This profile has not been claimed and data may not be accurate.
84th percentile
55th percentile
YC alum who co-founded and sold Paystack to Stripe, now angel investing
Credibility
Operator · 90th percentile
- Current founder and CEO of Paystack.
- Y Combinator Winter 2016 alum via Paystack.
- Past founder of Klein Devort, a software development and consulting company.
- Paystack was co-founded with at least one other co-founder.
Relationship Matrix
Most Like You
Most Complimentary
Founder score
- 99%Probability of being accurate (99%)Paystack was acquired by Stripe for approximately $200M.
- 99%Probability of being accurate (99%)Current founder and CEO of Paystack.
- 99%Probability of being accurate (99%)Y Combinator Winter 2016 alum via Paystack.
- 99%Probability of being accurate (99%)Wikipedia page exists for Shola Akinlade, confirming public notability.
- 95%Probability of being accurate (95%)paystack.com ranks #28,008 on the Majestic Million (global domain prominence).
- 90%Probability of being accurate (90%)Paystack was co-founded with at least one other co-founder.
- 90%Probability of being accurate (90%)GitHub account @shollsman identified as belonging to Shola Akinlade.
- 90%Probability of being accurate (90%)GitHub account @shollsman has been active for approximately 12 years (created 2013).
- 85%Probability of being accurate (85%)Past founder of Klein Devort, a software development and consulting company.
Investor score
- 75%Probability of being accurate (75%)Made at least one known investment in PayMongo.
- 65%Probability of being accurate (65%)Publicly identified as an angel investor with a known portfolio investment.
What you likely need
You're one of the most credible African fintech operators alive, but your investor identity is still nascent and your next chapter is unwritten — Festival events should accelerate both. The highest-leverage gatherings put you in rooms with YC Africa-adjacent founders who need your pattern recognition, global VCs actively hunting Africa exposure, and operators who've navigated the 'post-landmark-exit' identity shift. You'll get the most out of small, high-trust dinners and roundtables where the Paystack story opens doors rather than defines the ceiling.
Would you attend these IRL Festival events?
We will tune and customize your Founder Festival experience to make sure you get invited to the events that would be most valuable to you.
- introsA YC W16 reunion dinner for Africa-focused founders to swap deal flow and surface co-investment opportunities in African fintech
- fundraisingA roundtable with Microtraction, Ventures Platform, and global micro-fund GPs who've formalized Africa-focused syndicates, to help Shola structure and launch his own public investment vehicle
- positioningA dinner for founders who've been acquired by Stripe, Plaid, or Adyen and are now navigating what comes next — new venture, fund, or operator-investor hybrid
- fundraisingA happy hour with LPs and emerging-market-focused GPs from a16z Growth, Partech Africa, and IFC Ventures who are actively seeking an Africa expert anchor for their deal sourcing networks
- positioningA technical operator dinner with infrastructure founders from Flutterwave, Mono, Stitch, and Moov to co-develop a public content series on building payments rails in frontier markets
- introsA YC Africa-adjacent angel office hours session pairing Shola with W20–W24 African fintech founders actively raising pre-seed rounds who need a credible lead or signal investor
- positioningA roundtable with post-exit African tech founders — including Interswitch and Andela alumni — who've transitioned into active investing, to benchmark portfolio construction and public investor positioning
- positioningA dinner with sports-tech investors and African talent development advocates to shape a public narrative around the Aarhus Fremad acquisition that ties football, African youth development, and tech entrepreneurship into a single brand story