I’ve earned my stripes as a serial entrepreneur, having built three startups from scratch to self-sustaining revenue in different industries (Media, Ad Tech, now SaaS), geographies (Nigeria, Africa, now US) and monetization models.

These lessons are useful for starting a tech startup / business, or even innovating within a large company:

1. Traction is first slow then sudden

The path to sustainable revenue isn’t linear and most people quit during the slow phase. Momentum is a stack of signal after signal.

I’m seeing it for the third time with Insight7 – consistently deepening two things: your core value (product) and growth lever (marketing) is what leads to traction.

2. Nobody buys what they don’t understand

Start from familiar ground, then build your differentiation. With my ad-tech startup, Twinpine, we learned it’s way easier to sell into existing budgets than create new ones.

Your innovation needs to make sense within an existing framework before you can expand beyond it. Easier to displace, replace something today then expand.

3. The market is EVERYTHING

Market research is THE secret weapon, but it goes beyond market size. Market timing, competition, and readiness matter just as much – being too early is the same as being wrong.

Most importantly: focusing on wants (what people will pay for today) not needs (what you think they should have) and building for “needs” means slow sales cycles and expensive customer education.

After three ventures, here’s what I know for sure:

Startup success is about thorough market discovery, building from familiar foundations, and having the patience to let traction compound.