Another one bites the dust.
Latest and the biggest is Okra, one of Nigeria’s most promising fintech startups, just shut down after raising a whopping $16 million.
Yes, $16M! They were once at the forefront of open banking in Africa.
Today, they’re gone – just like many others before them.
Why? Let’s talk about it.
Too many Nigerian founders don’t understand what a real startup is.
Or they do but choose to take investors money
A startup is not just about raising funds and building buzz. It’s about solving a real problem
and proving to your users that you’re the solution they’ve been searching for.
But here’s the catch: that validation takes time. Years, sometimes.
Most successful startups didn’t make profit in the first 3–5 years. Amazon? Took years before it made a single dollar in profit.
Twitter/X? Is Still struggling to be profitable even after dominating social media for over a decade.
So why do some Nigerian founders expect to raise $1 million and be balling in six months?
You think it’s easy to breakthrough ?
Let me say this as someone who come there
If you can’t run that business for 5 years without expecting to make a dime, please don’t start.
Tell your investors before you begin
You need structure.
You need a real user base.
You need product-market fit.
That doesn’t come by buying billboards and launching in 3 cities overnight.
It comes from grinding in the background, making mistakes, testing, tweaking, and growing slowly but surely.
And these things cost money too.
So everyone must be sold to succeed
Another problem I see?
Flamboyance.
Most of these guys are bailing with investors funds
You raised $500k, and the next thing you’re in Dubai for a business trip, wearing designer clothes, driving a Benz, and doing “soft life” tours on Instagram.
Meanwhile, your product isn’t working.
You’ve outsourced everything instead of learning, building, and growing from the inside.
“investor money” is not free money.
Startups like Payday, 54gene, and now Okra have shut down, not just because the idea was bad, but because the execution was disconnected from reality.
We need founders who are builders, not just hype men.
We need people who can delay gratification, keep it simple, and grind for the long term.
Can stop glamorizing raising funds and start celebrating sustainable businesses.
And to every Nigerian startup founder out there Including Me:
Build for people.
Build with patience.
And build with purpose..
Let’s not see another one that fail…
20 thoughts on “Why Do Nigerian Startups Fail?”
Build to solve real problems
Build to change the way people see things, feel things, experience things to save money, time and energy
Only startups or businesses that solves real problem(s) are sustainable…
Everything great takes time, energy and resilience, the earlier we learn this, the better the future..
When poverty has not left a person, no matter the amount of money in their possession, they will still come to poverty. Thanks for this information Royalty Ifeanyi.
Huge lesson learnt.
If your startup can’t solve problems than the already startups, hold on.
People aren’t looking for beautiful designs.
They have real problems.
Meaning, all they want is SOLUTION.
Even you’re providing real solution, give yourself enough room to learn, unlearn and relearn.
It takes time to really hit it big.
Investors money isn’t for flexing.
Hard pill:
Entrepreneurship is war.
Business is war. Treat it as such.
Entrepreneurship is great. But you need patience if it must pay off.
You can’t start a business today and expect to be balling in 6 months or 12. Who are you?
Enough is said already.
Stay sharp. Stay Grounded. Move like a king.
Because they keep solving already solved problems, the worst part is their solution is not even better than the already existing ones…
Truly said
But it’s easier to be an armchair critic nowadays
Let’s look at it from another angle. Assuming their product market fit was wrong
We also have investors who are share flippers
They don’t care about solving problems just to invest and flip their equity.
Pressure from them makes products get shipped too early and also makes the founders too focused on the outcome rather than the process
It only goes to say that funding is not the reason businesses dont thrive but many just dont have the grits. Structure, patience, sincerity to build.
You must solve a problem that benefits many people.
What do you have to say… Oya drop your comments
But it all depends on Governmental policies, purchasing power, and the security of the business environment though!
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