13 Startup Lessons from 50+ Founders from Founders Connect
Founders Connect has been my favorite show on YouTube since 2021. It tells the stories of African tech founders, particularly those leading growing startups.
The show’s creator, Peace Itimi, a multi-talented YouTuber, Director of Growth at Smile Identity, and content creator, aims to document the rise of African startups by profiling the journeys of key players, their challenges, learnings, and the impact they’re making on Africa’s future.
Inspired by Peace’s dedication to interviewing founders, I’ve been an avid viewer for two and a half years, soaking up knowledge since hitting the subscribe button. As an aspiring changemaker, I compiled valuable lessons I’ve learned into this article. Here are the key takeaways, followed by my favorite interviews.
1. Fall in Love with the Problem
Humans are wired to give affection and energy to things we love. When you are passionate about a problem, you’ll consistently find the motivation and energy to solve it. This love for the problem fuels your perseverance through tough times. Without it, obstacles seem impossible to overcome, leading to discouragement.
Starting a company to address a problem demands commitment, dedication, and a touch of obsession — all qualities fueled by love.
Ebun Okubanjo, CEO of Bento Africa, FitnessCentral, and Ezwash perfectly captures this sentiment:
”If the problem doesn’t keep you up at night…If you don’t Love the problem, don’t do it”
2. Have a Builder’s Mindset
While watching this show, I noticed a common thread: a problem-solving mindset.
These founders were constantly tackling challenges, aiming to create value where they saw a gap.
They took the initiative and responsibility to bring their ideas to reality. Then, they persuade people to buy into their vision. And all together they run with it. A builder’s mindset is necessary for anyone who aspires to create value.
3. Find the Right People
Finding the right people is crucial for any startup’s success. This typically involves three key groups: co-founders, talented employees, and investors.
Co-founders:
Complementary Skill Sets: It’s wise for co-founders to possess complementary skills. A technical co-founder can balance a non-technical one, and vice versa. This ensures a well-rounded skillset to handle both the business and technical sides of the operation. Shared responsibilities, balanced workloads, and mutual support are key benefits of co-founding with someone who complements your strengths. While a pre-existing friendship is often common among co-founders, building a strong working relationship is essential for success.
Talents:
Hiring Qualities: With the right team, you can build virtually any product.
During his interview, Tosin Eniolorunda, Founder of Moniepoint Group said,
“You can’t be bigger than the quality of the people you have in your organization.”
I couldn’t agree more.
Look for individuals with a diverse range of skills and experience, along with a willingness to learn, resilience, diligence, and a humble, self-autonomous approach to work.
Yanmo Omorogbe, Cofounder of Bamboo would expand on self-autonomy:
“I hire talents based on their ability to take initiative and ownership with as little supervision as possible.”
Yele Bademosi, CEO of NestCoin, emphasizes finding early hires with “an affinity for learning and ambition.”
Articulation, a key communication skill, is another valuable quality, as Abdul Hassan, CEO of Mono, points out.
Hiring while managing Growth: It’s important to acknowledge that team structures may evolve as your company grows. Some early hires might not be able to develop the skills necessary for higher positions.
Yinka Adewale (CEO of Nomba) advises against mistitling employees to prevent future issues.
Ezra Olubi (CTO of Paystack) reinforces this point, sharing a similar experience of promoting engineers to managers without the necessary leadership skills
Promoting someone to a VP position, like VP of Product, without them having the necessary experience, would ultimately require demoting them later — a situation that hurts morale and disrupts trust.
Investors:
Choose investors who share your vision, possess industry expertise, and have a long-term perspective. Look for those who offer strategic guidance, mentorship, valuable networks, and a history of supporting successful startups.
4. Gain Work Experience (If possible)
Before launching your company, consider gaining work experience if possible. This experience provides invaluable insights into how organizations operate within the corporate world. It allows you to visualize the structure you’ll eventually build for your own company.
Many successful founders have worked across multiple companies before venturing out on their own.
Onyeka Akumah, CEO of Treepz and former CEO of FarmCrowdy, emphasizes the value of experience in both structured and unstructured environments, citing the benefit of working for both a large corporation and a startup.
These experiences provide a roadmap for structuring your company and understanding how different roles contribute to a well-functioning organization
5. Get Started as You Gain Clarity
Imagine traveling from point A to point B. You need both direction and distance to get there. Without direction, even with speed, you might end up somewhere completely different. Similarly, with only direction and no action taken, you remain at point A.
The same principle applies to launching a startup. Clarity provides direction, but getting started is what sets you in motion. Both Femi Iromini, CEO of Moni, and Yomi Adedeji, CEO of Eyowo, advise against waiting for complete clarity before taking action.
Why? Because ideas rarely emerge fully formed. While clarity on your problem, target customers, market size, and competition is important, waiting for perfect clarity can lead to paralysis. Getting started and maintaining momentum is crucial — time waits for no one.
Finding clarity involves asking the right questions. Adia Sowho, CMO of MTN, emphasizes this point:
“If I had an hour to solve a problem, I would spend 55 minutes trying to figure out what the problem actually is… And it all goes back to asking the right question.”
Asking the right questions, of the right people, at the right time can unlock valuable insights and propel growth
6. Build a Community around the product.
Community building can be time-consuming and resource-consuming as you are constantly providing content and/or experiences to your target audience. However, the payoff is worth it. Transforming a community member into a brand advocate is far easier than converting a typical customer.
Femi Iromini, CEO of Moni, perfectly illustrates this benefit:
“When we launched our app, it was like entering a ready market. It grew rapidly without any major marketing push. Our customers had a way of promoting it to each other”
Therein lies the beauty of building a community around a product. It fosters direct connections with potential customers, allowing you to gather valuable feedback and gauge the true value you deliver. This, in turn, accelerates achieving product market fit.
7. Never Stop Pleasing Your Customers
As Odun Eweniyi, COO of PiggyVest, aptly stated at FCLive 2023,
“No matter your company’s age. No matter how big your company has gotten, it takes only one dissatisfied customer to (potentially) tank it all.”
This underscores a critical truth. Customers are the sole reason businesses exist. Without them, a company simply withers away
Beyond revenue, customers provide invaluable feedback that validates your concept and helps you refine your offering. Testimonials, as Odun Eweniyi highlighted in her first interview with Peace, were instrumental in PiggyVest’s success. This experience emphasizes the importance of identifying your ideal customer and solving a core problem for them. Focus is key. Spreading limited resources across multiple problems can lead to failure on all fronts.
However, customer focus extends beyond initial problem-solving. Market awareness is crucial to adapt to competition and evolving customer needs.
8. Experiment a lot
Finding what works is not a linear process. It’s a journey filled with misses, wins, and plenty of “I don’t know” moments.
These experiences highlight the valuable role failure plays in the learning process.
As Erika Brodnock, Founder of Kami, puts it,
“There is no failure, only feedback”
Achieving your desired results often requires tweaking and adapting your approach.
So, FAIL.
Fail fast and learn what works. While mistakes can be costly, they shouldn’t be demonized. Instead, view them as learning opportunities. Analyze them, learn from them, and move forward.
9. Build Relationships
The importance of relationship building was a recurring theme in nearly every episode of Founders Connect (roughly 70%). Founders consistently emphasized how strong relationships fuel growth. The people you connect with can evolve into your support system, investors, mentors, co-founders, hires, advisors, and more.
As Toba Adeyanju, CEO of Ejoya Music, emphasizes,
“The relationships you develop will do a lot for you… Almost every big, thriving music project owes its achievements to connections built within the entertainment industry.”
This principle applies across all industries. Building a strong network opens doors to valuable opportunities and privileges that might otherwise be inaccessible.
10. Bootstrap for as long as possible
There’s no one-size-fits-all answer to fundraising, as Onyeka Akumah, CEO of Treepz, emphasizes:
“The decision depends on your business model. If your business model allows you to get to a point where you can sustain the business, funding might not be necessary. But if you are in a place where you need to do some level of marketing or where there is a lot of competition with no room for mistakes and still survive, you need to raise money.”
While there are no rigid rules, some key principles should guide your decision.
- Raise Only When Necessary: Maximize bootstrapping to delay fundraising for as long as possible.
- Right-Size Your Raise: Don’t raise too much. You want to raise enough to keep you afloat but not too much that you dilute ownership of the business early on or add unnecessary pressure to grow rapidly.
- Maintain a Clean Cap Table: Limit the number of investors to avoid a messy cap table that can deter future investors and lead to equity distribution issues down the line.
12. Create a company culture people love.
Cultivating a culture that people love fosters a thriving and dedicated workforce. Here are seven (7) key principles to guide you:
- Aligned Values: Communicate your startup’s core values — the essence of who you are and what drives you. Ensure your team understands and embodies these values in their daily work.
- Open Communication: Prioritize open communication by offering regular training on active listening, conflict resolution, and providing continuous feedback. This empowers employees to feel respected, heard, and valued for their ideas.
- Incentivize Excellence: Recognize and reward outstanding work. Competitive compensation and well-designed reward structures motivate employees to consistently deliver their best.
- Employee Well-being: Prioritize employee well-being by offering comprehensive programs, benefits, and flexible schedules that support their physical and mental health.
- Embrace Diversity and Inclusion: Foster a culture that welcomes and celebrates differences in gender, age, sexual orientation, race, and all other dimensions of employee identity. Provide equal opportunities for everyone to thrive.
- Self-autonomy: Equip your team with the tools, resources, and information they need to make independent decisions. This fosters ownership and a sense of accomplishment.
- Transparency: Maintain transparency with your employees, investors, and customers. Open communication builds trust, credibility, and loyalty.
13. Pursue Value, not money
The foremost lesson from Funke Opeke, the CEO and Founder of MainOne, was
“If you are looking to create value the reward will come”
Chimezie Emewulu, CEO of SeamFix echoed this sentiment:
“Most times when people start, they aim at money and when you aim at money, money becomes elusive. But When you aim at value, you get money by default…. If not, when you get money you get complacent. You relax and start looking for the easy life. You might even start misbehaving and disrespecting people.” Don’t let your success get in your head.
This concludes my key takeaways from the Founders Connect show. I want to express my sincere gratitude to Peace and the entire Founders Connect team for creating such an invaluable learning opportunity.
Here are my Favorite Episodes/Notable Mentions:
These are other episodes that stood out to me:
- Erika Brodnock, Founder of Kami: I loved this interview. It is a hidden gem. I admire Erika’s thought processes, values, relationship-building approach, problem-solving mindset, and overall philosophy on life. She’s a truly profound lady.
- Hanu Agbodje, CEO and Founder of Patricia: I loved that Hanu was always solving problems and had an entrepreneurial spirit since he was a kid. His practice of documenting ideas is something I’ve adopted. He is so charismatic and well-spoken.
- Joe Kinvi, Cofounder HOaQ. He had an unconventional path to founding a company. His confidence and eloquence amazes me.
- Fola Olatunji Davis, Founder of Sporting Lagos, This interview introduced me to the concept of four types of luck (blind luck, luck by motion, luck from awareness, and luck from uniqueness). It inspired me to read ‘Chase, Chance, and Creativity: The Lucky Art of Novelty’ by James H. Austin.
- Preston Ideh, Founder of Stears, -This interview stood out to me, perhaps due to Preston’s intelligence or his take on self-confidence and pushing boundaries. I am not sure, but I loved the interview.
Check out Peace’s documentary on Innovating Africa: The Rise of Tech in Africa.
Click here to watch Founder’s Connect
Like Peace would always say,
“Peace Out! ✌️”
