When Nigeria’s first wave of digital businesses emerged, there was no playbook for the lawyers advising them. Mobile money was still finding its feet, startups had not yet become a recognised asset class, and regulators were trying to understand businesses that did not fit neatly into existing laws.
For many founders, compliance meant squeezing innovative business models into regulations designed for traditional industries. For lawyers advising those companies, the challenge wasn’t simply interpreting the law. It was figuring out where innovative businesses fit within regulatory systems that had never anticipated them.
That gap was what Aderonke Alex-Adedipe and Seun Timi-Koleolu, Founding Partners of Pavestones Legal, sought to bridge.
Before launching the law firm in 2018, both women had front-row seats to Nigeria’s digital transformation. Timi-Koleolu spent years as in-house counsel at Etisalat Nigeria (formerly 9mobile, now T2), while Alex-Adedipe, who was a Partner at Strachan Partners, built her career advising clients in banking and financial services. Their experiences placed them at the intersection of two industries that eventually produced Nigeria’s modern startup ecosystem.
Together, those experiences shaped a law firm that has grown alongside the business ecosystem.
When fintech was simply “mobile money”
Timi-Koleolu traces her introduction to technology law back to her years at Etisalat, where she led a team of corporate commercial lawyers.
At the time, telecom operators were more than connectivity providers. They were the infrastructure that enabled many of Nigeria’s earliest digital businesses. Companies offering mobile payments, educational content, sports updates, and healthcare services all depended on telecom networks to reach users.
Her legal team drafted agreements for what were then known as value-added service providers, businesses that have now evolved into fintechs, edtechs, and healthtech startups.
“I remember when the first mobile money contract came to my table. It was something we were not used to and it was new. Some really intelligent innovators came up with apps and software that allowed us to sit in our offices and use mobile phones to do transfers and settle our financial needs.”
Back then, financial services largely required visiting a physical bank branch. Mobile money changed that, while digital services also began reaching millions through mobile phones. Inside the telecom companies, those changes forced legal teams to rethink existing frameworks.
“There was a time when we were all brainstorming in Etisalat and in most of the telcos wondering how do we group these people? What kind of contracts do they need?”
Looking back, she describes that period as the moment technology stopped being synonymous with telecommunications and became a vehicle for solving everyday problems.
“This is where they caught my fancy. It tickled me, and I was really interested in trying to help make these things happen.”
Alex-Adedipe experienced a similar shift from advising businesses in the financial services sector. As financial services began to evolve beyond tradition, she found herself providing advisory services at the intersection between finance and technology (fintech).
In addition, during the evolution, technology companies began raising capital and building financial products. She also observed that startups increasingly required and demanded legal services to support them with compliance and regulatory requirements, despite the absence of specific technology laws in Nigeria.
“Even though there was no technology law in Nigeria, the startups recognised that they needed lawyers because, first of all, no one would invest in you if you don’t have a lawyer. You also had to show some level of compliance when dealing with investors and accelerator programmes,” Adedipe says.
Building a law firm for startups rather than traditional businesses
Around the same period, Alex-Adedipe and Timi-Koleolu independently decided to leave established organisations to build something of their own. Introduced through a mutual friend, they quickly realised they shared the same vision. Their goal was not simply to create another commercial practice. They wanted legal advice to be accessible, practical and aligned with how startups operate.
“We happened to meet at a time when technology was just evolving. The sector was relatively new even for lawyers, and there was a need. Tech companies required our services; they didn’t necessarily want to work with traditional law firms because they felt there was a knowledge gap. We were fresh, agile, and had some level of experience,” Adedipe says.
Both believed traditional legal practice was failing to meet the needs of fast-moving businesses.
As an in-house lawyer, Timi-Koleolu often sought urgent legal advice from external counsel only to receive lengthy academic opinions that answered every legal question except the commercial one.
That experience became one of the principles behind Pavestones Legal.
“We wanted to understand the business of our clients. We wanted to solve their problems. We wanted to focus more on providing succinct advice that solves the problem rather than just trying to justify our pay,” Timi-Koleolu says.
The firm also made another deliberate decision to publish legal information freely, writing weekly, to help companies and businesses understand Nigerian regulations.
According to both founders, the idea was simple. Businesses should not struggle to find basic regulatory information before they can even begin to seek legal advice.
Regulation is still chasing innovation
The legal landscape startups operate in today looks very different from the one Pavestones Legal entered in 2018. When the firm first started, there were many regulations in place that did not specifically address technology issues.
Nigeria has since introduced dedicated frameworks around fintech, data protection, consumer protection, digital assets and other technology-driven sectors. Regulators such as the Central Bank of Nigeria and the Securities and Exchange Commission have also developed more specialised approaches to supervising digital businesses.
Yet the founders argue that regulation will always trail innovation.
“We always say that regulation follows innovation,” Alex-Adedipe says. “That’s not necessarily just a thing in Nigeria. It’s a global phenomenon.”
According to her, regulators first need to understand how new technologies work before meaningful regulation can emerge.
Timi-Koleolu agrees, noting that early regulators often struggled to classify startups because they viewed technology largely through the lens of information technology rather than digital businesses.
“It was almost like regulators were placing hurdles in the way of innovation as if they didn’t understand it; they were just going to stamp a no on it or make it difficult.”
That forced lawyers to become translators between innovative businesses and traditional regulatory frameworks. The firm’s approach became layered. First, understand the business itself. Second, identify the sector it operates in, whether finance, healthcare or education. Finally, determine the technology-specific obligations, such as data protection and cybersecurity.
Over time, regulators also became more specialised. Although sectors such as agritech and edtech still rely heavily on traditional regulatory structures, both founders believe regulators have become considerably more mature.
Why compliance should start from day one
Despite the progress regulators have made, both founders believe one misconception continues to hold startups back: viewing compliance as something to address after achieving growth.
Alex-Adedipe compares compliance to a solid foundation.
“Compliance is like the infrastructure on which you build your business. It’s the foundation on which you build your business,” she says.
Businesses that postpone governance often spend years developing practices that become difficult and expensive to reverse once regulators or investors begin asking questions.
Delaying it, she warned, can become expensive once a company begins to attract regulatory scrutiny or investor attention. She also challenged the assumption that compliance is only for advanced businesses or companies with significant financial resources.
According to Timi-Koleolu, investors increasingly scrutinise governance, contracts and regulatory compliance during due diligence. Weak documentation or unresolved legal risks can delay or entirely derail investment opportunities.
Founders also continue to underestimate the importance of agreements governing relationships between co-founders, partners and third parties. Disputes that appear manageable in a company’s early days often become significantly more complicated when ownership, investment or intellectual property enters the equation.
“Startups should enter into founders’ agreements from the onset to manage the relationship between the founders,” Timi-Koleolu says.
She also warned against relying entirely on generative AI to produce legal agreements.
“Sometimes startups say now with AI or ChatGPT they can draft their own contracts. But the difference is that when the lawyer is drafting the agreement, we are thinking about the risks.” These considerations are areas generic templates rarely capture.
The next challenge for African startups
Beyond compliance, the founders see undervaluing intellectual property as another issue emerging across African startups.
In their experience, founders are often eager to secure partnerships or immediate funding but pay less attention to preserving ownership of the ideas, technology and data that create long-term value.
For Alex-Adedipe and Timi-Koleolu, however, the objective remains the same as when they founded Pavestones Legal: ensure the law enables innovation rather than becoming an obstacle to it.
Because while startups may be built on code, capital and ambition, sustainable growth increasingly depends on getting the legal foundations right.
