Communiqué 99: Five years in one

Notes on balancing rapid growth and powering through the tough times.

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1. The hard thing…

I first read Ben Horowitz’s The Hard Thing About Hard Things ten years ago, in the final months of my time as a Literature teacher under Nigeria’s compulsory one-year youth service programme.

I’d dedicated that year to learning about entrepreneurship because I knew it was an inevitable part of my future. At the time, the plan was to launch an online bookstore for Nigeria in the mould of Amazon. So, in addition to Horowitz’s book, I also dug deep into Brad Stone’s The Everything Store, which chronicled the rise and challenges of building Amazon. They remain two of my favourite business books because of their candour and refusal to glamourise business in ways that others did.

Because of these two books, and many more, I knew very early in my career that entrepreneurship was never going to be easy. I knew that building a business that would impact millions of people would be like rolling a boulder up a hill. I also knew that, in business, success is far less likely than failure. But I also knew that staying alive was the most defining principle. Stay alive long enough, and things will start to fall in place.

However, reading about hardship and experiencing it are two different things. As prepared as you might want to think you are to walk through fire, there is nothing quite like walking through it. And this year taught me that.

Building anything from scratch is hard. Building it from Africa is a million times harder.

2. …About building a media company in Africa

I came into 2025 with a handful of lofty goals for Communiqué. Some of them we’ve exceeded, some we abandoned along the way. What is constant, though, is that neither pushing through nor changing course was easy. Take our decision to suspend the paywall on our newsletter, for example.

In an ideal world, at least 20% of Communiqué’s subscribers would be paying monthly to support the newsletter. In that case, annual net revenue (after platform deductions) would be roughly $960,000 from subscriptions alone. In reality, however, we were far from that figure.

We generated enough in monthly subscriptions to cover editorial costs, but that line item was not profitable on the balance sheet. Furthermore, we knew our stories could travel farther if they were more accessible. So, we had to decide: to power through and hope for bigger numbers in the future, or shelf the idea of a paid publication for now and grow revenue in other ways. We chose the latter, and it’s proven to be the right decision.

In removing the paywall, we considered two primary factors: our market realities (in Nigeria and across Africa) and our audience’s likelihood to pay. At the moment, both factors are trending downward. The proliferation of AI-generated content, along with already harsh economic conditions, means fewer people on the continent are likely to pay for access, and even those willing to must choose from an ocean of options. Even Multichoice, Africa’s biggest media success story, has seen this play out in real time over the last two years or so, to the point that it has had to surrender control to Canal+.

As expected, the absence of a paywall drew more people to read and engage with our work. In the 3 months that followed, traffic grew by over 55% and subscribers by nearly 30%. To offset the revenue loss from switching to an entirely free publishing model, we focused on expanding our research and advisory businesses. Within five months, we tripled our annual revenue target.

We found solid product-market fit for our intelligence services, which now gives us the platform to deepen our research and data offerings. With this new reality, we head into 2026 with a more deliberate media strategy.

Getting to this point required doing what, to the uninitiated, looks like admitting defeat. In truth, we acknowledged the reality of our market and adapted to it.

3. The event gods smile at us

Another significant contributor to Communiqué’s growth this year was events. We struck gold with the conception of Communiqué IRL, our city-to-city event series. What began as a small community gathering in Lagos has now spread across the continent. We didn’t plan this in the beginning. With Lagos, we wanted to test a hypothesis: measure the vibrancy of the creative economy and see if, in our little way, we could bring something unique to the atmosphere. The idea for the IRL series came in January. Within a month, we found partners, secured a venue (thanks to the British Council), and launched a registration link that sold out within two weeks.

IRL Lagos 1.0 proved that there was something to work with. IRL Nairobi and Johannesburg showed us we needed to think bigger. Altogether, we connected with nearly 400 community members in person. Next year, we are going global.

The other part of this strategy is that we’ve seen the value of small events. People are getting tired of large gatherings with no specific agenda or endgame. Yes, they still show up in the numbers, but only because they think they have to do so to network. Smaller, highly curated events are proving more appealing. For advertisers and sponsors, this is proving effective as well. At IRL, for instance, our partners often have ample time for mini-workshops or Q&A sessions that allow the audience to engage more deeply with them. We are doubling down on this hypothesis in 2026.

Beyond our own offerings, we have successfully partnered with other organisations to design and curate their events. In April, we partnered with Gitex Africa Morocco to curate the first-ever creative economy track. In May, we worked with Founders Connect on the creative economy sessions at The Builders Summit. In August, we worked with the African Creatives Alliance on the African Creative Economy Lens conference in Kigali. In October, we were at Moonshot by TechCabal, where we helped curate and moderate panels and keynotes.

In 2026, we will do more of this, and more strategically.

4. Taking stock

This year, we’ve moved at breakneck speed. Every time I’m at an event, someone asks me how we can pull off all we’ve done. It is as unbelievable on the inside as it looks on the outside. But here’s the secret: Everyone at Communiqué owns something. We have a plethora of products and ideas, and each one belongs to someone. This is the beauty of the startup life.

Our team has grown mentally and emotionally, but we’ve also grown numerically. We came into 2025 with four people. We are exiting the year with twelve. And no one is here just because we feel like ramping up numbers. This is not about bloating overhead costs. Everyone has an important role to play, from the newsletter and events to our socials and data products, from our advisory business to our culture management. We leave nothing to chance.

We also recognise our place in the grand scheme of things. We cannot succeed if other people don’t. We cannot grow if this ecosystem doesn’t. Communiqué’s future is tied inextricably to the creative economy’s future. This is where we’ve decided to pitch our tent, and we will rough this journey together—all of us. So we are where we are because others have chosen to open their arms to us. Most of the things we’ve done this year have been products of partnerships: one person sees our effort, reaches out to offer help, we say yes, we do great things together, more people see the results, more people reach out—ad infinitum.

The flip side is that we’ve had doors shut in our faces by people we assumed would be open to partnerships. But then again, human beings are survivalist at their core. We cannot fault people for wanting to protect what they perceive as their territory. We do know, however, that it is very shortsighted and helps no one in the long run.

5. Looking ahead

2025 has been incredibly difficult, especially the first half. But it’s also been gratifying. There’s nothing else I’d rather be building than Communiqué, no other industry I’d rather be ideating for than the creative economy, and no one else I’d rather be executing with than my team.

We are on the verge of something big. I can feel it coming. There’s something massive on the horizon. I can sense it.

If you’re on this journey with us, if you’re building this industry with us, I hope you can, too.

For now, happy holidays, and see you in 2026.