This interview with Founder Africa tells the story of the friendship between Adebowale, Bright, Christiana, and Onyinye, and how their unique talents came together to make something brilliant.
The four co-founders who studied together at NUTM revealed how a random conversation on another project led to my stash, what makes the idea unique, their journey, and advice to other entrepreneurs.
Please can you briefly introduce yourself?
Adebowale: My name is Adebowale Oparinu and I lead Growth at myStash. I earned my bachelor’s degree in Transport Management Technology from the Federal University of Technology, Akure. I have previously worked at the Apapa Port with the second-largest clearing and forwarding agency in Nigeria which is GMT Nigeria Ltd. Also, I previously worked in Haulage with Beta Transport. In my final year at the university, I co-founded my first business called LifePro which was focused on developing agricultural value chains. We focused on the African locust beans, and we were able to innovate around the local West African product, extending its shelf life from two weeks to one year, among other interesting product improvements. I did that for two years and in that period, I became the youngest Mandela Washington Fellow from Nigeria in 2019. I also spent some time with the Ashoka ChangemakerXchange program and expanded our sales into a few new countries. We got some funding support from The Platform Nigeria and Premier Hub which empowered us to distribute our packaged products to a few African stores in the US & UK, as well as local outlets across Nigeria, and one in Ghana.
We developed the Hiru Cube Innovation because we made the African locust beans into bouillon cubes like Maggi for organic-conscious consumers. We were able to secure a patent on that innovation. All of that we did in a two-year period until last year when I delved into the tech start-up world. After MAX.ng (now maxdrive.ai) was banned in Lagos in 2020, I initially joined them as a Growth Associate in Ibadan after I was quickly promoted to lead City Operations in Akure, and a key project in partnership with the Ekiti State Government in Ado-Ekiti. Their bounce-back strategy was to expand rapidly into other cities and I was fortunate to have been able to play a relatively key role in that. By the end of 2020, I sort to take a break from everything, reflect and take some time to pursue a Postgraduate Program. That was when I went to the NUTM program which is a Postgraduate Program in Entrepreneurship, Technology, and Management. That was where I met Christiana and Onyinye. Bright, who and I have been friends for over 10 years, was also on the program. We pretty much just came together to form what is now myStash.
Bright: My background is similar to Wale in a very ironic way. This is because we’ve been friends for ten years and have worked in almost the same companies. The only company we weren’t together at is actually MAX.ng. I also have a background in Transport Management Technology from the same University and then I went on to work with the 2nd largest forwarding and clearing agency in Nigeria at the time which was GMT. I also worked in the haulage industry for Beta Transport Nigeria Ltd but then I also quickly took a different path. I focused more on the logistics tech industry because I noticed a gap in terms of information and coordination of general logistics transport.
This led me to start a company called Haulr where we created a device that helped us to monitor the location and weights of trucks. The reason why this was important was that we needed to have a full understanding of where trucks were and what they were doing in real-time so we could go on to create a system to match demand and supply in the most efficient way possible. One of the most incredible things that we achieved during that time was that we brought down the cost of tracking the weight of a truck from $1,000 to about $17 and our device was quite cost-efficient in a sense.
After that, we worked on building Broka. Broka was the company that allowed us to go in-depth into trying to match the demand and supply of logistics companies. Some of the notable things we did then was, we worked with a couple of FMCGs and processed quite the amount of volume for these companies before I started my postgraduate studies at NUTM. At the moment, I lead Engineering and products at myStash, where I express the technical side of me. I have been coding for over 6 years now and the skills have played a huge role in each of these companies I have been at up to this moment.
Christiana: I lead Marketing and Customer Operations at myStash. My career journey began back in 2013 while I was still a student at the American University of Nigeria (AUN). AUN is renowned for being Africa’s first development university, and 2013 was the peak of the Boko Haram crisis, so AUN pioneered several projects aimed at helping Displaced People.
During that time, I worked with the AUN’s Office of Sustainability. We organized training to teach over 100 displaced women how to make beautiful artifacts from waste, and then we helped the women to sell these products online. This experience marked the beginning of my journey in the social enterprise/non-profit space, and in doing stuff in operations, sales, and marketing.
It felt quite fulfilling to know that I was making a difference. So, after graduating from the University in 2016, I went on to work on a USAID-funded project called TELA (stands for Technology Enhanced Learning for All), where we used radio technology to teach over 12,000 kids who were out of school due to the insurgency in the North-east. I also spent some time co-authoring and publishing a few journal articles, due to my experience working with IDPs in the northeast.
Then, in 2018 I went on to work with the Chibok Girls at the New Foundation School (NFS) for about two years, developing programs and events to aid their learning. While at NFS, I began working on a passion project that blossomed into a food processing business called Indigi Foods. In fact, that’s one thing Debo, Onyinye and I have in common, we each started food processing businesses.
Fast forward to 2020, I applied and got into the NUTM program, where I met these wonderful humans and we birthed myStash.
Onyinye: My name is Onyinye. At myStash, I lead the team focused on general management, asset management and fundraising. I have a background in Information Systems Management which is basically a combination of business administration and computer science from Ashesi University in Ghana. After that I worked in management consulting for a few years and then I have also worked in ECOWAS and the UN.
Like Christiana had mentioned, I ran a food processing company which inspired me to birth a foundation. The foundation is aimed at helping people to eat better and contributing to eradicating hunger in Nigeria. Within a year of starting our foundation, we were able to have about 300 beneficiaries where we give them enough food to last them for 4-6 weeks depending on the family size. We do that for 6 months and during that period, we see how we can set them up, connect them to jobs or give them grant funding to start up a small business and we have had great testimonials from that. I decided to take a break and go back to school to meet more people. Since I had done my undergraduate in Ghana, I felt like I needed to know more people and associate with young people who had changed Africa on top of their minds. This is why I went to NUTM where I met the awesome myStash team and here we are today.
How did all of you come together to form myStash?
Onyinye: Very funny story. Adebowale had reached out to me, Bright & Christiana sometime last year to say we should develop an idea to participate in a global competition at that time and it was a competition that was focused on revolutionizing the global agricultural space. Like I earlier mentioned, the three of us already had food processing companies in common so it was a good time to look at how we could move that industry forward that was what brought the team together. But over several iterations, while ideating based on our past experiences, we eventually landed on a fintech idea that became myStash.
How did you get into the world of entrepreneurship?
Adebowale: Before my first internship, I formed a group on campus with Bright that was focusing on learning things about Nigeria’s economy. The idea around it was that if we became ministers tomorrow, how were we going to change specific industries. Immediately after that semester, I remember that Bright and I, of course, had our first set of jobs together at the Ports and saw some of these wicked problems. We came back and decided to start doing something about it. A structured way to think about these problems and begin to start solving them and I remember that one of the first things we did was compete in the Hult Prize. It’s a one-million-dollar competition for students across the globe. And they had given us the challenge to solve something around food and agriculture problems. It was about restoring the rights and dignity of ten million refugees by 2025. We literally recited that in our minds for over 6 months or even a year. We worked on it and came up with solutions and that was the beginning of our entrepreneurial journey.
By the way, we won, that was the first time on our campus that the competition was happening, and we were supposed to represent our University at the semi-finals in Dubai but the funding never came through, so we never went to the semi-finals. However, our eyes were already opened to what was possible in the start-up world and how many people are solving problems. We had watched a lot of videos about those that won in the past, how they are faring, the kind of money they had raised, and that created the right spark we needed to venture into entrepreneurship. By the time I was graduating, I had co-founded LifePro and Bright had co-founded Haulr as well.
Bright: I totally agree with Wale. To add to what he said, I’d just say that there was simply a hunger to solve problems that make an impact in society. To me, that is the entrepreneurial spirit. We had a dream/goal to make a meaningful impact in Africa and one of the ways that we can achieve that is simply by venturing into entrepreneurship. On a personal note, I feel like one of the best ways I can achieve that is by using technology to drive entrepreneurship.
Christiana: For me, the journey to entrepreneurship was not intentional at all. It just so happened that as I met and interacted with people, and just generally experienced life, I began to question ‘why’ things are done a certain way, and ‘why not’ in another way. For example, I was curious about why some indigenous African grains remained underutilized and largely neglected, and that’s how I got into the food processing space.
That questioning led to exploring, experimenting, trying things out, failing, and trying again. It is all about being committed to a cause even when it seems difficult or makes no sense to most people. It’s being courageous in spite of the fear of the unknown. That’s what entrepreneurship is and that’s really how it began for me.
Onyinye: I have a slightly different story. Both my parents have been entrepreneurs since I can remember. I have been exposed to people who run businesses that solve problems, that they are passionate about, or simply because it paid the bills. So, for me, I wouldn’t necessarily say it comes naturally. But it is a case of nature VS nurture. Something I have been exposed to. I started buying and selling as far back as primary school where I would just take extra things from the house to sell during lunch break. In secondary school, there were different things I would indulge in to get some cash. That is why it is something I can easily identify with because it’s what I have been exposed to all m
