I pitched the idea of Paystack Storefront to Flutterwave in 2017

Africa Fintech Foundry event at Eko Hotels 2017

…this is a story about the innovator's dilemma.

Our brains are really amazing tools and when giving enough points of experience we can really come up with amazing ideas. It's 2016 in Lagos, Nigeria and I just got into the tech ecosystem. A lot of things are still relatively “new” and along the way got to find out about a cool company called Flutterwave that allowed you to accept online payments and at the time they were the dominant payment platform at least for developers and online payments.

The Gap

Finding a gap or a problem that can be solved with technology is like a muscle that you can only build up over many many failed attempts

I used Instagram a lot to build my brand and first company Senpai and over the time I spent on Instagram I noticed there was a gap in the mobile shopping experience. people often post their goods with the caption (dm for price) and payment often involved the owner having to send their account money for a bank transfer. There is nothing wrong with this experience but it can be improved by embracing card processing technology and also a unified storefront for all items and prices. This was the seed of the idea. It was fueled by a gap I noticed and also the knowledge of a potential solution.

Move Fast

After getting this idea I spoke with a friend and a developer to ask if he could cook up an mvp? something simple that just shows a working concept. At the time I have almost 0 technical knowledge and was more of the “idea guy” ( the innovator's dilemma ). But my dude came through with a nice MVP that we built using the flutterwave API. this was the link http://fin-techy.herokuapp.com/lizakoshy/product/introvert-shirt/ ( sadly it's not working anymore)

The goal was to never run this company for a long time as I knew we would be able to sell it fairly quickly.( isn't this the dream 😅)

The Pitch

I attended ALOT of events during my first years in the ecosystem.. haha. I was very optimistic then. Anyways, I attended the Africa Fintech event where I got to meet Iyin and GB both co-founders of Flutterwave, and pitched and showed them the MVP and they liked it ( at least I think they did ) but this is where things kinda just didn't work out as expected.

Email hell.. Have you ever heard of email hell? Its where a lot of great ideas, connections, and potential partnerships go to die every day and this was the case sadly. Was never able to setup a follow-up meeting. Thank you
Kanyinsola 😅.

Moving forward

Moving forward since this was a side project I begun to focus on other things and time went by but the idea never seemed to go anywhere. It was just too good not to work on, I thought. This slowly pushed me into learning more about coding and how software was built, coupled with the fact I was around developers a lot I found myself enrolling in ALC coding programs and taking online courses.

MVP 2.0?

after learning html, css, and javascript I decide to jump into vue.js and attempt to build my idea myself in 2019😅. I really thought I knew what I was getting into.. After my first major bug, i just gave up on coding. I was still a beginner and hadn't formed my “coding confidence” yet but I did learn a lot after that attempt.

MVP 2.0

this is now about 4 years since the initial conception of the idea, the innovator's dilemma. 2020. I decided to give this yet another shot because why the fuck not? I made a big bet by not taking any work for 3 months while building this idea and this meant eating into my rent money but I felt ( oh ill just raise money this year )

Shoply | The easiest way to create and manage a digital shop.

anyways, shoply.ng was created.. using Nuxt, Firebase and Paystack API

and I cried after I was “done” because I never imagined it could build something like this.

Paystack Merchant

This year also happened to be the year paystack begun to take shops and online merchants seriously and I knew it was over 😅. Not in a sad defeating way, but I knew I couldn't build a faster, cheaper or better product than them, shoply is even built using the paystack API so I decided to not put any more energy into shoply..

Paystack Storefront

Ahh finally here we are… it only too 4 years to get here.

So yesterday paystack.. finally.. announced and released their storefront feature and it is very similar to the concept of shoply.

Your boy Senpai 👽 - Create your online store and sell your items on shoply.ng

Paystack Storefront - Sell physical and digital products online

Lessons learned

I've learned a lot of things over the years but ill try list a few things

• You have to move faster than your competition always
• Learn to use leverage
• If you can't beat them join them
• learn how to make/build things
• Believe in yourself

Would end with this, As an innovator, I know it can be hard to bring your ideas to life, and it's often hard to find a good partner as if you find yourself in that situation would recommend one of 2 options.

1. Join a great company and one of your co-worker might have the skills you lack
2. learn to build.

If you enjoyed this article, please hold that little 👏below. Share the story with your friends, connect with me on twitter and thank you for reading :)