From 100k to 4M Users: How We Built Africa's ‘‘Spotify’’

Learn 5 key startup lessons that helped us grow our DAU from 100k to 4M users in 2 years

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Consider this guide as the playbook for builders creating something entirely new, inspired from scaling a music streaming platform to 4M paying users in emerging markets. This piece contains five critical lessons on development discipline, user experience, and growth.

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In 2013, while Apple was moving from music downloads to streaming, my team at Huawei saw an amazing opportunity in Africa. More people were getting smartphones across the continent, and it felt like the perfect time to build something new in music streaming.

For the past 15 years, I have worked in a unique space—building startup-style innovations inside mega-corporations. This intersection has been interesting, as I have learned the delicate art of combining entrepreneurial speed with corporate muscle. But nothing prepared me for what happened next.

I worked with a small but mighty team - 6 engineers, 2 designers, 2 product managers, and 1 analyst. We weren't just building another music streaming platform; we were racing to capture a moment when technology, market readiness, and customer needs were perfectly aligned. In our first 6 months, we acquired 100,000 paying customers with 80% Daily Active Users(DAU). What followed was extraordinary - a surge to 4 million paying subscribers in just two years!

Looking back now, this journey was more than just product development. Every decision, every iteration, and every user interaction taught us profound lessons about building 0-1 products in uncharted territories. We learned how to introduce transformative technology to markets that weren't just new to our product—they were new to the entire concept of streaming.

This experience refined my perspective on product building and fundamentally transformed my understanding of how to scale products, nurture communities, and build high-performing teams in full public view. When you are creating something truly new, every challenge is a potential opportunity for future innovations.

Here’s how we built this product.

Lesson #1 — Earn the right to build the next thing

One of the key principles we followed was clear focus. We identified ambitious goals and committed to them. This meant following through on what was planned or pivoting with the right validation, before chasing the next initiative, experiment, or shiny idea.

“Earn the right to build” and “have respect for sequencing” are principles I coached the team to internalize. This is important because ideas float from multiple sources and can all seem like the next best thing to achieve. The discipline to sequence your work is a forcing function to understand what is important now, next, and later.

At the earliest stages, this can mean doing due diligence on customer pain points and validating with prototypes. Today, you can almost validate anything using a combination of Cursor, Vercel and Replit. During scoping, it can mean being disciplined about what must be in version 1 of a feature; while post-launch, it can mean rigorously ensuring feature quality & evaluating feature success before thinking about what’s next. And so on.

At a meta-level, it is valuable to set up a consistent product development process that considers strategic fit, prioritization, scope, launch, evaluation, and iteration.

Lesson #2 — Strive for excellent UX and a good enough UI

Simply put, how things work matters more than how they look. This is especially true in the early stages of a product when you have supportive early adopters. They care deeply about how much your product solves their problem, they will be more forgiving of little bells and whistles that do not interfere with their core experience.

Think of your favorite apps. What makes them stick? It is rarely the colors or fonts, but more of how effortlessly they let you achieve your goals. That's the power of great UX.

Great UX is like a well-designed door - you just know how to use it and it makes your product's core features feel natural and intuitive. When customers can accomplish tasks without thinking "How do I do this?", you've nailed your UX!

Poor UX, however, is like a push door with a pull handle. It creates friction, confusion, and frustration. Even worse, it can mask your product's inherent value, driving users away before they experience your core benefits.

UI decisions such as color schemes and typography are like choosing between leather or fabric seats in a car. Sure, they matter for first impressions and brand identity. They can signal whether you're building for Gen Z creators or enterprise executives. But they rarely make or break the product experience.

Here's the proof: Look at your user feedback and bug reports. You'll notice a pattern:

• "I couldn't figure out how to..."

• "Why isn't there a way to..."

• "It took me forever to find..."

These are all UX issues, not UI complaints. Customers deeply care about getting things done, not whether your buttons have rounded corners.

The takeaway here is- Pour your energy into nailing your product's core interactions. Make them clear, simple, and intuitive. Get the UX right, and even a basic UI will serve you well. After all, Craigslist still drives billions in transactions with a UI that hasn't changed since the 90s.

Remember: A beautiful interface with poor usability is like a sports car with a broken engine. It might look great in the garage, but it won't take your users where they need to go.

Lesson #3 — Sound judgment is more skill than talent

I have observed that good product judgment is hard to define because it is empirical; you are only proven “right” after the fact and over time. It is also a skill more than it is pure talent, that is, you have to practice and have multiple repetitions to be world-class and to stay world-class. Arguably the most important way to invest your time is to deeply understand how your customers:

• Experience your product (so much so that you can even anticipate how various target user segments would react to changes in your product).

• Experience other products (know the evolving socio-cultural trends and understand the products that may compete to serve similar needs).

Product judgment is not mysterious - it develops from consistent expertise, customer empathy, and a great degree of creativity. The best way to develop these? Get closer to your customers and market dynamics.

Typically, you do not need a formal UX research team early on. Often, the most valuable insights come from doing the research yourself and drawing on your team's collective experience.

Simple, direct, and effective.

Lesson #4 — Beware of complexity creep

Usually, the first version of your product is simple. As you continue to build, the product becomes more robust in quality, utility, and impact. But, there’s a tipping point after which “robust” can sneakily switch to “complicated.”

You will observe these signs when your product has become too complicated: You’ve launched a suite of features and customers are lukewarm about them, yet you are running out of surface area to place new ones. More evidently, customers are unclear about what to do with the product and how.

Complexity creep is a human problem- Let's talk about the emotional side of building products. Almost every builder I have met falls prey to the fallacy of sunken cost. We fall in love with what we build.

It's natural. We pour our heart into features. We see our team's hard work. And suddenly, letting go (of proven sub-optimal experiences) becomes incredibly difficult for us to do. We hesitate to remove features, even when data shows they're not working. Sometimes we are not entirely sure which parts of our product matter the most to users.

Here's how you can handle this better;

1. Set clear expectations before you launch. What does success look like? What would make this feature a failure? You can learn more about setting KPIs here.

2. Build checkpoints into your process. When should the team continue building, when to pause to understand feedback loops, or when to stop and pivot.

3. Let data guide your decisions, not emotions.

4. Create a clear mechanism for sunsetting features that don't work.

The key here is planning for these emotional challenges ahead of time. When you have clear metrics and processes in place, it is easier to make tough decisions objectively.

Remember: Good product builders create features. Great product builders know when to remove them.

Lesson #5 — A ‘Community’ is a collection of many Communities

We knew early on that music was community-friendly. During customer research, we reinforced the belief that two strangers can hit a fantastic conversation off the content of their playlists.

We hypothesized that if you have 2 customers, you probably have 2 user personas. This is illustrative - even a small group of users can have a vastly different set of experiences, perspectives, goals and needs for your team’s attention and your product. Hence, groups of users form and represent many distinct communities as a network grows.

User segmentation isn't just about creating pretty slides with user personas. It's about making tough choices that shape your product's future.

Smart segmentation drives three critical decisions:

1. Strategic: Which customer segments get your scarce resources - and which do not?

2. Product: How your core value adapts to different user needs?

3. Operational: Where to invest in support, systems, and scale?

The key here is combining hard data with real anecdotal user stories to identify which segments matter. Then make the hard call: choose which segments to serve exceptionally well, knowing you will have to disappoint others.

Remember: Great products aren't built for everyone. They're built for the right someone.

In Summary

This is not just a piece about building a music streaming app across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. It's about recognizing a wave of change before it hits and having the courage to ride it. When we started with just 11 people in a room, we weren't thinking about reaching 4 million subscribers. We were rather focused on solving one problem: Bringing streaming music to people who had never experienced it before.

Our journey from 100,000 users to 4 million subscribers in two years wasn't just about numbers. It was about understanding what happens when you combine the right moment, the right team, and the right approach. While Apple was still figuring out streaming, we were already building the future of music consumption in Africa.

But what makes this story relevant today is that the principles we discovered - building products from scratch, scaling teams, and creating new markets - apply far beyond music streaming. They work whether you're building inside a giant corporation or launching your own startup.

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In the coming series of posts, I'll break down exactly:

• How we made critical early decisions that enabled rapid scaling.

• The specific strategies we used to grow from 100,000 to 4 million users.

• Our approach to building high-performing teams in high-pressure environments.

• The frameworks we developed for introducing new technology to emerging markets.

Want to learn how to spot and seize these opportunities in your market? Subscribe to this newsletter where I share weekly insights about building revolutionary products. Or drop a comment below with your biggest question about scaling products from zero to millions - I'll personally respond with concrete, actionable advice.

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