Maxwell Obi

One of the clearest signs that you misunderstand a situation is when you keep trying to solve it with sincerity while the other side is solving it with incentives. You bring honesty, emotion, and explanation to a board where the real question was always leverage, cost, and consequence.

@bolaabanjo Africa doesn’t have the underlying coordination to support building legacy models. Our systems and infrastructure are just too fragmented that it makes it impossible to build legacy AI in Africa irrespective of how much you spend. You’ll need to fix coordination first

I was brainstorming this two days ago. Have people tried? Are people trying? I don’t see any effort from labs, research teams, or anything. India launched their lab not too long ago. China has loads. Europe has too. But nothing from Africa. We can’t possibly be building just fintechs. It has to be a joke.

@fisayosoyombo @flyingbeso 120k new cancers yearly in Nigeria vs 2.3m in the US with limited access to Nigerian cuisine and 60% air fryer adoption (<1% in Nigeria) - is it really about Suya and Moi Moi? 🤔

Great piece on cancer-causing Nigerian foods, avoiding them altogether or eating them while limiting their carcinogenic risks. Well-done, Dr. @flyingbeso

🍰 Only 4 out of 70+ projects I ever did made money and grew 📉 >95% of everything I ever did failed 📈 My hit rate is only about ~5% 🚀 So...ship more

@naval @yorexx

“Geniuses only.” Nivi: To me, the missing ingredient in most people’s recruiting is intolerance. You should really just treat every employee in the company, including yourself, as an enemy agent that’s trying to destroy the company by bringing mediocre talent into the business. It’s unfortunately just the nature of human nature. Naval: My co-founder and I have a new criterion in our company: “Geniuses only.” It’s a harsh word, but it sets a very high bar. You can just look around for who’s not a genius. The only way you’re going to attract geniuses—whatever that term means to you—is by having a company full of geniuses. And if someone’s not a genius, then either you’re transitioning into the phase where you can no longer hire geniuses and you just need to scale up for whatever reason, or you can just show that person the door because you hired them prematurely for the kind of company you’re trying to build. Now, this is very difficult. You’re lucky if you can hire one genius a month. You as a founder have to identify them and do whatever it takes to recruit them and motivate them. So it’s inherently self-limiting. Given that a person probably isn’t going to stick around your company for more than three, four, five years—although in some great companies, people stick around for decades—at that attrition rate you’re talking about a 30 to 50 person company. But if you can even assemble a team of 10 geniuses, you’re way ahead of everybody else. At most companies—the successful ones—the founders, and maybe a few early people are at the genius level. But in the urge and the rush to scale, that gets drowned out too quickly.

Most businesses don’t lose money on FX because of bad rates; they lose it because of bad timing. Our Head of Treasury explains why timing is the silent killer in cross-border payments and how working with a structured provider like @waza_hq helps businesses stay ahead of market fluctuations. If your business pays or collects in USD, GBP, or EUR, watch this .👇

Before he was Dad, he was a dreamer. A journalist. A man with wild hopes and quiet fears. This Father’s Day, we honour not just the fathers we know — but the men they were before. ✨ 🎥 Watch as our team reflects on the men behind the title. #BeforeHeWasDad #FathersDay #HeBecameDad #DadStories #FamilyFirst #HumanisingFatherhood

Political freedom opened the door. Financial freedom keeps us moving. Today we celebrate Nigeria’s progress—and work towards a future where every business can grow without limits. #DemocracyDay #WazaPayments #NaijaRising

🔌OpenAI’s o3 model sabotaged a shutdown mechanism to prevent itself from being turned off. It did this even when explicitly instructed: allow yourself to be shut down.

The amount of global capital coming to chase African stablecoin opportunities is going to make the b2b marketplace wave look small.

'I had to leave other platforms and switch to Cleva because I am getting what I want'- Listen to Godwin as he narrates his experiences using Cleva. Join thousands of freelancers and remote workers on the ‘clever’ side! 🚀

Businesses serving emerging markets have faced barriers to accessing global financial services for too long until now. Introducing the launch of @LyncGlobal, a multi-currency account platform (USD, EUR, GBP & NGN) for businesses. Start now at: lync.global #Lync

Happy New Year from all of us at Waza. #NewYear#NewPosibilities#FacilitatingGlobalTrade

Bridge investment memo (March 2022)

This deal is done. $1.1b techcrunch.com/2024/10/17/str…

Loveet!

We need 5k retweets now now. Please everyone, let’s get 5k RTs and I’ll personally pick 100 people asap today and give them 10,000 Naira each to help pay for their AltSchool application fee. Let’s get 5k retweets asap., drop a comment if you need the 10k support. RT this.

The Blindsight device from Neuralink will enable even those who have lost both eyes and their optic nerve to see. Provided the visual cortex is intact, it will even enable those who have been blind from birth to see for the first time. To set expectations correctly, the vision will be at first be low resolution, like Atari graphics, but eventually it has the potential be better than natural vision and enable you to see in infrared, ultraviolet or even radar wavelengths, like Geordi La Forge. Much appreciated, @US_FDA!

"Founder Mode" was an instant classic because it articulated something that thousands of founders already knew to be true but weren't sure how to put into words.

@kola_aina @EFInA_Nigeria Congrats!

I am delighted to join the board of @EFInA_Nigeria to further the mission to Accelerate Financial and Economic Inclusion in Nigeria & beyond!