PayMyRent's Story of Merging Nigerian Insights with Canadian Property Needs with Tosin Ogunyemi, Founder of PayMyRent

3, 2, 1.

Hey, everyone. We are back with another episode of Founder Journey. Today we've got Tosin Uganyemi. Yes, pronounced right again. My add and dyslexia doesn't allow me to pronounce people's names properly, but Tosin has been with Launch as a maple company for quite a few couple years now. Yes. With a company called Pay My Rent. Tell us what is Pay My Rent? First of all, welcome to Canada. Welcome to Launch. You've been here for nine months now, so I guess I got to stop saying welcome to Canada. It's like you're already here. But yeah, tell us about pay by rent.

Yeah. So first of all, let me say thank you for having us in the Launch Academy. It's been a very good journey with you guys and the landing process has been very fantastic. The landing process has been very fantastic with the Launch Academy team.

Again, Pay My Rent. Tell us about it. But you've also got co founders. Tell us a little bit of co founders. Yeah.

So for Pay My Rent, because we are from the Nigerian origin, I'll tell you the background of Pay My Rent. So in Africa and in Nigeria specifically, we pay off rent on a yearly basis. So what that means is that if your house rent is $2,000, you are going to be paying $24,000 upfront. Yeah. So it's not as if you are going to be paying on a monthly basis. And we discovered that salaries income is earned on a monthly basis. So this became an instant gap for employees who earn salaries on a monthly basis but have to pay their house rents on a yearly basis. So we came up with what could be like the possible solution for us to fill in the gap.

What year was this?

That was 2017. So we came up with a product called Pay My Rent, which allows people to save towards your house rent. So what that does is that once you know that your house rent is $24,000, you just have to save like maybe $2,000 per month towards your next rent. And then once it's completed, you pay your landlord, or if it's not complete payment, rent helps you to augment with the balance to pay your landlord, thus keeping every family together, keeping the home intact and ensuring that everybody pays their rent when due. And. And then landlords love us.

So it's, it's saving for next year's rent.

Yes.

So putting some discipline in place, putting a process so they can, they get their salary and they can put the savings aside to make sure that it's there when it's Needed next year.

Yeah. So like, apparently like discipline is not there in Africa for savings. And what we've created was we know that individuals, when they end their salary, they're not going to do a transfer to the platform. So we created an automated system where immediately your salary is paid, the payment platform enters your account, picks your savings and saves it, and then you are not able to assess that funds to your next rent state.

So you as a client, connect your pay my rent account to your bank account and Pay my rent already has the parameters of I need to save 2,000 or 3,000 and it automatically deducts it out of your bank account and puts it into the savings.

Exactly. And the good thing about it is that you are not able to assess that funds till the withdrawal dates. So what we've seen over the time passed. When we started in 2017, you could actually withdraw anytime. And we saw that 80% to 85% of people that were saving, we are coming back to withdraw.

Yeah.

So we are basically not solving the problem.

I love those new Jordans around. I'm going to go take some money and go buy the Jordans first instantly.

So we put a restriction to that, that once you save on pay my rent, you can assess funds to your withdrawal dates. And then the numbers of savers grew because of that policy, because we created the discipline.

So I see that there's huge value for the up and coming working class because I guess that financial literacy education was not there when they're growing up. And so this is all new economy that requires this. But what's your business model? How does pay my rent make money? Yeah.

So the fantastic business model is that don't forget that like for us, a lot of people are keeping good funds with us because house rent in Nigeria too is quite expensive. It's like Vancouver when you compare the market. So $24,000 times, let's say 10,000 users is a lot of money. It's a lot of funds that's been kept with us. So what we've done is that we've partnered with commercial banks who, for instance, we give the savers like 7% and then we've negotiated 10% interest with commercial banks. So we make a markup from the fixed deposits.

Okay. And then do the banks access that capital to go make their bank loans and run their operations.

Exactly.

But because with a registered bank, it's secured.

Yes, 100%.

So it's innovative. And so that was 2017, is now 2023, six years later. How is pay my rent grown what's, what's the current status of the business?

So the first year, I think we had just 500 users using the platform. And then right now we've grown the platform to like 46,000 active users that have used us. As of today, we have like 25,000 people active on the platform, using the platform to save on a daily basis. So these 25,000 people, they've been with us for like two years. So it's been a consistent journey. And, well, one thing with us is that we are not basically hoping that everybody uses 100% or every time. What we've done is that we help you build a savings culture. The moment you feel that you've built a very good savings culture, you can use your commercial bank to save. But a lot of people do not have a good savings culture, and that's what we've helped them to build. So once you feel that, oh, I've used payment to save, and I understand the saving journey, and now I'm now good with financial literacy. You can then start saving on your own.

So that sounds like a really, really valuable platform for the individuals. I can see how you guys make money, but how's the current economic landscape change, changes in the landscape affecting you? Everybody's having problems paying my rent right now with the interest rates going up, mortgage rates going up. What are your thoughts on the current status in Canada and Nigeria or other parts of the world with interest rates?

Yeah, so, like, radar is very good. One of the shocking things we got when we landed in Canada, and I think that's one of the things we learned with Maple program, like landing in Canada. So when land. When we landed, we wanted to replicate the old payment process, like copy and paste into the Canadian market. But, you know, when we met you guys, you guys explained to us on how to understand the market and when we did our market survey and everything. So we saw like in Nigeria, right, you. You basically spend all your money. So everything you spend, you want to buy a house, you pay it cash down. There's practically not a good mortgage system in place. But when we got here, we discovered that there's a good mortgage system in place. And then the problem is that a lot of people don't save here. A lot of people rely more on credit as against savings. So bringing payment as a savings platform towards our. Paid on a monthly basis, right? Yeah. Unlike Africa, that is paid on a yearly basis. So we saw that we needed to tweak the model, and what we basically just did was to tweak it into the mortgage system. So what pay Marine Canada is now doing is to allow people save towards their down payments to buy their house. Like the mortgage rate keeps going up or we've experienced it like I think we've landed, we spent nine months and interest rate has gone up twice.

Yeah.

And like conversing with people we discover that like one of the major challenge a lot of people have here for first time home buyers is, is actually the first down payment because they are finding very difficult to actually save towards that. So what we've building or what we are building in payment Canada is to help people save towards their first down payment and then even if they cannot match up with their down payment. So for instance, if your down payment is meant to be $50,000, all you need to do is to save $25,000 payment. Rent will match it up for you to help you save $25,000 as well. And then you can do your down payments. So that's what we are helping people build in the Canadian market. So what we. So if we look at it like this, in Africa we have people save towards their house rents, but in Canada we have people safe towards their down payments to buy their first home.

That sounds again a very valuable platform because I know people that are struggling to save. So say they are trying to save 50,000 for their first down payment, but they come across a property or the market's dropping. Okay, well that was a perfect time to get in. But I don't have 50,000 yet. But if they were using pay my rent, they maybe they're at 30,000, they can bridge that 20,000, pay my rent. Because the bank's not going to give that to you. No, no, but what are you seeing in terms of the global impact with the interest rates and just the state of the economy? Do you guys keep a pulse on what's happening in the real estate industry? Yeah.

So for African market, the honest truth is that like a lot of people have made a lot of money from the real estate market. And then when we come to the Canadian market, we saw that like the real estate market is extremely huge. Like it's big. And all you need to do is to actually understand the real estate market. So for instance, I'll give you an instance. One of the people recently financed from Nigeria, the new immigrants, he brought a lot of cash to the Canadian market and he wanted to assess mortgage. And what we told him was that just if you have the funds, pay up. And then the guy paid up for his first mortgage for the first property 100% and instantly was able to assess another mortgage on that same house. And the first thing we try to tell immigrants or new people in Canada is like understand the real estate market, understand what you are paying in interest rates in mortgage and the likes. And because the Canadian market, for instance, most of the time you pay interest, it's your interest that goes down and not your principal element. So as much as possible, I always tell people that try to pay more of the principal so that your monthly repayment is actually bringing down your principal element as against the interest. And for new immigrants. Sorry, I'm talking about new immigrants.

No, no, that's perfectly fine.

But because it's the market, we understand and the market will pay because they are the ones that will actually go for new time, first time home buyers. But then we always tell them that like the first journey when you enter the Canadian market is not, I want to buy a house is to actually understand that what is your income. But if you buy the house, what is going to be your monthly repayments? What is going to be your mortgage repayments? And if interest should go up, especially if you go for the flat rate or the flexible rate, if you go for flexible rate and interest should go up, that simple interest rate going up can affect a lot of things. You can mess up your financials. So we always encourage people, we do a lot of financial education to, to tell people that, see, when you're buying a home in Canada, you have to understand like what the interest rate is. Interest rate can go up. In Africa, for instance, in Nigeria, interest rate is fixed if the bank gives you a particular mortgage or if you're able to assess mortgage at 15% is 15% forever for the term of the mortgage, of the mortgage. It doesn't go up, it doesn't come down.

But yeah, in Canada, yeah, flexible mortgage rates.

Mortgage rates.

So I want our audience to understand, let's go back to the Nigerian market. Real estate's a touchy subject no matter where you're in the world. But a lot of Canadians in particular people in Vancouver don't really understand how different the real estate sector is in other parts of the world. And in Canada, we get really dependent on credit and mortgages and it comes like a vicious cycle. Um, but Nigeria is very different. But even Africa is different. Like a lot of people lump, oh, Nigeria is Africa. It's like, no, Africa is a beast of a, of a, of a continent and there's so many different countries within it and they're all very different dynamics. So maybe we can shift away. Not specifically about real estate, but just being a entrepreneur in Nigeria and then maybe your perspective on Africa as a. As a nation or. Sorry, as a continent.

Yeah. So the thing about why most people feel like Africa is Nigeria is because of our population. And then we are a very brilliant set of people. So if you talk about the tech world, for instance, you see that most of the unicorns that have come from Africa, a lot of them are from Nigeria. Yeah. And then after Nigeria, I want to talk about Kenya. Yeah. But for Nigeria, like, a lot of attention is on Nigeria because, like, that is where, when you build a product, we have the number. Nigeria is eating almost 300 million in population. So what that means is that even if you are playing the payment space, you just need 10% or 1% of that market space to use you. If you are playing in any space, you only need 1% of the market to play. So if you go to Ghana, for instance, that is like, let's say 35,000, 35 million in population, you need to gain almost like 10% or 15% of the market share to actually get 1% of Nigerian market share. So that is why a lot of attention is actually on Nigeria. But Nigeria is like not the only place that this is actually happening. The population is working for us. But you have like Kenya, that the tech space is fantastic. So in whole, like, I see that Africa is actually brazen up. Before, there was no VC investment coming to Africa. But in the last five years, we've seen a lot of money coming to Africa.

Yeah. 20 years ago, all eyes were just on South Africa.

Yeah.

And again for the audience, a lot of the uneducated. South Africa is just a country in the continent of Africa. But Nigeria in the last 10 years has been just really pushing, pushing a lot of fintech in particular, which is driving a lot of capital into investment, a lot of economic stimulus. The country is. The cities are being built up and more development. But other countries are now on the heels of Nigeria, Kenya being one of them. What are your thoughts on the future of Africa?

So, like, if you notice like what is happening like in, let's say China, where they have their own version of WhatsApp for Africa, we don't have that yet, but it's still going to happen. Where like the, the tech space in Africa is still less than like 10 years. So you're seeing like companies trying to build their own African products, for instance. I'll give you an instance. There was a time that Skype was banned in. Was this Skype Twitter was banned in Africa. Right. And the federal government of Nigeria wanted to build their own Twitter but it couldn't work because we are still new, we are still young in the tech space. But in another 20 years it's going to be a different ball game where you now have the African version of Twitter. For instance, we talk about dating app. Tinder is like the world dating app, but Africa now has their own dating app and that is working. So in another 20 years you're going to see like competing global brands that competing with like the known brands that we know like.

So a lot of global eyes on the African market. They're going to try to build versions of their existing products for that market. But homegrown alternatives are going to come up. And two kids sitting in Nigeria playing after, after college trying to figure out what they want to do and come up with an app idea that is possible now. Whereas 10 years ago that was not as realistic.

So 10 years ago it was all about go to school, get a job and that's it. But now, like parents are now embracing the fact that their child could be at home, could coding.

Yeah.

So every parent is now looking for the next.

They want their own millionaire son that's gonna or daughter that's gonna help them.

So you tell your parents, I want to be a developer, it's fine. But before it wasn't fine. During my time, like after secondary school, it has to be university. There's no conversation about it. But right now my younger brother can say, I'm not going to university, I just want to code and it's fine.

Yeah, it's acceptable now.

It's acceptable.

It is a viable path. I want to move this along the podcast called Founder Journey. So I want to talk about the founders and the journey quickly. Who are the co founders of Payroll Rent. And then let's get into what got you here as your own journey.

Yeah. So first is like I started Pay My Rent as a sole founder and then along the journey I met a guy called Abel that has built an E commerce space, an E commerce company that failed. And then I met him in a business conference and we're discussing and he told me about his journey failing in his startup and now he sold the startup eventually. And I saw synergy in the products and I was like, oh, there's something I've been working on. I'm building pay my rent. I've been seeing good traction. The market is upset in it. If you are willing to come on board. Yeah, there's a space for you and then we had Abel join us as the CTO and then he moved to the operations aspect of the company. And then because for what we build is all about helping people to build their savings culture, right? The customer service aspect of this is very, very key because you are basically enlightening people on a daily basis on how to save, why not to assess the money, how to keep it so that they can keep their families together, pay the landlord when it is due. And apparently I worked with a company that was chevinic invested into soft side technologies and one of the persons in customer service was Ofure and she did fantastically well. So I was part of the management team, she was also in the management team. So when I left to build pay my rent after like a year I just called her and said, babe, I'm building something, you need to come on board. And then that's how Efure came on board.

So you knew she was a perfect fit.

Yes, she was just the perfect fit for that because we've worked together.

Hello fellow tech startup founders. I just wanted to quickly interrupt this episode to tell you about us at Launch. If you're looking for a community to help you take your business to the next level, consider joining our LaunchPad program. As a member, you'll get access to investor connections, programming workshops, mentorship and over $400,000 worth of perks. Also, don't forget to check out our other podcasts, Launch AMA and Bits and Bytes for expert advice and stories from the tech community in Vancouver and around the world. Visit LaunchAcademy CA to learn more and start building your dream business today. That's LaunchAcademy CA.

Let me take a moment to shout out our longtime sponsor Smythe. They are a leading independent VC based accounting firm specialized in providing financial services and consulting for tech companies across North America. Smythe has supported our program and our alumni throughout throughout their early growth stages by helping them structure and set up their businesses all the way to helping more established businesses with cross border operations and M and A. They combine industry knowledge with a proactive collaborative approach, empowering you to make more informed decisions as your business grows. So if you're looking for a trusted partner to help you drive your business to success, reach out to one of our Launch Academy's longtime mentors, Camellia Ho. For more information about how Smythe can support your growth, you can find Camellia's information on Smythe's website at Smythe's cpa.com that's s M-Y-T-H-E-C-P a.com along with more information about the various industries they support and the services they provide. That's awesome. And, and really is a journey to bring co founders together. But what got you to that point where you started Pay my rent. What was. What's the origin story of Tosin? Tosin, yeah.

So the premiere journey started in the year when I couldn't pay my house rent and I didn't have savings. And the notion is that like when you earn on a monthly basis, you try as much as possible to hustle and bustle. Then when your house rent is due, let's say next month maybe you now start hustling for the funds and most of the time you don't get it and then you have issues with your landlord, you get quick notice and then you are out of the house and then you are looking for the next rent for the next apartment. However, the journey, the interesting thing is that in Africa you actually pay 10% agency and 10% legal of whatever amount you are paying for the house. So what that means is that you are paying a house of $50,000 per year. Apart from paying the $50,000 upfront, you still pay 5% for agency, which is $5,000, and then you pay another 5% for legal, which is, is that for.

When you find a new place or every year that you're renting when you.

Find a new place?

Okay, so if you get kicked out.

It'S even worse again. Yeah, it gets worse. So I was in that shoes and I'm like, no, it's better to actually save towards the next rent so that I don't. This doesn't occur again. And then when I was looking for the platform to use to save, there was none. So I was restricted to like my bank account to use my bank account to save. And I know that I don't have discipline about that. I can't put money today and then there's an emergency tomorrow and emergency expense tomorrow I'm going to go to. I'll go to the money and spend it. I'll spend it. So I started building that product out of urgency that there was no place for me to actually use to save towards my house rent. And then I was like, if I had that problem, then a lot of people had that same problem. And then I started building premiere.

That's awesome. And obviously there's a lot of ups and downs in that journey that we don't really talk about. But I want to kind of get your pulse on being an entrepreneur in Nigeria. Being an entrepreneur in Africa, what was that journey like?

So the, the, you know, when we started Pay My Rent, the funding space has not been there, the VC funds wasn't there. So it was basically bootstrapping. And I always tell people that when you bootstrap is you learn a lot because you don't have options, you don't have investment, you don't have investors funds to run to. You are basically running from what you have, the income you make. But your brain must be very smart to bootstrap. So when we started to Pay My rent, one of the bad things that always happens is that like there are times that you have funding gap. Funding gap means the salaries to be paid the bank has not paid. You know, you only make imagine from the interest rates the bank has not paid. Imagine and then you have salaries to pay in between. At the early stage it was like a bit challenging because even the funds we are taking to bank was not a lot.

Your own cash flow is an issue. Right.

The cash flow wasn't good world, but we're able to surpass that after like nine months of operations. Yeah. So the journey for bootstrapping is way difficult. Is way challenging. Especially when the government does not support SMEs.

Yeah.

Like and in Africa, or let me say in Nigeria, the support is not as strong as you expect as at then maybe now it's becoming better. But at the end the support was in there.

But even like brick and mortar, let alone tech startup. Right. At least at the brick and mortar the government can say, okay, well we might support you because we see there's value in the real estate or the inventory that you're bringing in. Coming in with a tech startup where it's all just smoke and mirrors in terms of it's just code, you know.

That for even tech startups like the first challenge is that they don't even understand what you're doing. Government cannot see because it's, it's not physical, it's not an asset that they can touch, they cannot feel it. And then if you are not the tech a founder, another problem because you have to pay heavily for the tech. So like it was all the challenges at the early stage, but you discover that like it's only tech that can give you 10x. It's only tech that can take you from point 0 to point 10, which has happened on Pay My Rent and it has been, for instance, Launch Academy is not going to bring us to Canada because we have a hotel in Nigeria. They were actually, they were interested or they are only interested because wow, this is a fantastic tech products that can do xyz like. So that is why like for me tech is like everything right now.

It is, it is the future. It is, it's what's going to transform Africa. I know Africa as, as a continent has been raped and pillaged for natural resources. That's not going to change, let's just face it. But there is the ability to elevate the population out of poverty with tech. And again, payment rent's a perfect example of something that's putting in the discipline and the resources that the people need to help them become more successful and established. Now, six years later from when you started to where you are now, you're now in Canada. What's the Canadian experience been like, like for you from a founder's perspective?

So like when we landed here, I think the only difference is licensing that you need in Canada. So unlike Nigeria, like you can have this idea and then you can hit the ground running the next day. But like for, yeah, like you need to be sure you need the licenses. You have to. For instance, you spent nine months and then I think our first license just came out and then we are looking for the next license because we are trying to get a credit union license to power like the savings platform towards down payment. We've applied for that. That is in process and like. But you can't do much till you get the license to operate because even whoever you're talking to, the first question is like you have a license to operate.

Yeah, yeah. And, and again Canada, notoriously, banking system is, is very walled off. They have this whole notion of open banking. They're trying to launch this but it keeps getting delayed for mysterious reasons. They're never really transparent of why they keep delaying it, but it is a stranglehold that the big banks have on the industry.

Yeah.

But so that, that's the operational side of the business trying to get it up and off the ground. But what else are you experiencing as a founder here in Canada?

So another thing we are experiencing that is good is that the market is willing to accept like anything tech, anything that the, the idea is noble. So we've reached, we've gotten companies just reached out to us normally to say, oh we read about you, we saw your interview and what you are building is fantastic. How can we support like so like every company here is willing to support. There is a very good arm of fellowship. People are willing to support the business, help the business and support the founder. Because I think here they understand that like, being a founder is not easy. So they are willing to support in whichever way they can, unlike the market we are coming from. So we are seeing that difference. And then the second thing is that like, yeah, you have access to credits. So like you can say, oh, we want to build these. And then there's credit facility there for you to try to build. Unlike in Nigerian markets, we don't have that. So what I've seen is that this, there's a lot of enabling markets. The, the market is enabling founders, is supporting founders, which is like one of the things founders basically need at the early stage in any market. So the Canadian market, so far, so good. They've been very supportive to us.

Yeah, so they're definitely very supportive of what you're building. What's the response been in regards to, hey, I'm a Nigerian company that's now in Canada. I'm a Nigerian entrepreneur. My business has a strong presence back in Nigeria. What's been the appetite or interest for people to get involved with pay my rent for the Nigerian business? Are people interested in that market? Are people looking to get exposure to Nigeria?

Hmm. So because of our kind of business is tilted, the Canadian entity is tilted to the Canadian market. The Nigerian entity is suited to the Canadian market. So we've basically not seen, while we are still in Nigeria, we saw, for instance, Canadians trying to save in the Nigerian market. And then that became a problem because at the point of withdrawal, it's going to be a problem for them, for.

Them to get their money back.

So we have to shut down that product. So when we came here, we've done a test run and we've seen that, yeah, there's actually a market that people really want to save. People don't want to 100% depend on credit. People still want to save their own money. So we've seen that there's a product here and then we are aggressively building that product. So aggressively building for down payment towards their mortgage, their down payment to buy their first home, and also to save towards whatever. So we've seen that like savings is universal. Whether it is African market or the Canadian market, people really want to save. But here is more of a credit society or even being a credit society. For me, for instance, like, I save a lot, I now save a lot. So I try as much as possible. I don't want to rely on my Canadian bank account to save because I can still go there to withdraw it anytime. So, like, I'm still willing, I'm still using the payment rent platform to actually Save in the Canadian market.

Yeah, but from a perspective of like whether it's investors or other non customers, not, not customers of payment rent, but other people in the ecosystem around you in Canada, are they showing interest in Nigeria and that market? Yeah.

So like a lot of investors love the Nigerian markets, but they don't understand the Nigerian market. And then at the early stage when VCs opened the Nigerian market, let's say nine years ago, 10 years ago, the first set of investment that went to Africa went bad because it was not ripe. For instance, as at that time we didn't have Internet penetration, it was maybe like 10%. Right now it's at like maybe like 80%. So the market has grown, but at the early stage, for instance, E commerce, everybody that pumps money into E commerce at that time, they are lost because.

They just saw the sheer number of people, one plus one and say, hey, that's a lot of customers, let's go do E commerce. But they don't realize the tech penetration, the mobile penetration was not there, that was very low.

Exactly. So that affected us at that time. And then an investor that has gotten bond once is skeptical to come back, but right now they're saying that oh, the Nigerian market is actually ripe, the African market is ripe, they are willing to come back. And we've seen a lot of VCs, a lot of investors actually going back to the African market. But now they are focusing more on the fintech platforms as against any other.

Because that's where they've seen other people making money. And so it's like, I want to get back and make some money in there now.

Exactly.

And you still have operations in Nigeria. How has been the remote work situation for you managing a team remotely from Canada? Time differences. And there's also now different cultural differences with the team in Nigeria and a team that you're building here in Canada. How are you navigating that?

Yeah, so I think one of the things that really worked for us was Covid. So immediately Covid happened. We've been working remotely and then we practically didn't go back to the office. So because like we've been used to the remote working environment. And so even when we moved to Canada, when the founders moved to Canada, everybody was still fine. The only difference now is the time zone that we have to wake up to do meetings and all. And then working remotely has also allowed the team in itself to expand. So we have like some of our teams that are now in uk, some in Canada, some in the us but we are still Connected, working. So, yeah, because Covid actually helped us to know that. Oh, it's possible. And then we've just adopted remote work from that time.

So for you as a founder, are you making that sacrifice with a time difference? Are you getting up late at night or early in the morning or late at night?

Practically? I'm awake every Nigerian time, so I work with Nigerian time and I work with the Canadian time.

Yeah.

So right now it's still the sacrifice for the founders. Like, because you have to keep up with your team in Africa, in Nigeria, you're also keeping up with the team here in Canada. So we are practically working with the two time zones. Oh, that's the founders.

That's. That's the thing that we signed up for as founders, right?

Yeah, I'm paying my dues.

Uh, I do want to kind of wrap this up with talking about. We. We talk about the taboo topics, things that we wish more founders talked about. There obviously are challenges being an entrepreneur and a founder. What are your parting advice or parting thoughts for our audience about the journey of being an entrepreneur?

Yeah, so I think one of the things. So if you want to go through the spiritual way, you have pastors talking about, you have a book called God's General that explained every pastor and how they failed. Right. You also, I think in the tech space or in the founder's journey, we also want to see founders book or like a founders general where it has explained how founders actually rose to the top and fell. So that it helps like new founders and ongoing founders like us to understand that, oh, you don't want to run a company like this, or you don't want to make the mistake like this. Especially like, how do you even find the co founder? When do you even dissolve this co foundership thing? Because sometimes it's like a marriage that needs to be dissolved. Like, but most people, you just hear that, oh, that complaint has gone down. Please. What's what led to this company going down? What's what actually happened? Like, most of those news, you don't find it outside there. And then you just get like a lot of news media just saying, oh, this is what happened, is what happened. But the founders don't actually come out to tell you that this is what actually happening.

I think it's also point to say, like, the company fails and you hear, oh, well, they picked themselves back up and they did this and made this pivot and now it's success. To your point, they don't talk about, well, what led to that failure. But again, from My perspective, it's also. Okay, well, you picked yourself up, but how, how did you pick yourself up? What did you go through to motivate yourself to get right back in and exactly get more beats on your head as a founder? Because it's still a journey.

And I think it's more so about the pr because a lot of companies that you know that you're still going to pick up yourself, you don't want to put out the bad news that oh, this is what happened. This, the founder stole money and that's why the company was going down. You wouldn't want to put out that. So sometimes it's PR sake that, but we need to talk about it because it's the things that. So if I know that if I take XYZ from the company, it's likely to shut down the company because Ray did it and the company shut down, I would not want to try that. But if Ray did not even come out to say, oh, this is what I did, that was wrong, or I had an affair with a staff and then iboomeranged, you know, founders should come out more so that we can discuss about it. And I think that's what you guys do with founders, connect all the events that Launch Academy does, which is fantastic.

Yeah, yeah, that's. It's one of the sayings I keep saying is misery loves company. We as founders are very miserable, but we no other founder can really understand the trouble and challenges that you're going through other than other founders. So I appreciate you sharing that insight and I think more people talking about their journey is what's most important. So thank you for sharing yours with us. Tosin.

Thank you Lunch for having us. This has been fantastic. This has been great.

So for our audience, how can they find more about Pay My Rent? How can they connect with you?

Yeah, so for the Nigerian market, you PayMyrend NG and then we are launching the Canadian market in another two months. Paymarin ca. Yeah, so.

And that's waiting on these banking licenses. Knocker wood. Two months, it's going to be up and running.

Yes.

Awesome. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Ray. Thank you. Launch Academic.

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