Building Workarena: What Worked, What Didn’t, and What I’d Change

1. Context: Building and Scaling Across Markets

Workarena did not start as a fully formed idea. It started from curiosity and proximity to a problem.

After working as a founder’s associate in a hiring startup and later as a talent acquisition specialist in an HR development company, I became increasingly interested in solving workforce challenges in Nigeria. With a youth population of over 60 million, I saw a clear opportunity for Nigeria to mirror markets like India in creating large-scale employment pathways. That realisation stayed with me. At the same time, I developed a growing curiosity for software and entrepreneurship.

That curiosity became practical when I tried to build a simple website and realised how expensive it was at the time. Instead of outsourcing it, I taught myself and built my first WordPress site from scratch using online tutorials. What started as a workaround became a shift in mindset. I moved from observing problems to actively solving them.

I used Workarena as a vehicle to gain admission into the MEST accelerator in Accra, and after completing the program in 2020, I continued building with a clearer understanding of the problem I wanted to solve. Over time, Workarena evolved into a cross-border HR-tech platform supporting startups and multinationals across telecoms, fintech, and e-commerce, with operations spanning the UAE, Kenya, Ghana, and Nigeria.

In building Workarena, I operated across talent acquisition, sales and partnerships, and operations. In practice, that meant owning the full chain from identifying demand to fulfilling it across different markets and regulatory environments.

At its peak, the company placed over 200 professionals, improved offer acceptance rates to 92 percent, reduced time to hire from 45 days to 14 days, and drove 45 percent year-on-year revenue growth.

Expansion was not just about growth. It was about building something that could scale without breaking.

2. The Expansion Problem: Growth vs Scalable Growth

Early traction came from channels that I was familiar with. I leaned heavily on LinkedIn, writing consistently about hiring and talent, which created inbound demand and credibility from companies. I also created an outbound outreach campaigns via LinkedIn to companies. MEST portfolio companies became a strong distribution channel, leading to referrals and early client relationships.

One of the earliest signals that Workarena could operate beyond Nigeria came from working with a company based in the UAE and India that needed to build a distributed team in Africa. That single engagement extended across Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya and became a foundation for expansion.

However, as demand increased, it became clear that growth alone was not enough.

Revenue was concentrated within a small number of clients. Hiring processes were still dependent on individual effort rather than systems. Market knowledge outside Nigeria was reactive rather than deliberate.

The core question became:

How do we transition from opportunistic growth to repeatable, cross-market expansion?

This required a change in how I approached decisions. Instead of reacting to opportunities, I started thinking in terms of structure. Which markets made sense and why. What conditions needed to be true before entering. How to sequence expansion so that each step reinforced the next.

That shift toward structured thinking became one of the most important changes in how I operated.

3. What Worked

   3.1 Turning Execution Into Systems

One of the most important inflection points was moving from ad hoc hiring to a structured talent system.

In the early stages, hiring was reactive. Each client request triggered a new process, often without consistent evaluation criteria or a clear deployment structure. This made outcomes unpredictable and limited our ability to scale.

I began to redesign the hiring process as a system rather than a set of tasks. Sourcing became more targeted and role-specific. Evaluation was standardised so candidates could be assessed consistently across markets. Deployment was aligned with client timelines to ensure hiring translated into actual business outcomes.

This shift led to measurable improvements. We placed over 400 professionals across multiple companies and markets. Time to hire reduced from 45 days to 14 days. Offer acceptance increased to 92 percent.

More importantly, it created leverage. The same system could be applied across clients and geographies, allowing us to scale without a corresponding increase in complexity.

This was the point where I began to see the difference between working hard and building something that works.

3.2 Market Intelligence as a Strategic Lever

Expansion required more than demand signals. Each market introduced new variables, including regulatory requirements, talent availability, and compensation expectations.

I approached this by building a consistent way to evaluate markets. Instead of relying on intuition, I compared markets across key dimensions such as talent supply, cost structures, regulatory complexity, and client demand.

This made expansion more deliberate. It allowed me to prioritise markets with the highest likelihood of success and to enter them with clearer assumptions.

It also changed how I thought about opportunity. Rather than pursuing every available market, I began focusing on where we could build a repeatable advantage.

This shift toward structured thinking allowed us to move from opportunistic expansion to more disciplined growth.

3.3 Scaling Revenue Through Structured Channels

Revenue growth, which reached 45 percent year on year, was not driven by a single factor.

It came from a combination of faster hiring cycles, better talent matching, and the ability to serve clients across multiple markets. One of the most important insights was that expansion worked best when it followed client demand.

Rather than entering markets independently, we expanded alongside companies that were already growing across regions. This reduced risk and increased efficiency, as demand was already validated.

Channels like LinkedIn and the MEST network played an important role in early growth, but the real driver of scale was the ability to convert individual client engagements into multi-market opportunities.

This validated a key insight:

Expansion is most effective when driven by client pull across markets, not just geographic push.

4. Case Studies: Execution in Practice

What made Workarena a meaningful operating experience was not just scale, but range. The problems varied significantly depending on the company, and each required a different approach.

Case 1: Tendo - Market Entry Under Time Pressure

Tendo was an early-stage, YC-backed e-commerce startup expanding into Nigeria during the COVID period. The company had raised capital and needed to move quickly, but had no local team or hiring infrastructure.

The challenge here was speed combined with ambiguity. There was no existing system to improve. Everything had to be built from scratch.

I started with rapid market research to understand the talent landscape and identify roles that would directly impact early traction. From there, I led the hiring of the entire Nigerian team, including the country manager and key operational roles.

Candidate experience became a critical factor. In a period of uncertainty, clear communication and consistent engagement helped improve conversion rates and secure strong candidates.

Within a short timeframe, the company had a fully staffed team and was able to begin operations.

This experience required decisiveness and the ability to impose structure without slowing execution.

Case 2: Imperial Gaming - Organisation Transformation

Imperial Gaming was an operating company with over 20 employees, but with a team structure that was not aligned with its business priorities.

The issue was not hiring volume. It was organisational effectiveness.

I began by diagnosing the existing structure, identifying roles that were not contributing to outcomes and gaps that were limiting performance. I worked with leadership to redefine the team based on what the business actually needed.

This involved making trade-offs, including replacing low-impact roles and introducing new ones that could drive results. Once the structure was clear, I rebuilt the team around it.

Within six weeks, we hired 15 roles and improved offer acceptance from around 70 percent to over 90 percent.

The outcome was not just a new team. It was a more coherent organisation aligned with its goals.

Case 3: Pericius - Cross-Border Expansion

Pericius, a company with over 5,000 employees, was expanding into Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya. The challenge here was executing within an established global structure while adapting to local market realities.

I worked on designing hiring strategies across the three markets, defining team structures, and aligning roles with both global expectations and local conditions.

Execution involved scaling hiring to over 60 employees across the three countries, while also introducing payroll and people operations systems to support them.

A key part of this work was managing cross-cultural interactions. Working with stakeholders across regions required aligning expectations, adapting communication styles, and maintaining clarity across different ways of working.

The success of this engagement came from balancing structure with flexibility and ensuring that expansion did not create operational friction within the broader organisation.

5. What Didn't Work

One of the most significant mistakes I made was not investing early enough in internal systems, marketing and documentation.

Because the focus was on delivery, processes were often not documented, and decisions were not always captured in a way that others could follow. This made it difficult to track team structure clearly, particularly in cases where we were managing employees on behalf of clients.

It also limited scalability. The business depended too much on my direct involvement, which reduced the ability to delegate effectively.

In hindsight, this was a strategic gap. Systems should have been built alongside growth, not after it.

6. What I'd Do Differently Now

If I were to rebuild Workarena, I would approach it with a stronger emphasis on structure and focus.

I would build internal systems earlier, ensuring that documentation, tracking, and visibility are part of the foundation rather than an afterthought.

I would also be more deliberate about market selection, focusing on fewer markets and going deeper rather than expanding broadly.

Most importantly, I would lean earlier into structured thinking. Breaking problems into frameworks, comparing options systematically, and sequencing decisions more deliberately would have improved both speed and outcomes.

7. Final Reflection

Building Workarena shaped how I think about operating.

Working across startups and large organisations, and across different cultural contexts, reinforced the importance of clarity, structure, and adaptability. It also showed me that execution alone is not enough. The real leverage comes from being able to take an ambiguous situation and turn it into something structured and repeatable.

That is the kind of work I am most interested in.