Kennedy Ekezie

"One thing I learned was that all solutions have to be tailored towards the pain points of the target audience."

"Small businesses want to make more money, and they want to keep as much of that money in their pockets for as long as possible. This means that whatever solutions you’re building for them have to very directly address one of the pain points that affect their ability to do that."

"We also learned that imported solutions do not work. You cannot convince businesses that they need a solution that they are not convinced that they need, which has been an incredible pain point for us because there’s always a risk when building software and replicating a playbook."

"A big lesson we learned while building Kippa was definitely to not scale your team too early. You need to have very few people who are very hard working and can take on multiple roles and multiple hats."

"Another lesson we learned was avoiding the temptation to throw money at problems. If you’re in a position where you can afford to throw money at problems, you have a quality problem, because most people don’t have the money to solve their problems, but it’s still not always the best solution."

"It is important to identify what aligns well with your strengths. Achieving this through self-reflection alone can be challenging. Ideally, seek input from mentors or friends you trust who can provide insights into your areas of strength."

""95% of small businesses in Nigeria (our primary market) die in the first 5 years - building generational businesses is not the norm in our part of the world."

"African businesses operate informally and this lack of structure allows businesses to lose millions of dollars every year."

"---as a young aspiring entrepreneur, spend time figuring out if this is the best way for you to create an impact in the world. Usually, the best way to do so would be by working at a fast-growing startup. Furthermore, surround yourself with smart and talented people with who you can have fun as you build and grow. A combination of grit, back-of-brain motivation and technical competence scale your ability to successfully build and grow a startup."