Being a founder is increasingly presented as a status symbol. People see the international trips, speaking engagements, media coverage, fundraising announcements and photographs taken at important events, but they rarely see the weight of building and sustaining the company behind that image. They do not see the nights spent reviewing plans, worrying about cash flow, thinking through difficult decisions, managing debt, correcting mistakes and trying to ensure that the company remains healthy enough to meet its obligations.
I have been reflecting on this because of recent conversations about a well-known Nigerian founder whose former employees have made serious complaints about delayed salaries, unpaid sales commissions and statutory deductions such as PAYE and pensions that were allegedly not remitted. What struck me was the contrast between the company’s public image and the experience being described by people who had worked there. Online, the founder was perceived as successful and accomplished, but the employees were describing a very different reality inside the organization.
I am not writing this to pronounce judgment on a particular person or company because I do not know every side of the story. However, it raises an important question for every founder: what does the internal experience of the people who work with you reveal about the kind of business you are actually building?
A company’s reputation is not only what customers, investors and the public see. It is also what employees experience when salaries are due, commissions have been earned, statutory deductions must be remitted and difficult decisions need to be communicated. Eventually, the distance between a company’s public image and its internal reality becomes impossible to hide.
What you pay people says something about you
I have worked with many Nigerian businesses and business owners, and some of what I observed influenced the kind of founder I wanted to become. I did not want to build what people might describe as a typical African business, where the founder appears prosperous while the people doing the work are barely surviving, processes depend entirely on one person and employees are treated as though they should be grateful merely to have a job.
At our company, we try to pay well, even though we are still a relatively small company. We can now afford to do so, but compensation is also connected to the kind of company we are trying to build. Our ambition is not merely to build a successful African company; we want to build a global company that begins in Africa. That ambition affects the standard of talent we need, the quality of work we expect and the way we must compensate the people capable of producing that work.
I was speaking with a friend recently, and I told him that when a founder pays people peanuts, it often says more about the founder than it says about the employees. If you travel around the world, attend expensive business schools, participate in executive programmes and continually invest in your own development while most of your employees cannot live reasonably on what you pay them, something is wrong with that picture.
Compensation is not merely a cost to be minimized. It reveals how you value the people whose effort supports the life you are building.
Of course, every company has financial constraints, particularly during its early years. A startup cannot always compete with the largest companies in the market, and there are moments when founders and early employees must make sacrifices. However, there is a difference between operating within genuine constraints and building a business model that depends permanently on underpaying vulnerable people.
If you cannot afford to pay someone, do not hire the person. If you will repeatedly owe salaries for more than one or two months, reduce the size of the team to a level the business can sustain. If you genuinely need someone whose market compensation you cannot currently afford, consider offering meaningful equity that vests over time and is tied to clearly documented performance expectations. Whatever arrangement you choose, communicate it honestly and put it in writing.
The founder’s ambition must not be financed indefinitely by obligations transferred to employees who never agreed to become the company’s creditors.
Hire the best people you can afford
As companies begin to use artificial intelligence to redesign their operations, the difference between exceptional and average talent will become even more obvious. AI makes capability more accessible, but it does not automatically give people judgment, curiosity, discipline or the ability to use these tools intelligently. An average employee with access to AI may still produce average work more quickly, while an exceptional person can use the same technology to rethink the work entirely.
I have listened to leaders at companies such as Amazon and Apple, as well as experienced investors, discuss the difference between A players and B players. The difference is substantial, and the gap becomes even wider when you compare exceptional performers with people who are merely occupying positions.
If you genuinely want to go far, you must hire the best people you can find and afford. Many African companies remain average because even ambitious founders surround themselves with average talent. They may want to build global companies, but they recruit primarily according to who is cheapest, easiest to control or least likely to challenge them. That contradiction eventually becomes the company’s ceiling.
When you pay properly for strong talent, you are also less willing to tolerate mediocrity. You become more thoughtful about what the person should own, what outcomes are expected and whether those outcomes are being achieved. You are not paying for attendance or activity; you are paying for judgment, responsibility and measurable contribution.
My co-founder and I sometimes have meetings late at night because we are trying to sharpen the axe rather than continue cutting down a tree with a blunt one. We spend time thinking, planning, revising documents and directing AI agents to explore and execute different parts of the work. Building a company requires continuous reflection because activity alone does not create progress. The direction of the effort matters as much as the amount of effort.
The strongest employees help the founder improve that direction. They do not merely wait for tasks; they strengthen the quality of thinking inside the company.
Goodness does not remove the need for discipline
Founders should be good to people, compensate them fairly and treat them with dignity, but goodness cannot mean avoiding necessary decisions. I have learned that you must be fair and kind while remaining ruthless about the health of the business.
By ruthlessness, I do not mean cruelty, dishonesty or treating people as disposable. I mean doing what the business requires when the facts have become clear. It means communicating directly when expectations are not being met, correcting problems before they become cultural habits, reducing the team when the company cannot sustain its size and letting someone go when continued misalignment threatens the organization. Believe me, I’ve learnt to do this because I did not do it when I ought to have. Now, it’s done without hesitation.
Even when you have treated people well, relatively small disputes can still destroy relationships. A delayed payment or disputed remittance of ₦600,000, for example, can become the defining issue between a founder and a former employee, regardless of the salaries, support or opportunities that came before it. People experience their immediate needs personally, and they may not interpret the company’s difficulty from the founder’s perspective.
The lesson is not that founders should stop being generous because people may fail to appreciate it. The lesson is that generosity cannot replace proper systems, written agreements, accurate records and the prompt settlement of obligations. Be good, but do not rely on goodwill where governance is required.
People can leave a company when they decide that the employment no longer works for them, yet they understandably do not want the company to end their employment suddenly. That tension is part of organizational life. Founders cannot eliminate it completely, but they can ensure that decisions are fair, contracts are respected, communication is clear and people are treated with dignity when the relationship ends.
When I let someone go, I do not want to do it as punishment or from a place of contempt. The decision should be based on the health of the organization. Ending an employment relationship does not require me to declare that the person has no ability or will never succeed anywhere else. People can learn, change and flourish in environments that are better suited to them.
I remember someone we had to let go telling me about an idea he wanted to pursue. I still offered my thoughts about how he could approach it and told him that if he needed appropriate support, the company could consider investing in what he was building. The fact that someone was no longer right for a role in our company did not mean that I needed to become hostile to his future.
Firmness and kindness are not opposites.
Put yourself under accountability too
If founders expect employees to accept performance targets, the founder should also be accountable for performance. Put yourself under measurable expectations and allow the board to evaluate whether you are achieving them. When people see that accountability applies to the founder as well as the employees, difficult decisions are more likely to be understood as part of a fair system rather than expressions of personal power.
A founder should not demand sacrifice from everyone else while remaining protected from the consequences of poor leadership. If the business is consistently unable to pay people, if the strategy is repeatedly failing or if talented people keep leaving, the founder must be willing to ask whether the problem is also at the top.
Being the founder does not automatically make every decision correct. It simply means that the consequences of your decisions are likely to affect more people.
Founders must also understand that employees will usually see them as privileged, regardless of how much pressure they are carrying privately. If you have raised capital, live in an expensive part of the country, spend significant time outside Nigeria or travel frequently, people will see visible evidence of privilege. Explaining the founder’s personal sacrifices will not erase what employees can observe.
This is why the way you treat people matters so much. Your employees may not understand every liability, risk or sleepless night attached to your position, but they can see whether you pay them when you promised, remit what you deducted, communicate when circumstances change and treat them with respect.
The founder’s hardship does not cancel the employee’s hardship.
Leadership requires humility and patience
In the bible, II Timothy 2:24 teaches that the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but must be kind to everyone, able to teach and patient. Although the passage speaks specifically about the Lord’s servant, I believe these qualities are deeply relevant to leadership.
A leader must be kind, able to teach, patient and willing to forbear because not everybody can think like the leader. Not everyone will possess the founder’s tolerance for uncertainty, willingness to work beyond ordinary limits or ability to make painful decisions for a future that is not yet visible.
This is something founders must accept with humility.
Many people prefer predictable environments and immediate rewards. They may be able to make a difficult decision when the benefit is obvious, but they may struggle to endure uncertainty for several years while building towards an outcome nobody can guarantee. That does not necessarily make them bad people; it means the founder must understand the differences between people and build the organization accordingly.
Founders are trying to grow businesses, raise or preserve capital, manage debt, expand into new markets, increase the value of the company, improve themselves and still maintain their families and personal lives. It can feel like taking on the world at once. However, the difficulty of the founder’s role is not permission to become arrogant, impatient or unkind.
In fact, the difficulty should produce greater humility because the founder cannot succeed alone. You need exceptional people to support the vision, and you must help them see how working with you also advances their own ambitions. Their lives cannot exist merely as instruments for the achievement of your dream. The relationship should allow them to learn, earn, grow and move closer to the future they desire for themselves.
You must also remain humble because you will make mistakes. You will communicate badly sometimes, hire the wrong people, trust people you should not have trusted and misunderstand situations. Leadership therefore requires patience with people and honesty about yourself.
The title carries obligations
Being a founder is not evidence that you are successful, wise or even good at business. It means you have accepted responsibility for building something whose survival may affect employees, customers, investors, suppliers and families beyond your own.
The title is not the accomplishment. The company you build, the value you create, the capital you multiply, the obligations you honour and the people you develop are closer to the real evidence.
Founders should stop treating visibility as proof of success. Attending international programmes, advertising business classes and presenting yourself online as an authority cannot substitute for building a sound company. There is nothing inherently wrong with teaching or sharing what you know, but training other people in business should not become a costume that hides the fact that your own business is not being run responsibly.
A founder is not primarily a personality. A founder is a worker, a decision-maker, a steward and, eventually, a builder of systems that should continue to function beyond the founder’s personal energy.
The work is demanding, sometimes lonely and frequently misunderstood. You may discover that no more than a handful of people genuinely understand the pressures you carry, and those people may not be your employees or colleagues. That is why founders need trusted friends, advisers, mentors and a capable board. Your employees should not have to carry the emotional burden of validating your sacrifices while depending on you for their livelihoods.
Be fair to your people. Pay and compensate them properly. Hire the best people you can afford. Hold them accountable for meaningful outcomes, but place yourself under accountability as well. Make difficult decisions when the organization’s health requires them, but do not humiliate people or treat the end of a role as a judgment on their entire future.
Above all, remain humble enough to remember that the privilege of leading people comes with the responsibility to treat them well.
Being a founder is not a status symbol. It is real work, difficult work and sometimes gruesome work. If you want the title, you must also be prepared to carry its obligations.
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