Isaac Adewumi
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If You’re Not Helping Nigerian Businesses Earn, Save, or Multiply Money, You’re Wasting Time
It was electric.
We gathered around a digital fireside on LinkedIn with Bukola Osuntuyi (startup operations director, mentor, and guest lecturer), Edem Kudmozi (CTO at Hustlebean), and Lucianne Osideko (Hustlebean’s founder). The session, hosted by Isaac Adewumi (Content Marketing Associate at Hustlebean), was a raw, honest conversation about what it really takes to build a revenue growth product for Nigerian businesses.
We dug into the messy middle of startup life: building for the informal sector, surviving infrastructure breakdowns, demystifying product-market fit in Africa, and why speed and trust often matter more than your product’s features.
What came out wasn’t just inspiration, it was a field-tested blueprint for building in Nigeria’s high-pressure, low-margin, and high-ambition environment.
Building for Nigeria isn’t sexy, but it must work
“When building for Nigeria, you have to discard most of the Western assumptions in mind,” said Edem.
Hustlebean’s users are field agents in Ikorodu with limited data and low-end Androids, or sales managers in juggling spreadsheets, sales KPIs and expectations from top management.
“You can’t just build shiny things,” Edem added. “You have to build what works. It must be fast, lightweight, offline-friendly and flexible. That’s the only way to scale here.”
These aren't just abstract values. They’re embedded in Hustlebean’s infrastructure. Every user flow is designed to reduce delay. Managers track field performance in seconds, sales agents onboard in minutes and reporting is real-time and lightweight.
“We optimize for speed, not vanity. No request should take more than a few milliseconds. We’re building in low-trust environments. Every click must prove value because every delay loses a user,” Edem emphasized.
This is why the team resists over-engineering. Each feature has to answer one key question: How does this help the user earn or succeed faster? That’s the lens behind HUBA, Hustlebean’s smart staffing engine that performs seamlessly even on poor connections.
From pen and paper to product: Why doing the unscalable first matters
In the early days, Hustlebean didn’t start with code. It started with chaos. Pen and paper, whatsApp groups, google Sheets, flyers handed out on Unilag campus, real-life experiments before product specs.
“Whatever solution you’re trying to solve,” Edem said, “remove the tech and begin with pen and paper. Use Excel, Word, whatever basic tools you can. Understand how the process actually works. Once your product can handle the things that don’t scale, then you can automate, cut costs, and build real value.”
That scrappy, people-first approach became Hustlebean’s superpower.
“There was passion. But also chaos,” Bukola recalled. “Hustlebean had users. They had a bit of revenue. But operational structures didn’t yet exist. Still, I saw a founder who listened and had passion - that’s the first step.”
Lucianne put it simply: “We didn’t have fancy tools. But we had people who wanted work and businesses that needed results. So we focused on matching those two things fast. Then we built the tech backwards from that.”
By staying close to both workers and businesses, the team uncovered the core drivers: speed of job access, clarity of pay, sales agent performance visibility, and trust. Those insights became the foundation for HUBA.
Product market fit (PMF) in Nigeria is about Naira, not vanity metrics
“If your product doesn’t help Nigerian businesses earn, save, or multiply money,” Bukola said, “you’re wasting time.”
For Hustlebean which operates in Nigeria’s informal economy contributing over 50% to GDP, there’s no room for extravagance. The value proposition must be clear, immediate, and tied to revenue. No one cares about app ratings, they care about return on investment.
This mindset shapes every Hustlebean decision. Features are prioritized based on how fast they help a business see results. That’s how HUBA delivers measurable ROI, often within weeks.
Lucianne explained it clearly: “This isn’t about staffing anymore. It’s about enabling growth — with the right people, tools, and metrics.”
Bukola listed the key indicators to track for product-market fit (PMF) in new markets beyond increase in revenue:
- Session time increasing
- Repeat hires by businesses
- Higher average job earnings
- Organic referrals
- Field agent satisfaction
Lucianne added: “When a sales manager in Ikeja finishes a campaign and immediately messages us for the next one, that’s PMF. Your user behavior will let you know if your product fits them or not.”
And when negative feedback comes in? That’s also a good sign.
“As a builder, you must learn to love the tough and negative messages,” Bukola said. “When a customer gives negative feedback, it means they actually like you and want you to win. That’s why they’re still engaging. Track product usage, listen hard, and take that feedback seriously.”
Real-world proof: Watu Simu and over N250million in revenue
Lucianne shared one example that illustrates Hustlebean’s value at scale: the partnership with Watu Simu, a leading African asset financing company.
Watu Simu was expanding rapidly into Nigeria but faced a major bottleneck: undertrained sales agents, high no-show rates, and inconsistent field performance. Hustlebean stepped in with a smarter solution: trained, vetted, performance-tracked agents matched to regions with the highest demand.
The result include:
- Over 500 mobile devices sold.
- Over ₦250M+ revenue generated, proving the power of strategic staffing.
- N1m average weekly payouts in commissions to our DSRs working with Watsu.
That’s the level of impact a revenue growth product must deliver in Nigeria: clear and verifiable outcomes in naira and kobo.
What’s next for Hustlebean in 2025
Now, Hustlebean is expanding from a full-stack hiring sales agent solution to a full-scale revenue growth engine for our partners. Our focus is on creating:
- Real-time performance dashboards for businesses
- AI-driven insights for rehire or retrain decisions
- Smarter matching based on skill, location, and performance
- Post-campaign reporting that shows ROI in hard currency
“A lot of our clients are scaling,” Lucianne said. “They’re not just hiring, they’re growing. We’re building tools that don’t just add to their team but multiply their results.”
Final advice for Nigerian founders building products
To close the session, each speaker shared one key lesson:
Bukola Osuntuyi:
“If your product doesn’t help someone earn, save, or multiply money, you’re wasting time. That’s the only metric that matters here.”
Edem Kudmozi:
“When building a product in Nigeria, design for an environment where anything can go wrong — because it will. Optimize every workflow for speed, flexibility, and resilience.”
Lucianne Osideko:
“Stay in the fight, pivot if you have to, and never stop listening. Your users will tell you exactly what to build, if you take the time to listen.”
Curious about what we’re building?
We’re not just hiring vetted and on-demand staff. We’re helping Nigerian businesses grow revenue fast, smart, and sustainably.
Join the waitlist for HUBA, our AI-powered staffing engine designed to drive real-time results for your business.
