A Series of Fortunate Events

In 2011, a few of us were working out of Busy Internet, convinced we were building Ghana’s next big e-commerce platform. We called it Launchpad. The name was already taken, so we became Nsano — a name we worried was too local for our global ambitions.

What we didn’t know was that the detours ahead would matter far more than the plans we had on paper.

One such detour came through a friend from my eTranzact days. He had an idea: a USSD sales-tracking tool that would let salespeople report their numbers by simply dialing a code on their phone. He had the technical chops; we brought the business and product skills.

We built it together and delivered it to Vodafone (now Telecel). For my engineering team — Percy, Christian, and Jesse — this was a masterclass in building USSD applications, the text-based mobile technology that would later become the backbone of African financial services. At the time, we didn’t realize it, but this was our first step into fintech.

After the Vodafone project, I invited my friend to join Nsano so we could deploy the sales tracker to other institutions. He turned the offer down. In hindsight, it didn’t matter — because the product never really sold anywhere else. The only enduring benefit was the knowledge we had gained: a deep, practical understanding of USSD. That, not the sales tracker itself, became our most valuable asset.

Not long after, Vodafone called again. They wanted us to build something bigger: M-Susu, a temporary mobile money platform. Suddenly, we were in high-level meetings, building a real product with real potential impact. I remember thinking, “Is this really me?”

M-Susu was never launched. A procurement lapse delayed our payment for years. But once again, the real payoff wasn’t the cheque — it was the expertise. We now understood mobile money infrastructure inside out.

That realization sparked a new question: Why not slice the product into smaller components and sell them individually? Out of that thinking came Money Merchant, our first mobile banking product. Our first customer paid us 4,000 cedis.

That was the true birth of Nsano as a fintech. Not by design, but by a series of fortunate events:

• A project that didn’t scale but taught us everything.

• A friend who declined to join, but whose idea sparked our first pivot.

• Executives who remembered my track record.

• A detour into USSD that became the foundation for a company now serving millions across Africa.

Looking back, the biggest lesson is this: real innovation rarely comes from boardrooms or five-year strategies. It comes when you recognize that the skills you built solving one problem can unlock entirely new opportunities.

So I’ll leave you with a question: What chance encounter completely changed the trajectory of your business or life?

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