The people who need money rarely make good money.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Poverty as a founder is a two-sided coin. One side forges empires. The other buries them. And the tragedy is that most founders never realize which side they’re standing on until it’s too late.

The fire that poverty ignites

Let’s be honest. Growing up without much creates something powerful in you. You’ve tasted what “not having” feels like. You’ve worn it. Slept in it. That memory burns itself into your bones and becomes rocket fuel.

Napoleon Hill understood this. In Think and Grow Rich, he wrote about how his own poverty as a young man became the furnace that forged his obsession with success. He interviewed over 500 of the wealthiest people in America and found a pattern: many of them had known poverty intimately.

Andrew Carnegie grew up in a one-room house in Scotland. His family was so poor they immigrated to America with almost nothing. That poverty didn’t break Carnegie. It gave him a burning desire that comfortable people simply cannot manufacture.

Some of the most driven founders I know carry that same fire. They have something to prove. They’re not vibe coding startups as a hobby or chasing trends because AI might take their job.

They’re building because they refuse to go back to where they came from.

That’s real motivation. That’s the kind of energy that makes you work weekends, learn faster, and push through when others quit.

Poverty, wielded correctly, is a weapon.

The anchor that drowns you

But here’s the cruel twist.

That same poverty can become a chain around your neck. When you’re constantly worried about rent, about feeding yourself, about keeping the lights on, something happens to your brain. You stop thinking in years. You start thinking in days. Sometimes hours.

This is survival mode. And survival mode is the enemy of great decision-making.

You take the first deal instead of the right deal. You ship half-baked products because you need revenue now.

You say yes to clients who drain your soul because you can’t afford to say no. You optimize for cash today instead of building value for tomorrow.

When you need money, you make desperate moves. Desperate moves rarely compound into wealth.

The very hunger that drove you to start becomes the hunger that forces you into corners.

Poverty is expensive

I say this often and people look at me confused. How can not having money be expensive?

Let me explain.

When you’re poor, you can’t buy in bulk. You pay more per unit for everything. You can’t afford the annual plan that saves 40%. You pay monthly, bleeding money slowly.

You can’t invest in tools that save time because you don’t have the upfront cash. So you spend hours doing what software could do in minutes. Your time becomes cheap because you can’t afford to value it.

When you’re a poor founder, the cost multiplies. You can’t hire help, so you do everything yourself. Poorly. You can’t afford the lawyer, so you sign bad contracts.

You can’t wait for the right investor, so you take predatory terms. You can’t say no to bad revenue, so you build a business that owns you instead of one you own.

The cheap option is almost always more expensive in the long run. But when you’re poor, the long run is a luxury you can’t afford to think about.

This is the trap. Poverty forces you into decisions that keep you poor. The desperate founder takes the $10,000 today instead of building toward the $10 million tomorrow. And that $10,000 decision costs them everything.

Poverty doesn’t just take your money. It takes your options. And options are worth more than money.

The pattern hiding in plain sight

Look at the founders who’ve built generational wealth. Really study them. A pattern emerges that most people miss.

Jeff Bezos was a senior vice president at a Wall Street hedge fund before Amazon. He didn’t quit until he had enough runway to not worry about his next meal. He was derisked.

Sara Blakely kept her day job selling fax machines for two years while building Spanx on the side. She didn’t need Spanx to work. She wanted it to work. That distinction changed everything.

Mark Zuckerberg built Facebook while at Harvard. No rent to worry about. No pressure to monetize immediately. He could afford to say no to Yahoo’s $1 billion offer because he didn’t need the money.

Reid Hoffman funded his own early ventures from his PayPal exit. By the time he started LinkedIn, money wasn’t the pressure. Building something meaningful was.

The Stripe founders, Patrick and John Collison, had options. They could have taken high-paying jobs anywhere. They chose to build. That’s a different energy than having to build because you’ll starve otherwise.

Derek Sivers built CD Baby with a different philosophy entirely. Do one thing. Make it profitable. Then move on. He sold it for $22 million and gave the money to charity. No desperation. No rushing. Just profitable, then next.

African founders who got this right

This isn’t just a Western playbook. Some of the most successful African founders understood derisking too.

Shola Akinlade and Ezra Olubi built Paystack while they had other income streams. Shola had experience from working at companies and had built financial stability before going all in. They weren’t desperate when they started. They were prepared. That patience paid off with a $200M acquisition by Stripe.

Sim Shagaya built several businesses before Konga, learning and accumulating resources along the way. By the time he went big, he had the experience, network, and financial cushion to play the long game.

Tayo Oviosu worked at major companies including Visa before starting Paga. He didn’t jump into entrepreneurship broke and desperate. He built his skills, his savings, and his network first. That foundation let him build Paga into one of Nigeria’s leading fintech companies.

Iyinoluwa Aboyeji co-founded Andela after already having entrepreneurial experience and connections. When he later co-founded Flutterwave, he had even more runway. Financial, social, and experiential. He could afford to think big because he wasn’t thinking about next month’s rent.

The pattern holds everywhere. Founders who derisk first tend to build bigger and for longer.

The derisking imperative

Here’s what I’ve learned: the best thing you can do as a founder is to derisk yourself financially before going all in.

This might mean:

• Keeping your job while you validate your idea
• Building a side income that covers your basics
• Saving aggressively before taking the leap
• Finding a co-founder or partner who can share the financial burden
• Getting to a point where you can survive 12 to 18 months without revenue

The goal is simple. Get to where you want the money but don’t need the money.

When you don’t need it, you make better decisions. You can walk away from bad deals. You can take the time to build something right. You can wait for the right opportunity instead of grabbing the first one.

This is not about being rich first

Let me be clear. I’m not saying you need to be wealthy to start a company. I’m saying you need to not be desperate.

There’s a difference between being hungry and starving. Hungry founders build empires. Starving founders make compromises that may turn out to be their kryptonite.

The poverty that drove you? Keep that chip on your shoulder. Keep that memory of what you’re running from. But don’t let the present reality of poverty force you into decisions that sacrifice your future.

Use the memory of poverty as fuel. Don’t let the reality of poverty become your chain.

The uncomfortable truth for African founders

Many of us don’t have the luxury of family money, safety nets, or fallback options. The playing field isn’t level. I know that.

But that makes derisking even more important, not less. It might take longer. You might need to be more creative. You might need to build slower than your counterparts with more resources.

That’s okay. A slower path to a solid foundation beats a fast path to a desperate situation.

Build your runway. Then take off.

The coin of poverty will flip. Make sure you’ve done the work to control which side it lands on.