#98 - Shola Akinlade

Hey, how's it going? This is Greg Cannon, and you're listening to Y Combinators podcast. Today's episode is with Shola Akenlade. Shola is CEO and co-founder of Paystack.

Paystack helps businesses in Africa get paid online and offline. They're based in Lagos, Nigeria, and they're part of the Winter 2016 batch. You can learn more about them at paystack.com. And Shola's on Twitter at Sholesman.

All right, here we go. I think many people kind of know about Paystack, but what, can you give us the one-line explanation? Yeah, well, payments company, we help merchants in Africa accept payments from their customers. So businesses will connect to Paystack, and almost immediately they'll cost them this competitive with credit cards, debit cards, and different payment methods.

And you said one-line description. Well, that was perfect description. We're currently live in Nigeria, and we're trying to just go into the markets very quickly. Nice.

And how long you guys been around? We launched in January 2016. Okay, and so before that, you were also a founder, right? Yes, yes, yes.

I can take it back a little. I think you're all right. So yeah, I grew up in Lagos. I grew up in Lagos, Nigeria.

I spent all my life there, actually. After college, I started computer science. After college, I woke up in Oregon. It'd be a company.

I did it for two years. And then I left, I left because I thought I was, I should be making things. Were you pushing code at Heineken? No, no, no, no.

I was mind-wrenching me. Oh, exactly. So I wrote my co-founder, Dan Myoa. We taught Dropbox, I was at 7, 7, 7, 8.

So we got Dropbox with Cloud, and Cloud in the market was like a good concept. I don't know if I think. So we said, you know what? Someone builds a Dropbox on-premise.

You don't need Cloud. You don't need Cloud. So we did it. We called it Picodo.

We put it up on Sosforge. Sosforge was very big, Dan. And I think when we had about 200,000 companies using it, it was available in six languages. So we went very well.

I did that for about five years. And then banks in Nigeria started reaching out to me to help them build software. So I built software for about three banks. And quickly I said, you know what?

This payments, I always knew the state of payments wasn't where it should be. But I didn't think it was going to be me. But just working with the banks, I don't know. I just figured, you know, if there's so many other people out there, it probably will be me, because I built Workhouse software before.

And now I just have access. I understand how financial system works. So started past that very quickly. Spent about one year just when you want to groundwork.

How do we lease about 300 customers? And I was caught in all of them, just talking through what they wanted, and building up with them. And then when do you want to my friends actually send an email, copy all the YC workers. It was late because my name was, I think it was nine hours I had, or eight hours.

So it was about one year. I started email and I said, hey, why see? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, this is Facebook. I just said that email.

I copied all of them, some Michael, and I'm like, what is this? And then I slept, and then I woke up in one year. Michael had just one in Michael's, and said, hey, should I tell him about Facebook? So I spent about five hours, like, the best email ever, which walk because Michael was not online.

So we had back and forth, they asked me to apply. I applied for YC Fellowship. And I didn't get in, actually. I think that was the biggest.

So immediately I came to apply again for the YC. I think it was October, so I applied. I think we had caught in, we became the first nine German companies getting to YC. Now I think there are 10 other companies that I've got.

And just two years, which is really amazing and exciting. Yeah, and we launched Facebook. It's good so fast. There's a launch.

And you guys just raised again. Yes, we just raised that series, $8 million from Stripe and Visa. So yeah, thank you. So I think a lot of people are curious, yeah, probably from Africa, about what your YC application looks like.

Yes, yes. What were your stats? What were your metrics? And that was the first one I teased.

Because people, honestly, when I said it in my first company, I can use profile I think in 2008, 2007. So I applied for YC then to the world. I probably didn't expect to get it. With your host of Dropbox?

Yes, exactly. Show it up. We did. I was like, I didn't expect to get into it because there was no reference like why will the Nigerian company get into YC?

But very quickly, I realized that the YC structure is actually optimized for just finding the best company's zeros. So my application was very simple. On the interview, they actually remember the access, how much I reprocessed that month. I said $200.

Like I said, it's a ship for you. And it didn't matter. Now, last month we did $20 million. It's just three years.

So what I think application was really simple. It was just clear. It just wanted to say what we wear. Yeah.

And what you're building right now is basically identical to what is basically the application for you. Exactly. You're not going to change it. Yes, yes.

It's the same vision when you payments was broken. I think it's a broken world. I think we've made a lot of progress just trying to figure it out. Yeah.

And how did you meet Ezra? Oh, we went to school together. We went to the background. We went to the background together.

And after school, we lived together. He had worked on the payments company, actually, that didn't work out. So when I wanted to do payments, it was obvious. I had to call it as a work.

So you just built a prototype and pitched them? What did you do? I built it. I actually built it.

I had customers. And while I was in GitHub, I told you the back and forth with Michael. Yeah. So one of the back and forth, Michael was saying, who else was working with me on the project?

So I talked about Ezra and a few people. And I was like, you know what? Is there someone that really you should, that you can take along with you on this journey? And I was like, yeah, of course.

I just called this out. I was like, this is what I was doing. And he was like, yeah. Of course.

I didn't even wish for a lot of time. So he started very obvious. Yeah. Wow.

OK. And so I think it was a very good decision. Because yeah, just having two people connected with the same vision, just building this, we started moving faster and things just getting better. And so you, when you arrived, so you were in the winter 2016.

Yes. That's what I was saying. When you arrived in January. Well, I guess you did your interview in November or something.

Yes, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

It was fun. It was my favorite story. Every time I talk about the place, actually, I talk about the interview day. Because we got into YC.

We wanted to just see what was happening. So we came in a day earlier and just came in to see what was happening. The first company I saw was someone just building kind of shit. I saw two ladies.

I saw one of those two. I think they got into YC. They were building a bra that detects breast cancer. It's cool.

No, it's impressive. And people were asking us, what are you guys building? I'm like, oh, really? It's so many different.

It's of these five deals. It's just a goal. Yeah. But it was fascinating for people.

And people were like, wow, this is amazing. Obviously, there's so many people in Africa. There's a lot of transactions happening. It's any team trying to figure out payments there.

I want to be the operator. So we're really excited. I got at least two emails the night before I interviewed from people I met saying they talked about building something cool. So it was really good.

The next morning, just going into the interview. We were a bit more confident. Yeah. What were the interview questions where they were saying things like, why won't Stripe build it?

It was very fast. I came on. We got in a very long flight. I think it was 22 hours just from Lagos to San Francisco.

And I wrote out my notes. I think I crammed everything. Well, I only practiced. It was just the first line.

I was like, hey, tell us what are you guys working on? I'm working on a pay stack. It's a payments company. We've made a huge leap of how it currently exists.

It used to be about seven steps before. It's now two steps. I'm like, sure. So I had to do this.

I'm full out of laughter. I'm like, oh, this is interesting. So I forgot all my talking points. We went very fast.

I remember also the access to why we went live. We said we just had a week. We were worried about fraud and all that. And they said, they don't think we should put that to be as a shell barrier to growth.

We go in if people want it and open it up. Okay. That's why I thought that might have been a problem. But it didn't matter.

And then we got a call in the evening asking if we want it wisely. Of course. Yeah, it was very exciting actually. And then so what was it like when you, I mean, I don't know nearly as much as you do about the Nigerian startups.

But like when you were just thrown in with everyone else in January. No, it was fun. So why is it pretty much international? For sure.

I think a lot of people don't recognize that. But we didn't feel, we didn't feel, actually I thought I was going to have a problem. No, we got in. We met people from Ghana working on, I think, from Chicago, but like, originally from Ghana.

So there's a lot of diversity in my city. So we didn't feel any. Okay. And so then what are their substantial differences in any element of the startup scene in Nigeria?

I think a lot. Yeah. I think one of the things we just saw quickly was just the, I don't want to say the age. But I think if I'd say when I was starting up, the kind of people that were building cool stuff, they're really like in the tatters and the fifties.

So just coming here and seeing young people just doing amazing stuff. Like young people that I don't have any stuff. It is a good one. I remember Justin Khan, for example, I remember watching Justin Sevi.

And just seeing him about 12 years of 10 years later, I was still looking at young. I'm like, wow, everybody's doing it. So I was really shocked at how much how young everyone was, how connected everyone was. So I was shocked.

I think the other thing is also just the quality of the advice. The things are not as intuitive as this should be. That's my favorite. That's the first thing I picked up.

The startups founders think they want to be the way to network. The way to get out there is to network and just be everywhere. But the way to build a strong network is to build something impressive. And just letting that very quickly made me focus its down.

And it was helpful. Now I feel like I need to know without having to just be everywhere. That was me in college. I was like, oh man, how do I meet all these people?

Exactly. I was asking the handful of impressive people that I met. And they're saying, don't worry about it. Just make cool stuff.

Exactly. Also, I think the long term view is also very helpful. Which helped me. I remember my conversation.

I think it was Michael to just asking about what this would look like. And he said, it takes about seven years to build a solid startup. Anyway, so I had to do it for a long time. That was really refreshing for me to say, I'm not going to make it one more.

Like, no pressure. Let's just do it every year. This is our third year. I'm looking forward to the next four years.

What does a payments market look like in Nigeria? Like how much is cash? How much is card? How does it go?

It's a lot of cash. I would say Nigeria's GDP is about $500 million. A consumer spending is about $150 billion. The population is like $200 million.

But just less than 2% of consumers spending spend the cards. And a lot of that is just people using their cards at the ATM to get cash out. So they can spend it. So I think it's still very, very early.

There's a lot of transactions happening. Most of them are still happening offline. And then there's a lot of transactions that are kicking off new business models that have been created. And it's getting obvious that digital payments will win.

So there's a company called ByPower. I think they're rising to the selling electricity online, the use-based stack. Before now, before then, you would have had to go buy electricity at a store. But if your electricity goes off at 9pm on a Friday night, then you have to wait till morning.

That doesn't make sense. So the fact that you can pay digital means you can always have electricity. And then multiple business models like that make it very easy for people to do things. So I think people are realizing this smartphone adoption is increasing, mobile penetration is increasing.

So I think it's a good time. It was really a good time everything is speaking up. And we're just there just trying to connect the customers with the budgets and remove all the friction. Because I think, and just to say why pay stack is extremely interesting.

I think before now, a lot of the payments infrastructure was built for enterprise companies. And of course, enterprise companies like Complexity. I don't know why. So just detangling all that and just giving things simple.

First thing we had to do, making it easy for businesses to accept payments, figure out the cost infrastructure, understand why things are, why they are doing all that. And in terms of your growth, are you trying to incentivize more businesses to pay to figure out a card system? What do you do? So I will say we've been overwhelmed.

Like we haven't since we launched space like that day, January, like I forget today. It's been like, we've not had time to even think. But a few things we're doing very well. Number one, we know that we see these transactions.

We see what is in the same business. So we think the first thing to do is make sure that transactions can happen. Transactions can be successful, which we're doing. The next thing is also just ensuring that the cost of my experience is good enough.

If someone is trying to pay, we have to make that payment happen as soon as they can. If someone has a dispute, we have to figure it out. So we started building what the first company, I think was the only company that has like an automated dispute process and all that. So because everything is connected, we tell ourselves that if someone has a problem with a transaction, that's someone that will never trust digital payments again.

So we don't take it lightly. We try our best to make sure we can make it work. So I will say in the short term, half of our strategy is just making it work. Now that's a good tip for everybody.

But half is building a community around our margins. We think the ideal pace that we know why people are using the pace that people want to start and scale businesses. So how can we help them do this? We know just having a community, helping them with tools, with content, with events, last month we had an event with Facebook, which is teaching people how to sell on Instagram.

And that's on one end. We have multiple things we do in the community. So yeah, it's really make you work and build a community around the businesses so that it will be easy for people to start and scale their businesses. Okay.

Is there an average type of business that you guys are? Yes. Now no, because we have little, we have people just starting out, people building side projects on one hand. On the other hand, we have airlines.

On the other hand, we have an airline. We have a tux collection. We have boss tickets in. I think that's the beauty of payments.

Everybody is affected. And in fact, the bigger you are, the bigger you are, the bigger you are, the bigger you are. So it's exciting. So in terms of your growth over the past few years, were there particular features that made a big impact in your growth rate?

I wouldn't say so. I think it's still the same, just making it work. And even our customers have been going themselves. So when I was doing the fundraising, I had time to look at the data.

The first of court that launched in Q1 2016 by Q4 2017, they were doing 30X volumes. I was even the lowest because other courts I would go faster. The businesses themselves are early. And so everybody is growing at the same time.

So I think it's really exciting. Wow. So when it comes to expanding to other countries in Africa, I assume, then everywhere else. Definitely, Africa.

Do you just assume that their economies function in similar ways to Nigeria's? Or do you have to get someone on the ground to figure it all out? How do you do it? Oh, I think it's true.

So the first part is every day we get people just ping the sensor. When are you coming to the ground? When are you coming to the ground? When are you coming to the ground?

So there's that. And there's the fact that we knew that this problem is like continent wide. And we know what we've built can work because payments is really simple. Well, I hope.

Well, the way we think about pace-notch. It's like a full stack payment. It's what happens before the payment. It happens during the payments.

And after. So we've spent a lot of time thinking about this. And these things work the same way this market changes. It changes the lookout context.

But I will admit that Africa is really interesting. My favorite expansion story. I used to be very excited that I was going to scale across Africa. And then there was an opportunity to go to Egypt's Cairo.

And we got to Cairo. I remember my friend. We got to the airport. And Uber, I think it was Uber or Karim.

And then it occurred to us that the Uber, the Vietnam bar was in Arabic. Oh, no. I'm not going to be the one to launch this. That was really exciting.

But like you said, I think finding the right people to help us figure this out will be very helpful. That's one of the reasons why I'm just thinking about a series A. We have to think about companies that have figured out skill, comments like Stripe, comments like Visa. The comments that I've thought about moving payments from one place to another.

It's these companies. And so we're like really, really going to have to learn how to do this in another country. But we've made a lot of progress with Ghana, which is really close to Nigeria. But I think as we go to other countries, it would even be more difficult.

But the good thing is to be honest, we're ready to learn. We're ready to learn. We're ready for the challenge. This is why we created the company.

And that is why when people say, oh, why won't an international company just come to Africa? Because it's very difficult. This local context is difficult. And it really takes its thing that believes that this is why we can say the company.

So we're really willing to do the work. And hopefully we'll see. Oh, God. So when it comes to scaling up, like, what does your team look like?

Are you hiring people exclusively from Visa? What do you do? Let's talk about it. That's like my greatest problem.

I'm like, I used to read a lot about when this was a CEO's work. Always be hiring. I didn't realize that. I used to want to like, why will CEOs try to hire?

But now it's mostly only in my head. So I will say right now we have about 36 people. This time last year, I was about 15, three years ago. It was about five.

So it's been very interesting. We have so many problems in Toronto. Across all corners, right now, I'm actually looking for senior engineers to help us. We got some of these things out.

I think it's a good thing that happens in startup where you don't really optimize so far that you've built it. But now you're having like millions and millions of records in your DB and you're wondering should I switch it? But you can't even switch because the more problems come in. And there's more things to build than everything.

So it takes some skill and some experience because I want these things out. And just actually be looking for people that are really ready for that challenge. Because it's very easy to just come help us. Yeah.

So I think my understanding is that you're looking for people from anywhere in the world to come. Yes, yes, yes. I think my goal, my vision is to build the best talents in Africa. I think there's so many talents in people in Africa.

And we want to have them around the building for Ross. But also understand very clearly that because of where we're going to, we need some help. We need people that have done these things before to show us some of these things. Like I want to set a stand out for engineering culture in Africa.

How would I do that if I don't know if we haven't seen how it's done elsewhere? So we think the best case scenario for Ross is can we find the very best people in the world irrespective of where they're from? Can they come spend time with us about a year or more? Can they obscure people?

Can we learn from them? Can they, for every one person we get as about 20 people that will be obscured even more? So how can we find these people? How can we learn from them?

How can we become better than them? I don't know that because I think there's a lot happening. And the startups actually that do that now. But Ross, in fact, we've talked about creating a bootcamp.

You know, can't we find someone? So I was running a bootcamp. I was just in town with the company. I just felt like I was a couple of people because the problems are there.

The real problem is do we have enough people that have the right experience to fix it? And we can't like I run this company on Google. Like I said, how do you do this? I think at the point it would get more difficult to do that.

So like, is there someone I can just be inside and just help us with this? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. You can definitely email anyone who's done YC before, but even that.

No, but also the YC community has been extremely, extremely helpful. That's like the best part of YC. Like I thought YC, best part of YC was going to YC. Okay.

At every point in my career, I faced like I've always thought the best part of YC was something else. So I thought the best part of YC was the one cent of K. But very quickly, I thought the best part of YC was YC. And then later, and now I think the best part of YC is just bookface.

Just passively seen conversations happening. And so some of the times when I see some of these things, like, oh, I saw this. Someone talk about this three months ago. Can I see the responses?

So it feels like I'm building a company with about thousands of people. So it feels like, I don't know. It's really exciting. No, I mean, everyone's in the same struggle.

So they're just like happening because everyone's been helped out so many times. Exactly. No, the network is really amazing. And like you said, everybody's helpful helping.

Sometimes they want to like, does this person really need to help me? Well, yeah. I think so. And when you were talking about building a boot camp, like, are there boot camps?

It's called doing very well. I think they're doing very well. They find the best people. Okay.

And they do it for four years. Yeah. But I like that model. I think that will scale in the long term.

So what I think I paste back now, what I was saying is can we find the best engineers locally? Yeah. And can we find someone that can help us make them extremely, can we find good engineers and tell them to greet at amazing engineers as a struggle as possible, as a three months. Because I know with engineering some things, you just have to have seen the problems before.

You can't react to bits of things. So just having someone having a 10x engineer just sits with a team of five engineers. I think it helps everybody. Yeah.

And I think that's a really interesting idea because it's actually a common complaint I've heard that companies get a lot of junior, great JavaScript engineers. And they can make all kinds of blocks. Yes. But they can do more complicated stuff.

Exactly. Exactly. And I think the LIO stuff is going to start the better. Because I don't think our problems will reduce.

I think it's going to be more complicated. It's going to be more difficult. So, yeah, it's really just, I hope we can take on this challenge. I hope we can find the right people.

But yeah, if there's anyone listening, if there's anyone interested in just the challenge that you're building in Africa, building some of the best, just working with payments of a structuring Africa, building for some of the best businesses in Africa, please reach out to me. And we're willing to even help with the experience, just keep a very good experience, leaving it legal to help with logistics, help with the accommodation, help them even travel seed continent. So it's going to be a good offer. But we just think, can we find the best people, can we figure some of these problems out as soon as we can and can we just help businesses start that skill.

I think it's awesome. You've got a ton of questions. People seem very excited to talk to you. You've got time.

We'll make it happen. So I want to make sure I give them credit. But someone asked about crypto. People have talked about crypto exploded in the past couple of years.

Maybe it's in these less developed markets that it'll really take hold. What's your on the ground? What's actually happening? I think there's a lot of activity happening.

I would have made that most of the activities around trading, people buying and selling very quickly. I think the right use case is still just being formed. So I think the right use case is just being formed. But right now there's a lot of trading activity happening.

So many people, it seems like from Nigeria are also asking you questions. And then some of them, let's just start with the basic stuff. So Creative Joe, their question is how difficult is it to get into YC? I think how easy is it to get into YC if you have a good business.

I think the YC process, I just think it was difficult too. I think the YC process actually selects the right people. I don't know how to explain that. But if you have all the right components, it's extremely easy.

I think the hard work is, can you clearly at school Italian press your businesses, can you explain what you're doing and can they understand what you're saying? Were there certain things that, maybe this was in fundraising too, where you felt that you had to educate US investors about the market? A lot of times. I think it is what it is.

But I think the right investors, they know what to look out for. And that's what makes YC exciting. I was just processing $200. Very bad.

The questions were around other things. Why will you be the ones with you? What is your experience? I think YC is in that bucket of sophisticated investors.

I know the right questions to ask. Even if they don't have to look out context, they know what to look out for. That's why I think it's relatively easy. I think founders need to focus on building the businesses such that when your opportunities come, it becomes easy for them to take advantage of those opportunities.

Yeah, I think in large part, people are looking for cheat codes and the only cheat code is to make something great. Exactly. Exactly. All right.

Paul Israel, he asks, what gaps do you think still exist in the Nigerian and FitX space? Whoa. That's very a lot. I think it's a lot.

I think just Nigeria, like we said, is very big. Financial services in Nigeria is very big. So I think there's a lot. I think there's some opportunity for scoring, credit scoring.

I know a few people are doing that now, but there's some opportunity there. There's still no like, cash up there more. There's something around there. I know that there are also things happening there, but like there's still no.

So I will say across all financial services in countries, it's so hard to say this is the winner. So I will say because there's still no club in all parts, there are multiple opportunities. All right. Nelson asks, are there any conventional startup pieces of advice that did not work for pay stack as their target market is in Africa?

That's a good question. Well, I think I will say, I think, generally, I found the advice I received here actually more useful because I think doing a business is doing a business. It's hard everywhere. So I think that's the hardest part for me, like finding people, building a business, what should you be doing, all your priorities and all that.

So I think that's like constant wherever you are. So I will say, I will say this. I haven't seen anything that like did you really work? Maybe some things are all fundraising.

I think things are more difficult, I would say, but I think the principles are still the same. Yeah. It must have been in some other interview I heard with you, but you were kind of talking about the psychology there, but like more people were telling you, you couldn't. Exactly.

That's exactly so. And I think I talk about it just coming here. Psychology is, and I think that's changing now. Two years later, I think it has changed.

But two years ago, people laughed at me. How your competition is a 14 year old company that has video, how are you? I've got a lot of that. And I'm sure people still get it.

Why will you be the one to figure this out? But I think that mindset is changing now. It doesn't seem that it's focused on solving the problem. It's getting easier for them to just get access to whatever they need.

That's helpful. That mindset is changing. I think the content is like pace dark and a lot of other content is different. It's just breaking some of these barriers.

I think it's getting easier for other people. Yeah, man. You're leading the way. For better or worse.

Nelson had another question. That was interesting. What are some of the most important lessons you've learned while building pace dark? Wow.

Yeah. I think that's a very good question. I think your team is very important. I think it's tied to the first question around how I courage.

Like people would worry like, how would you figure this out? Just in building pace dark, I think that you can be courageous. Like just pick a big problem and solve it. But you won't be the one to solve yourself.

Like you're going to have to find the right team to help you figure this out. So just lent that quickly. Can I find people better than me? And I switched into that mode maybe one month into pace dark, like one month into lacy.

And everybody that's joined the team has been better than me. Because I started doing everything. Cos I'm a success. Front end.

Back end. Deside everything. Oh my god. Exhale.

Just started disconnecting that and finding the best people that can do it better than me. I think just learning that has really helped. I think that's one. And number two, I think it's just around.

I think there's an ecosystem available. Like don't try to do it yourself. Just can you learn how to use the ecosystem to solve some of the problems you have. And do you guys think you've fundraised at the right time?

So every time we fundraised, it came out as like, I never, so this fundraised for example should have just started now. Actually, September, that was where we set it up for. Because I came out of conversation. I said, I wanted to do it at the end of year.

I went to a jump school. So just got into that mode very quickly. And so that you know what, okay, I can spend the rest of the year just building up for like a September fundraise. And then things just happened very quickly.

Yeah. That's it. It just happened. Yeah.

All right. Let's do another, let's do another another no some question. They ask, what are some applications you would love to see built on top of Paystack? Wow.

I think I would definitely love to see like a, like a P2P payments. So something like cash up, I'm really interested in. I think something for businesses too. I really love to be for Paystack.

While I was figuring out Paystack, I really wanted to build something like that. Which is like, expenses, employee expenses and all that. I really, really wanted to build that. Well, I thought that like the Fondish dollar infrastructure wasn't even there.

So we have to start from like collections and this process. Okay. So I think someone can build something for like expense management and all that. I think they all be excited on the Paystack.

But I had it in the world. It's expensive. It's like that. I have to have to do a video.

I can give it to you. Yeah. So just a few things. Okay.

What about the market in general? Because like, yeah, of all the startups that exist in the States, for example, like what would you love to see over there? Oh, interesting. That's a big question.

Yeah. Yeah. I was excited to see that we had a world's building stripe because I spent about three or four years just for the install. Like all your work was everything, the other direction and all that.

So I'm excited. But other than that, I think most of the other companies have some form. Okay. Maybe it was something like Apple.

Yeah. It's not. You know what? Yeah.

Maybe something around phones, something around games, something around. Yeah. But I will say most of the things have some form. Okay.

There were a handful of questions around just like how the market in Africa is ensuring like what's the state of the infrastructure? Yeah. Okay. So I will say this is a very exciting time to be building for Africa.

Okay. I think because there's a very young population. I think for context in 19. Okay.

This is going to be very good. I don't have numbers on my head, but I think in 1960, Nigeria's population was about 45 million, Italy's population was about 45 million. I think and just going through 40 years of 45 years, Nigeria is about 200 million, Italy is probably still about 60 million or 40 million. You know, so like, and this is not just Nigeria.

Countries are moving very fast. Like the next five years, I think Nigeria is going to be even more than the US. So the population is young, active, like, it has its phones and all that. So if this is the right time to build for this people, yeah.

So I think the market is just getting there and some foundational things are now being built. So the payments layer has been figured out now. Yeah. Logistics layer has been figured out now.

Well, what does that look like? Are there a train network? What's a road situation? What's it look like?

Well, yeah. There's like, I think there's a road network. I mean, yeah, like what's the, what quality we're talking about? Yeah.

Alash and Singapore. But I think it's kind of different to better, especially Nigeria and Lagos. But I think the conflict is going in out. The exciting thing is about, can we like just go against the constraints?

Can we even need to go to the best ways to just solve the problem? So I think the interesting con is we're going out logistics. Three are logistics is kind of called max. So I will say, yeah, so it's getting easier.

People are going out payments. People are going out logistics. And so whenever you want to build on top of this, it's going to become easier. Yeah.

Okay. Nestor, is it Gout? Is that Nigerian name? Can you pronounce that one?

Yeah. Is that Gout? Is that Gout? Yeah.

All right. There you go. Yeah. Do you think something like GoFundMe could work in Nigeria?

Yeah. There's multiple sites like there's a company called DunitNG. I think already working. Yeah.

I think it can work. I think it can work. Exactly. Easy.

Yeah. This next one, I'm carjoy asked. Can I see payments on an MVP e-commerce website before registering a company? Is that a specific question?

Yeah. So when we launched Space Deck, we called on, you had to be a registered business, a use space deck. Okay. But we just launched something earlier called Tata Businesses.

So yes, you can register business with your personal details. So there's something called the BVN now, which is a parametric verification number that everybody has. Okay. So it's very easy for us to just identify people.

So just talking about the former question about how things are changing. Yeah. So the identity infrastructure is just being built. And so imagine how long ago you guys at the US had the social security number.

And now just three or four years into a BVN, which is not really a direct comparison, but it's a process we have to identify. Okay. And so now you, in other words, you connect a personal checking account or something like that. Yeah.

We can just get your BVN and we can get your details, we can verify that. Okay. We can allow you accept payments for, I think, October of $3,000. And then after that, you have to register business.

All right. So the answer is yes. Exactly. We got a lot.

That's why we launched the startup business. Oh, right on. Yes. Yes.

I shoot stress man. Here's another, is that an Nigerian name? No. No.