What we tell founders before they go looking for money.
Working guides on raising money in Nigeria, passing diligence, holding a family business together when the children live abroad, and knowing which lender or investor funds what. Each one comes out of mandates we ran, down to the documents founders are actually asked for.
How to raise capital for a business in Nigeria
Most Nigerian businesses do not fail to raise capital because the money is absent. They fail because the business cannot yet be underwritten. This guide sets out the funding options open to a Nigerian company, what a serious investor tests before writing a cheque, and the order in which to prepare.
Investment readiness: the checklist before you raise
Investment readiness is the difference between a business that can be underwritten and one that cannot. It is measurable. This checklist follows the eight dimensions of the Crimson Oak Institutionalisation Index and names, for each one, the evidence an investor will ask to see.
Family business governance: separating ownership from management
Family businesses fail at the point where the family's informal decision-making can no longer carry the company's complexity. Governance is what replaces it. This guide sets out the structures that let a family retain ownership while the business is run to an institutional standard.
Private capital in Nigeria: who funds what, and on what terms
Founders often describe every institutional investor as private equity. They are not interchangeable. Each pool of private capital in Nigeria has a different mandate, cheque size, holding period and set of conditions, and approaching the wrong one is the most common waste of a fundraising cycle.
Family business succession in Nigeria: keeping the company alive when the founder steps back
A Nigerian business that took thirty years to build can be lost in eighteen months. The usual cause is not competition. It is an unplanned transition: a founder who is slowing down, children who have built lives in London, Toronto or Houston, and no structure that allows the company to run without the person whose name is on it. This guide sets out the realistic options and the order in which to take them.
Business funding in Nigeria: what you can raise, from whom, and what it takes to qualify
Most funding searches begin with a number and end in frustration, because the instrument was wrong for the business. Funding is not one market; it is several, each with its own qualifying test. This guide maps what a Nigerian business can realistically raise at its current stage, who provides it, and the specific requirements you must satisfy to be considered.