Next Wave: Dead fintech startups are seeds

Big bank brain drain JULY 11, 2021 This newsletter is a weekly in-depth analysis of tech and innovation in Africa that will serve as a post-pandemic guide. [Subscribe here]( to get it directly in your inbox every Sunday at 3 pm WAT. Hello, Let’s talk about failure. In particular, fintech startup failures in Africa. The subject of failures in Africa is often avoided maybe because it raises a sense of shame and disappointment. Failing at an endeavor after much effort can mean members of a founding team starting from scratch. Nobody likes that feeling (directly or otherwise from family or peers) that one’s life has been a catastrophe or a waste of time at least. As a recent report shows, more than one hundred fintech startups have failed in Africa in the last half decade. So does that mean a lot of African entrepreneurs have wasted productive years only to end up building nothing? On the contrary, we gain a lot by constructively documenting fintech failures in Africa. PARTNER MESSAGE The Flutterwave Mobile app, the app that turns any smartphone into a mobile POS is now redefining commerce. The Flutterwave Mobile App makes it super convenient for anyone to take their business with them anywhere, anytime. Learn how you can take your business anywhere, anytime [here](. Now, let’s dive into the story. Fail forward The number of fintech startups in Africa has increased by nearly 90% between 2017 and 2021. That is according to Disrupt Africa’s ‘Finnovating for Africa’ report on the state of fintech in Africa. Inspired by early movers like Andela and Paystack between 2014 and 2016, a generation of software developers, MBA types, former consultants and [barely-twenty-year-olds who quit University]( has jumped into fintech-preneurship. And so the number of fintech startups in Africa has increased from 301 in 2017 to 491 in 2019 and 576 in 2021 (so far). You will find at least one fintech startup in 25 out of Africa’s 54 countries. South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya (in that order) are the origin countries of 67.9% of fintechs on the continent, which is less than the 74.4% share they had in 2017, per Disrupt Africa. Olanrewaju Odunowo/TC Insights The emergence of two fintech unicorns, Flutterwave and [Chipper]( this year paint the clearest picture yet of fintech’s maturity and attraction in Africa. [OPay]( [Paga]( and [TeamApt]( are talking up their billion-dollar potentials too. But this fuzzy-rosy narrative should always be moderated by sober reflection. Because as many African fintechs rise, many also fall. One in five failures Out of the 301 fintech startups recorded in 2017, 72 had shut down by 2019. Out of the 491 startups recorded in 2019, 109 have closed as of today. What does that mean? It appears that at least 20% of the total fintech startups in Africa in a given year will close in two years. We need a longer list of startups over a longer period to make definitive predictions but keep this in mind for now. 59.6% of fintech startup closures between 2019 and 2021 happened in South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria. 40.3% of those startups were in either payments, remittances, lending or financing. According to the report’s authors, the fintech startup shutdown rate (so far) can be blamed on “unsustainable levels of competition in some sectors and geographies.” Many startups crop up to pursue similar ideas and products. Some achieve traction, while others fall along the way. Of course that’s not the whole story. Competition is a good thing. Startups that faded due to competition were not very effective in satisfying customer demand. In reality, sometimes fintech startups - like other businesses or organizations - fail because the founders make foundational mistakes. Like Abdulhamid Hassan (pictured at the top of this newsletter). When he founded OyaPay - a service for offline businesses to accept payment with or without a smartphone - in 2018, the startup was hailed a fintech startup to watch. But Hassan took seed money from an uncle who would not tolerate being diluted in a subsequent funding round. The result? [Frustration]( and [shutdown](. But even founders who are able to raise money several times may not know what to do with the money. As [reported by Quartz]( last week, we now know that the Angolan, Nigerian and Ghanaian founders behind KuBitX - a crypto exchange that packed up this year - were high on motivation but rather low on technical knowledge and administrative capacity. The end result? $1 million in VC money gone. Failures as seeds We are not deep-diving into these failures here. The point really is that it is necessary to see these public accounts, from the founders but also through investigative sources. One of KuBitX’s founders admits to making “early-stage terrible mistakes.” It could serve him well next time he joins or forms a startup. Hassan spent some time at Paystack as a product manager after OyaPay’s demise, but has gone on to found [Mono]( a Y Combinator-backed fintech startup driving an open banking ecosystem in Nigeria. Where OyaPay lasted barely 365 days, Mono is being talked about as another Paystack. It’ll be good to seek out those 181 startups that have failed in the past four years. Some of those founders and former employees have probably left fintech altogether for other causes. Maybe they’ve left the uncertainty in Africa for more security in the US and Europe. But surely some have gone on to seed success in today's and tomorrow’s African fintech unicorns. How do we get them to add nutrients from their failure stories to the ecosystem’s startup soil? FROM THE CABAL Big bank brain drain Guaranty Trust Bank, one of Nigeria's biggest, has had issues. At the beginning of this year, many customers complained about not being able to complete transactions on the bank's USSD and mobile app channels. It recurred too often to be random or a temporary blip. So Daniel Adeyemi went a-digging. What he documents - [overworked staff, mass exits, delayed promotions]( - is well worth your five minutes. Why did Peter Njonjo start Twiga in Kenya? In this exclusive interview, Edwin Madu sits with the Kenyan founder and [has all you need to know](. We heard the bank accounts of Multichoice, the South African pay tv company, had been blocked in Nigeria. [Find out the details here](. (Hint: something something about tax fraud). Have a great week Thank you for reading the Next Wave. Please share today's edition with your network on WhatsApp, Telegram and other platforms, and reply to this email to let us know what we can be better at. [Subscribe to our TC Daily Newsletter]( to receive all the technology and business stories you need each weekday at 7 AM (WAT). Follow TechCabal on [Twitter]( [Instagram]( [Facebook]( and [LinkedIn]( to stay engaged in our real-time conversations on tech and innovation in Africa. – Alexander Onukwue, Staff writer, TechCabal Share this newsletter [Twitter]( [Share]( [Facebook]( [Share]( Sign up for The Next Wave by TechCabal [Sign me up]( [View this email in your browser]( You are receiving this email because of your relationship with TechCabal. Please [reconfirm]( your interest in receiving emails from us. If you do not wish to receive any more emails, you can [unsubscribe here](. This message was sent to {EMAIL} by newsletters@techcabal.com 18 Nnobi Streeet, Surulere, Lagos, Lagos 101283, Nigeria [Unsubscribe from all mailings] [Unsubscribe]( | [Manage Subscription]( | [Forward Email]( | [Report Abuse]( ?p=500289