Live thoughts. Muslim. Founder of Africa’s Open banking Company. Investor in grey.co, fonu.com, abeg.app (acquired by Piggyvest) and more.
How to Build 911 for Africa I keep coming back to this idea that every home and business in Africa will one day have something it has never had: the certainty that when something goes wrong, help is already on its way. We are nowhere near that today. To see why, it helps to look at what someone trying to keep their home or business safe can actually buy right now, because every option on the…
Today, I turn 30 🎉 In the Name of God, the Beneficent, the Merciful. Praise be to the Almighty, Lord of the worlds Today marks exactly three decades since I took my first breath in Ijebu-Ode. I was born to the most amazing parents, but if you look at the timeline of our family, the truth is simple: I wasn’t supposed to be here. Let me tell you the story of how I happened. My story actually begins…
Spectators In the Name of God, the Beneficent, the Merciful. Praise be to the Almighty, Lord of the worlds. Happy new year. I wish everyone good, in accordance with the good they put out into the world. That principle matters, especially at moments like this. New years invite reflection, but they also reveal character. When something significant happens, what we choose to add to the conversation,…
May your life be difficult I don’t mean a life of dramatic suffering. I don’t mean a life of endless sadness or pain. I mean a life with challenges. I mean a life that throws unexpected storms at you so often that you learn fast to ride the waves. This year dragged me through that kind of road. It was a long stretch. It squeezed lessons out of me that I hadn’t learned in decades. Strange how one…
How to be a failure at anything Failure has a recipe. It is reliable, repeatable, and oddly comforting once you learn it. You can apply it to startups, relationships, careers or anything else that asks something from you. The steps are simple. First, never decide what you actually want. Drift. Say yes to things because they are available, not because they matter. If someone asks what you are…
How to be exceptional at anything Being exceptional is less about rare talent and more about the choices you make every day. It’s a set of habits that quietly outwork everyone else. Below are five habits for anyone who wants to be exceptional. Show extreme care Care is visible. It shows in the neatness of your file names, the tone of an email, the frame you set for a meeting. Care is not a…
Be disrespected, not disregarded Disrespect is loud. Someone interrupts you, criticizes you, maybe even insults you. It stings, but it tells you something: you exist. You matter enough to provoke a reaction. Disregard is quieter. It’s someone acting as if you aren’t there. Your ideas, your effort, your presence, ignored. That’s worse, because it erases you. You could spend years doing things no…
Life Is a Beach Lately I’ve been thinking life is closer to a beach. Not the Instagram version with perfect sunsets and edited shoreline, but the real thing. The beach where the tide is sometimes calm, sometimes violent, where the sand sticks to your feet and the sun burns you if you stay too long. The beach that doesn’t care who you are or what you planned for the day. A beach teaches you…
Give recognition One of the things that’s missing in today’s startup culture is recognition. Everyone wants to be “the first,” the one who “did it before anyone else.” But the truth is, progress doesn’t happen in isolation. Every founder, every company, every product is standing on the shoulders of those who came before them, the people who took the first risk, made the first pitch, convinced the…
Awareness of Death In Islam, reflecting on death is essential. It sharpens your perspective, reshapes how you act, and influences how you treat others. Just the thought that life can end in an instant encourages you to do right by people and live with intention. There are certain thoughts we try to walk past quickly, like a dark alley we avoid even when it’s the shortest route home. Death is one…
New Hobbies Yesterday I bought a guitar on Amazon. No lessons. No musical background. I have never played an instrument in my life. And yet when it arrived and I opened the box, it felt exactly like how everything in my life has started. I just dive in and figure it out later. There is something pure about standing at the edge of a new skill. Before you learn anything, there is this wide open…
False Futures If you study the world long enough, you notice a pattern: the technologies that spread the fastest often aren’t the ones that make us better, but the ones that tap into our weaknesses. Gambling proved this long ago. Prediction markets are learning it. And AI is beginning to follow the same path. The shift is subtle. When you see a new gambling product, it rarely calls itself…
Make Good Mistakes One of the strange things about experience is that it rarely feels like experience when you’re getting it. It feels like confusion. It feels like “how did I miss that?” or “I should have known better.” What we later call wisdom usually begins as an ordinary mistake we’d prefer to forget. People say experience is the best teacher, but that’s not quite accurate. Failure is the…
The best talent is rarely the most famous We grow up believing that the world naturally discovers greatness. If someone is truly exceptional at anything, they should already be known. That belief makes life feel orderly. It suggests a system that rewards skill wherever it appears. But the more you observe the world, the more you see how wrong that assumption is. The best talent is rarely the most…
Waving at Planes Every so often, you find yourself doing something that makes no logical sense, yet still feels completely right. Waving at planes is one of those things. You stand on the ground, neck tilted back, arm in the air, greeting a speck of metal thousands of feet above you. You know the people inside can’t see you. They’re sipping drinks, adjusting their seats, staring at clouds. And…
Don’t Explain Yourself on Twitter There is a strange ritual that plays out every day on Twitter. Someone posts something. Someone else misunderstands it. A crowd gathers. And the original poster begins the cycle of explaining. They reply. They clarify. They reframe. They add context. They apologize for the missing nuance. They defend the intention behind the sentence. And after all that, nothing…
Lying to Get Ahead People imagine lying as a kind of shortcut. You tell a small untruth, skip a few steps, and suddenly you’re standing somewhere you haven’t earned. It feels clever in the moment, like finding a hidden path behind a building everyone else is walking around. But there’s a reason most shortcuts become overgrown. They don’t take you where you think. The strange thing about lying to…
How to Know Your Enemy Most people imagine an enemy as someone who openly dislikes them. Someone who throws stones. Someone who plots in the dark. But real life is rarely that theatrical. The most dangerous enemy is often the person who never raises their voice, never shows their hand, and never openly declares opposition. They don’t have to hate you. They only need to quietly prefer a version of…
Less capital is a feature, not a bug We founders often treat a lack of capital as a handicap. We speak as if the only thing separating us from greatness is a bigger bank balance. But that’s rarely the truth. More often, having less money is what shapes the kind of company that’s actually worth building. It isn’t a flaw in your system. It’s the feature that forces you to be resourceful,…
When to Raise VC Money There is a moment in every company’s life when the question of venture capital stops being theoretical and becomes real. It usually arrives disguised as growth: more customers than you can handle, a product straining under its own demand, a team moving faster than the infrastructure beneath them. But the real signal is simpler. You raise venture money when the next chapter…