Juggling

Early into my last break from work, I considered quitting paid employment to focus full-time on the studio. Maybe that would incentivize me to make it profitable quickly.

I know I can earn more if I put everything into the studio, but for it to really work, I’d need to hire more experienced people and grow the organization quickly. I didn’t feel ready for this.

I set a salary figure in mind and started applying to roles. I got a few interviews, but eventually turned to my network. A few days after a lengthy LinkedIn post, I met Zach Walsh.

At HIFI, we’re building an infrastructure layer on top of a mix of fiat and stablecoin payment rails. I started with the Dashboard and slowly extended myself into Brand, API, Website, and operations. Six months later, I now lead the Engineering team.

The job has been incredibly rewarding, and this was the right decision. It’s encouraged me to adapt and evolve, expanded my professional network, and pushed me to become more visible. I’ve learned a great deal about what matters in a company and how to make the best of diversity in a group. I also think we have everything we need to be very successful.

At Paystack, my proudest achievement was the quality of the organization. There was a constant pull between the work and the people/systems required to do it, and my work often skewed to the latter.

At HIFI, I want it to be the former: excellent APIs, innovative products, continuous improvement, and phenomenal customer experience.

With all of this going on, Princess and I have been growing the studio too! As of today, about 11+ people work with us in one capacity or another building brands (Main Squeeze), technology (Fable), and art (wuruwuru).

Success at HIFI means building a great team, excellent product delivery, impressive profits and smooth customer experience at scale. It also matters to me that we achieve it without bloating the org.

Success at Moonlight means building a great team and sustaining our experiments. Our next set of hires need to be multipliers in the way I’ve been for HIFI. That will be transformative.

Until then, my approach is simple: keep doing what’s working until it doesn’t. The studio has always been a long game.