Takeaways

• By its founder's own account, Iroko TV raised thirty-five million dollars and spent about a hundred million over ten years, with paying viewers as its goal; it left Nigeria in two thousand and twenty-three. A sister business with fewer than thirty staff, selling films and channels to pay-television companies on contracts of three to five years, was bringing eighty percent of the revenue for a quarter of the costs when its numbers were separated out for the two thousand and nineteen fundraise.
• The person who uses your work and the person who pays for it are often different people, and you may not see which is which until you separate the numbers. That is our reading of one founder's hindsight; he also names richer rivals and a falling currency, and viewers abroad did subscribe.
• Something to try: before Friday, list every payment you received last month, write beside each the kind of customer who paid, add up each kind with the work it took, and ask one more customer of the best-paying kind to buy. No sales yet? Ask someone who sells the nearest thing who pays them.