Monie Point recently moved their head office to London from Lagos and so the CEO and the management team relocated from Lagos to London, where the head office is.
For proper context, Monie Point is a Nigerian business that serves customers in Nigeria.
Moniepoint claims to have become profitable since its inception and is currently serving 600,000+ businesses in Nigeria.
“In 2022 alone, Moniepoint processed over $100 billion, facilitated $1.4 billion in disbursed loans with a default rate of less than 1%, processed 8,000 transactions per minute, and handled over 55 million unique cards.”
Monie Point has a broader plan to expand to North America, Europe, and Africa later in the future, but at the moment, the customer base is in Nigeria, while the head office is in the UK.
These generations of tech founders make strange, bizarre business decisions that make me wonder whether I understand business.
It is common to see tech founders living abroad while running a business in Nigeria.
Or, in part, moving the head office of a business that serves Nigerian customers abroad,like Monie Point did.
Dangote lives in Lagos.
He can afford to live anywhere in the world, but he lives in Ikoyi Lagos, and the head office of his global business is in Lagos as well.
The Tony Elumelu family lives in the UK.
Tony runs a bank that is bigger than monie point but he lives alone in Ikoyi because his business is here, and he wants to be closer to his customers.
The Peace Mass Transit head office is in Enugu, and their chairman and founder, Dr. Samuel Maduka Onyishi, MON lives in Enugu as well.
But our tech founder, who runs a business that is barely making a profit, thinks otherwise.
They take pride in announcing that they are living abroad while running a business that serves Nigerian customers.
Maybe I’m too old or too cosevative, but this is not right.
Patricia moved their office to Estonia to announce that they had arrived.
As we know, it did not end well for them.
The older generation of Nigerian entrepreneurs has already laid the road map.
You have to live close to your customers.
They did not live abroad or move their head office abroad to show workings.
They lived close to their customers.
Our generation of entrepreneurs living far away from their businesses is a reminder that we are not yet ready to run an actual business.
A profitable business that does not need VC’s dollars to pay salaries.
Chukwudi Iwuchukwu is an accomplished Digital Entrepreneur, inspirational writer on finance, business relationship and entrepreneurship in his spare time
Copyright 2023