Damilare Ajiboye is not the kind of tech founder you typically read about. There is no fundraising announcement, no accelerator pedigree, no investor deck making the rounds. What there is, instead, is code. A lot of it. Ajiboye is the Founder and CEO of Ocean Trends Digital Limited, a Nigerian-born technology company now operating out of London, and he has built two live digital products across fintech, social commerce, and loan management. He designed and coded the core infrastructure for each of them himself.
Currently based in London, where he is also pursuing a BSc in Computer Science at the University of Wolverhampton alongside running his company, Ajiboye holds a BSc in Accounting from the National Open University of Nigeria. He has been coding since 2011, founded Ocean Trends Digital in 2017, and leads a growing team of approximately 15 to 20 people across in-house and remote capacities. His flagship platform, EarnIT, is approaching 10,000 users and has processed over ₦100 million in transaction volume, all without external capital.
We sat down with him to understand how he thinks about building products, why he operates across multiple sectors, and what drives a founder who still writes production code every day.
You started coding in 2011. Walk us through how you went from writing code to founding a multi-product technology company.
It was not a straight line. I started by building small tools and solutions, learning how systems worked at a fundamental level. Early in my career, I worked at Fidelity Bank as a developer, which gave me exposure to financial systems and how institutions handle data, transactions, and compliance. I also spent time at IROKO, which gave me engineering experience in a media technology environment.
What I kept noticing was that businesses, particularly in Nigeria and across Africa, lacked reliable, well-built digital tools. Not because the market did not need them, but because most technology products were being built to raise funding rather than to solve problems. I wanted to do the opposite. I wanted to build things that worked, that people would pay for, and that could sustain themselves commercially from day one. That thinking led me to found Ocean Trends Digital in 2017.
You have two live products and you have said you plan to build more. Why not focus on one thing?
I understand why the question comes up. The conventional advice is to focus on one thing. But the way I think about it is different. I am not building unrelated products. I am applying the same engineering methodology to different problems. Every product follows the same pattern: identify a real operational gap, understand the domain deeply before writing any code, build infrastructure that is designed to last, and charge money from day one.
Bimzukash is a loan management system I launched in 2021. It handles credit scoring, disbursement tracking, repayment automation, and default management. I had to learn the lending domain deeply before I could build it properly, because credit risk is not something you can approximate with generic software. And EarnIT is a social commerce and fintech platform where users earn, transact, and pay bills within a single ecosystem. It launched in mid-2022 and is growing quickly. Both products required me to build the core financial infrastructure from scratch: wallets, transaction engines, reconciliation, and identity verification. I have more products planned across other sectors, including utility management and education, but I will not ship them until the engineering is ready.
Each product required me to learn a new domain, understand its specific requirements, and build something that meets real operational needs. That process of going deep into a domain before writing code is something I intend to repeat as I build more products. The engineering approach is transferable. The domain knowledge is what takes time.
Let us focus on EarnIT. Where does it stand right now?
EarnIT is our most active platform and the one I am most focused on scaling. It sits at the intersection of social commerce and fintech. Users earn through structured digital tasks, social engagement, and referral programmes. They then spend those earnings within an integrated financial layer that handles wallets, payouts, bill payments, and peer-to-peer transfers. The full cycle — earn, save, spend — happens inside one platform.
We are approaching 10,000 registered users, and the platform has processed over ₦100 million in cumulative transaction volume. We are generating revenue, and the trajectory is encouraging. What matters most to me right now is not the headline numbers but the quality of the engagement. Users are returning, completing tasks, and transacting repeatedly. That tells me the product is solving a real problem, not just attracting curiosity.
From a technical standpoint, I built the core infrastructure myself: the wallet system, the payment reconciliation engine, the payout automation, the KYC verification pipeline, and the fraud monitoring layer. The system maintains strong uptime and transaction reliability, which is critical when you are handling real money. We run on Laravel with MySQL and RESTful APIs, with a structured release cycle for continuous improvement.
You built all of that infrastructure yourself. Why not hire engineers to do it from the start?
Two reasons. First, when I started, I did not have the resources to hire a full engineering team. So I had to build it myself. That constraint forced me to understand every layer of the system at a deep level, which turned out to be one of the best things that could have happened.
Second, and more importantly, I believe that the quality of a platform’s core infrastructure determines everything that follows. If the wallet system is poorly designed, no amount of frontend polish will save you. If the reconciliation engine has flaws, you will lose users’ trust the moment something goes wrong with their money. I wanted to make sure those foundational systems were built with the rigour they deserved. Now that those systems are solid, I bring in engineers to extend, maintain, and scale them. But the architectural decisions, the transaction logic, the security design — those are things I built and continue to oversee personally.
You have never raised external funding. Is that intentional?
It started out of necessity and became a principle. When I founded Ocean Trends Digital, I did not have access to venture capital networks. There was no safety net. So every product I built had to generate revenue immediately, because that was the only way the company could survive.
That constraint shaped how I think about everything. I do not build features unless they have a clear path to generating value. I do not hire ahead of revenue. I do not spend money acquiring users who will not pay. Every decision is grounded in commercial sustainability.
I am not ideologically against raising capital. But I believe the strongest position to raise from is one where you do not need the money. If your product already generates revenue, already has real users, and already works at a technical level, then funding becomes a growth accelerator rather than a survival mechanism. That is where I want to be if and when we raise.
You are based in London now but building products primarily for African markets. How does that dynamic work?
It works because the engineering is location-independent but the market understanding is not. I grew up in Nigeria. I understand the infrastructure realities, the payment behaviours, the connectivity challenges, and the user expectations. That knowledge is embedded in how I design every system. Living in London does not change that.
What London does give me is proximity to the UK technology ecosystem, which is where I want to take Ocean Trends Digital in the longer term. The UK fintech sector is one of the most developed in the world. The education technology market here is significant. The social care sector has major digitisation needs. Our products have relevance beyond African markets, and being in London positions us to explore those opportunities.
I am also studying Computer Science at the University of Wolverhampton, which is adding formal theoretical depth to the practical engineering experience I have built over the years. Balancing a degree with running a company is demanding, but the two disciplines reinforce each other in ways I did not fully expect.
You mentioned designing systems for African realities. What does that mean in practice?
It means building with constraints in mind from the start, not as an afterthought. In many African markets, internet connectivity is inconsistent. Payment infrastructure is fragmented. Users may be accessing your platform from devices with limited processing power. If you build your product assuming everyone has a fast, stable connection and a premium device, you will lose most of your potential users.
At a technical level, this means optimising for low bandwidth, designing lightweight interfaces, handling payment provider failover gracefully (because providers go down), and building reconciliation logic that can handle incomplete or delayed transaction responses. It also means taking KYC and identity verification seriously, because trust is the foundation of any financial platform operating in these markets. These are not glamorous engineering challenges, but they are the ones that determine whether a product actually works for the people it is meant to serve.
What is next for Ocean Trends Digital?
The immediate focus is scaling EarnIT. The product has strong early traction, and I want to push it toward tens of thousands of active users over the coming year. The underlying infrastructure is built to handle significantly more volume than we currently process, so the technical foundation is there. Now it is about growth, user acquisition, and continued product refinement.
Beyond EarnIT, I want to continue developing Bimzukash, which is addressing a loan management market with significant unmet demand. I also have plans to build products in utility management and other sectors where I see the same pattern of poor infrastructure and real operational need. And I am thinking seriously about how to bring our products into the UK market. The technology we have built is not limited to African use cases. The infrastructure, the engineering approach, and the product thinking are transferable. I want to prove that technology built by African founders can compete at a global level. That is the long-term vision.
What would you say to someone who is building their first product right now with no funding and no team?
I would say you are in a better position than you think. The absence of funding forces discipline. It forces you to build something people will actually pay for, because you have no other choice. That discipline is worth more than most seed rounds.
Build your own core infrastructure. I know it is tempting to stitch together third-party APIs and call it a product, but if the systems that define your business are owned by someone else, you are building on borrowed ground. Own the critical pieces. Understand them deeply. That knowledge will compound over time in ways you cannot predict.
And measure the right things. Do not obsess over user registrations. Focus on who is paying, who is returning, and who is finding real value. A thousand paying users who trust your platform are worth more than a hundred thousand signups who never come back.
Damilare Ajiboye is the Founder and CEO of Ocean Trends Digital Limited and the creator of EarnIT. He is based in London, United Kingdom. Website: damilareajiboye.com
