In the heart of Nigeria’s turbulent startup ecosystem, where great ideas too often burn out under the weight of funding gaps, weak structure, and hype-driven expectations, David Lanre Messan, Chief Venture Builder and CEO of FirstFounders, is spearheading a model that flips the script.
Messan is leading what might be Africa’s most ambitious effort to rewire how startups are born, scaled, and sustained on the continent.“We are not just betting on startups; we are building them, brick by brick, founder by founder”, he told me in an interview.
That was the unshakeable conviction in his voice as he leaned into the core philosophy driving FirstFounders, the Lagos-born but pan-African venture studio he leads. In an era where African startups burn bright and fizzle out fast, his mission is surgical and systemic: to democratise entrepreneurship across the continent by rewriting the script from the inside out.
With the upcoming launch of their white paper, “The State of Venture Studios in Africa”, FirstFounders is not just making a case for a new model; it is heralding a movement.
Africa’s tech ecosystem is surging with youthful energy, foreign capital, and breakout success stories. But beneath the surface lies a quiet churn. Too many ventures die early, not for lack of brilliant ideas, but due to what Messan calls “execution starvation”.
“Africa has talent,” he says, “but what we lack is capital efficiency and operational efficiency. Most founders are thrown into the ocean with no compass. They get capital and maybe mentorship, but no one is building with them.”
That is where the venture studio model comes in, and how FirstFounders stands apart.
Unlike incubators or accelerators, the venture studio co-founds the startup with the founder. That means offering three things VCs rarely do: an entrepreneurial lens, an operator’s playbook, and an investor’s discipline. All rolled into one, over a 36-month guided journey.
“Think of it as raising a child,” Messan explains. “We are there at conception and ideation through the messy adolescence of product-market fit, all the way to scaling. No hand-offs. No theory-only mentorship.”
FirstFounders does not wait for an MVP to show traction. Sometimes, it builds the startup internally before onboarding a founder. Other times, it co-creates from scratch. The result is a safer, smarter, and faster pathway to value creation and fewer dead-end pivots.
FirstFounders’ Venture Studio: A case for innovation by design
The studio model may feel novel in Africa, but its global roots run deep. Twitter, Slack, and even Dollar Shave Club were all born inside venture studios. David shares an eye-opening historical analogy: post-apartheid South Africa’s innovation strategy.
“In 1994, South Africa created a 10-year innovation plan that seeded giants like MTN and Shoprite by mirroring global success models and injecting local flavour,” he recounts. “They had venture builders working alongside policymakers. That’s the level of intentionality we need.”
This is the foundation of corporate innovation, a model that Messan says most African conglomerates have yet to grasp. His favourite case study? Chotukool, an Indian refrigerator company that discovered a new market by building a solar-powered, electricity-free portable fridge for peasant farmers. That product alone captured 60% of India’s cooling market.
“This is what happens when you innovate from the problem,” he emphasises, “not just from the product.”
At the heart of FirstFounders’ model is a startup-building playbook designed to de-risk innovation. Instead of chasing vanity metrics, the studio focuses on:
- Problem-market fit: Is this a real, painful, widespread problem?
- Rapid prototyping: Build, test, and pivot fast before capital runs out.
- Shared resources: From legal to marketing to engineering, startups plug into an in-house operations engine.
“Most traditional startups waste their first $100,000. We built two companies with that,” Messan says confidently. “Because we do not spend out of assumption, we spend where there’s movement.”
One recent startup from the studio achieved a 6.5x return on invested capital before even fully entering the market. That’s the power of a system engineered for capital and operational efficiency.
Messan’s approach is radically inclusive.
“We do not care if you have an MBA or not. You could be a street vendor with grit and vision; we will build with you,” he says.
One of FirstFounders’ core principles is to lower the barriers to entry for entrepreneurship. While most accelerators cater to startups already in motion, FirstFounders often works with those who have more than a driven personality.
Their venture studio builds include:
- Pocket Lawyers: A virtual law firm platform now onboarding 1,000 lawyers across Africa.
- Flixster: A consumer insights app with 4,000+ active users.
- Escrow-focused fintechs pivoted from more crowded verticals.
These are not mere experiments. They are jobs created, markets unlocked, and products used, without the noise of paid PR.
The ecosystem collective: infrastructure beyond capital
But FirstFounders is more than a studio. It’s also an ecosystem enabler. Messan outlines an ambitious roadmap that includes:
- Startup Bank: Africa’s first banking platform tailored for startups with flexible, idea-stage financing.
- UniBuilder: A university hackathon pipeline that discovers and nurtures talent early.
- F2 Nation: A 1,200-member community of builders, founders, and innovation stakeholders.
“Democratising entrepreneurship requires infrastructure,” Messan argues. “We cannot just praise the top 3,000 startups. What about the 100,000 ideas that die before they get a chance?”
By providing community, funding, and structured apprenticeships, FirstFounders is attempting to mainstream innovation, not reserve it for the lucky few. The upcoming white paper is not just for founders. It’s a policy tool.
Messan envisions:
- A National Venture Studio Agency
- A National Institute for Venture Builders
- Legislation to institutionalise venture building at scale
“Our white paper proposes a complete framework: from grassroots experimentation centres to corporate venture-building strategies, he explains.”
Meanwhile, some critics argue that venture studios are hard to scale or, worse, resource-heavy. Messan pushes back hard.
“Critics do not understand it. They’re used to models where 1 out of 30 startups succeeds, and they call it a win. We’re saying: build better from the beginning. Fail fast, pivot smart, grow sustainably.”
He likens other models to “giving birth and walking away”. The studio model? “We’re co-parenting, until graduation.” When asked what success means to him, Messan does not hesitate:
“When we’ve helped birth 1,000 startups, trained 100,000 venture builders, and influenced policy in 30 African countries, that’s success.”
For Messan, success is not personal wealth or unicorn valuations. It is a systems-level transformation. It is seeing governments adopt startup pipelines. It is helping founders who were never “supposed” to make it build a generational impact.
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