MSME DIGEST With Kola Owolabi
REVERSE ENTREPRENEURSHIP Series (4)
Across Africa’s growing entrepreneurial landscape, a familiar pattern continues to emerge. Bright ideas are conceived, business plans are drafted, and almost immediately, attention turns to one pressing question: Where will the funding come from?
Pitch decks are prepared. Investors are pursued. Grants are chased. Yet, in the midst of all this effort, one critical element is often overlooked—the customer.
This is the quiet contradiction of modern entrepreneurship. Many founders chase investors before securing the one group that truly determines success: paying customers.
The truth is simple: going after customers beats going after investors.
A business is not built on funding. It is built on transactions. It comes alive the moment someone is willing to pay. Before that happens, everything else—plans, projections, and funding conversations—remains theoretical.
Investors do not validate a business. Customers do.
Consider the rise of Flutterwave. The company did not grow because it first secured massive funding. It grew because it solved a real problem—helping businesses receive payments seamlessly. As merchants adopted the platform and transactions increased, investors followed.
The sequence is instructive:
Customers first. Investors later.
This order matters because investors are drawn to evidence, and the strongest evidence in business is revenue. A paying customer sends a clearer signal than any pitch deck ever can.
In contrast, chasing investors too early can create an illusion of progress. It feels productive, but it often avoids the harder task of engaging real customers. Investors may listen politely, but customers ask difficult questions. They reject what does not meet their needs. They demand value.
And it is this pressure that builds strong businesses.
The experience of Jumia reinforces this point. Operating in a challenging environment, the company had to win customers one order at a time. By adapting to local realities and building trust, it created a base of paying users. Without those customers, no amount of funding would have sustained the business.
This highlights a deeper principle: capital amplifies what already exists. If customers are present, funding accelerates growth. If they are absent, funding accelerates failure.
Customers, in many ways, are the best investors. Every time they pay, they validate your idea and fund your operations—without demanding equity or control. They simply expect value, and when satisfied, they return.
For African entrepreneurs, this perspective is especially important. Access to capital is limited, and waiting for funding can delay action. Focusing on customers, however, puts control back in the hands of the entrepreneur. It builds discipline, resilience, and market understanding.
This is not to dismiss the role of investors. Capital is essential for scaling. But timing is critical. Funding works best when it accelerates a proven model, not when it is used to test an unproven idea.
The most successful entrepreneurs understand this instinctively. Their first priority is not funding, but customers.
Because in the end, a single paying customer does more than provide revenue—it proves that the business works.
And that is why going after customers will always beat going after investors.
Kola Owolabi is a Fellow of the Nigerian Institute of Management Consultants (FIMC.CMC) and Chief Executive Officer of David Solomon Consulting Limited, based in Igbesa, a suburb of metropolitan Lagos. The company can be reached via phone or WhatsApp at 08023203198.
