You power at least one out of four payment transactions in Nigeria, Africa's newest unicorn. You have now gone pretty close to half a billion dollars in yearly revenue.
I am still me. I like that song. I'm still Jenny for the block. I'm still Tosin for the blog.
Welcome back to We Talk Pod. My name is Olu Oans. I'm very happy today to have with us Fintech Royalty Tosin Eniolorunda, the co-founder and CEO of Moniepoint, one of the most significant financial technology companies to come out of Africa in the last decade. If your teachers or classmates were going to describe you by three words, what would they be?
Vibe. Vibe. Vibe. Vibe. Roadside mechanic. They called me that because I was always tinkering with things. It's time. Let's stop being the farmers. We need to control our brand. We need to control all the way to the customer and that's why Moniepoint was born.
If you're a nepo baby, it reduces your chance of grits.
Okay. But grits. Yes. But it doesn't mean that.
Say it. Say it.
In this conversation, we talk about the early days of building Moniepoint, how trust is earned at scale, and the realities of building long-term impact beyond the numbers. Join me to welcome Tosin Eniolorunda.
Hi guys, welcome back to We Talk Pod. Today I have my friend, portfolio founder, and a mentor, Tosin. Tosin, welcome.
Thank you very much. Hello. How are you doing?
Not bad. Life gets tough, flight gets busy, but happy that we don't look like what we're going through.
Good to hear. You don't look like what you're going through.
Oh, you know what I'm going through.
Yeah, it's been an exciting 2025. Hopefully it's even a more exciting 2026.
Looking forward. What they say happens is that the things you've achieved get easier, but then you put yourself in trouble by setting higher goals and then you make it hard again for yourselves. But I guess that's what life is about.
Welcome back. We've had these conversations many times, not a lot with cameras and mics in front of us. So, but I guess it's what we do. And again, just to give you context, over the last 6 months, 8 months, we've spoken to some of the most phenomenal founders, entrepreneurs, investors around the world. And as they say, charity begins at home, right? And there's a common misconception that some continents are more blessed with talent than some others. I do not agree. This is the reason why I could have been a fund manager anywhere in the world but I chose to be in Africa and that's why I say Fintech Royalty is Fintech Royalty anywhere in the world. You have built with your team a phenomenal company, not just a team, a product, and you've touched communities and changed the way they live. And today I really want to talk to you for the benefit of people watching around the world what African excellence looks like and to give opportunity to investors, founders around the world to see what's happening on this side of the world and also for founders who look up to you to be able to learn from what you're doing. So, welcome again.
I'm going to jump right in. A lot of people see the end of a story or they see something that's close to the end. News flash, Moniepoint has crossed a certain number in transactions, serving over 13 million people, has become Africa's latest unicorn, and one of the fastest growing fintechs on the continent. It's a great end of the story. Some people don't even know that the name was different when you started, which is a big part of why these conversations are important. To kind of show people how the things that have formed came to be, right? And so as one of the major drivers of that company, the co-founder, what were the things in your early life? First of all, tell us a little bit about your early life and then tell us the things in your early life that you think were trappings of an entrepreneur that would get you here. I know you and I have spoken in the past. I know you had a gigish growing up. But it would be interesting to tell us, start from as early as you can, right? I'll tell you the things to talk about. Early as you can, what were kind of your parents' disposition towards you, education, entrepreneurship, and what were the things that drove you to actually become an entrepreneur eventually?
Yeah, my journey started of course as early as I can remember. I've always been a restless fellow. My dad is an engineer. My mom was a school teacher. And I think the earliest records that I have growing up is when I knew growing up, my dad was in school. So he was kind of like studying. So as a child that kind of imprinted on me on studying. So I kind of took interest of books then. And of course as a young child there's not much you can read. I just began to read all forms of textbooks which included his own books because he was in school studying electrical and electronics engineering at school. So I kind of found some of those things fascinating, circuit and all that. That kind of sparked my interest in building. And growing up in a middle income, lower middle income household where other things are prioritized, not children's toys, I kind of found expression building some of those entertainment items or contraptions as toys for myself. So that's where I would say the love of building sort of started. And when you couple that with restlessness and the need to just constantly do things, you would say that entrepreneurs in my own opinion have a nature that they want to control that they have and perhaps the rest would have been not. So yeah, I mean my growing up was growing up into a lower middle income household, to an engineer father, a teacher mom. Seeing him being a student while growing up allowed me to develop interest in reading, especially his own technical text. And I found expression by building things for myself in that period. And since then, life has evolved. We've moved on from building contraptions to building companies.
Did you build any of those St. Louis sugar boxes with tires?
Well, could they move fast?
It did. I remember when I was in JS3 and I had two friends and we had like a competition between ourselves.
Yeah, right. Exactly. Like year nine.
And we had like a competition between ourselves for who could build a toy car the fastest. So I remember three of us, one of my friends went to buy a toy car and dismantled it, but it was still the same toy car. Another of my friend did nothing. And I went to go and construct a toy car from Matset. You know, remember? And I kind of found it proud of myself putting a motor and putting gears beside it and putting a battery, all that. So kind of an early memory of building contraptions. I remember the one that went to build a toy car but dismantled a toy car. He's an entrepreneur too right now.
Yes. He's also an entrepreneur. I think he's also a successful entrepreneur now.
And so would you say that this kind of curiosity to build things is one of the trappings of entrepreneur?
I think so. I think so. I think so. But also the need to be non-conformist, not just being, not so much a respect of rules. You know what I mean?
We'll talk about that. I have all your records.
Like rule. I mean, not that you want to be an iconoclast or someone who just want to break rules, but just basically questioning the reason why those things exist and not accepting those boundaries. It might sound romantic like I'm romanticizing because I think a lot of fun things are romanticized, but indeed that's a reality. And I also don't think it's personally, I also don't think it's anything superior to anybody. It's just a way of life. And if we look at it deeply that at the end of the day everybody just here to have a good time and enjoy their lives at their time, then you've chosen a hard path as an entrepreneur and everybody else that wants to follow the role has happiness available.
I'm going to pick out one very important thing that people want to hear from your upbringing. You kind of stated that I grew up lower middle class and this is a question I usually try to ask successful entrepreneurs. Do you think the amount of privilege you had growing up affected your grit and how successful you became and what do you think this correlation is?
100%. 100% of grit. I don't think growing up lower middle class is the only way to... Wait, if you're a nepo baby, it reduces your chances of becoming a successful entrepreneur. It reduces your chance of grit.
Okay. But grit. Yeah. So by relation...
But it doesn't mean that.
No, I mean it's like it doesn't also mean that as a nepo baby you can't still develop. The chances are just lower.
And so by extension you believe that one of the determinants of how gritty...
Which is also a determinant of success, is how you grew up.
And so how does that make you feel? Is it that if you grew up very comfortable now you're on the lower end of the draw or how would you think about that?
I mean I think at the end of the day the factor is just grit. And grit can come from having tough childhoods or maybe just simply being gritty by nature. Elon Musk for example, I believe he was like a nepo baby, right? Exactly. So but he also had a tough childhood regardless. Right. So I think the main determining factor is the nature or the nature of developing grit, either nurture threw at you or you're just naturally like that. And in the case of and also millions of people that grew up in lower middle households, it doesn't mean everybody will become an entrepreneur. To maybe there's a survivorship bias in that population. But at the end of the day, the main thing to hold on to is whatever led to you being a gritty individual. And it's a hard life to be gritty.
So to tell me, for example, in like high school, if your teachers or classmates were going to describe you by three words, what would they be?
They used to give me some nicknames in my college years. They called me 'Uter'. Okay. So different. Yeah. And I think they just call me different because I was hardly in class. I was hardly in class. Probably don't do most assignments but probably still came out with grades that were not bad. Exactly. So it was more like don't follow that guy, like different. So in my colleges, I went to a military school. And there's a code name called RSM, called Regimental Sergeant Major. And my friends turned it into roadside mechanic. I used to call... because I was always tinkering with things. Okay. Okay. Okay. And I was always tinkering but I was also the JET club president. So it was just like a way to humor you, like say this guy's always building, he's a mechanic. So my teachers will used to say something consistently about me that if only I was patient that I would be the smartest guy in the class.
Didn't they tell everyone that, right?
They only said that. So it's fine, I knew what I was doing.
Interesting. So you started a company 10 years ago. Congratulations. Called TeamApt.
Many people might not know we at We Capital joined you 6 years ago.
Before it was called Moniepoint.
Before it was called Moniepoint.
Yes. Yes. Before it was called Moniepoint. When you originally started this company, a company that now we are very fortunate to have invested in as part of your first round of institutional capital. When you started this company, what problem were you and your co-founder looking to solve?
TeamApt was seeking, was me seeking expression to be honest. I was an engineer. I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur. Let's put it that way. While when I was in college, I kind of made a decision that I want to create a big large hardware company at that time. And fortunately immediately out of school I joined Interswitch as an engineer. Now while I was in college I had like this goal of creating a big company, was going to be a hardware company at that time. I then figured out that for you to form a hardware company you have to have like the infrastructure, you have to have like the systems, the country needs to support you. Nigeria is quite probably not the place and at that time China was already like taking over the world in terms of manufacturing. So and hardware is hard, software is softer. That's why it's called software. So exactly. So then unfortunately immediately after school I joined Interswitch as a software engineer so I became exposed to that. In fact, one of the exciting things about joining Interswitch then was that I was going to stand on the shoulder of giants because Interswitch then is still one of the largest software companies in Nigeria. So immediately after Interswitch, after spending 5 years, I actually even forgot about it initially but after 5 years I was like okay now it's time, I don't know exactly what I'm going to do. I know that banks need solutions. I'll probably just start by building solutions for banks. And that's what TeamApt started by doing.
Interesting. And that's actually when we did meet.
And for context, I think that was one of the most compelling business cases for us. If you remember at the time, interoperability and transaction failure rates were the biggest problem.
And if you could solve it, it will become a moat.
Right. And now I'm telling you our secrets. This is how we felt. You know what? This team is going to figure it out.
