About this episode From the show’s notes Shola Akinlade is CEO and cofounder of Paystack. Paystack helps businesses in Africa get paid online and offline. They’re based in Lagos, Nigeria and were part of the Winter 2016 batch.
Shola’s on Twitter @shollsman.
Read the show’s notes in full The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon.
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Topics
Chapters 27 · press a time to start there 00:26 What is Paystack? 01:06 Shola's background and previous company 04:26 Paystack's YC application 06:01 Meeting his cofounder 07:26 Interviewing at YC 10:21 Joining YC as a Nigerian company 10:56 Differences between startups in Nigeria and the US 13:26 Nigeria's payments market 15:56 Paystack's growth 19:26 Expanding to other countries and hiring 25:26 The best part of doing YC 29:26 Crypto developments in Africa Show all 27 chapters 30:21 Creative Joe asks - How difficult is it to get into YC? 30:56 Educating US investors 32:06 Paul Israel asks - What gaps do you think still exist in the Nigerian fintech space? 33:01 Nelson asks - Are there any conventional startup advice that did not work for Paystack as their target market is Africa? 35:21 Nelson asks - What are some important lessons he learnt while building Paystack? 37:46 Nelson asks - What are some applications he would love to see been built on top of Paystack? 39:56 Building for Africa 42:16 Nestor Ezeagu asks - Do you think something like GoFundMe could work in Nigeria? 42:46 Car Joyy asks - Can I receive payments as an MVP ecommerce site before registering as a company? 44:06 Achyut Shrestha asks - What’s your tech stack? 44:41 Jordan Jackson asks - What are the biggest cultural differences that you account for in UX and product design? 
