GoNomads founder on what stops companies from going world

In 2018, Uke Enun used his final-year tuition on the College of Calabar in southern Nigeria on the Web. It introduced him nothing.

He had arrange an e-commerce retailer promoting print-on-demand merchandise, t-shirts, hoodies, the sort of facet hustle that made sense on the time, and poured cash into advertisements. Folks clicked, added objects to their carts, after which they left. 

The fee strategies weren’t appropriate with overseas playing cards, and the deserted carts piled up. “I spent that cash, misplaced that cash,” Enun says. “After which I deserted it for a minute.”

That failure planted a query he couldn’t shake: why is it so laborious to promote throughout borders from Africa? Two years later, when COVID despatched the world on-line, the query got here again more durable. 

If work might occur digitally, absolutely commerce might too. And if companies within the US had been world from day one, in a position to promote to anybody, wherever, with out fuss, what was stopping African companies from doing the identical?

GoNomads, a business-to-business (B2B) market-entry consultancy that Enun would spend the following 4 years constructing, is his reply to that query. It helps African companies increase into new markets digitally by dealing with all the pieces from licences and banking setups to fee processing and authorized buildings. 

The pitch sounds easy, but the issue it solves isn’t.

Day 1: The 12 months of analysis and the group that discovered one another

Enun spent the entire of 2020 asking questions. What stops African companies from buying and selling internationally? What are the actual blockers – technical, authorized, business? He mapped the issue earlier than he touched the answer.

By the tip of that 12 months, he had the define of one thing. In early 2021, he and a small group started testing concepts. The primary model failed, and so they went again to the drafting board. By September 2021, they relaunched. This time, it moved.

Earlier than GoNomads, Enun had a quick stint at Selar, an e-commerce startup that helps creators promote merchandise, which taught him one thing vital: what an organised group appears like from the within. 

“Coming into an organisation and seeing completely different folks pulling their weight in numerous departments,” he says, “that was primarily free training.”

His co-founders got here from his life. Esther Airemionkhale, who would lead operations, had simply left a job and was in a niche 12 months when Enun approached her. “There’s no draw back, a minimum of. Let’s do that.” She mentioned sure. 

Liberty Oyugboh, who turned Chief Technical Officer (CTO), had been giving Enun unsolicited suggestions on the thought on-line for months, investing time no person had paid him for. 

At a tech convention they each attended, they slipped out of the opening handle and spent the remainder of the day deep in dialog. They agreed to fulfill the next week to construct the minimal viable product (MVP). Seven days later, that they had one thing new.

“I worth time probably the most,” Enun says. “When somebody offers you their time without cost, that’s the sign.”

Day 500: The yeses that become nos, and the month all the pieces modified

The months after the relaunch had been a lesson in how B2B gross sales truly work—slowly, and with a selected sort of false hope.

GoNomads used a mixture of influencer advertising and marketing and Fb advertisements to drive leads. A YouTuber good friend made a video concerning the product. Folks clicked via, stuffed in types, and booked demos. They mentioned all the precise issues. Then they disappeared.

“They might offer you all of the inexperienced lights,” Enun recollects, “after which the deal simply falls via.”

It took two months after the September 2021 relaunch to shut the very first paying buyer. When that deal lastly got here via, GoNomads over-delivered. That buyer despatched referrals. Extra clients adopted, slowly. The group made a important mistake in these early days, assuming the issue was pricing. They examined installment plans and ended up with a pile of unpaid invoices as a substitute.

“What we discovered over time was that the stronger the model, the extra we’d be capable of entice the enterprise.”

A part of what gave GoNomads early credibility with shoppers was the corporate’s capacity to connect its title to established gamers. In 2023, GoNomads introduced a partnership with Payoneer, the Nasdaq-listed monetary know-how platform utilized by over 5 million companies throughout 190 nations. 

The mixing meant GoNomads’ shoppers might create and confirm Payoneer accounts instantly via the GoNomads platform, giving them entry to native receiving accounts in 9 currencies, a universally accepted Mastercard, and the flexibility to obtain funds from over 3,000 world marketplaces. 

For a startup whose total pitch was about making African companies globally aggressive, having Payoneer within the stack was a belief sign.

Payroll, in the meantime, was a knife-edge train. From the second GoNomads made its first rent, a buyer assist individual in early 2022, recruited via a referral, interviewed extra on vibes than construction—no matter income got here in went straight out to maintain the group. Internet zero, month after month. 

“We simply noticed the income as funds to have the ability to make payroll,” Enun says.

There was one month, round June 2022, once they couldn’t hit 100%. They made a partial fee and requested the group for 3 months to kind it out. They sorted it in a single month. GoNomads has not missed a full payroll month in over 4 years of operation, in response to Enun. 

“That’s a badge of honor,” he says. “We do all the pieces in our energy to stay by it.”

The GoNomads group was additionally operating two corporations on the similar time. Alongside GoNomads, the group had launched a fintech device for freelancers to obtain cross-border funds. It was an affordable concept. However they weren’t skilled sufficient to execute on two fronts directly. After six months, they shut it down, redirected these clients into GoNomads, and targeted.

The month they made that decision, August 2023, turned out to be their greatest month ever. Offers got here in from all over the place, triple or quadruple the everyday month, in response to Enun 

“We couldn’t even solely clarify the expansion,” Enun says. However he didn’t spend time attempting to, as a substitute he took it as a sign: extra was doable.

“Each milestone is a brand new flooring,” he says. “Not a ceiling.”

From that time, the technique sharpened. Extra specialists, fewer generalists. YouTube advertisements. Webinars. Group partnerships. The logic was to succeed in folks the place they’re already searching for options, and the leads that are available are already half-convinced. It labored: their churn price decreased.

Day 1000 – What 4 years taught him about Africa’s globalisation hole

GoNomads’ shoppers at the moment are unfold throughout greater than 40 nations. However Enun is clear-eyed about how far the broader ecosystem nonetheless has to go.

“There are a number of shadow bans that companies usually are not even conscious of,” Enun says. Programs that quietly block cross-border transactions. Fee setups that fail with out clarification. Buildings that exclude with out discover. Most companies by no means discover out what’s stopping them—they simply know one thing isn’t working, and so they hand over.

What African founders typically miss, he argues, is that going world doesn’t imply promoting the identical product in a brand new market. It means adapting. A cake baker doesn’t want to determine worldwide delivery. She might package deal her data as a digital course and promote it to somebody in London for $20. 

“You probably have 20 clients shopping for from you at $20, that’s $400 with out you having to bake a single cake,” he says.

The mindset shift is the toughest half. “Folks right here can’t image promoting to somebody who doesn’t seem like them,” he says. “They see the worldwide market as this pedestal that’s so excessive, so troublesome to succeed in. However companies from different components of the world come right here, study our context, and promote to us. We are able to do the identical.”

In Could 2025, GoNomads relaunched the product it’d killed in 2022. The brand new model, GoFlex, is an automatic billing platform for freelancers and service-based companies that handlescontracting, invoicing, and supply handoff. Three years wiser, they launched it correctly. 

For GoNomads, the following chapter is 2 issues: structured training round globalisation to place GoNomads because the authority for African companies going world, and increasing past Africa to serve companies within the Center East and Asia trying to cross into new markets too.

“Cross-border commerce doesn’t solely occur in Africa,” Enun says. “It occurs all over the place.”

The query he got down to reply in 2020 stays unanswered. However GoNomads is a number of years deeper into the work of answering it.

“You don’t must know all the pieces to begin,” he says. “You simply must know sufficient to start. The whole lot else, you study on the way in which.”