Client: (Client name changed for privacy.)
Role: Project and Product Manager
Industry: Social Media / Technology
Located: UK / Ghana
Timeline: 2023
Team Size: 2-20
Tools: Jira, Agile-Scrum
Two African founders saw something in the creator economy that most people overlooked.
On every major platform, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Patreon, Twitch, and Facebook, the same pattern appeared. Black, Indigenous, creators of colour who had built audiences and engagement earned much less than white creators with similar work and followings because the platforms weren’t designed for them.
The founders saw this gap and decided to take action. They set out to build a social platform from scratch, led by Africans, for a global community of underrepresented creators. Their goal was to support fair earnings and create a genuine community for those often overlooked by existing algorithms.
As a startup, everything needed to be built from scratch, and it all had to happen quickly. The two founders I worked with had entirely unique approaches. One focused on technical and engineering decisions, while the other concentrated on the mission and the community aimed to serve. From the start, much of my role was to connect these two perspectives.
I managed two workstreams at once: building the team and setting up the infrastructure they would use, and as mentioned earlier, both needed to happen at the same time.
The founders were clear about whom they wanted to build Luupli. African talent. The team would be sourced from Nigeria, Ghana, Algeria, Egypt, Kenya, and across the African tech ecosystem. This was a statement of identity that Africans were building this platform, and the team had to reflect that from the very beginning.
Over the first three months, I conducted and coordinated over 100 interviews. I sourced candidates from LinkedIn, job boards, Slack communities, Facebook groups, referral networks, and every corner of the African tech ecosystem I could find. Some interviews I led independently. Others I ran jointly with the founders. The search was constant and didn’t stop at posting listings and waiting; we showed up in the communities where African tech talent gathered and made a genuine case for why we were worth their time.
We were searching for people with direct experience building similar products. Those who had done it before were much more desirable in a startup than those learning for the first time. Finding enough of these candidates from a specific region in just three months took patience and steady effort across many channels.
The team that eventually came together was the most important output of the entire ten months. They were people who could work together effectively, who understood the technical challenge, and who believed in what they were building. The founders had been deliberate and patient throughout the interview process; they knew that the initial team would build the first version of the product and set the pace, culture, and capabilities for everything that followed. Getting it right was definitely worth the time it took.
As the team formed, I set up the Agile-Scrum framework to guide our product development.
We used Jira to manage our work, set up epics, sprints, and backlogs to help organize the roadmap, and list everything the team needed to build. I wrote user stories with clear acceptance criteria so developers and designers knew what was expected for each feature.
We also set up all the Agile ceremonies: daily standups to spot blockers, sprint planning to set clear goals, sprint reviews to show progress and get feedback from the founders, and retrospectives to help the team improve how they worked together.
Most team members had worked in Agile environments before, which made the transition easier. Still, every team is different, so we adjusted the ceremonies to fit our needs and timezones, deciding what to cover in standups, how detailed sprint planning should be, and how to make retrospectives helpful.
This setup gave the founders a clear view of our progress. The team also had a shared way of working, which reduced confusion and made coordination a lot easier.
While the team was being assembled and the processes established, I led competitive research across the social media landscape.
We studied TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Patreon, Twitch, Clubhouse, Twitter, and other major platforms in the creator economy. We listed their features and looked for where they fell short for the creators we aimed to support. We asked: Where were the gaps? What did those gaps look like in terms of product features? What had these platforms built, and what was missing?
Our findings confirmed that the earnings gap was clear and consistent. It appeared in monetization program rules, in how algorithms promoted content, in access to brand partnerships, and in the tools meant to help creators grow. Most platforms were not built with underrepresented creators in mind, and the results showed it.
This research confirmed our mission and directly shaped the product. By seeing what competitors had built and what they hadn’t, the founders and team knew exactly where Luupli needed to go and how it should be different from the start. While I can’t share the specific product decisions due to an NDA, this research was very helpful in shaping the platform.
I left in July 2023, before the public launch. The team continued developing the product, moving into user testing, watching how creators used the platform, and making improvements based on their feedback.
In product development, the early months matter. The team you build at the start shapes what’s possible later, and the processes you set up when the team is small determine whether it can succeed as it grows. The founders at Luupli knew this and took the time to build the right foundation and find the best people.
