Asher's Blog

It’s been three years since our company got into YC, which is arguably the biggest and most respected startup accelerator in the world, and every now and then, I find myself replaying that moment in my head, not just as a milestone, but as a reminder of how far the journey has stretched me.

I remember the night we got into YC very clearly. I was unbelievably happy, but more than that, I was deeply relieved. I remember calling my wife immediately, and that call alone made the entire journey feel worth it. The 20 months leading up to that moment had been brutal in ways that are hard to fully explain unless you’ve lived it. We spent the first 12 months without a product, made the painful decision to let go of the entire technical team, then somehow managed to regroup, rebuild, and ship something meaningful within six months. We got our first customer, then the second, then the third, and slowly, momentum began to form. And then, YC.

What I don’t always remember, though, is that our very first YC application was rejected. At the time, I didn’t even fully understand what YC was. I was desperate, honestly. The business was fighting for survival, so I applied to everything that looked like it could help keep us alive. Unsurprisingly, that first attempt didn’t work out, and looking back now, I completely understand why. In fact, if I were on the other side of the table, I probably would have rejected us too. Before that rejection, we had raised a small family-and-friends round at fair terms, which helped us stay afloat, but clarity and maturity were still missing.

A few months later, we applied again, this time with a very different mindset. I had studied the YC application process obsessively, read everything I could find, and tried to deeply understand what the partners were really looking for beneath the surface questions. When we got invited for the interview, I prepared relentlessly. I questioned myself from every angle, researched nonstop, and tested my thinking repeatedly. I knew I was ready when I had a mock session with a YC founder who was offering pro-bono interview coaching, and almost every response landed exactly where it needed to.

During the actual interview, one of the YC partners asked us a question about distribution, and for the first time, I felt we gave the right YC answer, not because it was rehearsed, but because we truly understood the problem. About 20 minutes after the call ended, Emmanuel knocked on the door of the office where we were working and sleeping that night, to tell me we had been accepted. I was overwhelmed with gratitude. I’m smiling as I write this now, sitting in an airport lounge, because the memory still feels fresh. I called my wife immediately, sent messages to my parents and my pastor, and then called my best friend while heading home around 3 a.m. It was one of those rare moments of emotional climax that I hope to experience again. God is truly good.

Going through YC reshaped my thinking in ways I didn’t fully appreciate at the time. One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned, especially three years later, is that the biggest problem in a business is not money. Money matters, yes, but it is not the foundation. If you asked me today what I would focus on while raising capital, I’d tell you that several things matter equally, and ignoring any of them is dangerous. These are the lessons I’ve carried forward and intend to use deliberately over the next three years.

The first is leadership. Leadership is the lid to an organisation’s effectiveness and achievements, and that reality hit me hard. One of my biggest early mistakes was trying too hard to be a good person instead of being a decisive leader. I wanted to be right with the product, right with people, and right with everyone’s emotions, and those are terrible instincts to optimise for. You can’t please everyone, and your product will never be perfect. What matters is focus. On product, my mindset has shifted to obsessing over the core problem and the core story, continuously measuring whether we are delivering value quickly and whether customers genuinely love what we’re building, then improving relentlessly from there. On leadership, I’ve learned that my job is to protect a single direction and remove threats to it. Disunity is subtle but destructive, and spotting it early requires discernment. My approach now is to think strategically by consulting experts before and after making decisions, asking whether they are legal, smart, aligned with objectives, and consistent with what staff, customers, and investors expect. I map out the plan, stress-test it, and then develop extreme-scenario alternatives that I keep in reserve. If the primary plan fails, I deploy the tougher option, the one that requires extreme execution and uncomfortable communication, but still delivers 30–50% of the objective. It’s not pleasant, but it works, and results are the goal.

The second lesson is GTM. I am naturally quiet, reserved, and stubbornly logical, and for a long time, I didn’t realise how much that shaped the company. Marketing and communication didn’t come naturally to me, and that weakness reflected directly in the business. I focused heavily on building a good product, but we delayed testing GTM channels, and when we finally tried, we attempted too many things at once and failed badly. Over the last eight months, however, we’ve been methodical, testing GTM channels properly, documenting results, and iterating. We’ve seen cases where 1,000 qualified leads resulted in 200 engaged conversations and 30 onboarded customers within a month, at a direct cost of about $200. That kind of clarity changes everything. Once you reach or even sense PMF, GTM must become a priority. Without it, you can’t sell properly, you misjudge your market size, and you may even misunderstand the value you offer. GTM also sharpens your story, and stories matter far more than features. Customers will retell your story long after they forget your feature list. But stories must convert. If a story doesn’t lead to sales, it must change. I’ve learned never to fall in love with narratives, only with what works. If a product or story fails, I let it go quickly, no matter how passionately I once pushed it.

The third lesson is about work structure. We were remote-first for a while, but today, we are intentionally hybrid. A fully work-from-office setup would be ideal in theory, but Lagos traffic makes that unrealistic, as no one should spend five hours a day commuting. Our solution has been deliberate hybridisation: engineers work from the office one to two times a week and participate in a monthly six-day “engineering marathon,” where we live and work together intensively. Other teams work from the office three times a week because culture, performance, and alignment matter deeply. I’ve realised that leaders need proximity, to me and to their teams, and junior staff need regular exposure to their leads. That closeness accelerates growth, helps us spot high and low performers early, and keeps standards high in an age where AI makes output deceptively easy. If we were in the EU, UK, or US, we would likely be fully WFO, but leadership also means adapting structure to reality while still attracting and retaining the best talent.

Three years after YC, I’m clearer, calmer, and more decisive than I was then. The journey hasn’t gotten easier, but my perspective has matured, and that, more than anything, has made all the difference.