The end of an incredible journey at Paystack
I'm leaving Paystack after almost two incredible years. In some ways it feels like I've been here longer than I have because I've learned and grown so much. In some other ways it feels like it was just a few weeks ago I walked into the office for the very first time and knew that I had found home.
After winding down my company in 2017, I joined Paystack as Shola's wingman/stunt double as his Executive Assistant, transitioned into a role as the founding member of the product operations team which grew into a team of three that I led.
Kickstarting and managing our pilot program in Ghana was one of my greatest endeavours. I negotiated terms and commercials with our local partners in Accra and onboarded Ghanaian merchants to our pilot.
As the product operations lead, I also built out our disputes management process and our merchant disputes monitoring program, and helped scale the team outside of the one-woman (me) operation it started out as.
Paystack gave me the opportunity to throw myself into the deep end repeatedly and in different ways and I am beyond grateful for that.
In this period of time, I learned your product is only as good as the team building it - and Paystack has a solid team.
I learned people can flourish and grow into the very best individual contributors, leaders, etc if given the right tools and support.
I'm grateful to Oo Nwoye for introducing me to the CEO of Paystack, Shola Akinlade. I'm grateful to Shola for taking a chance on me, Khadijah for constantly asking "why?", probing and pushing me to be better than I was yesterday. Also thankful for Amandine, Serkan, Biola, Emmanuel, Ezra for being supportive through this process and all my very amazing colleagues turned family who inspire me to get out of bed every morning and get things done.
When asked why I'm leaving, it's difficult for me to give an answer that satisfies whoever is asking. And it's difficult to explain outside of: I have a deep longing to try something new, discover a new challenge, step out of my comfort zone.
"Is there a world where..." is an opening line you will hear very often in Paystack because there's always a world where _____ is possible if you're brave enough to think it and brave enough to go for exactly what you want.
As for what's next for me, I have no idea yet but I want to be a part of a world where there's room for a process improvement/product operations/project management guru to work in a team of smart, kind and curious dreamers.
If you'd like to chat with me about joining your company, please email ibukunakinnawo@gmail.com or connect with me on Linkedin. I'd be more than happy to chat!