Quick Fire 🔥 with Feranmi Ajetomobi

Feranmi Ajetomobi has spent the better part of a decade in the quiet trenches of Nigerian fintech and consumer markets. He cut his teeth leading growth at Cowrywise, where he helped build saving habits in a place where saving is anything but habitual. He then joined Flutterwave to drive lifecycle marketing during its explosive phase, learning firsthand how rapid scale amplifies the opportunities and complexities of human behaviour around payments and money movement.

Before that intense chapter at Flutterwave, he spent time at Nestcoin—the launchpad behind projects like Onboard Global—where he built communities from the ground up. He has also crossed into traditional consumer goods, driving market adoption for Refresh Yoghurt, a product from Integrated Dairies, the makers of Farmfresh. In a category crowded with choices and price sensitivity, he orchestrated campaigns that focused on real consumer behaviour—taste, convenience, trust in quality milk—and helped position the brand as a daily essential rather than an occasional treat.

He later joined Cenoa, a fintech company, as Country Manager for Nigeria, where he executed a comparative growth strategy that scaled the user base aggressively by leaning into the psychology of choice and competition in a noisy market. Today, he operates at the intersection of growth operations, strategic partnerships, and community-led expansion, helping fintechs, web3 projects, and consumer brands navigate markets that reward persistence over hype.

• Explain what you do to a 5-year-old.

The toys that you get require money for payment. I am the guy who ensures your parents can afford that payment by getting customers to buy what their companies sell. I spend a bulk of my day finding new ways to get those customers, ensuring they buy, and nurturing them so they come back to buy again. 

• What is the most unconventional thing about your career in Growth?

I have never taken a professional course on marketing or growth. However, I have created course outlines to teach professionals how to market products. Does this mean courses aren’t needed? Absolutely not! I read the most random little things that cover for not taking those courses. Also, I plan to do my PhD in behavioural psychology, so please take courses. 

• You’ve helped people save, spend, and move money differently. What’s the smallest behavioural tweak that created the biggest growth outcome in your career?

During points when users are about to transact (like making deposits), using preset amounts to suggest to them to do more is one of my go-to tweaks. One time, a product I worked with suggested $0.25 as the minimum starting amount. Almost 80% started with that. They weren’t aware that they could edit. 

We did a 10x of that, and people started depositing that. Finally, we built a list of options and a clear edit. That way, the first-time average deposit value increased. The lesson? Be very intentional about your suggestions during acquisition or onboarding campaigns. For example, I once saw how putting a balance of $1000 on the app screen of an ad immediately changed the perception of prospects, from when it was $10.

• You talk a lot about trust and incentives. What’s something companies get dangerously wrong about how Africans think about money?

To date, many companies still equate popularity with trust. To be fair, popularity plays a role in building trust, but it interestingly also breeds scepticism. Africans are wary of popularity campaigns because history has shown that, more often than not, such campaigns are covering up something else. 

This equivalence is why many businesses also see public relations (PR) spending as a waste of money. They pay for some short-term spike that doesn’t deliver the expected value. Trust is not a final destination; it is a continuous process that requires granular spending and planning, so as to have your product come across as worthy for organic referrals. 

In summary, popularity contests should never be confused with the presence of trust. 

• What’s one growth win you’re proud of that most people would consider “boring”—but you know was everything?

Building product education flows at Cowrywise and every other place I have worked. I have seen customers who have never ever transacted, after an email or push notification, respond and start transacting. 

In one of many cases, the customer had signed up over a year ago, but only decided to become active after receiving a product email from a marketing flow we did. It was funny, but it reminded me of one simple thing I learnt, “There is no silver bullet for growth, what wins every time is consistency with the good stuff.”

• What’s your personal test or litmus for knowing whether a product’s traction is real or just noise?

Recommendations. I simply search for conversations around niche requests and monitor the options that pop up. Also, because of my experience, I can mostly tell when such recommendations are incentivised or genuinely organic.

• Outside of work, what’s a belief or habit that influences how you build communities and partnerships as a keen community builder?

Like every relationship, you have to genuinely want to offer value. The issue is that many enter the partnership game or community-building process with the aim of value extraction.

Yes, you should get value, but what exactly do you bring to the table that matters? Speaking of value, I have a lot of favourite examples, but let me use one from Cowrywise, given that it is popular. 

When Razaq Ahmed (Cowrywise’s CEO) and I were discussing the ambassadors’ programme, we agreed on a simple plan. We didn’t just want to build a programme that would drive referrals. Rather, we wanted a programme that would give students a chance at winning in their careers and then build an affection for the brand, and naturally sell the brand. That formed the foundation for all the activities you see today around that initiative.

Finally, I currently drive growth at Timon, a money app designed for nomads. We approach partnerships in a similar fashion. First, we see if there is an alignment between both parties and make it clear what we can solve for them, then tie it to the product. 

For example, we are working and always open to working with travel creators. How we do this is we can take their itineraries, amplify to our audience, and also provide free eSIMs for their customers. With that in motion, selling the product almost comes naturally.