This is what Gokada and ORide actually did for Max

Added: 2026-05-24

[00:00:00]I thought I wanted to do something a bit bigger than what I've done, then and I felt I needed a bigger platform, right?

[00:00:04]MIT obviously was very attractive. MIT is synonymous with innovation and all of that. Uh so, fortunately, I got admission there for my grad program at the Sloan School. What did you study?

[00:00:13][music] >> I did a business program, right? About the MIT environment is a little different from other MBA programs because it allows you to take classes across all the engineering schools as well. It was just transformational. I learned so much, built [music] really powerful relationships, and that's also where I met Chinedu, with whom I co-founded MAX. And five others.

[00:00:27]Actually, it was about seven of us initially. Tayo, how would you describe [music] you in like three words?

[00:00:32]>> Simple, intense, and complex. I did tell Obafemi Awolowo is the CEO and co-founder of MAX, a mobility and logistics platform that he launched out of MIT in 2015. It turned a class project into one of the continent's most ambitious bets on transportation, raising multiple rounds of fundraising, navigating regulatory shutdowns, a global pandemic, and Nigeria's 2022 currency devaluation along the way. What does it look like? Cuz when you guys started, you were pretty much like the first, right? You were the innovators on the ground. Yeah. And at some point, it feels like it's taking off. Yeah.

[00:00:59]And then somebody just comes >> How did you manage that? And how's it [music] been since then? Of course, initially, we were like, "Hey, what's going on here?" You know, Gokada came in, ORide came in.

[00:01:06]>> Yeah. And a bunch of other players. At that point in time, obviously, you know, you don't like when people like come into your space, especially if you feel like you're the pioneer in the space, right? But, in hindsight now, obviously, we see it very, very differently. And it's one of the things like, you know, you sort of like teach, uh you know, younger founders is the more players in the space, the better it is for everyone. How do you mean? Because what it does is, especially if I'm thinking about it also from a fundraising standpoint, forget like the Open AI's of this world. Those are like real exceptions. But, more often than not, investors don't deploy capital because they see just only one person doing it.

[00:01:34]Investors back a movement. They don't back a company. Mhm. They back a movement, but they find a company in the movement to back. The average percentage of Nigerians' income, or the income of every Nigerian that goes to energy, is already very high. When you double the price of energy, the price of petrol, you've just taken more money out of people who are already desperately poor.

[00:01:51]Money that should go to food, that should go to education, that should go to shelter, that should go to learning skills. You're taking a lot more out of it overnight than just pushing it into energy. Today, Max orbits thousands of electric vehicles across Nigeria, pairs them with solar power charging [music] stations, and is on a mission to lock in energy prices for riders for decades to come. On today's episode of Founders Connect, Tayo shares why he chose to build in Nigeria instead in the US after his MIT degree, what the competitive wave of Gokada and ORide actually did for Max, and the [music] hardest lesson a decade of building has taught him about people, resilience, and responsibility. Max was my project in one of the entrepreneurial classes.