Crop2Cash began with an ambitious goal: to end hunger by helping smallholder farmers access loans. But the journey from that goal to a functional business was much harder than its founders thought. They built the wrong products, lost almost everything during the COVID-19 pandemic, and had to slowly earn the trust of their target audience: farmers.
This is the honest story of a startup that learned it must listen before it can build.
Day 1: A clever solution no one could use
Crop2Cash officially started on May 18, 2018. The founders met at a university contest. There was Seyi Alabi, an agronomy student who understood farming, Michael Ogundare, a computer scientist who could build technology, and another partner, Emem Essien. They got along well and decided to work together.
Their big mission was “zero hunger.” “The first product we built was a Facebook Messenger bot,” Alabi says. The idea was that farmers could chat with this bot to help them sell their crops and lose less food after harvest.
But they quickly discovered a big problem. The real farmers that they wanted to help, the ones who needed it most, did not use Facebook. They didn’t have smartphones or good internet to chat with a bot. It was a classic first mistake, something typical of tech bros: they built something they thought was clever, without truly understanding the daily life of the farmers they wanted to serve.
Day 500: Changing direction and earning trust
After the Facebook bot failed, they tried a new idea. They built a digital platform for big agricultural companies to manage their supply chains. They called it SupplyBase. But again, companies were slow to adopt it and didn’t use it much.
While SupplyBase struggled to take off, the founders were testing a simple financial tool for farmers. The tool showed early promise, and they put a stop to SupplyBase and focused on growing the fintech tool.
Their biggest challenge wasn’t technology; it was trust. “Farmers have seen it all from scam interventions to failed programs,” Alabi explained. Farmers are often promised help by other organisations or government institutions and have been let down or even cheated. The Crop2Cash team were just “young, nerdy Lagos boys” to them.
To solve this, the team left their office and went to the farmers. They visited villages across Nigerian states, like Oyo, Kaduna, and Kano. They listened to the farmers share their problems. They built tools in the farmers’ local languages and made sure their solutions worked on simple phones, with bad or no internet. Most importantly, they never asked the farmers for money to sign up. They knew they had to prove their value first.
Just when they were starting to make progress, the COVID-19 pandemic hit. It was a disaster for the young company. “Life wasn’t the same during or after the pandemic,” Alabi said. “We lost momentum, partners, team members, and farmers.” Travel was banned, so they couldn’t visit farming communities. Money became extremely tight.
The lowest point came after the worst of the pandemic. They were trying to close an investment round, but money was running out fast. The founders made a tough decision: they stopped paying themselves for nearly three months to make sure they could still pay their staff. It was a period of “starving” while working day and night to save the company.
Through all these struggles, they learned their most important rule: always choose simple over smart. “I choose accessibility for rural farmers every day and twice on Sundays,” Alabi declared. For every new idea, they ask one question: “Can a 50-year-old farmer with no smartphone and little education use this?” If the answer is no, they would not build it.
Day 1000: Looking back and facing the real work
The moment they knew they were finally on the right track wasn’t about a huge number of users. It was a feeling of confidence. After they launched their USSD service and saw how all its features worked together for the farmers, Alabi remembers, “I knew we got one!” They had finally built something that truly fit the farmers’ lives.
The USSD code allows farmers to access financial and marketplace services without internet. By dialing the Crop2Cash USSD code, farmers can buy essential farming needs, compare prices and get paid via a local account that Crop2Cash supports.
Their understanding of the problem has also grown. They now know that just giving a farmer a loan is not enough. “For financial inclusion to work, you need financial orientation,” Alabi says. This means you also have to teach farmers how to use the money and run their businesses better. They now believe the future depends on helping farmers become self-sufficient and profitable, not on giving them free things or short-term help.
Winning contests and getting into programs like the Google for Startups Accelerator helped people take them seriously. But what worries the founder now is the hardest, least glamorous part of the business: making sure the loans are paid back. “Giving out loans is very easy,” Alabi says, “but you see, monitoring and evaluation, stakeholder management, and loan recovery. That’s where the real work lies.” This is the daily, difficult work that happens after the excitement of the launch.
Looking back on the wild ride from a failed Facebook bot to a real financial service for thousands of farmers, Alabi’s advice to his younger self is simple and true: “Buckle up, it’s about to be a crazy ride.”
