“The strategy behind these fintech players is largely to onboard users who are already banked (to some extent) and offer them financial services that their banks do not see them as profitable (or safe) enough to offer to,” Maro Elias posits in a piece in Tekedia.

What do you think is the grand playbook of fintech companies in Nigeria and Africa? Being marginal to banks or actually going to eat the cake which banks have been eating? But guess what: the profit levels of banks have not dropped since the effervescence we have seen in the fintech world.

And what could that mean? This could be symbiotic in the short-term for banks and fintechs. Do not ask me what happens in the long-term!

Who Solves the Small Scale Payment Problems in Nigeria (MTN, eNaira, etc)?

A study conducted about reasons startups fail showed that timing accounts for 42 percent of team successes or failures in any business, higher than any other factor. The timing was seen to be more important than execution, funding, team, and even the idea. More than every other factor, timing is most critical to the success or failure of any startup.

Let us discuss it.

The timing simply answers the question of whether the market is ready for what you are offering. Is the idea too early, too late, or just in time.

Picture this. If 100 years ago, someone brought a business producing electric blenders or mixers, to introduce to a community with no access to electricity, what do you think would be the fate of that business?

Is the idea valid? Yes.

Does it solve a real problem? Yes, people need to save time in cooking their foods.

Is the market ready for it? No. No one would spend money to build an electric food blender when he has no access to electricity. Simply put, that idea or innovation would be described as being way ahead of the times.

For a better perspective, there was an online streaming platform that started out in the 1990s but folded up after three years. In the 2000s, another online streaming platform came up and has survived till now – Netflix. What accounted for the failure of the first and the success of the second? Timing.

In the 1990s, internet broadband penetration was still low even in the United States of America, and even people who had access had to deal with low-quality connections. By contrast, the 2000s already had high internet broadband penetration in place and several other technological facilities. This singular difference alone accounted for the success of Netflix.

The ubiquity of the internet made for the success of a lot of digital or internet-based business ideas. It will remain on for a while, but we are gradually going to move into an age powered by Artificial intelligence and we will see a change in the nature of startups and their business ideas. In-vehicle manufacturing, we can already see a shift from fossil-fuel-powered vehicles to electric vehicles.

If you have a business that failed, I urge you to go back and take a second look. Ask yourself if that business idea stands a better chance in the next 10 years. Find out if there is a specific technological advancement that may help your business penetrate the market better, and probe to see if there are plans underway to bring that technology into the market.

My point is that the same idea that failed 20 years ago, could become a success today, and the business that fails today may have a better fate in the next couple of years. Your customers have to be ready to accept what you want to give them or you will not have a business for long. Every idea is valid but Timing can be everything about the success or otherwise of the business.

Steve Jobs, an Apple founder, was legendary for stimulating demand. He worked without surveys or focus groups. He was a genius. He developed a good design paradigm of working at the perception of customers, beyond their needs and expectations. He found glory and Apple triumphed with iPod, iPhone, iPad and more.

I call this Perception Demand because Mr Jobs used his vision to create new industrial sectors. He used his talent to launch the new dawns in the apps economy and the smartphone economy, at scale. Sure, Blackberry and Nokia might have been ahead, but he redesigned the sectors through his products.

African innovators, it is really important that the focus moves from the excitement on the technology to the value created in markets. We have to work on building products that bring perception demand.

By moving into perception demand, you have changed the basis of competition, creating fans out of customers. I never see Apple as a technically great company. It does not need to be to have success. The company is peerless in innovation from the lens of customers and that is what matters.

In 2022, think different. Stimulate your new markets.

Steve Jobs’ Perception Demand Construct, for Africa