Hey,

There’s something I’ve noticed about African founders.

Most of us try to build “the next Stripe” or “the next Shopify”.

But the founders who actually win here do something very different.

They study the street first.

Today, I want to walk you through one of my favorite African operator stories.

The real playbook.

The story of Tosin Eniolorunda and Moniepoint.

And if you’re trying to scale past $1M ARR in Africa, this might be one of the most practical breakdowns you’ll read this year.

Let’s start here.

Before Moniepoint, Tosin was just an engineer at Interswitch.

Then he left and started TeamApt in 2015.

TeamApt was basically a software consulting company for banks. They built apps and internal systems. Sterling Bank. Unity Bank. That kind of work.

Good revenue.

But fragile.

Then one day, Sterling Bank pulled out.

Just like that.

One client gone. Cash flow hit. Business shaking.

Every founder has this moment.

The email that changes everything.

For most people, this is where the story ends.

For Tosin, this is where Moniepoint started.

Instead of chasing more bank contracts, he asked a better question:

“Why are we building for banks when the real pain is with businesses on the ground?”

Banks were already served.

But small businesses?

Market women. Shops. Agents. Informal economy.

They had:

• poor access to banking
• unreliable POS
• failed transactions
• downtime
• cash problems

Huge pain. Zero respect from traditional banks.

That’s where TeamApt pivoted.

To merchants.

Boring. Unsexy. Massive.

This is Lesson 1 for you:

If you’re stuck at $200k to $500k ARR, stop chasing shiny customers.

Go where the pain is embarrassing and urgent.

Here’s where it gets really smart.

Most fintechs went fully digital.

Apps. Downloads. Ads.

Moniepoint did the opposite.

They went hybrid.

Offline + digital.

Physical agents + tech.

Tosin understood something most founders ignore:

African markets are low trust.

People don’t just download an app and move money.

They want to see a human being.

So Moniepoint built an agent and POS network.

Real people in real markets.

Helping businesses accept payments.

Helping them deposit and withdraw cash.

Helping them troubleshoot.

This created:

• trust
• visibility
• daily usage
• word of mouth

Usage.

Big difference.

By 2023, they had expanded to hundreds of thousands of agents and were processing over $14 billion monthly.

Monthly.

Let that sink in.

This is Lesson 2:

In Africa, distribution is more important than product.

Your growth problem is reach.

This part founders rarely talk about.

TeamApt operated for years without external funding.

Bootstrapped.

Scrappy.

At one point Tosin had to borrow money from his wife to pay salaries.

Most people would panic and fundraise immediately.

They didn’t.

They focused on:

• building real revenue
• real customers
• real transactions

So when they eventually raised over $80M from investors like QED and Lightrock, it was from strength, not desperation.

Lesson 3:

Raise after product market fit, not to find it.

Money amplifies what already works. It doesn’t fix a weak model.

Another thing I love about this story.

They didn’t start as a “bank”.

They evolved.

Step 1
Serve banks with software.

Step 2
Serve agents with POS.

Step 3
Serve businesses with payments.

Step 4
Become a full business bank.

Step 5
Enter consumer banking.

Each step was adjacent.

Each step leveraged existing trust and distribution.

They never jumped too far.

This is classic operator thinking.

Small, logical expansions.

Lesson 4:

Don’t launch five products.

Solve one problem deeply, then expand sideways.

Let me make this practical for you.

Here’s the Moniepoint playbook translated for SaaS founders trying to cross $1M ARR:

If you apply just these six, your odds of surviving Africa improve dramatically.

Because this is exactly why I started Smarter SaaS Growth.

There are brilliant African founders everywhere.

But most of us don’t get access to these kinds of operator breakdowns.

We get Twitter threads and hype posts.

Not playbooks.

So every week, I’m breaking down real African companies like this and extracting what you can actually use.

If you want more of this:

If you’re serious about scaling past $1M ARR:

• Sign up for our events calendar to get founder sessions and workshops
• Follow my personal LinkedIn where I share daily African founder stories and breakdowns
• Follow our company page for ecosystem updates
• And subscribe to the LinkedIn newsletter for weekly playbooks like this

Also, we’re hosting a live webinar soon where a founder will take us through her journey of building and resilience as a female tech founder in Africa and answer questions live.

If this email helped you think differently, you’ll love that session.

You can sign up here to get first dibs when registration opens.

Talk soon,
Angela.