Good afternoon, everyone. Great to be here. Thank you so much for having me, pastor. Yeah.
I am the product of a country that has taught me how to dream in all of my reality and infrastructure. Nigeria is my home. And one thing Nigeria teaches you at a very young age is how to dream despite what you see around you. Sometimes the infra is not there. What you want to see is not there. The capital is not there sometimes. Even the rules might still be evolving sometimes. Even the path itself might not exist sometimes. One thing about we Nigerians, we will still dream. And our challenge is not that we can dream or dream big. It is that can we build big?
There's a huge difference between having a great idea and building a company that's been here for over a decade, employed over a thousand plus Nigerians in Nigeria, have millions of customers, investors, and being 35 plus corner all over Africa. There's a huge difference there. We did not start Flutterwave as a billion-dollar company by valuation. We started with a very simple idea and problem that we wanted to solve, which is that why should moving money across Africa be frictioned? Why should it be difficult for a business in Accra to get paid by a customer in New York? Africa has brilliant businesses, banks, telcos, companies, you know. However, everything was fragmented. You know, you can make a payment in Kenya via M-Pesa work seamlessly. In Nigeria, NIBBS, Verve, seamless infrastructure, they work really really well. But what you don't see here is being able to use M-Pesa in Nigeria or use NIBBS in Ghana or use MTN Mobile Money at that time, you know, in maybe Rwanda or whatnot.
Today, instead of complaining about that infrastructure deficit, we decided to build it at Flutterwave. We went ahead to build a company that would make an attempt to solve how money movement should work across Africa. And today, global companies like from Uber to Netflix to Microsoft to Google, you know, and many others are building on the rail that we have built using an infrastructure built in Africa by Africans.
That matters to me beyond just Flutterwave. It tells me that Africa can build global companies and infrastructure. We can build system that the world can trust. And that's very, very key. However, the dream is very, very free, but the scale is expensive. Very expensive. Nobody will post a picture of a reconciliation nightmare that we have in Flutterwave. Or post on Instagram or how a compliance system breaks midway in a transaction. Nobody will wake up happy about all these controls, risk committees, you know, backup systems. Because these boring things are actually what turns this idea into an institution and makes it to work, makes it to scale. And at scale, innovation with governance actually helps to scale that idea better than you can think about.
However, building Flutterwave has not been a straight line. No. That's not been easy. We've had our setbacks that we had to lean into and overcome. We've seen market that behave differently than how we thought it would behave at the beginning. We've seen consumer behavior make us to change the approach we use to solve a problem. And I think the lesson here for me is always knowing that restless isn't just building with setbacks, but building in spite of setbacks. And being able to understand that every serious challenge that you have in building that idea into a reality will actually make you stronger when you go through that process. A fraud incident should make your risk systems better. That's the reality today. You build that school fees, you emerge made better and stronger. A bad hire will improve your next hire. A difficult market will teach you how to understand local nuances that you didn't know before. And that pain with learning becomes the tools you use to build a scalable institution.
However, all that knowledge isn't just education. Isn't just where you went to school. Doesn't really matter to be very frank. It means knowing your customers, knowing your numbers, knowing your market, knowing what you do not know so that you can go and learn it. Knowing when you are wrong. Having enough humility to change course when it is required for you to be done. And one of the dangers of success today has been thinking yesterday's knowledge cannot become today's arrogance. It can. However, you have to be humble to know that the market is changing. Technology has changed immensely. When we are building 10 years ago, there was no Nigeria higher at that time. If you build for a wave today, you're going to build it differently than 10 years ago. It's a no-brainer. Right? Consumer behavior is changing as markets are evolving, time is going, things are changing rapidly. Even regulation is changing. 10 years ago, telcos could not become banks, now they are banks, right? Things are changing massively across the ecosystem. And that is where, like I said earlier, we saw the problem, we didn't complain about it, rather how do we come together and go and find a solution to that problem.
And what I always think about is today Flutterwave is as employed thousands of Nigerians in Nigeria today. Imagine there are a thousand Flutterwave in Nigeria today. Naturally, that would be what? Millions of Nigerians who are employed because of the decision to go and solve a problem and not just see it as a frustrating endeavor, rather an opportunity to create a platform. And that is what involved national transformation. When companies come together at scale to build institutions, natural companies countries will also transform. It's thousands of systems coming together, working together over time that helps to make this work. And a country becomes great when excellence becomes, you know, the day-to-day of what we see becomes a norm. It's no more just seen as heroic.
And to everybody here today who is thinking of building something, right? I will say don't stop dreaming. You hold that right 100%. And please dream very, very, very big. But understand that that dream is just what? The beginning. Then you have to go and learn. You have to become excellent at something. You have to understand technology in this age, understand people, understand money, understand infrastructure, know your industry, build resilient systems, understand the world beyond Nigeria, and then get to work. Execute relentlessly. And don't believe everything will work out, cuz it won't. It might not. Some doors will close. Some ideas will fail. Some people will tell you it cannot be done. And you know what? They might be right. So, don't become emotionally attached to your first iteration, right? Rather, be focused on your mission. That is what makes you execute long-term.
And you can't also do it alone, right? Nobody can build systemic infrastructure alone. Not governments, not entrepreneurs, not businesses. No. We need an ecosystem where each side understands that progress is not a zero-sum game. It's about how do we all come together to make Nigeria to win. When Nigeria wins, Nigerian companies have a bigger chance, a bigger market. Nigerian talent will have more opportunities. Investors will have more confidence, and government will have a stronger tax base automatically, and young people will have reason to believe that you can make it from Nigeria. And that is very, very important.
So, I dream of an Africa where the biggest infra companies in Africa today are built from Africa for the world, not just for Africa alone. Where African tech will power stuff happening in New York, or in London, or in São Paulo, or in Singapore. It doesn't matter. Where African companies will become global institutions. Where a child growing up in Africa will always know that it is possible to achieve great things here in Africa. And the greatest thing we can give the next generation is not motivation, it's evidence that it can be done.
