Shola Akinlade

Shola Akinlade is a Nigerian software engineer and entrepreneur, best known as the co-founder and CEO of Paystack, a financial technology company acquired by U.S. payments firm Stripe in 2020 in a deal reported to be worth approximately $200 million. In 2022, he was conferred with the national honour of Officer of the Order of the Niger (OON) by Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari for his contributions to the advancement of technology in finance and business. Quotes Build something remarkable, be resourceful enough to find places where you can articulate what you are doing. Shola Akindele speaking at the Africa Fintech summit. Solutions to hard work is persistence and resilience. Shola Akindele speaking at the Africa Fintech summit Figuring out a market that is growing is some of the things people look out for. Shola Akindele speaking with the BBC It is important to think of your co-funders and your partners as people you are going to be on a long journey with. Shola Akindele speaking with the BBC All acquisition conversations always require careful thought and consideration, and it was no different in this case. The Paystack team has been interacting with Patrick and the Stripe team over the past couple years and after significant amounts of collaboration and knowledge exchange between both companies, we agreed that this move was a natural evolution of what was and continues to be a great relationship. https://africa.businessinsider.com/local/markets/exclusive-interview-with-shola-akinlade-on-building-a-multi-million-dollar-payment/chzjptm Venture-backed companies are generally destined for one of two outcomes. IPO or acquisition. Five years in, neither of these were on the list of things that we care about as a company. We’ve always been focused on building the best payments and growth tools for African businesses and are in it for the long haul. The option to team up with the world’s most sophisticated payments company to accelerate our ambitions happened to show up, and we believe it was fortuitous. https://africa.businessinsider.com/local/markets/exclusive-interview-with-shola-akinlade-on-building-a-multi-million-dollar-payment/chzjptm Stripe and Paystack are both Y Combinator alumni, so that was the first point of contact. We were introduced to Patrick, who then offered to invest. Stripe would then lead our Series A, and along with Visa, invest $8 million in 2018. Since then, Stripe has been a close partner, and after over two years of knowledge exchange between our teams, we've built up a lot of mutual respect for each other. Eventually, it became obvious that our visions were so aligned that the natural evolution of the relationship would be to join forces in this way. https://africa.businessinsider.com/local/markets/exclusive-interview-with-shola-akinlade-on-building-a-multi-million-dollar-payment/chzjptm Businesses are bought, not sold. The most important thing is to choose a problem you are excited about solving, and focusing on that every day. External links Category:Software engineers Category:Entrepreneurs Category:Businesspeople from Nigeria Category:Chief executive officers Category:Company founders Category:Living people Category:Nigerian people in technology