Buying or selling online shouldn't feel like a gamble. One of the biggest problems when dealing with strangers online is trust — how do you know the other person will actually do what they promised? I'm working on GARE, a marketplace designed around protected transactions, where payment can be held until the agreed transaction condition is met. We're now opening the GARE Early Access List. If you'd genuinely consider using GARE as a buyer, seller, or both, I'd love to have you on the list. No payment. No commitment. Just early access and an opportunity to help shape what we're building. Join the GARE Early Access List: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F… I'm looking to speak with our first buyers and sellers over the coming days and learn what would make GARE genuinely useful. If this problem sounds familiar, join us. 🚀

First rule of selling: always know what your customers want.

This is it

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The founder of GARE started building it after getting burned by online shopping. He ordered products from Temu and experienced that frustrating moment when what arrived wasn’t what he expected. He’s also been scammed several times while buying things from people in other parts of Nigeria and while take a walk in Nigeria streets everyday people complain of same issues. Different sellers. Different situations. Same problem: How do you safely trust someone you’ve never met? That question stayed with him. Because millions of people buy, sell, and offer services online every day, but when something goes wrong, the buyer or seller can be left on their own. That’s where the idea for GARE came from. GARE is a Nigeria-first P2P marketplace built around protected transactions. Buyer pays → GARE holds the funds → seller delivers → buyer confirms → seller gets paid. It’s still pre-launch. No revenue. No traction. Just a personal problem that became a bigger question: Can we build a marketplace where people don’t have to blindly trust strangers with their money? That’s what we’re trying to find out. Nigeria first. Africa next. 🚀

What if you could buy, sell, or work with a stranger online without worrying about whether they’ll hold up their end of the deal? That’s what we’re building with GARE. A Nigeria-first P2P marketplace where the buyer or client pays GARE, we hold the funds, the other side delivers, and the money is released when the agreed condition is met. Physical goods. Digital work. Services. We’re still pre-launch. No revenue. No traction yet. We’re currently raising our first $10K to build the MVP and test the idea with real users. We don’t know yet if GARE will become what we imagine. That’s exactly what we’re going to find out. Nigeria first. Africa next. 🚀

The word "impossible" is not familiar

The Cost of Waiting: When Small-Check Investors Arrive Too Late

Once we raise the first $10K, the goal is simple: make every dollar count. We want to build GARE carefully, validate it with real users, generate revenue, and grow from the business itself rather than constantly depending on fundraising. We’ll work tirelessly to make the company strong enough to fund its own growth. If we eventually raise again, I want it to be because we’re ready for a major expansion — not because we ran out of money. The long-term goal? Build GARE into a company strong enough to think about the public markets someday. 🚀

Someone Has to Bet Before the Proof Exists One thing I’ve been thinking about lately is the role of early investors. Everyone loves a startup after it has users, revenue, growth, and a strong product. But what about before all of that? Before the numbers look good. Before the product is fully built. Before there is proof. That is where the real early-stage bet happens. Take Airbnb. In 2008, Airbnb was still a very uncertain idea. The founders were struggling financially, investors were not convinced, and the company had very little growth. According to Y Combinator’s Paul Graham, the founders had even been funding the company with maxed-out credit cards, while one potential investor famously walked out of a meeting without finishing his smoothie. Yet they kept going. Airbnb eventually went through Y Combinator in 2009. The company started with something incredibly simple: people opening their homes to strangers. Today, that sounds normal. At the time, it required people to believe that strangers would trust strangers enough to sleep in each other’s homes. That is the interesting part about early-stage investing. The investor isn't only betting on the product. They're betting on the founders' ability to turn an uncertain idea into something real. And there is an important distinction here: Taking an early risk doesn't mean ignoring risk. Good early investors still ask hard questions. Can this actually work? Is there a real problem? Can the founder execute? Is the market large enough? What needs to be proven? But eventually, someone has to decide whether the potential upside is worth taking a risk before everything is proven. That is what makes early-stage investing different. By the time a startup has proven everything, the opportunity may already look very different. This is something I'm experiencing firsthand with GARE. GARE is still early. We have a prototype, but we don't yet have the users, transactions, or revenue that would make the opportunity feel safe. And I understand why someone would look at that and say, “It's too risky for me right now.” That's a completely fair position. But startups don't become proven businesses by waiting for someone to prove them first. Someone has to build the first version. Someone has to get the first user. Someone has to process the first transaction. And sometimes, someone has to make the first bet. I'm not saying every early-stage idea deserves investment. Most won't work. But I believe the role of early capital is precisely to give promising founders enough room to turn an idea into evidence. That's the bet I'm looking for with GARE. Not someone who believes blindly. Someone who understands that before there is proof, there is a period where someone has to help create the proof. And maybe that's the most interesting part of entrepreneurship: The future usually looks obvious only after someone was brave enough to build it.

A lot of people see problems and ask, “Why is this so difficult?” I’ve started asking a different question: “What if this difficulty is the opportunity?” The friction, the gaps, the things people complain about every day — sometimes that’s where the next big business is hiding. Build around real problems. 🚀

Just submitted my application to @2048vc . 🚀 I’m building GARE, a Nigeria-first P2P marketplace focused on making buying, selling, and working with strangers safer through protected transactions. We’re still at the idea stage, but I’m serious about turning the hypothesis into evidence. Would love to connect and see how it goes.

In 2010, Bitcoin was still an experiment. The people who got involved that early were taking a chance on something most people didn't understand yet. They weren't investing after the whole world had already validated it. That's what early-stage investing is about. GARE is still very early too. I'm building a Nigeria-first P2P marketplace to make online transactions safer through protected payments. I'm currently raising my first $10K to build the MVP and validate the idea. If you like looking at opportunities before they're obvious, let's talk.

Building GARE from zero is teaching me something: You can have a big vision without having all the answers. Right now, I’m still at the idea stage. No product. No users. No traction. Just a problem I believe is worth solving, a hypothesis, and a lot of questions. The goal now isn’t to look bigger than I am. It’s to test the idea, learn from real people, and turn uncertainty into evidence. One step at a time. 🚀

I’m looking for an early-stage investor who is willing to make a small bet before the evidence is obvious. I’m building GARE — a Nigeria-first P2P marketplace focused on making buying, selling, and working with strangers more trusted. We’re still at the idea/pre-launch stage. No product. No revenue. No traction. I’m raising my first $10K to build the MVP, validate the problem, and turn the hypothesis into evidence. @capital_3x if you know an angel or VC who genuinely likes making early bets, I’d appreciate an introduction.

I’m not looking for a big pre-seed round yet. I’m looking for the first $10K bet. GARE is still at the idea/pre-launch stage. No product. No revenue. No traction. The goal of that first capital is simple: build the MVP, test the trust problem with real Nigerians, and turn assumptions into evidence. If the evidence is strong, then I can think about a larger pre-seed. First bet → first evidence → next round. 🚀

Building from zero teaches you something: Conviction isn’t believing your idea will work. It’s being willing to test it when you could be wrong. That’s where I am with GARE 🇳🇬 No product. No traction. No revenue. Just a problem I believe is worth solving, a hypothesis to test, and the search for someone willing to make an early bet before the evidence is obvious. Build. Test. Learn. Repeat. 🚀

Building GARE from zero is teaching me something: A big market doesn’t mean you should build for everyone. Nigeria has 200M+ people, but my first goal is much smaller — find the people who genuinely struggle with trust when buying, selling, or working with strangers online. Solve that problem for them first. Then earn the right to expand. 🇳🇬🚀

If Apple can launch a foldable phone 7 years after Samsung, you can do the thing you’ve been telling yourself you can’t do just because someone else did it before you.

Nigeria gives GARE a powerful starting point. 200M+ people. Millions of buyers, sellers, freelancers and service providers already participating in online commerce. The opportunity is not to create the behavior. It’s to make those transactions safer and more trusted. If we can build strong trust and liquidity in Nigeria, the same model can expand across Africa and eventually globally. @dara_venture — I’d be interested in your thoughts on this market opportunity. I’m still at idea stage and focused on proving the opportunity before building too much. 🇳🇬 → 🌍 🚀