Kofoworola Ibrahim did not arrive at TeeybAds with an extensive portfolio. Neither did Vivian Bejide. Nor Roseline Abioro.

What they arrived with was potential — and a willingness to work. In most Nigerian companies, that would not have been enough. At TeeybAds, it was exactly enough.

Today, all three are part of a growing team of more than 25 young Nigerians working across media buying, video production, customer relationship management, operations, and creative functions inside one of Nigeria’s emerging performance marketing and e-commerce management firms. They are not just employees. They are, in many ways, the proof of a philosophy.

For Kofoworola Ibrahim, the most significant thing about working at TeeybAds was not the role itself. It was the environment.

“Working with TeeybAds has helped me grow beyond my expectations,” she said. “What I value most is that it feels safe — safe enough to learn, safe enough to make mistakes, safe enough to actually grow.”

Vivian Bejide describes something similar, though she frames it differently. For her, the turning point was realising that the company genuinely believed in what she could become.

“The trust placed in me shaped my confidence,” she said. “It made me take my own development more seriously. I have grown professionally and personally here — and I am constantly being challenged to improve.”

Roseline Abioro puts it most directly.

“Saying I am privileged to work with TeeybAds is an understatement,” she said. “I have never experienced a company so genuinely committed to the growth of its people. It has been a journey of growth, purpose, and excellence — and this recognition only inspires me to keep giving my best.”

Three different people. Three different roles. One consistent thread running through every account: they were trusted before they had proved they deserved to be. And that trust changed what they became.
The person responsible for building this environment is Toheeb, founder of TeeybAds. And to understand why the company operates the way it does, it helps to understand where he started.

In 2019, Toheeb was a biochemistry student doing something most people around him did not understand — running Facebook advertisements for Nigerian business owners. He had theoretical knowledge, genuine curiosity, and almost no track record. By conventional standards, he was an unlikely choice for any client looking for measurable results.

The clients came anyway.

They handed him their advertising budgets. Real money. Their businesses on the line. They trusted a young man with little experience because something about how he showed up made them believe he could figure it out.

“Clients trusted me with their money when I was just a student,” he said. “That trust was everything. It is why I am here.”

That experience — of being believed in before the proof existed — became the founding instinct of how he would one day build his own team.

There is a familiar argument about the Nigerian workforce. Not enough skilled graduates. Not enough experienced candidates. Not enough people who are ready. Toheeb does not accept the premise.

“Africa does not have a talent problem,” he said. “It has a trust deficit.”

His position is straightforward. Many young Nigerians with genuine capability never get the environment to prove it. Not because the talent is absent. Because the opportunity — the first real chance, extended before the track record exists — is withheld. And without that first chance, the lack of experience becomes a cycle that is almost impossible to break from the outside.

That idea became more structured in 2023, when Toheeb attended a business conference organised by Akin Alabi, one of Nigeria’s most prominent entrepreneurial voices. One of the key messages he took away was simple: hire. Build a team. Stop operating alone. He hired his first employee shortly after — a student at the time, much like he had once been, with more potential than proof.

What followed became a pattern. TeeybAds continued to bring in young Nigerians across different functions, giving them real responsibilities early — inside live campaigns, real client accounts, actual operational challenges — and training them as they delivered. The stakes were real. So were the lessons.

At TeeybAds, the training is not separate from the work. It happens inside it. That is a demanding model. It is also, by the accounts of the people inside it, the thing that makes the growth happen faster than it would anywhere else.

For Toheeb, this is not simply a hiring strategy. It is an ongoing test of something he believes the Nigerian business community has not fully reckoned with — that the experience employers say is missing in the labour market is often missing because nobody gave the candidate the environment to build it.

“The trust I received made me,” he said. “I want the people who work with me to be able to say the same thing.”

At TeeybAds, by the accounts of Kofoworola, Vivian, and Roseline, they already can.