Classic mistake that led to Lazerpay’s collapse—Iyin Aboyeji

Article summary

• Future Africa founder, Iyin Aboyeji, said Lazerpay made a big mistake of marketing its product to the wrong people.
• He said the age of the founder also contributed to why some financial institutions were not willing to entrust their business to Lazerpay.
• Aboyeji offered some advice for young entrepreneurs even as he urges them to take a cue from Flutterwave.

Serial entrepreneur and the founder of Future Africa, Iyin Aboyeji, has said that the founders of the Nigerian crypto payment company that shut down recently, Lazerpay, made a ‘classic’ mistake that led to the company’s collapse.

According to him, Lazerpay made the same mistake often made by business-to-business (B2B) companies as it wasted ‘too much’ time marketing its product to developers and small businesses rather than focusing on sales to large enterprises.

Reacting to a Twitter post that suggested that the only reason Lazerpay closed is because they built products that were way ahead of the market’s maturity, Aboyeji said:

I also think they made a classic mistake of B2B payments companies. Wasting too much time marketing to developers and small businesses instead of focusing on professional services enabled sales to large enterprises. This is what made @theflutterwave survive.”

He also alluded to the age of the founder and CEO of Lazerpay as another factor that affected the business.

• “Then again you cannot blame Lazerpay guys because if we are keeping it a buck, which financial institution will give a 20-year-old CEO their global payments infrastructure to manage? It’s a challenge of founder-market fit,” he said.

Advice to startups

Aboyeji, who is also a co-founder of the leading fintech in Africa, Flutterwave, advised young startups to always find the use case for their products before launching in any market.

• “If you are introducing new technology into a market find a use case with a partner that makes everyone go ‘what the hell just happened and why?’ That’s what we did with Access Bank and Uber at Flutterwave. Don’t spend too much time on your developer community. No money there,” he said.

In case you missed it

Lazerpay, which was co-founded by 21-year-old Emmanuel Njoku, last month announced it was shutting down the business after 2 years of operation. Lazerpay, which laid off some of its staff last November to extend its runway, said it had now come to the end of the road as it was unable to raise funds to sustain its operations.

Announcing the shutdown, the company’s CEO, Emmanuel Njoku said:

• “Today, we announce the difficult decision to cease operations at Lazerpay. Despite our team’s tireless efforts to secure the necessary funding to keep Lazerpay going, we were unable to close a successful fundraising round. We fought hard to keep the lights on as long as possible, but unfortunately, we are now at a point where we need to shut down.
• “As we sunset Lazerpay, we remain committed to helping our users transition smoothly and to ensuring that any outstanding matters are resolved. Merchants are advised to withdraw their funds from the platform before the 30th of April 2023 using the Bank or Crypto payout option.
• “We encourage our community to stay in touch and reach out to us as the team will be available to answer any questions or concerns.
• “We welcome offers from companies who are interested in purchasing Lazerpay’s IP, and who would like to continue building the future of crypto payments. We are more than happy to talk further about how our technology works, and how we can help set you up to build or integrate with it.”