Building a Financial Services Company in Africa

Nigeria.

Hey, my first time out here. I'm very happy-

Yeah

... to meet you and then create some content

out here.

How's it going so far?

It's been great. You've built an incredible company.

Yeah. Thank you.

This is your business right here.

Yeah, it's called Paga.

And how big is the company today? How many employees do you have?

Paga today has over 200 employees, and we're processing over

$1.5 billion every month.

That's a crazy amount of money right there.

Yeah.

Well, I'm happy to be out here with you, and I, I, I-

Thank you

... I have one rule for all my interviews.

Sure.

There's no holding back.

Okay.

We're gonna give the younger generation the blueprint to build a-

Yeah

... million-dollar, hundred billion dollar company in today's

world.

Yes.

Can we make that happen?

For sure.

Let's do it.

Let's do it.

Who am I here with today?

Tayo Oviosu. I'm the founder and CEO of Paga.

And what is your business? What do you do?

Paga is a financial services infrastructure business,

and what we're doing is

delivering the infrastructure layer that gives Africans access to payments and

financial services, both domestically and into the global rails as well.

And what is your company worth today?

My company is, uh, you know, it's hard for me to say exact numbers,

but it's worth

hundreds of millions of dollars.

So what was the most amount of money you made in a single year?

Oh, wow. But I'll tell you this. So for the company, for revenue, from,

like,

around $60 million in today's dollars.

60 million.

Um, yeah.

How did you scale a multiple eight-figure business, man?

You're almost at $100 million.

Yeah. I tell you this, find exceptional people,

share the mission with them, and

then get out of their way, and let them build. Let them innovate.

You gotta fire yourself is what you're saying.

You gotta fire yourself. What it does is that if you empower other people,

you go

up and go do other things. And I remember this from my very first

boss at Deloitte

Consulting in San Francisco, and he said to me, he said, "Tayo,

your job is to make

me look good, and the more you do, I'm gonna give you more and more,

and that's

gonna help you grow. I wanna work myself out of a job."

Yeah.

That's what he said to me.

I love that.

And I was like, "That is exactly it."

Where are you from?

I'm from Lagos, Nigeria.

And where are we at right now?

We are in Lagos, Nigeria, and that is very exciting to have you here.

We're in Nigeria right now.

Yeah, I've seen you on YouTube, man.

You have, and I appreciate that, man.

Yeah.

Let me ask this. Why Africa? Why should the rest of the world not be

overlooking

Africa at the current moment?

Yeah. In our lifetime, 25 years, Africa will be

2.5 billion people. One in four people on this planet will be

African. So when you think the youngest population,

while the rest of the world is

aging, Africa is young. 60% of Africans are under the age of 25.

So when I think, Africa is young. 60% of Africans are under the age of

25. So when I think about the opportunity for

financial services

globally, Africa is the only market that is building financial

services from ground up at this scale.

It is the single largest greenfield opportunity for financial services,

and that's

why Africa.

Did you come from a lot of money growing up?

No, I didn't.

Did you?

I didn't. I grew up in a single-parent family.

My mom, I was the last of five boys, and she struggled to make, make ends meet.

What was your turning point to financial freedom? What was that moment?

Take me back.

Yeah.

I wanna go deep in your life, where you were like-

Yeah

... I'm gonna go out there and build a $100 million company.

Yeah. You know, when- in my 20s, I was, I was quite lost.

I had a lot of down moments, and at some point, I decided that I

was going to be

part of rebuilding Africa. When I grew up, Nigeria was the giant of Africa, and I

think that was the key turning moment for me because that was the moment I said,

"I'm gonna go down this particular path." You know, I believe in God, and so I

think it was a God-given mission to go down this path and really, like, go to

business school. I was fortunate to go to business school at

Stanford Business

School, and really, like, set me up to do well.

Yeah. Did you master the follow-up in business?

Were you good at following up with your people?

Absolutely, and I think that's really important.

They have their thing going on.

Everybody has their own thing going on. It's on you to chase it up.

And the other thing, advice I give people is

that let your ego go.

Somebody says no to you, it's not no forever. It's no today.

No doesn't mean no. It means not yet.