Mary Agekameh

Mary AgekamehOct 21, 2026

On August 5, 2026, Moove announced that it had raised $250 million at a $2.1 billion valuation. Just over a month after Uber left Nigeria, on October 8, Moove announced that it was closing its operations in the country where it started with 76 cars in Lagos. As it exited, Moove said it would hand over vehicles worth about ₦35 billion to eligible customers, with no further vehicle payments from October 1. Its Nigerian staff would receive cars too. Beyond this, the announcement offered little explanation for why the company was leaving. A company worth more than $2 billion leaves the country that built it. How does that happen? It seems like a contradiction, but I think it offers an important lesson about how African startups grow, and the challenges they face along the way. To understand what happened, we need to go back to the beginning and look at both sides of the story: Moove's business and the drivers whose livelihoods depended on it. The African Startup Breakdown #30 is here. P.S. The African Startup Breakdown is moving to a weekly newsletter. Going forward, the full articles will be published there, with excerpts shared here on LinkedIn. Subscribe here to read the full article: https://lnkd.in/eqymhpY8 Ladi Delano Jide Odunsi Iyinoluwa Samuel Aboyeji Jr Moove

Mary AgekamehOct 28, 2026

Yellow Card started with a simple idea: helping Africans buy Bitcoin. But the business that started with individual users has grown into something very different. Today, Yellow Card is building the infrastructure businesses use to move money across borders. Then, in January 2026, it closed the consumer app that built its name. Why would it close the door on its first customers? The African Startup Breakdown #31 is here. Chris Maurice Justin Poiroux #AfricanStartups #Fintech #Crypto #Stablecoins #Nigeria #Payments #VentureCapital #StartupEcosystem #AfricaTech #YellowCard

Mary AgekamehOct 12, 2026

I was talking to a founder over the weekend who was trying to figure out a pricing strategy for his startup. During our conversation, he kept mentioning how business is a numbers game. And it got me thinking. A lot of people say this, but they often forget the other part of the conversation: Yes, business is a numbers game, but the numbers depend on your business model. Are you building for a few customers who can pay more, or a large number of customers who can pay less? Let’s say you run a business and charge ₦50,000 per customer. If 100 customers pay, that’s ₦5 million in revenue. Now, imagine a different business that charges ₦500 per customer. It would need 10,000 customers to generate that same ₦5 million. This is one approach many startups use to scale: making their products or services affordable enough to reach a much larger customer base. Same revenue. Very different businesses. The first business will need fewer customers but will have to offer a high value, specialised service. The second will need a much larger market, an affordable product, and a way to serve customers at scale without its costs eating into revenue. Neither model is necessarily better than the other. The problem is when founders choose a pricing strategy without thinking about the kind of business they are trying to build. Who are your customers? How much are they willing and able to pay? How many potential customers exist in your market? How much does it cost to acquire and serve each one? And can your business model support the volume you need to be profitable? These are important questions to answer before deciding what to charge. Revenue isn’t just about how much one customer pays. It’s also about how many customers your business can reach, what it costs to serve them, and how much you retain after covering those costs. So, before you ask, “How much should I charge?” Ask yourself, “What kind of business am I building, and what pricing model makes sense for it?”