News
4 Disastrous Ways to Push Your Start-up Through Lies

There was this popular ad on TVs and billboards. The ad introduced a croissant brand into the one of the biggest emerging markets in Africa, Nigeria.
In fact, the feeling was great, the visuals were powerful and compelling. To crown it all, a popular celebrity was used to personify the brand.
If there were a thousand and one consumers craving for the product, I was one of them but for several weeks, I couldn’t lay my hand on ituntil on a very tiring day while returning home from work.
The adrenalin rush to devour the croissant was unimaginable but hey, the traffic law says you shouldn’t eat why driving!
The whole excitement turned into dissonance even before consumption. The product size could not measure up to the same as the size portrayed by the advertisement.
I felt cheated, embarrassed and discomfited for wasting my hard-earned money on a product that could not deliver its promise.
Since there was no value for money, repeat purchase was the last thing on my mind and never would I allow my close associates to make the same mistake.
Things like these are common in mostemerging markets and because the consumer laws are rather weak in these markets, advertisers sometimes escape the necessary regulatory scrutiny and whack.
Be that as it may, below are four ways I think your start-up can unsuccessfully lie to its market:
Making Promises You Can’t Fulfil
Every start-up should be reminded that a brand is a promise to the consumer to deliver a particular desired experience most of the time.
It should be known that consumers offer their trust and loyalty with the implicit understanding that your brand will behave in certain satisfying ways through product/service performance and through appropriate pricing, promotion, and distribution programs. In the croissant story earlier told, do you think I felt cheated because the product was too small? Not at all.
I felt embittered because the advertiser had failed in its promise to meet my expectations as conveyed in the billboard and television.
Believing Advert Would Do The Magic
Troublingly, many well-funded start-ups oftensubscribe to advertisingto blatantly make implicit promises they would never keep.
When the product or service doesn’t match up to the advertised promise, isn’t that like cheating, or at some level, stealing from people’s hopes?
Well, your ever wise customers would soon realise this, jettison your brand and pitch their tent with your competition who is real and truthful.
A marketing professional once said that advertising is powerful but ad is not what the consumer is buying.
You can spend one billion dollar on ad, if the product lacks merit, you would not sell. In fact, your ad begins to irritate. The value of an ad is based on the fact that the product is right.
There is a coinage in marketing, which underscores this, that the best way to kill a bad product is to advertise it.
Bad Positioning
More importantly, in our social media crazed world, venting out broken promises made to consumers has instant ramifications to the credibility and trajectory of your start-up’s perceived value.It is true that the goal of any brand positioning exercise is to develop a brand promise that is unique, compelling and believable.
Any successful brand positioning project must evaluate all potential brand promises against these three criteria – unique, compelling and believable. The winning promise must deliver against all threecriteria or it won’t work.
Thinking That Lies Would Engender Profitability
It’s wrong to assume that lies would ensure profitability. In fact, a lie told will only stimulate trial but never engender repeat purchase that can guarantee sustainable profitability.
Most times, a betrayed consumer will make sure others around him never fall victim. Tell the truth and don’t shoot yourself in the leg.
Don’t over promise and under deliver. Lies shouldn’t be ‘sold’ to push your start-up.
I’m sure you’re still interested in the croissant story I shared with you at the beginning of this article.
Well, I’m pleased to inform you that its makers only survived for two years. The croissant is abysmally dead, never to be resurrected.
Is your start-uppositioned to lie? If yes, please have a rethink!
Jide Ayegbusi is the founder of Edusko.com, an edtechstart-up that connects Africans with good and affordable schools in Africa and beyond. Follow Jide on twitter @jideayegbusi.
News
Elon Musk to Become First World’s Trillionaire with SpaceX Historic IPO

Elon Musk is poised to become the world’s first trillionaire after SpaceX, his company, confirmed plans to go public.

Elon Musk
Because Musk owns the majority of the shares, it could push his net worth over the trillion dollar mark.
The entrepreneur is known for his leadership of Tesla, SpaceX, X, and xAI.
Musk has been the wealthiest person in the world since 2025; as of May 2026, Forbes estimates his net worth to be $788 billion.
SpaceX has filed for a blockbuster public listing in the United States, paving the way for what could become the largest stock market debut in Wall Street history.
The company, formally known as Space Exploration Technologies, announced plans to begin trading under the ticker symbol “SPCX” as early as next month.
The listing values SpaceX at about $1.25 trillion, with Musk’s majority ownership potentially worth more than $600 billion alone.
Combined with his existing holdings in companies including Tesla, the IPO could push Musk’s personal wealth above the $1 trillion mark.
The long-awaited filing also offered investors a rare look into SpaceX’s finances.
The company reported $18.6 billion in revenue last year but recorded a net loss of $4.9 billion. In the first quarter of this year, SpaceX generated $4.7 billion in sales while posting a $4.3 billion net loss.
Financial disclosures showed the company holds $102 billion in assets, including rockets, launch infrastructure and satellite systems, while carrying debts totalling $60.5 billion.
Despite the losses, analysts suggested investors were unlikely to be deterred given SpaceX’s dominance in commercial space launches and satellite internet services.
Ruth Foxe-Blader, managing partner at Citrine Venture Partners, described the planned flotation as “extremely exciting.”
“SpaceX is just an absolutely sprawling, enormous project with so many different selling points, and so many points that really point to the future,” she said.
SpaceX operates the Starlink satellite internet network and also owns Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI.
The IPO filing revealed that xAI recently reached a major commercial agreement with rival AI company Anthropic, maker of the Claude chatbot.
Under the arrangement, Anthropic will reportedly pay $15 billion annually to access data centre infrastructure linked to xAI operations in the American South.
The filing also disclosed that SpaceX expects to incur more than half a billion dollars in legal costs from multiple ongoing lawsuits and regulatory disputes.
Among the cases listed were claims alleging that xAI’s chatbot Grok had been used to create sexualised deepfakes of women and girls, alongside patent infringement disputes, music copyright claims, data breach allegations and investigations into compliance with European Union content moderation rules.
Musk has previously said he plans to dissolve xAI as a standalone company and pursue his AI ambitions directly under SpaceX.
The filing came shortly after Musk lost a high-profile legal battle against OpenAI and its chief executive Sam Altman.
Musk had accused OpenAI of abandoning its non-profit mission after shifting towards a commercial model, but a jury dismissed the lawsuit, ruling that he had waited too long to bring the claims.
News
Moniepoint Boosts UK Payments Security

African financial services platform Moniepoint has partnered with open banking software-as-a-service provider tell.money to deploy a transaction security system in the UK market.

The companies said the partnership will allow Moniepoint to implement Confirmation of Payee, an account name-checking service designed to verify recipient details before payments are processed.
The integration will be rolled out through Monieworld, Moniepoint’s UK remittance subsidiary, as part of the company’s broader European expansion strategy.
Tell.money will provide the underlying verification technology, which the companies said is intended to reduce misdirected payments and help protect users against cross-border fraud.
Ravi Jakhodia, CEO of Monieworld, said: “Our goal with Monieworld is to build financial services for Africans in the diaspora.”
He added that tell.money was selected because it manages compliance and accreditation requirements, allowing the fintech company to focus on customer service.
Moniepoint is entering a competitive UK-to-Africa remittance market that includes established providers such as Wise, WorldRemit and Remitly, as well as African fintech firms including Flutterwave’s Send App.
According to data from the World Bank’s KNOMAD programme, remittance flows to low- and middle-income countries are estimated at about $620 billion annually, with digital -first platforms capturing increasing market share through open banking integrations and automated compliance systems.
The rollout reflects a broader trend of African fintech firms expanding into developed markets by adopting local regulatory and open banking standards.
Industry analysts expect diaspora-focused platforms to evolve beyond money transfers into services such as multi-currency banking, credit and investment products.
News
Meet the 39-Year-Old Genius Replacing Oloyede at JAMB

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has appointed 39‑year‑old Professor Segun Aina as the new Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), succeeding Professor Is‑haq Oloyede whose two‑term tenure expires on July 31, 2026.

Professor Segun Aina
Aina, who will turn 40 in July, will become the youngest registrar in JAMB’s history, marking a generational shift in the leadership of Nigeria’s premier tertiary‑admissions body.
In a statement issued in Abuja by the President’s Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, the new registrar was described as a distinguished academic and systems expert with extensive experience in national examination systems, digital infrastructure and public‑sector institutional reform.
A professor of Computer Engineering at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile‑Ife, Aina holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Systems Engineering from the University of Kent, an MSc in Internet Computing and Network Security and a PhD in Digital Signal Processing, both from Loughborough University, United Kingdom. He also completed the Senior Management Programme at Lagos Business School.
His early career with JAMB began during his National Youth Service Corps scheme, where he gained foundational experience in national admissions and data‑driven institutional processes; those insights have since shaped his contributions to examination reform and systems optimisation.
At 39, Aina became one of Nigeria’s youngest professors of Computer Engineering and has advised federal and state governments on system design, digital transition and operational reform, while also consulting major examination bodies such as NECO and NABTEB on ICT systems and examination integrity.
He is a member of the Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN), the Nigerian Society of Engineers (NSE), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET).
President Tinubu expects Aina to leverage his experience, knowledge and practical insight to further strengthen JAMB’s operations and to build on the achievements recorded under Professor Oloyede’s leadership.
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