Douglas Kendyson calls himself “God’s favorite,” and his journey to date reinforces his perception. After graduating from Covenant College at 19, he transitioned from a curious web site developer to one of many earliest workers at Paystack—an organization he idolised—and later, Flutterwave. After two soft jobs in Dubai, he’s now constructing Selar, an e-commerce platform that, in 2024, paid out ₦9.8 billion to 241,000 creators promoting digital merchandise like ebooks and programs, based on the corporate.

Kendyson, now CEO of Selar, arrives at Basilico, an Italian restaurant in Victoria Island, a couple of minutes late. We settle in—he orders BBQ lamb chops with fried egg and yam, whereas I’m going for the barracuda, an overpriced fish served with mashed potatoes.

Over our three-hour dialog, Kendyson is strikingly candid. He tells me a few former Paystack boss who urged him to get a psychological well being evaluation—recommendation that led, years later, to a borderline persona dysfunction analysis. He admits he almost stayed again in Dubai, afraid returning to Nigeria to construct Selar, after japa, would appear like a failure. He tells me of his deep affection for his mom, who raised him as a single mum or dad, and a cherished relationship with an bold journalist with “an attractive beard.”

However when it got here to the mechanics behind Selar’s speedy progress over the previous 4 years, his response is obscure at first.

“There’s no precise factor. Simply quite a lot of intentional work,” he says after a pause.

That work started in his early college days as a contract net developer in 2013. Years of tinkering together with his personal gadgets had made him adept at repairing computer systems, nevertheless it was in college that he discovered software program improvement—and began charging for his abilities. One in every of his early purchasers was the famend musician Cobhams Asuquo, although Kendyson now believes he was underpaid—about ₦70,000—for 2 web sites. He went on to make a enterprise of it. His fascination with e-commerce took root throughout this era as he constructed a number of on-line shops, together with a food-ordering platform that gained a grant at a campus pitch competitors.

On the time, enabling on-line transactions on e-commerce platforms meant grappling with the costly Interswitch API, a ₦150,000 hurdle that usually deterred purchasers. It’s simple to grasp his admiration for Paystack and its founders, Shola Akinlade and Ezra Olubi, who launched a less expensive, extra accessible different. He turned a superfan, actively partaking with the corporate on Twitter and their public Slack channel, and typically sharing suggestions straight with CEO Shola Akinlade.

All that enthusiasm was rewarded when Kendyson landed a job at Paystack, simply two months after commencement. In keeping with him, Akinlade supplied him the place on the spot at their Shonibare, Ikeja workplace.

“It was a product I used to be very enthusiastic about, and I used to be simply glad to have a job,” Kendyson recollects, a smile spreading throughout his face.

Kendyson recollects working lengthy intense hours at Paystack with two different engineers, growing third-party integrations with banks and plugins for varied CMS like WordPress, Joomla, Magento, and e-commerce platforms like Opencart, Drupal, Prestashop, and Abantecart. 

All of that work, in opposition to the backdrop of his expertise growing e-commerce websites, seeded an concept in his thoughts: to create a market for digital merchandise. 

Right now, probably the most respected e-commerce platforms, like Jumia and Konga, have been all promoting bodily items they’d sourced themselves or from third-party sellers. 

Whereas these firms grew shortly, Kendyson seen that Nigeria’s data financial system was rising, with course creators like Tricia Biz turning into web celebrities for his or her experience as enterprise coaches. The mannequin was additionally less complicated to function as there have been no bodily items that required cash-bleeding logistics, warehousing or supply.

“Folks have been all the time coaching folks to do issues, and other people have been all the time paying for assets. Despite the fact that it wasn’t as mainstream, I knew there may very well be one thing right here. I simply didn’t understand how large the market was, however I knew that it existed,” he says. 

Three months into his job at Paystack, he and 5 pals started engaged on Selar. However with little progress and demanding day jobs, one after the other, they dropped off—till he was the one one left. Eight months later, he give up Paystack, which has since grown a popularity for prime worker retention. Kendyson admits that it was extra about him; he simply strongly felt like his time there was up and refused to remain any longer regardless of persuasions from the corporate. 

A couple of months later, he joined Flutterwave—Paystack’s competitor—to work on Barter, a digital card service that has since been discontinued. However that stint was additionally temporary—he left in lower than a 12 months.

He struck gold once more with an engineering job at a Dubai fintech, Sarwa, which relocated him to Dubai. The job paid him about $4,000 each month—Kendyson admits he had unimaginable luck with jobs for a then-21-year-old. Nevertheless, he was dismissed over a 12 months later following a wage negotiation gone south.  

He was supplied a ten% elevate and a free residence in Abu Dhabi, however after studying “By no means Cut up the Distinction”, a e book on negotiation, he pushed for way more. Having skilled substantial pay will increase earlier than—his wage had jumped from ₦150,000 to ₦250,000 after a 12 months at Paystack in 2016—he anticipated an even bigger leap. Nevertheless, throughout negotiations, he unintentionally got here throughout as inflexible, even insulted by the supply, and was in the end let go.  

Kendyson referred to as his encounter with the e book “unlucky,” but he stays an avid reader of self-help books, favouring them over fiction as a result of he struggles to visualise what he reads. Recently, he has been drawn to psychology books, which he says assist him higher perceive folks and psychological well being.

Till Kendyson was fired, he had been engaged on Selar at a comparatively gradual tempo. That modified when he landed one other engineering job in Dubai at an open banking startup that paid him about $5,000 month-to-month. By then, a persistent feeling had taken root—that he may make Selar a hit. He ramped up his efforts, transport new options, cold-emailing in style creators, and pitching his platform as a manner for them to promote their on-line programs without cost.

By the tip of 2020, greater than 3,000 creators had bought programs, books, and different digital merchandise value about $270,000 on Selar.

He give up his job and returned to Nigeria to focus squarely on Selar with over $20,000 in financial savings.

“If I had stayed again in Dubai to run the corporate, that cash would have lasted me 4 months, however in Nigeria, it was value about one 12 months of runway,” he says.

Kendyson describes the return as probably the most anxiety-inducing of his life. Nonetheless, he believed Selar may turn out to be the most important creator platform within the nation. 

In early 2021, when he returned, was the ZIRP period. Many overseas buyers have been scouting for and funding bold concepts. Selar, which was gunning to be one thing like Teachable—a web-based course platform that was valued at $134 million within the earlier 12 months—simply match the invoice.

However Kendyson couldn’t get himself to complete a pitch deck.

“After I obtained to the “How a lot would you like?” part, I had no concept what quantity to place,” he recounts. “I used to be simply pissed off by the entire course of.” 

As a substitute, he set a private problem: see how a lot traction the corporate may acquire in three months.

“ The numbers needed to be stable—it needed to be a straightforward promote,” he says.

By April, the corporate had grown its creator base by 133% and bought ₦220 million ($550,000) value of digital merchandise. Annual gross sales rose from ₦1 billion in 2021 to ₦2 billion in 2022, then doubled to ₦4 billion in 2023.

Three years later, Selar stays bootstrapped however has grown to 1.5 million customers throughout 194 nations.

I ask him once more how the corporate has achieved such spectacular progress with out VC funding.  He says the identical factor as earlier than: “We threw the whole lot at it and hoped it clicked.” 

Within the early days, Selar grew nearly totally on the energy of its product and word-of-mouth.

“We didn’t begin doing adverts until like 2022,” Kendyson provides. “Earlier than that, it was all product advertising. We constructed one thing folks wished, they usually instructed others about it.”

Past natural progress, Kendyson attributes its success to consideration to clients’ wants and relentless execution—one thing he discovered from Paystack. Kendyson describes himself as a sponge, absorbing classes from each firm he’s labored at.

“I obtained the a part of Paystack that’s about having a stable product and making it nice. I additionally obtained the half about [experimenting] however moderately.”

He additionally discovered to not obsess over competitors.

“We deal with ourselves. I don’t undergo rivals’ dashboards. I don’t verify what they’re launching. I care about my clients, not what the competitors is doing,” he says.

That philosophy has paid off. With a lean staff of 30 workers, Selar is worthwhile.  However extra importantly, to Kendyson, the ensuing success is shared. In 2024, each worker obtained a share of the income from a brand new function rollout, amounting to about ₦800,000 every, on high of their common salaries and a Thirteenth-month paycheck. It was a milestone for the corporate, however for Kendyson, it was solely the start. He hopes he can repeat it this 12 months and the following, and ultimately make it part of the corporate’s tradition.

His enthusiasm about profit-sharing displays a deeper perception: Selar’s energy isn’t simply in its enterprise mannequin however within the staff he has constructed—and that didn’t come simply. Hiring, Kendyson admits, has been certainly one of his largest challenges as a founder. He has additionally struggled with letting folks go.

“It was the worst stress of my life,” he recollects about his early experiences constructing a staff. One in every of his hardest classes was understanding the tradeoff between money and time. “I discovered that if you’re not paying for one thing in cash, you’re paying for it in your time. And for various issues, you must determine—is it your cash or your time you’re prepared to present?”

Fairly often the work of some early hires didn’t meet his requirements, and he discovered himself rewriting copy, redoing designs, and micromanaging. Ultimately, he discovered to make robust calls.

“Good firing by no means comes as a shock,” he says emphasising that he typically gave workers a number of probabilities to enhance. 

Kendyson is worked up concerning the staff he’s constructed.

“It jogs my memory of that Beyoncé interview after Future’s Little one restructured,” he says. “She mentioned, ‘Everybody right here can sing lead.’ That’s how I really feel. Everyone seems to be passionate concerning the work and able to stepping up.”

This confidence might be examined as Selar goals to double income to ₦20 billion this 12 months. Not like previously, the corporate might not disclose its income figures, he says. However for him, the actual query isn’t whether or not Selar will continue to grow—it’s simply how far they will take it.