Shows
TCS - The TechCentral ShowJoel Bronkowski on Paystack's big expansion plansNigerian fintech Paystack, which was acquired by Stripe, the Irish-American firm founded by the Collison brothers in 2020 for US$200-million, has big plans to expand elsewhere in Africa.
Joel Bronkowski, Paystack’s country head for South Africa, joins the TechCentral Show (TCS) to talk about these expansion plans as well as the state of fintech on the continent.
Paystack, which is headquartered in Lagos, was founded by Shola Akinlade and Ezra Olubi and received early funding from Silicon Valley start-up accelerator Y Combinator.
In the TCS interview, Bronkowski also chats about:
• Paystack’s plans for the South...2023-07-2725 min
Founders ConnectThe Paystack Story: Interview with Cofounder/CTO of Paystack, Ezra Olubi #FoundersConnectPaystack is a technology company solving payments problems for ambitious businesses. Their mission is to help businesses in Africa become profitable, envied, and loved. Stripe (an American financial service and software as a service company headquartered in San Francisco) acquired Paystack for a rumoured amount of about $200M.
In this episode of #FoundersConnect, I sat down with the CTO of Paystack, Ezra Olubi. He shared how Paystack started, why he said Yes to the idea, how Paystack raised money and eventually got acquired; his biggest life lessons and favourite failures and even talked about h...2021-11-0136 min
Afrobility: Africa Tech and Business#20: Paystack - How the FinTech payments platform went from Y Combinator to a $200M Stripe exit in 5 yearsOverview: Today, we’re going to talk about Paystack - the African payments infrastructure company that was acquired by Stripe in 2020 October. We’ll give some context of the Nigerian payments sector before 2015, Paystack's founding, early history, acquisition by Stripe & end with our views on its future outlook. This episode was recorded on January 10th, 2021.
Companies discussed: Paystack, Stripe, Flutterwave, Interswitch & Y Combinator (YC)
Business concepts discussed: Payments infrastructure strategy, low-end disruption, product-market fit (PMF), capital fundraising (Angels, Strategic investors, VCs), Corporate venture capital (CVC) strategy, payments infrastructure & payments M&A...2021-01-111h 22
Building The Future PodcastEpisode 11 Shola Akinlade, Co-founder at Paystack, How to build a big business by solving painful problems. The story of Paystack.On the podcast today, we have the CEO and Co-Founder of Paystack, Shola Akinlade. Paystack is a payments processing company which lets businesses accept payments via debit card or money transfer on their websites or mobile apps. Paystack was the very first Nigerian company to get into YC - which is no small feat! Shola is a software engineer by training and his foray into software engineering started when his uncle gifted him a computer. We discuss his journey as a developer, from being a part of the vibrant tech ecosystem at Babcock University to building a tracking tool for H...2017-09-0453 min
crudcastOgavenue AdOgavenue Ad by Ezra Olubi, Uzo Olisemeka & Tolu Agunbiade2016-08-2700 min
crudcastLegalist - YCombinatorLegalist - YCombinator by Ezra Olubi, Uzo Olisemeka & Tolu Agunbiade2016-08-2701 min
crudcastFlying Drones in NigeriaFlying Drones in Nigeria by Ezra Olubi, Uzo Olisemeka & Tolu Agunbiade2016-08-2700 min
crudcastEpisode 21So... we went through a list of companies that recently graduated from Y Combinator and ran commentary on a few that jumped at us. The last 10 minutes of the recording might be painful to listen to due to microphone issues. Contemplated deleting it, but it contained good conversation so BEER with us. Bye.
Closing song: "Until the Levee" by Joy Williams.2016-08-261h 15
crudcastEpisode 20"It's great to be back" - were Tolu's closing words as we ended the episode. Seriously, sorry it took us so long to do this. Uzo did what he does best and put me on the spot for a bit there with a Flutterwave question, thus making it the first time any of the Paystack founders publicly discuss the subject. We spent the rest of the episode examining possible steps to take to help Nigerians appreciate local technology solutions.
Closing song: "St. Jude" by Florence + the Machine2016-08-1655 min
crudcastEpisode 19Tolu is back. We discussed our individual love (or appreciation) for gadgets and explored the subject of underutilization of material possessions. We also discussed the subject of giving feedback and how things we say impress on others.
Closing song: "Comfortably Numb" by Pink Floyd2016-05-071h 17
crudcastEpisode 18Ubuntu on Windows 10.
Closing song: "Centuries" by Fall Out Boy2016-05-031h 43
crudcastEpisode 17The gang gets back together after a long hiatus and now, with greater timezone differences. We discuss what its like living in Mauritius, left-pad as a service, how donating to crudcast might trump donating towards cancer, what its like to be a Y Combinator alum, and easter eggs.
Closing song: "Uma Thurman (Didrick remix)" by Fall Out Boy.2016-03-251h 30
crudcastEpisode 15On this episode, we feature a much sought after guest fondly known as Papa Olabode. We discuss accountants starting technology startups, the importance of collaboration in the ecosystem, and someone's Jamaican wife.
Closing song: "Ojuelegba" by Wizkid2016-02-141h 49
crudcastEpisode 14: Robots, Marketplaces and DevelopersWhere is Uzo? Hello? Alright. We'll just go on without him. Meet Debo Olaosebikan, one of the cofounders of Gigster - a software outsourcing firm with a pool of vetted freelance developers. We discuss everything from interview tips, to living in the bay area with a $600 monthly budget. The best products come from scratching one's itch and it always pays to be true to yourself. These, and more (including Debo's music career) in this week's episode of the show.
Closing song: "Farewell" by Avantasia2016-02-041h 40
crudcastEpisode 13: Classrooms, Culture and ClapWe present to you Shirin, founder at clapglobal.com - a startup that links travelers around the world with schools at their destination countries in a bid to foster interactivity, knowledge transfer, and openness across diverse cultures. In a self referential turn of events, the episode itself became an interesting bridge between our cultures (Shirin is Indian) that it was only fair to cut this episode short and record an extra.
Closing song: "Building All Is Love" from Where the Wild Things Are (OST)2016-02-021h 37
crudcastEpisode 12We open with a discussion on loyalty/rewards solutions and how they fare in Nigeria compared to the west and asked Uzo a couple of questions on the plans for his own product. Tolu shared how a dead millionaire trolled a couple of families into making more babies and scratched the surface of what it's like to be a woman in tech.
Closing song: "Like Water" by Joey Bada$$, Capital STEEZ & CJ Fly2016-01-231h 31
crudcastEpisode 11In what was supposed to be our first episode with Tolu joining as a cohost, she abandoned us mid episode for activities regarding a pool party she was at. We discussed our activities from the past week and news regarding Uber and Netflix. The episode came to a close with the team welcoming a certain TemiL to a certain forum called Radar.
Closing song: "Blame It On The Boom Boom" by Black Stone Cherry2016-01-161h 02
crudcastEpisode 10: Holiday SpecialWe have our second solo guest - Tolu Agunbiade (calling in from Chile). We spent a little time reflecting on our past adventures and played a little rating game. One of us once cried in a car and another absconded with company property. You'll have to guess though. Once again, we discuss the business side of startups from the angle of finding a product fit rather than building a solution looking for a problem. Overall, fun episode, or we would like to think it is. Happy new year folks.
Opening song: "Ave Maria" by Gregorian
Background music: All tracks on...2015-12-311h 33
crudcastEpisode 9Finally, we record a new episode. We apologize for skipping out on last week and as Uzo said, "life got the better of us". We discuss the subject of criticizing (or praising) Nigerian startups, possible use cases for the Techcabal.com.ng domain name, pornography, and bringing in unsuccessful people as guests on the show in the future. We thoroughly had fun recording this episode and were disappointed when we noticed irreparable issues with the sound quality. We sincerely apologize for what will probably make for a shit listening experience.
Closing song: "Not Strong Enough" by Apocalyptica2015-12-1448 min
crudcastEpisode 8Sorry for the late recording of this episode. We will do better next time, promise. We explored the idea of creating a Shopify for streaming websites and while Uzo thinks it's brilliant, Ezra thinks it's too niche and unless there is proof of market, people are better off stitching together services like they can today. We also looked at a bandwidth benchmark of cloud services, specifically Amazon Web Services, Digital Ocean, and Microsoft Azure.
Closing song: "Find Your Wings" by Tyler, The Creator2015-12-021h 07
crudcastEpisode 7Another episode across the atlantic - we better start getting used to this. Ezra hung out with the co-founder of Gigster and discusses his understanding of the product. Uzo tables his disappointment with the bulk of ideas presented at the recent Startup Weekend in Lagos and dives into a long-winding talk about some idea he's helping a friend with. We end the episode with how Ezra went to an Israeli restaurant to eat rice and chicken.
Closing song: "Killing Strangers" by Marilyn Manson2015-11-201h 24
crudcastEpisode 6Our first episode over Skype. Ezra buys a hoodie and gets to do good work on Paystack. Uzo uses Code Igniter and expresses his luuurrrv for Nairaland. Mr. Secret gets some airtime, and Ezra gets borderline racist talking about a black Uber driver.
Closing song: "Carry Me Home" by The Sweeplings2015-11-141h 13
crudcastEpisode 5This episode is a conversation over ice-cream with our four guests: two bloggers, a web developer and a business development lead.
We discussed how a gmail account could be a technical barrier to adopting a product, building focused products with no need for plugins, the power of Instagram, image curation as a way to reach your audience and why Uzo's parents don't use his web-apps.
(spoiler: they're not as practical as Ire's Personal Finance Tracker: Owo Mi Da)
Forgive the background noise. We were at Ice Cream Factory so we didn't have as much control over the environment.
Hope you...2015-11-1055 min
crudcastEpisode 4Finally, a theme song - sampled from Audiomachine's "Cat And Mouse". Uzo expresses his hatred for it but who cares, right? We talked about Uzo's experimentation with streaming data logs, the skull shaped (ooooh, spooky) asteroid that did a flyby of earth on Halloween, and yesterday's failed attempt to coordinate an installation of Arch Linux on a VM from commands provided over Twitch.tv by thousands of people worldwide.
Closing song: "What a Shame" by Shinedown2015-11-0138 min
crudcastEpisode 3We went old-school telephony and saw Ezra goof with the full meaning of DTMF. Who owns the right to photographs taken of you? You, the photographer, or Uzo's umbrella man? We also sort of continued last week's talk with a focus on funding and mistakes that sometimes come with them.
Opening & closing song: "Paris, Tokyo" by Lupe Fiasco2015-10-251h 13
crudcastEpisode 2Our first guest on the show - Lanre Oyedotun, naturally. General startup talk, and what kinda turned out to be a Delivery Science episode. :)
Closing song: "Hurricane" by Theory of a Deadman2015-10-171h 17
crudcastEpisode 1Paga, Microsoft Surface book and its hinge, Android Marshmallow (did we spell that right?), and crude drawings of ourselves for the website.
Closing song: "This Is How It Goes" by Billy Talent2015-10-101h 23
crudcastEpisode 0We introduce the show, and then look at the various startups supposedly presenting at AfricaBeta (an event organized by BigCabal Media) later today.2015-10-031h 22