For the third episode of Launch to Seed, we're joined by trained-engineer-turned-investment-professional, Yanmo Omorogbe. She's the co-founder and Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Bamboo, a fintech startup helping Africans invest in the US stock market. In her role as COO, Yanmo is the operational backbone of the business, making sure that each team has what it needs to run efficiently and effectively.

Launch to Seed is back with another insightful episode – and this time, we are joined by Yvonne Johnson, the entrepreneurial mastermind behind Indicina, an API-driven credit infrastructure company, which is a product of her invaluable technical expertise, grit, and hard work. 

With extensive experience and expertise in multiple verticals, including technology, investment banking, investing, and advisory, Yvonne is uniquely positioned to build Indicina. As a software engineer who sealed her financial management path with an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management, she understands what’s required to build a successful business.

In conversation with Ozzy, Yvonne details the lessons from her professional journey, explaining how the technical and investment know-how came in handy in her entrepreneurial journey. She shares the idea that led her to Indicina, the process behind launching and growing her business—including how she decided on her co-founders (the company’s CFO, CTO and Chief Data Scientist) and how she continues to grow her team. She also shares the lessons learned about credit, investment and banking in today’s times. Indicina has already raised over a few million dollars in venture capital and is eyeing an exploding growth trajectory in the years to come.

The lessons from today’s episode are a surefire way of setting your entrepreneurial thought process right. Listen up for entrepreneurial advice from one of Africa’s trailblazing startup founders.

Enjoyed the conversation? Feel free to reach out with comments @Twitter or @Instagram.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• What Indicina does: In simple words, Indicina is an API-driven credit infrastructure that aims to bridge the credit gap by providing a digital financial analytics layer to lenders. Over the years, the company has grown to over 40 employees spread across six different cities worldwide and has over a hundred clients.
• Realising the power of technology in transforming the banking space: Towards the end of Yvonne’s time in investment banking, digital finance was on the rise. Sensing this early wave, Yvonne realised that technology could bridge the gap between retail consumers and banks and marketing by manifold times.
• How Yvonne decided on her business idea:
  • Having extensive experience in the banking sector, she knew it wouldn’t be feasible to compete with banks as a lender because banks have a massive advantage when it comes to lending.
  • Yvonne realised that the missing credit infrastructure presented a huge market opportunity. In this era, where data is almost a commodity, there’s true value in real-time analytics. Hence, powering credit decisions using real-time data analytics was a sustainable business idea.
• Yvonne shares that being an angel investor helped her make fundraising decisions well. Knowing the market both as an investor and a business owner made her decisions better informed.
• Marketing for a B2C business model is different from a B2B model. The latter requires more patience and relies heavily on the product and brand.
• A role that Yvonne never thought she would be an expert at is sales. Yvonne didn’t know she could make an excellent sales executive until she did that for herself for her business. She realised that she had what it took to get buyers to buy from her business offerings.
• Remember always that you have to convince yourself before you convince anyone else to invest in your business or buy from it.

KEY QUOTES

• “A lot of motivation (for Indicina) did come from my experience at the bank. I could appreciate the challenges that banks face in serving retail consumers – there's just a lot of structural barriers that are limited (to) who they can

This first episode of Launch to Seed, a monthly fireside chat with trailblazing tech startup founders in Africa, hosted live on Twitter Spaces, features an entrepreneurial powerhouse who, along with her two co-founders, beat the odds to launch a highly successful entrepreneurial venture in the midst of a global pandemic.  Chioma Okotcha, co-founder and Chief Operating Officer at Payhippo, shares the startup’s origin story – from sending hundreds of unanswered, fruitless emails pitches in search of early funding to enjoying exponential growth today. Payhippo provides loans to small businesses in Africa in under 3 hours. The fintech startup launched in 2019, was selected for Y Combinator’s Summer 2020 batch and has since raised $4 million in two rounds of early-stage capital. The team has gone from three to 23 employees, growing the business to over $100,000 in monthly revenues. Chioma shares the fundamentals every startup should have in place from the outset as well as strategies for getting around stumbling blocks. Enjoy this lively conversation packed with practical guidance (choose the right team) and actionable advice (build a credible business case) for all those who aspire to the adventure of a lifetime: launching a startup venture.   KEY QUOTES:  “I started two businesses that failed – a stationery business and a beauty business – and the biggest lessons from that were about timing and partners. Who are you starting your business with and when?” “I had tons of friends with businesses and usually their issues were always around scale  and access to capital.” “(Co-founder Zach Bijesse) and I were aligned on what the vision was and what we wanted to do, starting in Nigeria.” “Having a co-founder is one of the best things you can do because your skills and the way that you work hopefully complement each other.” “It’s very helpful to be on the same page on your values and what you’re trying to build. That doesn’t mean you aren’t going to disagree or go in different directions at some point, but at least your foundation is solid.” “It’s very important not to spend a lot of time thinking about the reasons (something) wouldn’t work and instead actually starting and seeing if you have a viable product.” “In setting goals we tried to be conservative but also bold in what we wanted to achieve.” “You have to be clear around what your raise is about. It’s not just raising money randomly.” “What our technology does is really drill down into assessing a business and its capacity to handle cash … We are careful only to give capital that you can repay.” “(Payhippo’s) growth in the early stages was just completely organic…just building 25% every month.” “(The COO) is like the heartbeat of the company, so everything from finance to legal to HR to tech to product design, product management/development, fundraising and … taking care of the team.” “What helps (build entrepreneurial success) is your adaptability and being able to be flexible and bend around challenges without breaking.” “It can be very heartbreaking, but (raising funds) is all part of the process.” “We are working constantly, around-the-clock to build out this tech and make sure that it matches up and holds up to scale.” FURTHER RESOURCES: www.payhippo.ng www.firstcheck.africa https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/03/nigerias-lender-payhippo-raises-3-million-in-seed-funding-to-extend-quick-loans-to-smes/ https://africa.businessinsider.com/local/markets/exclusive-nigerian-lending-startup-payhippo-joins-y-combinator-summer-2021/nc8wlrz https://techcabal.com/2021/07/02/payhippo-raises-1-million-pre-seed-to-improve-access-to-funding-for-smes-in-africa/