If you are planning to create a unicorn, is your idea unique?
Have you found your unicorn yet? If you have not, I have news for you. Not every fintech start-up will become a unicorn. Some fintech start-ups will die. Some will try. Others will be fried in the process of working towards a unicorn. It is like a tadpole. Not all the tadpoles became adult frogs. Many died. Some survived. In the same breath, not every spermatozoa becomes a baby. Many died. You survived. That is why you dare to birth a unicorn in months.
On the one hand
Not every fintech start-up will become a unicorn. Let us roll out the red carpet. The following unicorns did not start as unicorns. Interswitch. Chipper Cash. Flutterwave. Moniepoint. Opay. WhatsApp. None of these giants started as a unicorn. They started to solve a social problem.
On the other hand
Dear fintech start-up founders and would-be founders, have you found a pain point you can help to ease? Does the pain point exist? Is there an idea in the ecosystem that offers a solution to the same pain point? All right. Is your idea different? Have you validated the idea? Do you understand your target addressable market? Do you have a sidekick? Are you a warrior? Are you a Rambo? Do you work alone in the wilderness and fight coding demons? Do you have funding to float your idea? Alternatively, are you waiting for a venture capitalist to knock on your door?
In the long term
Anyway, there is a different way to fund your fintech start-up outside of venture capital. If you wait for venture capital funding, you might wait for a long time. Tyler Trengis, co-founder of Ernest Capital, under his theory, said that bootstrapped founders fail less frequently than venture capital-backed founders do.
He has no data to back it up yet. Nevertheless, his anecdotal evidence is compelling. He said the pressure ‘’to go big or go home’’ actually leads many start-up companies to fail. This is because so much emphasis is put on the next series of funding instead of focusing on the actual aspects of the business that make it compelling to the market. Trengis said instead of waiting for a venture capitalist to fund your start-up, take a cheque that allows you to ‘’optimise sustainability’’ over a-growth-at-all-costs.
Dreaming of becoming a unicorn is not a crime. Not understanding the terrain, not understanding that there are giants along the way and not understanding that unicorns exist in the realm of valuation is a delinquency. Value and valuation are not identical twins. As a fintech start-up founder, are you pursuing valuation? Are you suited to delivering value? Which one is first? Where does your start-up belong in the quadrants? If you are equipped to deliver value consistently, soon, the ‘mantle’ of a unicorn will fall on your business.
Why does this matter
No fintech start-up is born as a unicorn. Yes, there are soonicorns. Fintech firms that are set to become unicorns. In Nigeria, with about 430 fintech firms, only five are unicorns. Other fintechs are ‘’optimising sustainability’’. Some are living on a-pay-as-you-go-funding-model. This does not indicate that these other fintech firms do not have the greatness of a unicorn in them. Time and chance happen to the unicorns.
In the short term
If you are planning to create a unicorn, is your idea unique?
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