Company Founders

"We’re more on the side of citizens and individuals than institutions, definitely. We see ourselves as a platform. Even though we’ve been a long advocate, we increasingly see ourselves as a platform. That we build solutions, data, civic infrastructure."

"My sincere interest is to see a Nigeria that grows and optimises resources for the benefits of all Nigerians."

"We are like the civic infrastructure for Nigeria. We build stuff and people build on top of that."

"We also track public projects, for which we have a platform called Traackr. Then we also have institutional support. We help public institutions, media, society build and do civic products."

"We work with four major categories of people. One is digitally active citizens."

"My loyalty to the good cause of our nation, Nigeria compelled me to accept the call to provide technical skills and this experience has more than strengthened it."

"The key goal for us is that our work is centered on evidence. And it’s centered on data.We are not an investigative journalist platform. We just want to make sure that we continue to advocate, or demand, or build strategies for supply of public data. So that’s our first key goal. Getting public data to be held there. As much as we can find. Then also figuring out the way to build platforms to simplify and to ease the access to that level of data. So that’s what’s unique too. We are building this constellation of data, technology, and storytelling."

"Beyond just a tour, we want to build strong presence in the Bay Area."

"But the sad thing is, even if they want to, they won’t be able to apply it after they finish their high school education."

"Technology inspires you. Having that feeling of freedom and being able to do something gives you that sense of accomplishment and that sense of accomplishment drives you to do more things that you love, more things that excite you."

"The boys imagine more, they want to do something that’s big and inspired, the girls they really want to help their community from the core."

"Teaching young girls coding and seeing them become confident and inspired reminded me of how I felt when I started coding."

"The biggest thing we have in Africa is a young generation. So if we train the young generation in tech, we’ll be able to build something that is everlasting."

"Parents have an expectation of what you should be — if you’re a good student, you’re a doctor, you’re not an engineer or in the computer science field... They haven’t seen any female being in STEM and being successful."

"Unless you really are in the industry, there is no one to look up to in technology."

"More than that, it’s about equipping kids to cope in the 21st century,It’s about problem solving, analytical thinking and self-learning, as well as digital literacy. It means understanding how the internet works, how to get information from it, how to identify wrong and false information, how to keep your privacy and make sure your data is not being used. We think these are really important lessons, especially in this day and age."

"The girls get the coding education but also other skills and the necessary knowledge to keep themselves away from problems – or at least be aware enough to report them."

"It doesn’t matter if you went to a great university – what matters is if you have a computer, access to the internet and the drive to achieve."

"Who can solve the problem of a female if she cannot tell you the problem, and find her own solution?"

"I think now they understand the value of the quality of the education that’s provided, and the enabling environment for entrepreneurs in Ethiopia. It’s a struggle every day, but we have seen a lot of progress."

"Connect with people that can add value to you, connect with people that can take you to your promise, share notes with them, get encouragement from them."

"My aim is to democratize technology."

"Our goal in the end is to see the quality of life of citizens improve through efficient service delivery. We majorly work in five key areas. One is on budget access and research. The team will break down the budget into basics, and simplify it, and make sure everyone can understand it."

"Ethiopia’s youth have no lack of ideas, energy or ambition,but they can’t fulfil their potential alone. What we see in Ethiopia is a lack of co-creation centres where like-minded people can come together and create and innovate."

"But you should never do anything that puts your entire company at risk. You need to contain your risks."

"The story stays the same but how you tell it changes as you progress further and further up."

"At the end of the day the key to a good pitch is to put yourself in the shoes of the person you’re talking to at the fund."

"Having spent time researching robotics undergraduate courses up and down the country, I was impressed by a video of the work being done in the labs here in Bristol – especially what was being done here with legged robots. That was what I specialised in while studying the degree course."

"At the end of my first year, myself and another student created a program to take robotics into local schools. Robotics is the perfect combination of the STEM subjects – Science, Technology, English and Maths – which younger students might not think to combine. The program expanded to four schools in Bristol in four years."

"I grew up in Nigeria and moved to the UK with my family when I was 11. I did my GCSEs and A Levels in Kent where I developed a real interest in the sciences. Moving into robotics seemed like the ideal way to combine physics, biology and maths in one subject, so I went on to study robotics at UWE here in Bristol."

"If the next majority are left out the world misses out on what its young brilliant minds including Africa has to offer."

"Coming up with an idea, presenting it to people and getting them to say “yeah we believe in this” was nothing but entrepreneurship."

"If governance is shaped only by those who already holds power it isn't governance but infringement."

"To build a great brand, you have to explain why everything looks the way it does."

"Stripe and Paystack are both Y Combinator alumni, so that was the first point of contact. We were introduced to Patrick, who then offered to invest. Stripe would then lead our Series A, and along with Visa, invest $8 million in 2018. Since then, Stripe has been a close partner, and after over two years of knowledge exchange between our teams, we've built up a lot of mutual respect for each other. Eventually, it became obvious that our visions were so aligned that the natural evolution of the relationship would be to join forces in this way."

"Venture-backed companies are generally destined for one of two outcomes. IPO or acquisition. Five years in, neither of these were on the list of things that we care about as a company. We’ve always been focused on building the best payments and growth tools for African businesses and are in it for the long haul. The option to team up with the world’s most sophisticated payments company to accelerate our ambitions happened to show up, and we believe it was fortuitous."

"Businesses are bought, not sold. The most important thing is to choose a problem you are excited about solving, and focusing on that every day."

"Let's build something that truly works not just for the few but for everyone."

"In the fundamentals of robotics, the more freedom of movement you have, the more expressions the character can have."

"AI is moving fast we need outcomes not just dialogue."

"Success is the fire and how big you can make it burn."

"Build something remarkable, be resourceful enough to find places where you can articulate what you are doing."

"Solutions to hard work is persistence and resilience."

"Figuring out a market that is growing is some of the things people look out for."

"It is important to think of your co-funders and your partners as people you are going to be on a long journey with."

"All acquisition conversations always require careful thought and consideration, and it was no different in this case. The Paystack team has been interacting with Patrick and the Stripe team over the past couple years and after significant amounts of collaboration and knowledge exchange between both companies, we agreed that this move was a natural evolution of what was and continues to be a great relationship."

"Throughout his decades-long career, Son has made headlines for spectacular victories as well as disastrous failures. For a time, at the beginning of 2000, he claimed to be the world’s richest man, with a fortune worth an estimated $78 billion amassed by buying up internet startups. However, the collapse of the dotcom bubble just months later wiped out more than 90% of his wealth."

"Well, we can still create things. We can still enjoy. We can still try to sell something, try to design something, try to communicate with others. This may be just a job, and it may be a job you don't like very much. But we have to do it just to live, just to earn an income, to have food to eat, a roof over our heads, and clothes to wear. We must have some income, even if it is just to live. For this purpose, many people are working, but they don't necessarily like it. They have to work to make a living. And those who have to work to live, many of them will be replaced by a more efficient solution, that is, smart robots, robots with intelligence. Well, that way we can move on to more exciting things."

"Even today, we don’t need to remember so many things because you can search for relevant information on Google. It's like a part of your brain - it becomes an extension of your brain. So we don't have to do some primitive things. We can use our brains to think more. You know, think more creatively. The brain is no longer used to remember how many days there are in a year, or what happened, nor is it used to remember what the name of this plant is or what shape its rhizome is. Because we can Google it really quickly, right. However, our brains still function in many ways. Our brains are still very active and actively thinking. The extension of the brain enables a seamless connection between virtual and reality. It is also an extension of our lives."

"Few characters are more enigmatic or misunderstood than Masayoshi Son, the billionaire founder and CEO of SoftBank, the Japanese media technology conglomerate. In Japan and in western media, he is cast as a dreamer, financial engineer, and speculator — an object of suspicion who has risked financial ruin more than once in a five-decade career."