IYINOLUWA ABOYEJI -CEO FLUTTERWAVE
Iyinoluwa is the founder and CEO of Flutterwave, a digital payment platform helping to connect Africa to a global economy by assisting banks and businesses make secure payments. He is also the former co-founder of Andela.
Journey Into Entrepreneurship
As a teenager, Iyinoluwa worked with several local and international organisations such as the World Youth Alliance, Board Of Imprint Publication and Harambe Africa.
Despite gaining a law degree, Iyin always had a passion for tech. At age 18 he founded bookneto, a social e-learning platform for university professors to teach online courses.
The Start Of Andela
In 2014, Iyin teamed up with an old friend to form Andela, a talent accelerator that recruits and trains software developers, pays them as they learn and connects them with employers.
It grew to become one of Nigeria’s best-known startups and became a huge success that it was dubbed “harder to get in than Harvard” by CNN. Iyinoluwa helped build it to a $100 million market cap in two years.
The Switch TO Flutterwave
In 2016, Iyin left Andela to start Flutterwave, a technology and infrastructure solutions provider for digital payment across Africa.
It helps businesses in Africa go global by providing a smooth exchange of funds in more than 150 currencies. In 2018 alone, it announced that it processed over $1 billion worth of transactions. By the end of 2019, Flutterwave was worth over $100 million.
Entrepreneurial Trials
“I wish I understood the importance and uniqueness of African business modelling much earlier in my entrepreneurial career. I made a lot of mistakes tinkering around with impossible unit economics in tiny markets. I see a lot of well-funded giants still make some of the mistakes I made earlier in my career. But understanding the intricate relationships between value creation and value capture has been so important to me.”
If you want to do important work you must have the courage to be disliked.
–Iyinoluwa Aboyeji
In an interview with Microtraction
IF YOU HAVEN’T YET, SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER ON WWW.BRAVEWOOD.NG FOR WEEKLY INSPIRING CONTENT THAT WILL SPUR YOU TO SUCCESS.