The Key to Nigerian Startup Expansion and Global Scale

At the initial stages of any business, the founder is usually the business. You are doing all this: product design, customer service, sales calls, finance, human resources, operations, and marketing. There is not one other body, so you put on all the hats. However, as you mature, that ceases to stand. Sometimes, even doing is no longer your greatest job, but getting out of the positions that you used to have and employing others to perform them more effectively than you ever managed to do yourself.

As a beginner, you do it all. Then you take generalists and have many things. Then you begin to recruit specialists to assume part of the role of the generalist. Lastly, you employ experts who operate in the same way the business would not perform in all their areas of expertise.

Not merely a theory, this is a model that most high-growth CEOs operate on. It is only a matter of knowing when you are in that cycle and being unsparing of shedding roles.

This is a critical transition in the startup ecosystem in Nigeria. Due to resource constraints, founders tend to overly retain functions. However, when you are serious about scaling, past n1 billion in revenue or growing the business across locations in Africa, Europe or any other place in the world, you have to systematically get out of positions you do not require to maintain.

In this article:

We will unravel the generalist to specialist cycle and demonstrate how it works out.       

We will apply that framework to the Nigerian and African situation (with the challenges, pitfalls, and tips to live by).

We will dwell upon the signals which will help to understand that you lag and how to speed up the process of hiring specialists.

We will end with a series of strategic steps that you can take today to start firing yourself.

Let’s go.

 

Generalist Specialist Cycle: What It Really Means

This is because many founders follow the generalist to specialist cycle:

1. Founder-as-generalist (doer-phase): You happen to do just about everything because you have to. You can be coding, selling, doing administration, debugging bugs, user onboarding, etc.

2. Indeed, hire generalists: When you expand to possibly 520 employees, you can recruit individuals who have no problem with wearing several hats, e.g., marketing + ops + support.

3. Start recruiting experts: As the organization grows more stressful, you take some functions (e.g. finance, growth marketing, and product management) and hire experts in the domain.

4. Full specialization/leadership model: You bring others into the company who are superior in their area of activity, and you cease to do nearly every operational task, and instead concentrate on vision, culture, strategy and development.

What is the significance of such a change?

- Scalability & leverage: A generalist has a limit to the level of scaling. Experts are experts with profound knowledge, rigor, and scale.

- Stopping burnout and bottlenecks: Founders who continue to do it all get bottlenecked; the slowness of decision-making will slow things down.

- Quality and domain greatness: Experts are usually able to produce exceptionally high-quality work in their field (finance, marketing, dev, etc.).

- Strategic focus: When you are delivered, you can look into the future: new markets, M&A, partnerships, raising capital, etc.

It is common in startup practice to find many teams that fail to make it to Stage 3 or 4. They remain attached to generalists excessively. According to LinkedIn commentary, the argument is that, in the vast majority of cases, founders cease with generalists and they do not go on to systems, and that, at Stage 4, real scale commences.

A rule of thumb that is helpful at Float (a global SaaS company) is:

When your team has fewer than 15 people, then every role must be a generalist role. Surviving the product-market fit opens the next door, where you can begin to recruit expertise with more knowledge in more specialized areas.

In this way, the transition is not arbitrary, but rather, scale thresholds and complexity are also involved.

 

Application of the Cycle in the Nigerian/African Ecosystem

The shift between generalist and specialist is difficult in all locations. There are a few more challenges and opportunities, however, added to the Nigerian and wider African situation. Now, I would like to discuss the way to localize and globalize this cycle.

Nigeria / African unique difficulties

1. Talent shortage/skills: The number of highly skilled specialists (e.g. experienced growth marketers, senior finance leaders, architects of deep tech) may be lower or even more expensive, particularly when moving to other cities beyond the major hubs of Lagos or Nairobi.

2. Cost sensitivity Cost constraints: Some startups have to bootstrap. Being founders, it is easy to postpone hiring to save money, extending the generalist stage.

3. Cultural founder ownership bias: Nigerians have been accustomed to running the majority of the business, they have a psychological aversion to relinquishing control.

4. Complexity of operation across markets: When you are expanding to Nigerian states, or Ghana, South Africa, Europe, etc., you have to be specialized (e.g. regulatory, logistics) sooner.

5. Infrastructure & systems gaps: You could be in the mature internal systems (e.g. automated finance, HRIS, governance processes), and hence the necessity to hire specialists is two-fold.

Those difficulties notwithstanding, Nigeria-based founders have an edge: the diaspora networks of the world, the appeal of frontier-market scale, and increasingly accessible remote and distributed talent.

 

Mapping the cycle of the Nigerian scale-ups

Here’s a rough mapping:

Founder-as-generalist: N0-N50M. Revenue (or initial 1-5 individuals): You do it all.

Hire generalists: N50M-N250M. on board generalists, and they will perform a variety of functions (customer service + marketing, etc.).

Hire specialists: N250M-N1B. You recruit domain heads (finance head, growth head, and technical architect).

Full specialization: N1B+, or cross-border scaling. You are the CEO/Chairperson; domain leads are independent of each other.

Suppose a Nigerian financial technology that is based in West Africa is scaling:

1. The founder is the person in charge of operations and support at N30M. At N100M, they employ a generalist operations manager (marketing is also included).

2. The more intricate the matter is, the more they employ a compliance/regulation specialist (to deal with country-specific regulations in Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone).

3. To maximize the unit economics, they recruit a growth marketing lead.

4. They will later recruit a CFO, a Chief Technology Officer, and a Country General Manager of Ghana/Nigeria, whose domain is mastered.

At this point, the task of the founder is to establish vision, external relationships, and fundraising and ecosystem relationships.

Signals you’re behind

You may be falling behind on some of the following:

You continue to make petty decisions (e.g. copy tweet, pay vendor).

You are the bottleneck of any decision that is made; no one calls without you.

You have not recorded standard operating procedures (SOPs).

There is no clarity in the boundaries of responsibility in your team.

You always feel strained and are unable to see the big picture.

With a revenue of above N200-N500 million and still very active in your operations, then chances are high that you are close to stagnation.

 

The Right Way to Fire Yourself: How to Do It

The following is a road phasing (with Nigerian/ African versions):

Phase 1: Audit functions and roles.

- List all the functions that you are dealing with at present (e.g. HR, customer care, finance, compliance, marketing, product).

- Allow the share of your weekly time in each.

- Question: What are the functions that I do not have to own in the next 12 months?

 

Phase 2: Document & standardize

- Make SOPs, playbooks and checklists of the areas you want to offload.

- Such as: finance approval procedures, vendor payment procedures, and customer onboarding procedures.

 

Phase 3: Recruit generalists (assuming you have not)

- The initial hires should be individuals with the ability to cross-function.

- But at the beginning, assess their specialization potential in the future.

- Eschew traps of unicorn roles (do not overload one hire).

 

Phase 4: Recruitment and employment of your first specialists

What are the highest ROI specialists? This will depend on your business, though generally common ones are:

- Head of Product/CTO

- Growth/Performance- Marketing Lead.

- Finance/Accounting Lead/CFO

- Leader/ Supply Chain Operations.

- Country or Market Manager (in case of geographical expansion)

- Compliance/Legal specialist

When hiring:

- Only concentrate on must-haves versus nice-to-haves to prevent unrealistic inclinations.

- Be cautious about hiring people like you, different thinking tends to create breakthroughs. Sierra Ventures

- Compare the candidates through the use of standard frameworks or scorecards.

- Involve executive recruiting/headhunting companies in senior positions (even in Nigeria) where needed.

 

Phase 5: Take a step out and delegate

- Give overlaps: during some period of time, you and the new hire will be on the same function before the complete handover.

- Decentralise authority and decision making, not duties only. Make people find their own solutions, not merely do what you command.

- Make results through metrics and OKRs to keep people responsible, rather than to monitor them all the time.

- Explain to the team the new structures and functions.

 

Phase 6: Focus yourself on strategic leadership

After they have offloaded you on critical roles, your core tasks are:

- Vision, strategy, direction

- Investors, fundraising, and high-level partnerships.

- Values, culture, talent strategy.

- New development, new market, M&A where applicable.

- It is no longer the day-to-day business, but to drive the ship.

 

Global Scale Perspective: Nigerian Founders Thinking Beyond Borders

The generalist-to-specialist cycle is even more important when you are aiming at a global scale. These are additional considerations:

- Distinct and scattered experts: You can exploit talent around the world. A Nigerian company can employ an American growth strategist, European compliance counsel, or remote senior engineers.

- Cross-border domain specialists: By way of illustration, in the case of expansion to Europe, employ a person who is knowledgeable about GDPR, EU regulation, local tax law, and local language marketing strategy.

- Local specialization by geography: Every target market can require its own expert.

Maturity of systems and processes becomes the critical factor in compatibility in markets.

Therefore, in expanding into the rest of the world, you need to recruit sooner in disciplines at the core, such as compliance, localization, regional operations and product-market fit in each area.

 

Fraud, Leapfrog, and Traps

- Hiring too soon: Hiring specialists before you can accommodate them (or you have sound product/market fit) may be a waste of resources.

- Micromanaging the specialist: To employ a professional and then to control everything is frustrating and counterproductive.

- No handover plan: You have to plan overlap, training and transfer of knowledge.

- Lack of role definition: When jobs are ambiguous, there will be conflict and confusion.

- Losing culture: With the introduction of specialists (mostly remote or international), culture drift may appear.

- Loss of initial generalists: Occasionally, initial employees feel dispossessed. Be considerate and kind during transfers (provide new positions, appreciate efforts).

 

Conclusion

It is not simply that you can move into a visionary CEO after being a generalist founder. Still, it is mandatory if you wish to scale sustainably in Nigeria and worldwide. The quote that you have given is the core of this transition:

Your one role as a founder is to sit yourself in as many positions as you can get.

However, it is not a flip switch, just the journey towards the transition. You must:

1. Identify your position in the cycle.

2. Mapping what should be offloaded - audit your functions.

3. Record it all to be able to delegate the tasks.

4. Recruit strategists, then experts.

5. Transition with care delegate, be responsible.

6. Work of leadership strategy, vision, partnerships.

To the founders in Nigeria and Africa, these bottlenecks are actual: talent, cost, and system maturity. Such restrictions, however, only add significance to the transition. Begin by identifying the positions that consume your time or hinder growth (some of them are finance, operations, compliance, and marketing). Offload them first.

When you are opening in other African markets, Europe, or the U.S., you will require domain experts in those markets, local experts who are familiar with regulation, language, and user behavior. Don’t wait too long.