Nigeria is almost a victim of it’s size. It’s almost too easy to have big ambition. The population size makes the country one of the most viable markets to monetise consumer products. It's quite common to see startup founders creating various versions of ecommerce platforms than anything else.

I get it, size matters. After all, size is a significant factor that drove most of China’s stratospheric growth. It’s easier to build and monetise an online consumer product that provides a slight improvement to what people already do offline, rather than build a deep-tech product that intends to create new habits.

However, I think a lot of Nigerian startup entrepreneurs are getting blindsided by the population size. The reality is, research data on the number of people with access to internet and consumer behaviour in Nigeria is still patchy. Internet is still expensive. It’s not everyone that has a mobile phone, that uses the internet. It’s not everyone that uses the internet that trusts it enough shop online. It’s not everyone that shops online that does so regularly. So the total addressable market for ecommerce in Nigeria could be smaller than what you see on numerous pitch decks and telco-sponsored research reports.

Also, consumer internet business models are relatively easy to validate but expensive to scale. Customer acquisition cost tends to go up as the market matures and more competition enters the fray. The Mexican standoff between Jumia and Konga highlights how tough this could be. Both businesses are burning loads of cash for land grab and market share that is still mainly confined within Lagos. And there is going to be another big boy in the hood - Mara.

The bottom line is, except you have deep-pocket investors with the willingness to fight a long drawn battle for network effects, building an e-commerce business at scale could be a hard one. So, why do so many Nigerian founders still default to ecommerce solutions? Well, I reckon it has a lot to do with size and solubility. The size of the market is alluring with an obvious demand. And most of the problems with e-commerce have been solved and can be adapted even in relatively immature markets.

So, it’s easier for Nigerian founders to demonstrate traction selling stuff online than trying to build a product that will make car registration in Nigeria more efficient. For the former, rallying your immediate friends and family network around your MVP can generate the first $100 in revenue, but the latter will take months of product development and government buy-in to demonstrate any meaningful traction.

However, technology and innovative business models can be used to solve other problems in Nigeria beyond buying and selling goods online. There are pockets of underserved and untapped markets in other spaces. Significant value and wealth can be created through B2B enterprise solutions that will create efficiencies in specific industries.

Nigerian founders should focus on problems-to-be-solved with technology rather money-to-be-made. Revenue is a reward for solving problems. Here are few that comes to mind.

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