Can you believe it? We've been on this incredible journey for 1,077 days, helping over 200,000 of you manage your cross-border payments better. Every day has been an adventure, and we couldn't be more grateful for your trust in us.
Circa 2021: Young, tenacious, and VERY delusional. We had no idea what was coming. | L-R Clinton, Adesuwa, Zino
If someone had shown us a glimpse of what we'd go through building Accrue, we might have thought it wise to call it a day and kill the dream before we even began — just kidding, just kidding, we love it here đź¤
It all started with an idea—Zino wanted to build a dollar-cost averaging app to make investing in crypto and stocks simple for beginners. He shared it with Clinton and Adesuwa, who immediately got on board. The first validation came from Tomiwa, our former boss, who believed in us enough to write our first check. We'll always be grateful for that early vote of confidence—thank you, Tomiwa!
Tomiwa sent us a congratulatory gift when we launched.
We were like kids with a new toy, super excited about making investing simpler for everyone. We truly believed this idea would be something special, and with every small win, that belief only grew stronger.
Before we launched, over a thousand people had joined our waitlist, many flooding our mentions, asking for early access. Within three months, $100,000 had already been deposited into the app. Revenue started coming in, and for a while—during the crypto boom—everything felt like it was falling into place.
When we finally launched a private beta in late 2021, people loved our Dollar-Cost Averaging calculator. It was like having a financial advisor helping you visualize your looming riches. We could not have been more proud.
Startups are emotional rollercoasters. All smiles in this picture, but from 2022 till mid-2023 we were on a death march — Clinton and Adesuwa.
Startups are emotional rollercoasters. In 2022, we hit our first major downturn when the crypto market crashed. Our once-promising revenue stream dried up as investor interest evaporated. Despite having a product people loved, raising funds became nearly impossible—investors kept turning us down, citing "poor market timing" even when they liked what we were building.
With our bank account dwindling and profitability nowhere in sight, we faced the harsh reality many startups dread: pivot or die.
Our first pivot didn't work as well as we had hoped. Users would praise our app's beautiful design and intuitive interface: "The Accrue app is so beautiful and easy to use, I just wish I had money to put in it." While the validation felt good, we learned that a pretty product alone doesn't make a sustainable business. Without growing revenue, we were not building a company. And that realization stung.
To keep the lights on while figuring out how to grow revenue, we went without pay for eight months, and we had to make some painful decisions, including temporarily laying off a valued teammate and cutting salaries by 35% for those who remained.
Sometimes, the best ideas come from your users showing you what's possible. On November 26, 2022 (we'll never forget this day!), while checking our dashboard, we noticed a Ghanaian woman casually using our app to send money to her aunt in Nigeria in minutes. We were like, "Wait, what? It can do that?”
Cashramp! What started as a simple tool to help our Ghanaian users make deposits turned out to have incredible potential far beyond what we initially imagined. So we thought, "Let's roll with this!".
We pivoted the company again, this time betting everything on Cashramp (our cross-border payment infrastructure). And wow, what a ride it’s been! In just seven months, it went from being a tiny part of our business to bringing in most of our revenue. By mid-2023, we hit the sweetest milestone ever—profitability!