This Bootstrapped Nigerian Startup is Cornering Africa’s Creator Economy

Nigerian digital creator marketplace, Selar, has emerged as a pioneering force democratising e‑commerce access for creators across Africa.

The bootstrapped startup has been on an impressive growth trajectory, doubling its payout to creators year after year since 2022. This growth has been driven by effective marketing and strategic partnerships.

Selar’s Origin Story and How it Works

Founded in 2016 by Douglas Kendyson, a former Flutterwave and Paystack engineer, Selar was built to empower creators across Africa to monetize their talents. The idea came while he was working at Paystack. Recalling the process to UrbanGeekz in an interview, he was exposed to Africa’s payment ecosystem and saw the challenges creators faced selling and getting paid for their work.

“A lot of customers needed an easy way to sell digital products and receive payments globally. At the time, there was no simple tool for that. I saw a clear demand across Africa and that was the lightbulb moment for me to build Selar.”

Building the product only took three weeks, and the first customers were just Kendyson’s friends. However, it took four years of constant customer feedback and cold-calling creators in Instagram DMs to scale the startup. Selar’s journey has been truly remarkable. What started as a simple tool for selling e‑books, music, and online courses has grown into a full‑featured ecosystem. This ecosystem now supports a wide variety of digital products.

The platform handles product hosting, cross‑border payments, and gives customers an easy way to access those items. All of this is provided without requiring any technical know‑how or web‑development skills. 

The e-commerce platform features a wide array of creator-centric tools: affiliate marketing, analytics dashboards, automated follow-ups, and custom pricing. It also integrates with PayPal and Stripe, offers payouts within 24 hours or via wallet, and supports eight major currencies.

As of today, Selar has grown into Africa’s largest creator platform with over 2 million users across 13 African countries, the US and Europe. In these countries, it has paid over $25 million to creators and, above all else, seen creators grow global businesses through Selar.

How Selar Bootstrapped to Profitability

Nigeria’s tech ecosystem, like other prominent ecosystems across the globe, depends on venture capital as its primary source of funding. In October alone, startups in the country raised $93.4 million in funding, a 130.6% increase from the previous month. 

However, Selar has largely been self-financed, relying on strategic bootstrapping rather than venture capital—a rarity in the fast-paced world of tech startups. Selar received a modest $5,000 grant from the Tony Elumelu Foundation in 2018 and a $50,000 grant from the Job Tech Alliance Accelerator Programme in 2023. Apart from these, the company has shunned external funding.

Responding to why they chose the model and their biggest motivation for sticking with it down the years, Kendyson explained, “Honestly, bootstrapping wasn’t the original plan. I’d quit my job in 2021 and wanted to raise some money for Selar, but I stalled because I wanted to grow the numbers so we’d be more attractive for a raise. Twelve months into that, we hit profitability.”

“I realized I enjoyed the autonomy and figured I’d keep it that way. In hindsight, it has helped us build sustainably while focusing on solving real customer problems. The biggest motivation has been seeing creators actually make a living through Selar. That impact keeps us going, even without external funding.”

This model sustained the startup when the global startup ecosystem began experiencing a significant funding dip starting in the first quarter of 2022. The “funding winter” originated in the United States and China and subsequently spread across all continents.

Nigeria has also experienced a severe cost-of-living crisis driven by persistently high inflation, particularly in food prices. This significantly eroded household purchasing power. Food inflation rose to 39.84% in December 2024, with staples such as rice, eggs, and vegetable oil becoming unaffordable for many. This pushed over 24 million people into acute food insecurity.

This crisis is rooted in economic reforms introduced by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration. These reforms include removing fuel subsidies and floating the naira exchange rate. These measures, intended to stabilize the economy long‑term, led to a rapid depreciation of the naira. This made imported goods, including food and raw materials, more expensive.

As a result, inflation rose to 34.6% in November 2024. This was the highest since the return to democracy in 1999, with basic items like bread and milk doubling or tripling in price. As household budgets are squeezed, consumers are forced to prioritize essential expenditures. This leads to reduced spending on non-essential items such as entertainment, education, and personal development programs.

During this difficult period, Selar employed strategies which helped it maintain resilience as a business. “We’ve always focused on efficiency,” Kendyson said. “Because we’re bootstrapped, we learned early to manage resources, adapt, and keep our operations lean. We also doubled down on listening to our users and building features that help them earn better. When your users succeed, you do too.”

Positioning for Africa’s Blossoming Creative Economy

Africa’s creator economy is projected to grow exponentially, with its market size rising from $5.10 billion in 2025 to $29.84 billion by 2032. This represents a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 28.7 %. This growth is driven by rising internet and smartphone penetration, a large and youthful population, and the increasing adoption of digital payment systems. These factors together enable creators to monetize their content more effectively.

Selar’s Team

The market is also being fueled by the rise of social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. These platforms give creators tools to build audiences and generate income.

Kendyson believes Nigeria’s creator economy is just getting started, “We are seeing creators becoming business owners offering services, products, and experiences that go beyond content. I think with the right infrastructure, Nigeria could easily become the hub for creator commerce in Africa.”

“We’re expanding across Africa and building more solutions that help creators monetize and scale their businesses globally. Our vision is for Selar to become the go-to platform for creator monetization in Africa.”