15 Company Builders Share Key Advice For Startup Founders

Earlier this year, we started the “Advice for Founders by Founders” series: a thoughtfully created content for the African Tech ecosystem where African founders and executives of top companies on the continent give hard-won advice to founders.

We interviewed 15 company builders who shared their experience on getting started, overcoming mistakes, team building and so much more.

Here are some key takeaways from the interviews.

Getting Started

Ire Aderinokun, Buycoins: “Trust is important when starting a company with someone.”

Goke Olubusi, Helium Health: “An important piece of advice is that you have to accept that no one will have any respect for you and they have no reason to. This is not their fault. You have to put in the work, time and effort to deliver what you want to achieve.”

Emotu Balogun, Sendbox: “Don’t just pick a field or sector that you see a genuine problem you want to solve only but be sure that it has the potential to be really big.”

Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, Andela and Flutterwave: “Find great co-founders and work together on an important problem. These two things are indispensable.”

Yinka Adewale, Kudi: “Talk to a lot of people such as advisors, mentors, investors, and entrepreneurs, but take whatever they say with a pinch of salt by sieving what you are told.”

Odun Eweniyi, Piggyvest: “If you are sure that entrepreneurship is the way to go then just make sure that you are ready mentally and physically. You have to be ready to put everything into it to make it work.”

Making and Overcoming Mistakes

Olugbenga GB Agboola, Flutterwave: “You cannot learn from experience if you have not experienced a few setbacks or failures, and I pride myself on the lessons I have learned from different challenges I have faced.”

Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, Andela and Flutterwave: “The moment I discover I am making a mistake I just stop making the mistake, no matter what people will say or how much I have invested in my mistake”

Yele Bademosi, Microtraction: “When you do make a mistake, your first reaction is that “it’s fine, everything is going to be okay in the long-run”, you just have to reflect and try to make sure you make a better judgment in the future.”

Ire Aderinokun, Buycoins: “Given that mistakes do happen, we have to make sure these things don’t happen again by documenting them. Documenting things is super important when trying to avoid making the same mistakes.”

Salami Abolore, Riby: “Mistakes are a very funny thing because you learn from them and you move on quickly. How quickly you move on from your mistakes is really important than the mistakes themselves. Once you’ve made them find the best way to correct them either in a short term or midterm or sometimes in the long term.”

Team Building

John Oke, Wallets Africa: “The people you work with matter a lot and in a very hostile business climate like Nigeria empathy is like a superpower. There are layers to it but if you really care about the people you work with; your co-founders and your colleagues, they, in turn, care about the sustainability of the company and of course the customers you are serving.”

Goke Olubusi, Helium Health: “If you run a business, any type of entity or even a relationship, you have to assess their personality types. That way you can understand them better, accept them for who they are and figure out how best to work with them.”

Simeon Ononobi, ThankUCash: “Hire smart people to work and share that dream with you.”

Razaq Ahmed, Cowrywise: “It is important to have a team that is completely aligned in terms of the vision of the company. Building a company is not about building a personal brand, it’s about building an entity that can outlast you over time and that can’t be done by one person.”

Salami Abolore, Riby: “ You need to know what other people’s problems are and be willing to help them succeed even as you are trying to achieve your own goal as a founder. Sometimes that might involve compromise and doing things you didn’t think you have to do but that’s just life.”

Small Change, Big Impact.

Yinka Adewale, Kudi: “Deciding to try out a business internship instead of taking an engineering internship.”

John Oke, Wallets Africa: “Learning how to code has been life-changing.”

Kola Aina, Ventures Platform: “Learning how to say no and being more selective with opportunities”

Timi Ajiboye, BuyCoins: “Having constant power supply and internet access has made a big impact on my life.”

Odun Eweniyi, Piggyvest: “Writing everything down and taking time to decompress.”

Powerful Life Lessons

Simeon Ononobi, ThankUCash: “Be focused and stay away from the noise.”

Yele Bademosi, Microtraction: “It is super important to segment your day and filter what’s important and what’s not.”

Emotu Balogun, Sendbox: “ I try not to dwell on past regrets because whatever I missed is either because of my own faults and if it was my own fault I will acknowledge that fault, own it and move forward.”

Segun Adeyemi, Amplified Payment (exited to OneFi): “ It is important to write things down because as much as you think you are smart and authentic if you don’t write things down you tend to lose a lot of details.”

Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, Andela and Flutterwave: “If you want to do important work you must have the courage to be disliked.”

Culture and Values

Kola Aina, Ventures Platform: “Founders need to be kinder to themselves and realize that most of the time it’s a marathon, not a race and attaining our metrics are critical but self-kindness is even more critical.”

Olugbenga GB Agboola, Flutterwave: “Experience is extremely important. It influences your values as a start-up founder, how you relate with people — employees, board members, stakeholders, etc.”

Goke Olubusi, Helium Health: “One thing that I found to be most valuable in everything that I have done, is the fact that I was able to ensure that I worked with people that liked me as much as I liked them. That way it never really felt like a business relationship as we had each other’s back and we still do till today.”

Timi Ajiboye, BuyCoins: “It is very important to realize that nothing great is ever built by one human being. It is either done by a community or a village of people and as someone who thinks very highly of himself, it makes you deemphasize yourself and know your limitations.”

Simeon Ononobi, ThankUCash: “Focus on the real value of your product and continue to make it better. Don’t include anything that is not necessary. Don’t oversell, just sell what you have, keep the focus on it and start building out from there.”

Books Startup Founders Should Read

Yele Bademosi, Microtraction: “How to Start a Startup by Sam Altman. Hatching Twitter by Nick Bilton”

Kola Aina, Ventures Platform: “The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For? by Rick Warren. The Prosperity Paradox: How Innovation Can Lift Nations Out of Poverty by Clayton M. Christensen, Efosa Ojomo, and Karen Dillon.”

Salami Abolore, Riby: “The richest man in Babylon by George Samuel Clason. The Art of War by Sun Tzu.”

Razaq Ahmed, Cowrywise: “ The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz.”

Segun Adeyemi, Amplified Payment (exited to OneFi): “Shoe Dog by Phil Knight. zero to one by Blake Masters and Peter Thiel.”

Ire Aderinokun, Buycoins: “It Doesn’t Have to be Crazy at Work by David Heinemeier Hansson and Jason Fried, Basecamp Founders. The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo.”

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