Meanwhile, U-Law said it is set to assist startups to tackle this challenge.

Held on Friday, November 28, 2025, the themed forum, “From Local Genius to Global Demand: Powering Startups with Innovation, Funding, and Market Access”, brought founders, investors and operators into one room for an insightful conversation on scaling responsibly. 

More than 60% of Nigerian startups never make it past 10 years, with many failing within just two. Beyond the usual challenges such as funding gaps, capital limitations, and weak market insight, U-Law pointed out one problem almost every founder underestimates: legal compliance.

Startups think first about raising capital, but ignore the “simple agreement between myself and my co-founder” until it becomes a threat. Founders were warned about building products without defining who owns the IP, operating in regulated sectors without licences, or onboarding employees without contracts. 

Some startups have stalled because a CTO resigned, claimed ownership of the product, and refused to sign over rights. One of U-Law’s goals is to prevent situations like this, ensuring that startups scale properly and avoid the mistakes others have made in the past.

That urgency framed the rest of the afternoon.

PANELLISTS BREAK DOWN WHAT REALLY DRIVES SCALE

The discussion featured Subuola Oyeleye (Founder/CEO, Beauty Hut Africa), Victoria Fabunmi (National Coordinator, ONDI), Chidimma Uzoma (Founder, Zayith Food Company), and Folasade Dapo (Head, Legal & Investor Relations, CCA). 

Each shared practical insights about growth, capital, governance and the realities of operating in Nigeria.

Building structure before raising money

Oyeleye, whose company recently turned two, said she planned from day one to build a venture-backed business. That meant installing clarity, not confusion:

“Investors fund clarity and not chaos.”

She recalled being asked for supplier contracts and internal processes by investors, documents many competitors don’t even have. She stressed that founders must think like investors: contracts, compliance, risk management, spend control, clear financials, and documented IP must exist early.

VC is not the only route, founders need blended capital

Dapo dismantled the idea that every founder must chase venture capital.

She explained the different funding paths available, including angels, family offices, grants, foundations, government-backed credit lines, and debt, and urged founders to know their “investor universe”.

“It’s not the only way to fund.”

She emphasised that not all investors fit every business, and founders must learn which ones belong in their “universe”.

Manufacturing founders can raise money too

Uzoma addressed a common misconception: that manufacturing is unattractive to investors. She stressed that the investors exist, founders just don’t look for them.

She urged traditional businesses to adopt a blended funding approach combining grants, equity, and debt. Her company runs all three concurrently.

On Nigeria’s infrastructure failures, she explained that manufacturing cannot rely on erratic power. Her company runs “the hard way”, funding generators to keep cold-chain operations running 24/7. She noted recent policy discussions on industrialisation and said power remains the single biggest limitation.

On logistics, she said partnerships saved them. “We would not invest in an area that somebody is already running as a business and is giving us a great price point.”

Investors look for more than decks

Fabunmi outlined what investors actually review beyond pitch slides and projections. Founders with discipline, accountability, openness and the mindset for scale. She underlined three areas: intentionality, resilience, and mindset.

Fabunmi also said investors increasingly want founders who can build beyond their local markets, founders who understand scale in the context of AfCFTA and global competition.

STRONG FACTS ABOUT GOVERNANCE

The Q&A session pushed further into governance, where many Nigerian startups fail after raising capital.

Dapo said one of the biggest issues investors encounter is poor corporate governance:

“You can have the best business model, but if you back the wrong founders, it doesn’t matter.”

The panellists at the U-Law Black Friday forum noted the basics that must be in place even before investment:

• Company registration
• Correct licences
• Tax registration
• Compliance obligations
• Contracts for employees and suppliers
• Accounting and finance systems
• Bank account separation
• A simple functional board
• Delegation of authority
• Clear mission, vision, and performance tracking

Corporate governance isn’t a waste of time, she stressed; it is what keeps founders accountable and makes businesses investable.

BUILDING TEAMS, LETTING GO AND RETAINING TALENT

Oyeleye tackled the difficulty founders face when releasing control. “Scaling does mean letting go, but letting go means creating structure.”

She said Nigeria’s labour market usually requires hand-holding because skills vary widely, so founders must create clear SOPs and train teams.

On employee turnover, she said culture helped Beauty Hut retain staff. Exit interviews revealed basic issues like long commutes, which brought about new hiring strategies.

Uzoma added that younger employees move faster, but businesses should prepare for that with succession plans. Her approach:

“Every manager has an exec, every exec has an assistant… so that it’s easier for people to live and leave without disrupting the system.”

THE NIGERIAN ADVANTAGE — RESILIENCE

Fabunmi wrapped up with a perspective foreign investors sometimes overlook: Nigerian founders are already hardened by the environment.

“Because we’ve suffered a lot here, it’s easier for you to take more to the market.”

She argued that the challenges in Nigeria sharpen entrepreneurs, making them bolder in other markets.

U-LAW CLOSES WITH TAX REFORM GUIDANCE

The session returned to U-Law, this time focusing on the 2025 tax reform regime. The team explained upcoming changes:

• Nigeria Revenue Service replaces FIRS
• New small-business thresholds
• Changes to company income tax bands
• New 4% development levy replacing several older levies
• Personal income tax rising to 15%
• Capital gains tax tied to income bands
• VAT exemptions for small companies
• Mandatory registration and monthly filings for virtual asset service providers
• New incentives for angel investors and VCs under the Startup Act

U-Law advised SMEs to register early, file required returns, and use available exemptions as the firm introduced its compliance calculator, designed to help startups understand their tax obligations.

THE BIG PICTURE

The U-Law Black Friday forum highlighted that Nigerian founders must build properly if they want to scale, and U-Law intends to be the partner guiding them through compliance, governance, agreements, tax, and structure.

In a country where resilience is high but failure rates are higher, U-Law says start right, structure early, scale without trouble.

Across the continent, founders are building products at record pace, but too many fail to scale. While African startups raised $2.6 billion in venture capital in 2024, a decline from 2023, poor user experience and weak product design have been among the top reasons why early-stage ventures collapse. 

It’s no coincidence that between 2022 and 2024, design thinking adoption among African startups rose by over 30%. Though uneven across sectors, this shows that technology without human-centred design rarely survives, leaving scale and retention elusive.

This is where Lucky Ekezie steps in. A product designer, mentor, and AI advocate, Lucky has made it his mission to build systems that don’t just look good but actually work for people, driving adoption, retention and measurable growth.

He transforms scarcity into opportunity, creating solutions that make startups investor-ready, user-ready, and scalable.

“Design isn’t just about interfaces,” he says. “It’s about people, resilience, and building systems that help others thrive.”

From his early days in Umuahia, where he built toys from scraps of wood and tin, to designing Bosscab, a ride-hailing platform for African cities, and Syncventory, an inventory management tool for SMEs, Lucky has turned curiosity into impact. 

Beyond products, he mentors emerging designers, develops AI-driven productivity solutions, and creates frameworks that help startups survive and scale where others fail.

Reimagining Tools for African Realities

In 2020, when the pandemic forced businesses across Africa to rethink operations, Lucky joined Nugi Technologies. There, he helped build Bosscab and Syncventory, platforms designed with Africa in mind, not Silicon Valley copies; they were tailored to local infrastructure, culture and user behaviour.

At Nugi, he mentored younger designers, embedding curiosity and user-first thinking into the culture. That kind of mindset shift is exactly what Africa’s growing ecosystem needs. 

In Q1 2025 alone, 83% of AI startup funding in Africa was concentrated in Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, and Egypt, but funding without solid design foundations risks being wasted. Lucky’s work shows how product design can bridge that gap.

Lessons From Failure

Lucky’s resilience is built on hard lessons. His first startup, Gianx, shut down due to funding challenges, but it became his training ground in business structure and timing. 

Those lessons later informed his contributions to My Skool Tool, a school management platform founded by ThankGod Maduka Kalu. Today, it serves over 10,000 students, a direct result of design choices that prioritised usability and scalability.

Where many see failure as an end, Lucky treats it as raw material, the same way he once treated tin containers and wood scraps as a child.

A Mentor Building People, Not Just Products

By 2023, Lucky had expanded his mission beyond building products to building people. At LM Tech Hub, he mentored aspiring African designers trying to break into tech. Later, at CareerFoundry, he began teaching design thinking and product development to learners worldwide.

The results are measurable. Over 80% of CareerFoundry graduates secure jobs within six months, with mentorship ranked as one of the strongest success factors. For Lucky, it’s more than statistics. Mentorship is about instilling confidence. 

For a continent where over 5,000 young professionals transitioned into tech careers through incubators since 2020, his work sits inside a bigger story, where Africa’s design uprising is being shaped by teachers, not just by tools.

At the Edge of Africa’s AI Boom

Africa’s AI market is projected to hit $4.51 billion in 2025, growing at more than 26% annually. By 2030, AI could contribute up to $2.9 trillion to Africa’s GDP. These are huge figures, but they mean little if Africans are not building solutions for themselves. Lucky is already positioning to ensure they do.

In 2025, he delivered a talk at Tech Flock titled “From Sci-Fi to Reality: The Evolution of Artificial Intelligence”. In it, he charted AI’s history, human impact, and opportunities for Africa. Today, he is developing an AI-driven productivity platform aimed at helping both individuals and enterprises work smarter.

While global companies like Microsoft and G42 are pouring $1 billion into AI infrastructure in East Africa, Lucky represents the individual innovators ensuring that Africa doesn’t just consume these technologies but also creates homegrown solutions.

Why Lucky’s Story Matters

Nigeria’s tech ecosystem is one of the largest in Africa, accounting for over 25% of the continent’s venture capital inflow. Lagos is a top innovation hub, but behind the statistics are challenges, including unreliable infrastructure, high failure rates, and limited mentorship pipelines. People like Lucky Ekezie are shifting that narrative.

From sketching human figures on a blackboard as a child in Umuahia to building products, mentoring global learners, and pushing Africa’s AI story forward, Lucky Ekezie embodies the resilience and creativity that African innovation demands. His career is proof that design is not secondary to technology, it is its beating heart.

And perhaps that is the real problem he is solving: proving that in Africa, technology will not thrive without design rooted in people, culture, and context.