Covid-19 and one trip to Dubai introduced me to my next problem-solving adventure.
How I got my groove back
My new manager, Stefan, came into my life when I was low on confidence. After several months of not writing code, I was rusty, and it took longer to do simple things.
My head was still correct, but my fingers were a lot slower. I’d spend one hour doing something I would’ve done in 15 minutes. I felt old; at 26, I thought I had peaked.
I paired a lot with my colleagues, Arinze Okeke and Nicholas Kajoh, to gain my confidence. In addition, Stefan was a great manager. He constantly gingered me with affirmative words like: “Your gut is your greatest asset.” His management style was similar to mine, so it was easy to work with him.
Having gotten my mojo back, I set out to build the first version of our data pipeline, which reads from our MySQL binlog, pushes the changes to Kafka, the consumer picks it up and pushes it to redshift. The idea of replicating data from a single source (MySQL) to many possible sources was exciting.
It also was my first time using Kafka, and it was a heavenly experience. I spent time digging deep into distributed systems. I knew a lot about practical distributed systems during this era because I had read a lot about them when I was a manager. Putting my knowledge into practice was excellent. When it worked, and our data team could rely on the streams to reconcile transactions, I felt pure joy. I managed that pipeline like a baby until the data team completely took over.
The start of something new
In January 2021, I travelled to Dubai to work with Stefan, Dhruv and Wes. I was supposed to go in December of 2020, but I got Covid and moved my trip to January.
It was an enjoyable six weeks where we engaged in deep, meaningful conversations, designed the new architecture and lots more. From meeting new people interacting with my colleagues’ families, I learned more about myself and got a sense of what kind of man and father I wanted to be. I also realised it was time to leave the streets and find love again.
I had clarity and was happier.
In May, Stefan, Ibrahim and I travelled again, but this time to Ethiopia. By this time, Ibrahim and I were backend principals, and the backend team was growing massively — the largest engineering team at the time. With over 30 engineers, we needed to figure out management. So we designed the new backend engineering structure. We required more technical engineering leaders and consequently more ownership. This structure divided engineers into six different guilds, and every guild had to be responsible for what they owned. We had a guild for reliability, code quality and more. We spent more time iterating on it before getting what we wanted — SWAT teams. Lol.
Of these two trips, though, spending time in Dubai opened my eyes.
During that trip, I got the idea to create reliable food delivery. The frustration with the delivery system in Nigeria started long before, but it was significantly worse when I caught Covid. I got my result test on New Year’s Eve, and because I had to self-isolate and couldn’t go out to purchase food, I had to rely on ordering online. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find food to order on January 1, 2021.
It was a terrible experience. But it made me realise I had to solve the problem.
Having seen how things worked in Dubai, I understood why it would be difficult to pull off in Nigeria. I had, however, spent the last four years solving complex problems in payments and was sure that if I had a good grasp of the situation, I could handle it.
I had a conversation with Olumide while in Dubai and shared my thoughts. We decided to solve the problem, but first, we would need to understand it.
But I was also very busy with my role as a Principal Engineer. Olumide and I agreed to bring in a third person to move fast. Someone we trusted, who was a lot more “process-driven” than either of us. We brought in Lanre Yusuf and began the process of understanding the problem.
We bought three bikes, got three riders, gave them to two restaurants to use, and observed them closely. After three months of watching, we had clarity of the problem. We dumped most of our initial mockups and designs and came up with a quick solution in a few weeks.
We deployed the first version in September 2021 at Lagos State University. There were several issues to fix, but we were OK with that. We were still learning.
Once we had a stable product, we began testing privately in beta. We got about 244 orders that month. The following month we got over 500 orders. In December 2021, we processed over a thousand, and in January 2022, we processed approximately 3,000 orders.
We were helping food businesses and restaurants grow. We were making consumers happy.
Seeing all of this progress, I had to make the hardest decision ever.
Leaving the Stack
Paystack is family. Paystack built and trained me.
I’m happy I passed through Paystack. Every single era in Paystack prepared me for the problems I’m solving today.
I’m leaving Paystack to build Chowdeck because I can’t combine both anymore. I’ve run Chowdeck at 60% capacity until now. It’s time to bump that number up to 150% capacity.
The mission is clear.
We will empower every business in Africa to deliver anywhere, anytime. We will start with food and eventually move on to other categories. We’re choosing food first since it’s the fastest validation of the instant delivery space. If you can build efficiency with food (read angry, hungry people), we believe we can scale to other services.
I’m not promising that your food will always come in 10 or 15 minutes, lol. Sometimes — at least for now — it’ll come in an hour, lol. However, I can promise that my team and I will continue to make you happy. We’ll deliver happiness to you, and we’ll do it from the bottom of our hearts. My team is filled with some of the smartest and kindest people ever. They are driven and on the mission to solve this problem. It’s hard, but we’ll build it together.
As we empower businesses to deliver, we always keep this at the top of our minds: delivery must be efficient, the product must be quality, and everyone — from the rider, the business, you the customer, and Chowdeck — has to win.
I’m hoping for the best as I spend the next years of my life making this dream a reality!
Adios!