2020 was a long and challenging year for everyone. The pandemic had an immense impact in both our personal and professional lives but it was absolutely incredible to see the growth and effort that many of the companies in our ecosystem have made during these past months even during the lockdown. Big-ups!
The love and support we got from the community when we launched Mono was truly amazing, so I thought it would be good to share and carry the community along with our plans for year 2021.
Started as an experiment
We officially started Mono in August, launched in September 2020 and during the past 6 months we’ve moved from signing our first customer, to working with dozens of innovative companies in Nigeria.
Our platform is already trusted by some of the leading companies in various verticals. Some of them are Carbon, who’s helping millions of Nigerians improve the financial wellbeing; Renmoney, a company offering loans through a digital platform; Credpal, the first company to offer physical credit cards and Muster, a company making it easier for millennials to rent apartment on a monthly basis.
This means tens of thousands of end-users are already using Mono to share their financial data for better customer experience and personalisation.
2021 Plans
#1 Experiments
Mono, at its core, started as an experiment and as we grow into a company, we want that culture to remain part of us. This why we are making it a company ritual to launch one experimental product, every year, that is or somewhat related to our mission as a company.
This year alone, we’re launching our Direct Debit Rails, building data intelligence features i.e something we call Networks that can infer transactions, and so many other experimental things.
The possibilities of mixing data, identity, and payments are near endless and exciting.
#2 Write and share more
I think, as a community, we don't share our learnings and processes more. The reason why Silicon valley is Silicon Valley is companies share their playbook, learnings and processes for the public to learn from.
With that in mind, our engineering and design team will be sharing three articles every quarter with the community.
#3 Diversity
In this regard, we are looking to hire more women, and have more women in leadership roles at Mono. We’re also looking to hire across Africa; folks from Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa, to broaden our insights from having diverse people in the room.
#4 Expansion
As with everything regarding fin-tech, expanding quickly is highly important to truly accomplishing your mission. This is why we will be expanding to two African countries this year. In the last year, we’ve put in some work for operations in these two countries, and we will be doubling down to complete this work and go live before end of Q1 of this year. Hi Red Team
#5 Giveback
This year, we'll be sponsoring people to take courses with the folks at Utiva, Stutern and many tech ed incubators as a way to bring more people into tech scene. We will also be setting up our internship programme for Engineering and Design roles.
Closing
These five items are quite new to us, and that’s why 2021 is the year of experiments for us here at Mono. We want to try new things, see what works and what doesn’t, learn from what didn’t work, see the ways we can improve and think about experiments.
Last year, the team welcomed employee 007, Chisom, and she currently leads our Operations efforts. By end of Q1, our headcount should have increased to 15 amazing monoliths. Our intention is to keep the team small but mighty, hire the best people on the continent, and pay them really well.
So, if you think you belong at Mono, a place full of ambitious misfits with an unusual gift, please reach out!
Inspired by the possibilities ahead of us, we look forward to a great year.
Let’s go! ✊🏿
