Ayobami Oyaleke, Chief Executive Officer of Mainstack, has urged Nigerian startups to focus on revenue generation, customer retention and sustainable growth rather than the volume of funding they attract.
Oyaleke said the health of Nigeria’s startup ecosystem should be measured by businesses’ ability to generate consistent income, manage financial risks and build lasting customer relationships, not simply by the amount of capital raised or the number of investment announcements.
“We should ask whether companies can serve customers, earn revenue, manage risk, and grow beyond the next round,” he said.
His comments come amid mixed trends in African technology funding. While investment across the continent recovered in 2025, Nigerian startups recorded a decline in equity financing.
According to Partech’s 2025 African tech funding report, technology companies across Africa raised $4.1 billion during the year, a 25 per cent increase from 2024. The number of deals also rose by seven per cent.
Nigeria, however, attracted $412 million in equity funding across 83 deals, representing declines of 21 per cent in funding value and 19 per cent in deal count compared with the previous year.
Oyaleke said the contrasting figures showed why headline investment totals should not be treated as a complete measure of the sector’s performance.
“A continent-wide rebound and a tougher fundraising market for Nigerian startups can both be true. We have to look beneath the aggregate to understand which companies and stages are actually getting capital,” he said.
Despite the decline, Nigeria remained Africa’s second-largest market by equity deal count in 2025 and the continent’s largest early-stage market over the 2021–2025 period, according to Partech.
Oyaleke said founders seeking investment needed to demonstrate that customers were willing to pay for their products and continue using them.
He identified recurring revenue, repeat usage, customer retention and the cost of serving customers as important indicators investors should examine when assessing a business.
“Sign-ups are not the same as recurring use. Transaction volume is not the same as revenue. An investor should be able to see who pays, why customers return, what it costs to serve them, and how new capital changes the business,” he said.
He added that growth alone might not convince investors if a startup had yet to demonstrate that its business model could deliver sustainable returns.
The funding environment is also becoming more challenging for early-stage companies. TechCabal Insights’ first-half 2026 recap indicated that debt accounted for 41 per cent of African startup funding during the period, while funding for early-stage startups fell to $9 million from $25 million a year earlier.
For Oyaleke, these trends reinforce the need for founders to build businesses around demonstrable customer needs rather than investor preferences.
Mainstack provides tools for creators and online businesses. The company initially focused on helping users receive and convert cross-border payments before expanding into online storefronts, digital products, bookings, payments, communities and customer follow-up tools.
Its version 4 launch in 2026 brought more of these capabilities together to address the operational needs of creators and online entrepreneurs.
Oyaleke said the company’s development underscored the importance of adapting products in response to customer feedback.
“Capital matters, but it cannot do the work of proving demand for you. The product has to keep changing as you learn from customers, not simply because an investor trend has changed,” he said.
