Tolu Alabi & Philip Abel on Building Cleva to 700K+ Customers in Nigeria in 2 Years (Yɛllɛ S1E5) скачать в хорошем качестве

Tolu Alabi & Philip Abel on Building Cleva to 700K+ Customers in Nigeria in 2 Years (Yɛllɛ S1E5)

In this episode of Yɛllɛ (S1E5), Arthur Musah sits down with Tolu Alabi (CEO) and Philip Abel (CTO), co-founders of Cleva — providing cross-border payment processing in US dollars to African creators, freelancers, and remote workers. With over 700,000+ customers in just two years, Cleva has become one of the continent’s most exciting and fastest-scaling startups. Tolu and Philip share the long arc of their journey: childhoods shaped by Nigeria’s education system, unlikely paths to the U.S. and Silicon Valley, the early sparks of entrepreneurship, the failures that prepared them, and the day they finally decided to build Cleva. We talk about partnership, responsibility, product intuition, and the emotional weight of building for people back home. This is a grounded conversation about where companies actually come from — lived questions, unresolved tensions, and years of becoming. Chapters: 00:00 – Intro 00:52 – Who are Tolu & Philip? 02:13 – Growing up in Nigeria: childhoods & early dreams 04:34 – Tolu’s path into engineering 04:55 – Why not medicine? 05:50 – Philip’s upbringing and family context 12:06 – The journey from Nigeria to the U.S. 15:40 – Rejections in Nigeria, MIT acceptance 20:25 – Could they have started Cleva earlier? 26:22 – How Tolu and Philip met 27:42 – The first concrete steps toward building Cleva 32:09 – Why their partnership works 40:38 – Marketing, storytelling & building trust 45:45 – Product decisions they’re proud of 47:11 – Are they surprised by Cleva’s growth? What’s next? 49:54 – What their parents think 52:48 – Advice to their younger selves 59:00 – Outro If you found this conversation valuable, please like, subscribe, and share — it helps more people find these conversations. Follow Cleva: ‪@clevabanking‬ http://getcleva.com Follow Yɛllɛ / Arthur Musah:   / pidgincinema