Oyindolapo Olusesi is a technology lawyer and the founder of Mustarred Crest – a business providing legal solutions to complex technology problems.
Mustarred, an initiative of Olusesi, is a full-service consulting firm for technology startups in Africa that provides startups with first-rate strategies for building and scaling successful businesses.
Owing to his desire to address some of the numerous challenges faced by early-stage businesses, Olusesi was inspired to establish Mustarred Crest.
“I had a lot of non-programmers, like law graduates, finance, and business administration students, looking to pivot into relatively new areas like fintech and find it a bit difficult to decide on what to do, and how to go about it, Mustarred crest decided to fill these gaps,” he explains.
Also, he notes that his conversation with a friend who is a brand expert unknowingly tinkering with the same idea at the time inspired the business.
Responding to the question of how much capital was used to establish the business, the young entrepreneur says that he started the business with N20,000 – an amount spent on registration.
“We also tried to recruit people based on available clients, this helped us ensure that we will not dip too much into personal funds and assure staff of their salaries as and when due,” Olusesi notes.
He notes that his business’s ability to support early startups kick-start their businesses and its flexible pricing system as well as a proper understanding of the market has sustained his business.
“Also, we are in business to make money but we are also very interested in our clients succeeding first. What we do is that we price each client on a case-by-case basis so we can accommodate the peculiarity of each,” he explains.
Answering questions on why most startups fail in the next five years despite the coverage, he attributes the high failure rates among start-ups to the unfriendly regulatory landscape in the country, explaining that it most times stifles innovation with many early businesses failing to properly for exigencies.
He adds that many start-ups failed to bootstrap and understand the market in which their businesses operate.
“There are lots of raises in the market that are premature, many of those startups failed to bootstrap and understand the market, some of them couldn’t even ascertain their product-market fit, and do not have a defined market share,” he says.
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He also notes that the dated education system, primitive judicial system, and lack of progressive politicking are also major challenges responsible for the high failure rate in the landscape.
On major challenges limiting entrepreneurship, he notes that the huge infrastructural deficit in the country remains a big problem for the ecosystem.
On the business expansion plan, he says Mustarred Crest intends to focus more on its training arm of the business in the short run.
Having realised that a lot of companies require training and this is something our company is considering assisting them with, he explains.
“We will soon start rolling out training for corporates interested in upskilling their staff,” he adds.
In the long-term, he says the business plans to create a network with venture capital to help its clients secure early-stage funding.
