way they do, the transfer handoffs and then the efficiency and the growth potential of IHS Towers. And I remember now, okay, I remember IHS Towers, they're either first or second place and almost all the countries they're in in terms of number of towers owned. So they actually have a market leading position in most of those countries, which I didn't know about. I thought, okay, of course, in every country the telco owns most of the towers. No, it's usually IHS towers.

[Bankole]

Yeah. Okay. Piggy vest.

[Olumide]

Piggy vest. I mean, what do we say about Piggy Vest?

[Bankole]

Very like, we're very positive, man. We're very positive because they came up doing one thing. They're still doing that one thing.

[Olumide]

Yes.

[Bankole]

And they seem to be like, have a lot of capital, have a very strong business model, seem to be lean. All from the outside, it seems to make sense. But the other things that they've done that we just, at least I had paused over is like a lot of their. The story was they are also behind this I beg app and they've tried some other consumer things haven't quite taken off that were very expensive. But all of that to say, I guess you can raise a lot of money and grow a big business by just doing one thing very well, even though that one thing may not appear to be that profitable from the outside.

[Olumide]

Yes. The parts of the story that I like, I like the initial founding story of a tweet and them tapping into consumer sentiment. Because piggyvest is basically a money savings app. It's now it's pivoted into a few things, but it's primarily a savings app for regular everyday consumers. I like the founding story. I like the fact they focus on the younger demographic who actually need to learn basic personal finance skills and building wealth management and learning about savings and investments. I pause on the rate of innovation and adding additional features. It's like, oh, how long have they been around? Well, seven to 10 years. What are the features? The futures are 90% the same as when they were founded. What, how is that possible? So it's a bit, I don't know. On one side they're very capital efficient. I like that. On the other hand, if the futures are the same after nine, 10 years, it says a lot about like, why is that? What is, what does that even mean? I don't know if it's working. I guess if it ain't broke, don't fix it. I have some question marks around that. But just the fact they're appealing towards a young audience. They did a bunch of social media marketing. They're still good at marketing. I sort of like that. I just have question marks around. I don't know how can you offer the same feature set for 10 years when everyone else is raising money and offering more feature sets? It just seems like the natural evolution of the market is someone else will offer what you're offering and they'll subsidize it by raising more money and growing faster and they'll bankrupt you. I just don't know about the long term potential of a company that does that, but I still like them. I'm just confused about the rate of product innovation.

[Bankole]

Okay. Amenti Halan.

[Olumide]

First of all, after we recorded I realized we're mispronouncing the name, which was hilarious. I just find that funny. But on a more serious note, I like the company. I like what they've done. I like the way the founder builds Holland first and then N and then M and then the whole, the whole story of learn a skill set, find the right partner, grow. Learn a skill set, find the right partner, grow. I love it.

[Bankole]

And distribution.

[Olumide]

Yeah, yeah. And thank you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How can a startup get access to customers? You need distribution. How do you get access to distribution? By partnering with a larger established company that has distribution. The problem then becomes what is the ownership structure? What's the partnership structure? That makes sense. And in this case it was almost like I remember the time I was like, wait, the parent company owns 80, 90%? Bangkok was like, yeah, they have all the customers.

[Bankole]

Yeah, they have all the customers. Like bro, if you can do it's gonna build your own.

[Olumide]

Yes. Okay, so in a way, how do we describe it? They do financial services and asset lending and basically fintech stuff. But they started with rideshare in which they. They shut down.

[Bankole]

There are finance conglomerate. Yeah, finance underpinned by this GB auto capital and distribution which is nothing. It's pretty big.

[Olumide]

Yeah. So it started with transportation and ride sharing but eventually that business model was not profitable. Eventually became more financial services, fintech, lending, credit. And that's what they do now under Vic that was episode 78 and then

[Bankole]

7 to 9 was selling.

[Olumide]

Last but not least, man, we made it through 80 episodes of affability. That is crazy. I feel like my brain is on fire. The fact I can remember so many of these episodes is actually remarkable. Cellulence. The last one we spoke about fintech player, as you'd expect. So we started with FinTech episode one. We ended with FinTech episode 79. It says a lot about where the ecosystem is. Yes, Elements is a fintech player, as you'd expect. I think the key differentiator for, for them is they were one of the earliest, so they have a long track record and yeah, they offer a payment platform that enables sellers get their money faster. Standard. Standard fintechs platform.

[Bankole]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Olumide]

Was there anything differentiating about the story that I'm forgetting?

[Bankole]

Not quite.

[Olumide]

Not quite. Yeah. I think the question mark for cellulence is how they grow based on how much money they've raised and the future potential. But, but for now they're in a space where everyone is trying to offer payment platforms, everyone is trying to grow, so how are they going to differentiate against well funded competitors?

[Bankole]

Okay, sounds good. Let's.

[Olumide]

That is all of the, okay, 80 episodes of affability. It's funny. So when we're preparing for this episode I thought what horizontal lessons can I learn across. We've done so many episodes, I think it's like 200 hours and it's hard because on one hand I thought is there a stereotypical founder? Like is there a founder mode? The answer for that was unequivocally no. We have some young founders, some older founders, some founders that had technical expertise, some non technical founders. We have founders that started raising money. Initially we had founders to start raising money. Later we had Lean found. So the founder profile is anyone can be a founder if you want to do it. No profile. So I was trying to what do we actually have? So I have a few things. I have the value of the story. One common theme across a lot of these affordability stories, like in order to raise a lot of money you need a good story and the story is sometimes more important than anything else. I'm not going to name any companies and I don't know if that's because the ultimate issue with affability, the biggest problem with affability is affability suffers from serious survivorship bias. Why almost all the time when we're researching companies to do we tend to pick companies that seem to be already successful. So everything I'm going to say now just take that with a massive grain of salt. We don't know about all the companies that went out of business, but I think founders can come from any background. Riding waves is important. The Aertel episode, the Zane episode, you could just see right place, right? There was a wave, there was a telco wave and he wrote it all the way to the exit. So for me the key things are Storytelling riding the right waves. Founders can come from any background and there's definitely money to be made with business model innovation even. It looks like the customers don't have money. It's just way more difficult to think about win win solutions. So I think I have those three or four lessons from affability. Just remember survivorship bias. Take with a grain of salt. We did not look at failing companies. We looked at mostly successful companies at the time. Do you have any horizontal lessons from all the episodes?

[Bankole]

I think I have a couple. I think for me, the first is just distribution and partnerships. I think if I look at the really big ones that have been successful, a good number of them actually did very well with distribution and partnerships. Sometimes giving up on holy amounts of equity. From like a startup Silicon Valley perspective, I think of MNT Haaland or Uber and move those investors, IHS Towers investors BCash and. And the big bank. A lot of. A lot of these companies figured out that, look, I can try this thing by myself or somebody can just, you know, I can make it somebody else's problem, giving my success somebody else's problem as well and give up some of that upside down.

[Olumide]

Funny. And by the way, you know, indirectly to Interswitch, because it was all the banks that came together, they already had sort of quote, unquote, a distribution partnership indirectly with all.

[Bankole]

Exactly. Indirectly as well. So I feel like that's like one of the things that this, these companies also did. And it's. On one hand the startup guys are. It's. It's intuitive for a startup if you decide to dedicate your life to something to be stingy about who gets equity. But I remember, I think back university, I was working on a startup, we used to jailbreak iPhones and then charge people for it. And I remember one of the investors, I will never forget this meeting, he said 100% of zero used to fight over equity like crazy. I don't even know what we're fighting over. You remember I said like 100% of zero is zero. And honestly, Joe was definitely right because we all got zero at the end. I went to my kids, I didn't do PhD, but that's like. That just. That stayed with me, which is like, look of us be stingy about equity. But instead the framework is not so much I need to keep everything is that everybody needs to work for it, get the value from it. And these guys have done it well with distribution, the move guys probably don't own a high percentage of the company. Neither does Mitch, neither does Munir or Nemencia Alan. But the company would be a fraction of the size if they decided to tight everything to their chest. The second thing I saw is that there's just really no hard and fast rules. People say asset light, asset heavy, B2B, B2C or don't business outside Lagos or opportunities in Lagos. You must do international expansion. You must not do international expansion. You need boots on the ground at the end of it. I feel like as a Renault, you'll be hurt if you did something because somebody else said you should do it. Just do. Even if you want to do based on vibe, do what's your heart. Don't let anybody tell you rubbish.

[Olumide]

Vibes are important bro.

[Bankole]

Cuz nobody knows anything. That's why we have a comedy podcast. Oh, the right approach is to focus on this market and you double down. Blah blah. We are just talking. This is your life, everybody has. You have savings, you have retirement. This is your own life. Don't come and let me be bystander and give you advice in the direction of life if I don't have skin in the game anyways. But I've learned from all the startups that there's no real archetype to add to the founder to the story. Everything is time and place. Like a man never walks on the same river twice. He's not the same man and it's not never the same river. And that's really story of startups in Africa, especially dope. Final point is that like being an African founder is not for the faint of heart. Also another reason why I'm a comedian on this podcast. Like every all of these stuff we talk about have war stories like you hear like police station militants, lawyers, fraud, war with cell telosine or they locked up the conga office, the headquarters, they just came and police had locked it up. Said the landlord did not pay rent.

[Olumide]

Like what was in prison for like six months.

[Bankole]

It takes so long to get to like meaningful exits too. So the people that do it, they are really superheroes in more ways than one. Because there are people who shut down the business and you now end up paying debts personally because you think your landlord that you tell your company's gone back all year rubbish. But you pay the rent that you're guaranteed, you sign at least you're not telling me that the company has shut down whenever police collects your car and everything. So a lot of startup founders will tell you that they are paying personal debt on company because they're the ones that they know they're the Ones that signed for the loan from XYZ bank for the three company cars that the company went bankrupt six months after. It's not for the faint of heart. The people who do it, they know why, but that's kind of like my major thing. So three things. So one is just distribution. Second is no hard and fast rules. And congratulations to all involved that choose to be founders. Man.

[Olumide]

Beautiful. Okay, we have some behind the scenes questions episodes we wanted to do but never did because we decided to end. So I have three big ones I wanted to do. So money points AKA Team Apt. That would have been fascinating. It was actually on the. On the list but we never made it to it. And then all the banks, I. I had, I had this idea and I thought it was going to be amazing. So someone can run with the idea just to do all the banks. GTB Access, Zenith, Union. Just do all of them. It would be incredible to see the similarities, the differences. And then the third one was down. Got it. Not a tech company but would have been an incredible story to deep dive on. Especially because it turned out there were similarities to other companies. So the Reliance in India and also even a little bit similar to Glow to Global Comms. We had similarities with stories retold. It would have been nice to do that.

[Bankole]

I wanted to do Dangote and I wanted to do. I think I wish I had almost like the time to do more interviews but I mean it still happened. But I'm. I'm very like. I think that there's like a room for those kind of conversations in Africa tech.

[Olumide]

But yeah, okay.

[Bankole]

Funniest on air blooper. You can share.

[Olumide]

I mean there's like a billion. I don't even remember. All I know is we had to redo the entire episode of I think Be Cash because Shami didn't put her microphone on. It was the most. One of the most shocking moments in my life.

[Bankole]

Yeah.

[Olumide]

She's like, I didn't put it on. I was like what's the half hours in. I know what three and a half hours. What have we been doing this whole time? We've just been enjoying ourselves. That's shocking.

[Bankole]

Most unexpected piece of feedback ever received. I remember one comment about somebody said OMD laughs too loud. I remember that.

[Olumide]

What the. That person can.

[Bankole]

Your laughter is too loud.

[Olumide]

I don't remember that. But the person.

[Bankole]

I remember that. I'll find it. I couldn't find it anymore.

[Olumide]

But I'm trying to find an insult for the person. But I'll just give you a hug. Instead, you didn't answer your first, the first question, okay, piece of tech you discovered through the, the podcast we can't live without.

[Bankole]

Now, I don't know if it's through the podcast, but I'd say two things that I talked about on the podcast very early, but I still like a core part of my life. One is read wise, which is for highlights. I think I had a, I had a highlight review streak up to 1200 days or something.

[Olumide]

How could you discover that podcast? It has literally nothing to do with the podcast.

[Bankole]

No, but I didn't discover. We talked, we do recommendations to the podcast. Right.

[Olumide]

Okay, that's not the question.

[Bankole]

That's what he said. That's how I understood it. So readwise and text expander as well.

[Olumide]

So that's two gave completely non relevant. Don't worry, my answer is very, very relevant. So Reliance Health, I use it insurance for my parents and then Cuda bank, it's my primary Nigerian bank. So those were from the podcast.

[Bankole]

My primary bank. I was very careful to be like, I don't want to imply that I love it because of my bank, but I don't love it.

[Olumide]

I love it. But also I'm a checking account nerd. So I, I love the idea of checking accounts. Oh, it makes me so happy. Happy to think about it.

[Bankole]

What's a question about African tech you still find yourself pondering?

[Olumide]

I mean, I'm, I'm an actual curious person, so I'm still curious about a lot of different things. I'm. I guess I'm curious to see the impact of stable coins. In fact, let's just say the impact of stable coins. I was going to go into a specific niche there, but if the primary issue is that your currency is unstable because of devaluation and inflation, what does it mean to have a Naira stable coin and a dollar stablecoin? Does the government want a Naira stable coin? Maybe. Yes. No. Do they want a dollar stable coin? And maybe yes. Nobody can't control that. Okay. If they can control the Naira stable coin, what does it mean if you don't have one? If you have one, what does it mean? And then if you can stabilize the currency without having a government involved, what does it mean? I don't know. There's just like, there's a bunch of stuff there. Is it good? Is it bad? I don't know. Will the government allow it? I don't know. If the government allows it, will be the impact? I don't know. Will the impact be mostly on the consumer Side maybe. What about the businesses doing settlements? Probably bigger. I don't know. There's just. There's a bunch of there but the primary question is still Naira investments overcoming the double challenge of devaluation inflation. What can you do? I don't know if the answer is stablecoins is probably the. The answer with all things in economics is a combination of factors. But I'm curious specifically on the stable coin side.

[Bankole]

Yeah, I'm more curious. I'm curious about like the impact the ongoing impact of policy and regulation. It's very clear that once something works government's eye will be big on it. To use a Nigerian expression. And I find that I was thinking about more recently Pay Stack and Zap got fined for launching this money transfer thing. You can't imagine a Pay Stack launched it without checking with the regulator first. You know what I mean? You can't just. You can't imagine that they just decided to just.

[Olumide]

It's possible Whiteboard.

[Bankole]

Not in Nigeria. Do you think that you think that somebody even sneaks to the regulator first? Anyways, all I got to say is if you're running a startup in Nigeria even as an entrepreneur, maybe that's why I'm an entrepreneur. My first worry would be or that as an employer in Nigeria my first word would be man. I don't even know when the government I have invited after first do meeting with and I worry about that overhang of success but most people just figure it out. I mean a lot of companies have done that but you never know what direction it's going going to. You never know how the government will. You have to be. You have to be alive and big before they go mad. Like Kolkata vs contrast Gokada to say Uber just different. Different wallet sizes. At the time the government was moving mad so they couldn't like it was too. It was existential for one and not for the other. Anyways.

[Olumide]

Wow, that's that a trend in Africa tech that you initially scoffed about but now you find interest.

[Bankole]

I was going to say I didn't have an answer here but the first thing that comes to mind from going

[Olumide]

through this come up with these questions who said I'd never answer that to me is the funniest thing in the

[Bankole]

world is asset light versus Asset asset heavy. I think I initially was much more like asset light is wasting your time because like a lot of the problems are much more asset heavy problems like asset light is kind of like you end up being capped. You have to be asset heavy in the end I've just realized looking at all of these businesses that honestly, it's all timing. Like, it's all like it depends on timing. And there's both can or can't work. It really depends on where you are in the cycle, available funding. In fact, it makes sense to be much more asset heavy if capital is cheap than the other way around. But that's kind of where. So I'm much more like maybe asset light is the way now that like interest rates are so high in the west and that cascades down to developing markets.

[Olumide]

Huh. Okay. Something I initially scoffed about and now I think is I'm curious about is agency banking. I just thought it sounded stupid because it's like, why are you wasting a person's time for something that could be done electronically? But now that we've done so many episodes, I actually realized it has a lot of potential. If the cost of labor is so cheap, which means we don't value human capital, which is the way it is in developing countries. It sounds sad to say, but that's economic. That's economic truth of like low capital cost for labor you don't value. So if it's so low, hey, you might as well have a person going around doing things because it's so cheap. So then the question then becomes, yes, in the long term, hypothetically, we want the cost of labor to be high because we want the cost of labor to be directly proportional to the amount of money the person's earned. Yes, but in the reality we're in, in the current term, if the labor is cheap, what does it mean? What can you do with cheap labor? Labor? So the question for me is then, because I'm so used to markets, the labor is so expensive. If the cost of labor is so, so cheap, what does it mean? And then I extended this idea to AI in general, if the cost of getting information like I don't need an intern to do a report for me, what does it mean? So the whole thing about agency banking, low labor cost, AI, there's like a direct linear philosophical path. The first path is you do arbitrage with low labor costs in developing countries. What can you do? What does it mean for business if labor is cheap? And then the next level of if labor costs are zero, you don't need the people, AKA data analysis, data tech, AI, machine learning. What does it mean? The different layers of it. But the initial layer for me was just the agency banking. I thought it was stupid. Now I have a more nuanced perspective. Yes, I want it to be high. I Don't want people to be super poor and having to do shitty jobs just to survive. But in the reality, if it's low cost, well, what does it actually mean? Like, if I'm in Nigeria, I'm not going to live the way I am now. I'm going to have like a pedicure every week. I'm gonna have a massage every day. I'm going to have a haircut every week. Like in America. Why the would I have a haircut every week? It's $50. In Nigeria, it's literally going to be like $2. Like so it's like all these things. Your brain starts to think differently if you remove constraints. So that was a long answer, but the short version is, as labor costs tend towards zero, what does it mean for both businesses and on an individual, personal level, what does it mean for your life? I would love to have a haircut every week or massage every day. It's impossible, but if it's possible, I'll take it. In the long term, I prefer if a machine does it. But if the labor is cheap, that's not my fault. That's the country fucked up its currency's fault. So I'll take advantage of it while I'm here.

[Bankole]

Future plans.

[Olumide]

Yeah.

[Bankole]

When you think of affability, what are you most proud of?

[Olumide]

You didn't answer the question. Now you have to answer the question.

[Bankole]

I did. No, I said asset liver heavy.

[Olumide]

Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. Ah, your answer. It's funny actually. Your answer made me think about another question. That's why I didn't answer it. Was it, was it something that was on your mind before affability, the asset lighting? Or is it our discussions? Because asset light asset also comes up in Western markets.

[Bankole]

Yeah, it comes up in western markets and in western markets. So my intuition even comes. Affability has always been, look, asset like, definitely works. In the US you want to be Uber, you want to be the app, you want to build software, let everybody go get the cars and make a lot of money. But in Africa it's different because we don't have that infrastructure. You need to be asset heavy and therefore in Africa you need to be asset heavy. In the US you need to be asset light. Has been my. Was my incoming assumption. I think I've. Over time I've just realized that the answer can be very, very nuanced. And even. What, what is heavy? What is light also like as a wide spectrum? Like, I don't know, Uber is assets light. Is it? You know, if you think about like the offices and the business and the lessons they have to operate. I guess it's asset light because they don't have cars.

[Olumide]

Mostly light on the spectrum.

[Bankole]

Yeah, on a spectrum, yeah. But, but I've, I've kind of come to a much more nuanced view of that of like well, asset light and asset heavy is a complete spectrum and it really depends on this, on the business, the business model and also the the timing of the where you are in the capital cycle. Like cheaper, expensive capital that kind of matters the most other than a dogmatic asset heavy versus asset lights in XYZ market. Like undue real is asset heavy.

[Olumide]

Right.

[Bankole]

And there's an asset light version of what they're building, but they're also building the asset heavy version of what they building. Underrail is a defense tech startup in the US that also builds drones, but also software to connect the drones.

[Olumide]

Future plans Ah man, there's so many discussions to be had. Future plans. When you think of affability, what are you most proud of? This is a good question, by the way. So for me, we said this when we started this recording five hours ago. I can't wait to see the runtime for this episode. I'm guessing it's going to be four to five hours. So when we started this episode I said what I'm going to repeat again at the end. I'm most proud of. There's an internal psychological personal piece. Then there's an external piece. So let's start with the internal side. So internally, psychologically starting up for beauty changed my self identity. It changed. It made me more comfortable with exploring entrepreneurial opportunities outside my corporate role. I was like a Googler in 2020. By the end of 2020 I was a Googler and podcaster. And then now I'm like I have. I would never even think of describing myself in any corporate role now. Investor, writer. But all these things were because of affordability. If not for affordability, I'd still be working. Well that's fired up. I would not be working at a company, but I wouldn't. I would be doing more leisure. The trend line of my life would have been towards more leisure activities. Now the trend life is firmly on creative pursuits in addition to leisure activities. So affability made me think more about the creative, the joy I get from creation. So it's just been, it's been a beautiful journey. Incredible. Externally, what am I most proud of? I mean it's just like affability is incredible. It's. It's a high quality product five years. So quality, high longevity, five years. Quantity, 80 episodes, 200 hours. It's just legendary, man. One of the, I mean one of the best podcasts you can listen to. I listen to it all the time. I listen to old episodes. This shit is just nice. I love it. So I'm proud of all the external stuff, but mostly internally I'm proud of the psychological impact on my, on my self perception.

[Bankole]

Yeah, fascinating. For me, I'm much. When I think of affability, I think of the people I've met either through this or because of this or the conversations I've had. I think every now and then I meet people randomly who have listened to the podcast or told me a story about the podcast or furniture about the podcast, like randomly. I think those brighten up my day or my week in ways are not possible. And I have developed at least professional, a good number of professional relationships that I don't think I would have had otherwise because I do this podcast and I think of this as a search for a number of people who you can have conversations about this kind of content with. And the podcast has opened me through all of that. So what I'm most proud of is really all the different people that I've been able to get value out of it. Like every time I meet one person was telling me they're like, oh, I found it helpful for X. It just, it brightens my world in ways that like it's just difficult for me to, to explain. I think that's the part that comes up to me.

[Olumide]

Okay, what do you folks, what do you want next?

[Bankole]

For me, I'm open to figuring that out, especially as it relates to Africa Tech. You can definitely email me bank if you have any ideas. But I, I generally I'm in a frame of mind where I'm fortunate to just be like working, loving what I do at work, but also exploring my interests and I try to see. So I kind of read and consume widely and kind of see where that takes me. So if you have any ideas, definitely email me and we'll see where that goes.

[Olumide]

It's so two funny thoughts. First of all, I remember it was like episode 40 or something. I'm editing the podcast and I'm like, oh what the fuck? We actually don't introduce ourselves when we start the podcast. So every other podcast they say oh hi, I'm Olumide. Hi, I'm Bankole Malcolm, we're going to talk. So we don't. So I remember thinking oh I should message balcony. But I thought Nah, let's just start it. So that's where you give your email address. I had that flashback number one. Number two, our email addresses are going to continue indefinitely forever. So you can always email Illuminated for Billy Bank. It's, it's a, it's a lifetime thing. And then to directly answer the question, what am I focusing on next? Basically more projects, more businesses, just more, more. You can always find it on my website. I'll be spending more time on more. It's more of the same launch some new, see the impact on the market. Always new shit. Specifically on what I'm currently working on. There's a Firedom. You can find me writing my personal finance shit on Firedom Substack with Simone. We have weekly articles. It's fascinating. It's incredible. If you like personal finance, I may write more in our affability substack. So check it out. I'm tbd the nature of that. But if I do, it will definitely be super long form. So if you want any short thing, just go on Twitter. I have no interest in any short shit. So yeah, you'll find just a lot of stuff will be launching. There's always stuff happening, but primarily fired up articles are live affability. More articles. Yeah, there's always, always stuff popping. But it's on the website is where it's at. And if you want to contact me, you can email me LinkedIn. But more creative projects, always around my interests. So tech, finance, business, shit, all those things. Okay, okay.

[Bankole]

Closing thoughts. And I think that's it, right?

[Olumide]

Closing thoughts. Matt. Closing thoughts. And we have seminal recommendations and small wins. I mean, yeah, I think I have a small one.

[Bankole]

Just no small wins, just seminar recommendations. I don't need small ones.

[Olumide]

No small wins. I mean. Closing thoughts. How do you, how do you even close? You want to go first? You want me to go first?

[Bankole]

I can go, I can go. Honestly, like this has been a great journey, but if there's any one thing that, that I take from this whole, whole episode, whole like I guess 80 episodes, but also that I would love for people to take is just really the idea of like just personal agency and being able to just do things. I think a lot of the funnels that we talk about, usually a good number of them start from this idea that something should exist in the world. It should be easier for people to get credit. Should be easier for, for, for people to make payments. And they did. And that they should be the ones to do it. I think a lot of us has the potential to just Create things. And I do like the fact that it feels to me that Liz was like, oh, this should exist and we should just create things and put ourselves out there. I think that's been like a good. So if there's any closing thought, it's really just that you can just do things. It's actually even become like some kind of meme on Twitter. But I'm thinking about it for a while, is that you can just. You really don't need permission for a large amount of things. You can just do things. But if that really comes from a place of personal agency. So, yeah, everybody listening. You can just do things.

[Olumide]

Yeah. How do we even. How do you even close it? It's where we have closed closing thoughts and then seminal recommendations. Maybe I'll talk about my recommendations first and then I'll close it.

[Bankole]

Yeah, sure.

[Olumide]

Seminal recommendations. It's hard to even think of some because we've made so many recommendations. So I was trying to think of what's the best way to categorize it. And I just thought, here is, I think three seminal recommendations that, that I like the most. So first of all, how I found freedom in an Unfree world. Because no other book talks about independent thinking as well. It's just an affrobit is all about independent thinking. Like, what do you. What do you actually think about this company, this business, the founders, the growth, the business model? Does it make sense? Speak your truth. Be honest and be truthful. So high five on Free World. Harry Brown. Highly recommended. Funny enough, the first time I read the book, I didn't even. I was like, oh, it's all right. The second time now I've read the book maybe 15 times. I just read the book like. Like I'm drinking water like candy. It's just that good. Maximum achievement, Brian Tracy. To say I love Brian Tracy is an understatement. The man is just like, I don't know if I would say Brian Tracy changed my life, but. But he's a legend. Like, it's. What does it mean to live the life that you want? What does it mean to live life, a life that's meaningful. What does it mean to live a life? To create the circumstances of your life? What else could you want from a book? So those two books. And then of course, the Fired on book Fidom is a permanent seminal recommendation because I wrote it, so obviously I recommend it to everyone and it says a lot about the way I think about different things. It seems to be a book about personal finance, but it's actually A book about living your own life. So those are the three high pound Freedom on free world, Harry Brown, Maximum achievement Brian Tracy Firedom by me and by Simone. Three books, seminal recommendations. And then yeah, listen to other 79 episodes of Affrobilities for recommendation for more recommendations. Those are the main ones.

[Bankole]

I have just two Anything you want by Derek Sivers. Oh yeah, I really love that book. I go back to it a lot because it's really just about choices and personal agency. And the second one is really like this book of why by Julia Pearl. I think it just exposed me, opened my mind to the complexity of just causation and people say things that they don't mean. When you think about A leads to B, A causes B. It's a very complicated question. And if you work in AI and ML, it's definitely. Or even if you work in tech or you work in places where people make decisions based on well, A led to B. So let's do more of A. If your day looks like that, you should definitely read that book. It definitely changed how I think about causation. Especially when you think about complex systems. Not complicated systems, complex systems. But the book of why was kind of like a. I believe one of those books everybody should read.

[Olumide]

Wow. And I love Derek Sivers too. He has a. He has a clean way about thinking about topics I like. I like that a lot. Follow his blog. Check out his blog too. Okay. Clothing thoughts. It's interesting to close affirability actually because in a way it's been an amazing journey of learning about new things, getting information and then connecting everything into a narrative. The core of Afrobuilding seems to be about the companies and the founders, but it's less about the business part but the stories around it. So I remember I just have all these flashbacks of I'm doing some research and then I find this piece of research. I'm like, oh wow, this now makes me think about the company differently and putting everything. All the data is available, but how do you put it all together? Like read every substack post about the company, which is what I used to do. Fine. Watch every YouTube video about the company. Fine. Every Google News results about the company. Or at least the top 15. Okay. And then I found out that oh, I could find some interesting sources by searching Google Images. I'm like, damn. Okay. So I searched Google Image because their pictures used in articles. I was like, fine. I can't find that many good things. Here's another. So just the idea of learning and searching and finding information and putting it together like a jigsaw puzzle. It's just. It's been an amazing episode. It's been an amazing journey. I remember. So it's 20 now it's 20. 25. Middle of 20, 25. So I started off a bit when I was 35, in 2020, and now I'm 40. So, like, affability has been part of my life for five years. I was 35, now I'm 40. It's even weird to say that it's crazy to think about it, because life moves on. You get older and you just do things. When I was in university, I started a radio channel. I was basically like a host and I had. I was like playing songs. And then I remember someone was asking me about my university and I told them, oh, I did this. They're like, oh, my God, where are the recordings I want to listen to? I was like, shit, I don't have any recordings. I never recorded it. But now, like, Affability is with me forever. All the episodes are on the Internet on Affability Forever. So it's just been five years of an amazing project. I learned a lot. I had fun with my friend Bankoli. We did it. And it's been a journey of, like, you learn about the companies, you learn about the business models, you learn about the founders, you learn about the impact on society, you meet some of the founders, and then eventually all the learning just stops. You come one day, record everything. It's hard to explain explain. It's just cathartic. You learn everything and you have this psychological anxiety of everything is about to be done and over, and then you do it. And then the way the brain works is you have some permanent knowledge base of what you've learned about. Some of it just dissipates. But it's been. It's become a part of my life. It's exceeded. I don't know what I planned. I just thought it would just be, we'll just do it. It would be small, but ended up being a massive thing. And yeah, I'm. I feel gratitude. I'm grateful and I'm thankful I did it with Bangkokle. It was good to do it as a team. We had a lot of. Even our workflow changed. Like, at some point, Bangkok was like, oh, let's use this thing for editing. I was like, what the fuck? Why are we doing this? And then we started using, like, that's good for editing. It's. What's it called now? Descript for editing. Better than that. And then we're using Anchor. Spotify bought Anchor, changed that. But at the end of the day, we wanted to make a quality product. We wanted to do something for the ecosystem, boost Africa Tech forward. And I think we were able to accomplish that. So I'm. I'm overwhelmed with gratitude. So I feel grateful for the journey. It's been an important part of my life. I'll look back at it very, very fondly. We wrap up one last time.

[Bankole]

We wrap up one last time.

[Olumide]

All right, enjoy, people. Cheers. Thanks for listening. We'd love to hear from you. If you have any feedback topics you'd like to hear or just want to say hello, please email infoffrobility.com thank.