Founder of SnappyExchange and SnappyPay, Olaide Alim, has urged African startup founders to complement business vision with technical knowledge as the continent’s digital finance, e-commerce and technology sectors continue to expand.

Alim said the fast-changing technology industry requires founders to understand the technical foundations of the products they build, enabling them to make informed decisions, communicate effectively with engineering teams and scale their businesses sustainably.

According to him, a number of startup founders are going beyond business strategy to acquire technical skills themselves, seeking deeper product understanding and stronger leadership in an era where execution often determines survival.

Alim said the journey has culminated in the completion of a one-year full-stack software engineering programme at New Horizons.

Alim, who founded SnappyExchange in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, said his decision to enrol in the programme was driven by the need to better understand the technologies powering the products he has spent the last five years building.

He said: “This journey was not just about receiving certificates. As a founder building technology products, I wanted to understand the structure, logic, and process behind software development. It has helped me communicate better with developers, ask better product questions, and lead technical conversations with more clarity.

“Building a technology company requires more than vision. It requires patience, structure, learning, and a strong understanding of how products work behind the scenes. This programme has been a valuable part of my growth as a founder.”

The full-stack programme covered both front-end and back-end software development, exposing him to areas including user interface design, application architecture, data flow management, authentication systems, responsiveness, and user experience engineering.

Founded initially as a cryptocurrency and gift card trading platform, SnappyExchange has evolved from a small startup operation into a digital financial services brand serving more than 100,000 users across multiple African markets, according to company figures. Over the last five years, the company says it has processed more than one million transactions while expanding beyond its original exchange services.

In November 2025, the company officially unveiled SnappyPay, a digital payment and lifestyle platform created to address one of Nigeria’s most persistent fintech challenges: failed and delayed digital transactions.