By the time Iyin Aboyeji turned 34, he had already helped shape some of Africa’s most influential technology ventures. Yet the Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Learn2Earn NG is quick to strip entrepreneurship of its mythology.
“I’m still a young man,” Aboyeji says. “And I didn’t set out to be an entrepreneur.”
His entry into technology and investing was largely accidental, shaped more by curiosity than calculation. As a young man, his ambitions shifted repeatedly, science, law, diplomacy, academia, each abandoned as his understanding of opportunity matured.
“I realised along the way that perception is not reality,” he says. “And that mattered.”
Entrepreneurship emerged while he was still in school, after reconnecting with a friend immersed in Silicon Valley’s startup culture. Exposure to founders, technologists, and the intensity of company-building reshaped his thinking. Watching The Social Network proved catalytic.
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“I remember thinking, if someone could build from obscurity, then we could too.”
That insight led to his first startup while still a student and set him on a path defined less by ideas and more by execution.
“I’ve never really been the ideas guy,” Aboyeji says. “Ideas are mostly useless.”
What matters, he argues, is building a business, deeply understanding customers, assembling the right early team, designing repeatable operating models, and creating a structure that can scale. Growth, in his view, moves through three distinct phases: operations, organisation, and orchestration.
“At scale, you’re no longer executing,” he says. “You’re coordinating systems. You’re orchestrating an ecosystem.”
That philosophy underpins his work beyond operating companies. As CEO and General Partner of Future Africa, Aboyeji oversees an innovation fund designed to back Africa’s future by providing capital, coaching, and community to bold founders tackling the continent’s most pressing challenges. The fund has invested in over 100 companies across Africa, with a combined valuation exceeding $6 billion, spanning sectors including fintech, edtech, healthtech, and agritech.
Among its notable investments are Moove, a flexible car ownership platform enabling Uber drivers in Nigeria to access vehicles, and Itana, a network of charter cities built to support Africa’s growing technology talent base. For Aboyeji, these investments are less about returns in isolation and more about system-building.
From his vantage point as both founder and investor, Aboyeji believes African startups are often held back by a single critical gap.
“Customer insight,” he says. “Most founders don’t really understand why their product works.”
That lack of depth leads to sameness in pitches and positioning, something investors quickly tune out.
“When founders all sound the same, they fall off investors’ radar.”
True customer insight, he notes, often reveals that opportunities are not merely local. Human behaviour, he argues, is remarkably consistent across markets.
“When you understand people deeply enough, you realise your market may be much bigger than you think.”
At Learn2Earn NG, where he serves as Co-Founder and Executive Chairman, Aboyeji’s focus is firmly on talent development. He believes Africa’s next phase of growth will not be driven by extractive industries, but by people equipped to participate competitively in the global digital economy.
“Africa will develop on the back of human resources, not natural resources,” he says.
The continent already has the population and ambition, he argues. What it lacks is infrastructure and opportunity at scale.
“Talent is eager,” Aboyeji says. “Opportunity is the constraint.”
For founders seeking capital, his advice is characteristically blunt.
“Launch first,” he says. “You will always sound smarter once you’ve launched.”
Pitch decks without products rarely survive serious scrutiny. Investors benchmark relentlessly against traction, not intention.
“There are only three ways to get on an investor’s radar,” Aboyeji explains. “An introduction from a trusted founder, a credible accelerator, or a trusted investor.”
Customers, he adds, remain the strongest signal of credibility.
“I judge companies primarily by their customers,” he says. “If you tell me MTN is your customer, I’ll take the meeting.”
While acknowledging progress in Nigeria’s startup policy environment, Aboyeji believes infrastructure remains the decisive bottleneck to scale.
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“Without internet access, power, and connectivity, ambition doesn’t scale,” he says.
If he had influence over policy direction, his priorities would be pragmatic.
“Countries in construction mode need engineers,” Aboyeji says. “Builders, not theorists.”
Despite his influence across Africa’s startup ecosystem, Aboyeji’s ambition remains sharply defined and measurable.
“I want one million young Nigerians earning $10,000 a year online,” he says.
That outcome, he notes, would inject $10 billion annually into the economy and fundamentally reshape the middle class.
“At that scale,” Aboyeji adds, “you don’t just build companies. You change society.”
