How I run my own company's money, and what I tell yours

There was a year when nothing grew: no marketing, no development. Customers kept paying more than the company cost to run, and that was enough to keep the doors open.

I chose to keep it alive instead of closing it. The lesson I take into every client conversation: cash that covers costs buys you time, and time is the most valuable thing a young company can have.

Customers who left taught me more than the ones who stayed. Some hired an accountant. Some needed features we didn't have. The gap wasn't software. It was service.

So we changed the model: bigger businesses, with full accounting support and onboarding on top of the software. The customers who left told me exactly what to build.

Next I had to decide what things cost. We set clear plans and hard feature gates, so what a business pays for is what it gets. Pricing is a decision, not a guess, and each plan has to have a reason to exist.

That sounds simple. It meant saying no to the easy option, which is giving everything to everyone and hoping to charge for it later.

In early 2026 I published our real activation numbers: more than 3,000 businesses signed up, fewer than 10% active, fewer than 1% paying. It was uncomfortable. It was also the most useful thing I did that quarter.

I called it an activation problem, not a marketing problem, and we spent the next thirty days fixing the first experience. An honest number is the beginning of an honest plan.

I asked for an audit of every path money takes through the product, to the standard a chartered accountant would expect, and I built a gate so that no change touching money can ship unless a large set of scenarios passes.

The gate catches problems before customers ever see them. It's the same standard I'd ask of any business I advise: don't trust the numbers because they look right, prove them.

When the company's focus moved from users to revenue, it made more than ₦10 million in three months.

What I tell the businesses I advise: know what you're measuring, and be ready to change it when it stops serving you.