Not because we ran out of money. Not because we couldn't find clients.
Because I was building software that worked but didn't matter.
Let me explain.
- I'm in a room in Allen Avenue, Lagos.
One client who needed a fintech app "like Opay." We built it in 8 weeks. Clean Flutter code.
Beautiful UI. The client paid. Everyone was happy.
- Same story. Different client. "Build me a wallet app." We built it. Shipped it. Moved on.
Early 2023. I met a woman named Mrs. Adeleke. She runs a provision store in Ikorodu.
She told me something that broke me:
"I don't trust these apps. Last month, I sent money to my son in school.
The network failed. The money left my account. He never got it.
I had to borrow to feed him that week."
She wasn't anti-technology. She was anti-unreliable technology.
And I realized….. We were building features. Not trust.
So I made a decision that almost killed the company.
I told the team: No new projects for 3 months. We're fixing one thing… reliability in low-network environments.
The developers thought I was crazy. "Enoch, we have paying clients waiting." I know. "We'll lose revenue." I know. "Competitors are shipping faster." I know.
But here's what I also knew: In Nigeria, "network error" isn't an inconvenience.
For someone sending school fees, it's a crisis. For someone buying electricity tokens at midnight, it's sitting in darkness.
We spent those 3 months on things that don't look good in pitch decks:
Retry logic that actually works when 2G flickers
Offline queueing that syncs when signal returns
SMS fallbacks when push notifications fail
Token formatting that works even on old Tecno phones with cracked screens
Today, March 2025:
Adeweb Developer Africa has 27 people. We've processed over 11000+ transactions.
Our electricity payment system alone serves 4,000+ monthly active users.
But the number I'm proudest of?
0.3% transaction failure rate. Down from 12% in 2022.
Mrs. Adeleke? She uses our platform now. She told me last month: "It just works.
Even when MTN is doing their nonsense."
That's the review that matters.
What I learned and what I want every founder reading this to hear
"It works on my phone" is not enough.
Test on the ₦35,000 Android device. Test on 2G. Test with 15% battery.
Your users don't have iPhone 15s and fiber internet.
Speed without reliability is debt.
Explaining to a crying customer why their money disappeared feels worse.
Technical debt is real. But "trust debt" the kind where users lose faith in your platform…. is harder to repay.
Your ego will cost you users.
To the founders building for emerging markets:
You're not just writing code.
You're building infrastructure for people who've been disappointed by systems before.
Government failed them. Banks failed them. Now an app is failing them.
Your job isn't to be the smartest in the room. It's to be the most trustworthy…
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