COO search for African fintech
TITC runs retained COO searches for fintech and financial services businesses across Africa. For founder-CEOs who need to stop being the bottleneck.
The hire that keeps going wrong
You're doing product, ops, hiring and the raise. The COO hire is meant to give you back the three things only you can do. Most don't.
The common miss is hiring a strong coordinator who organises the chaos but never owns it. Six months in you're still in every decision. The other miss is chemistry. The COO sits closer to you than anyone. Get the fit wrong and it plays out like a bad marriage, in public, in front of the team.
In payments and lending, "operations" isn't generic. It's settlement, reconciliation, treasury ops, PSP and bank relationships, fraud ops and customer operations. A COO who's only run a software team will drown in the rails.
What good looks like
Someone who complements you instead of mirroring you. Who owns the operating cadence so you can leave the room. Who's run regulated, money-moving operations at the scale you're heading into, not the scale you've left. The test is simple. Within two quarters, the day-to-day runs without you.
How we run it
COO is the hardest fit to get right because it's the most personal. We spend real time on how you operate before we map the market, then assess for complementary strengths, not just operational track record.
Common questions
When does a fintech need a COO?
When the founder-CEO has become the bottleneck on execution. Typically between 30 and 150 staff, or when the business runs in more than one market and no single person owns operations end to end.
What's the difference between a COO and a senior operations manager?
A COO owns the operating model and a P&L, and makes the CEO redundant on the day-to-day. An operations manager runs a function. Hiring the second when you need the first is the most common COO mistake.
How do you reduce the risk of a bad founder-COO fit?
We assess working style and complementarity before profile. The brief starts with how the CEO operates, where they want to let go, and where they don't.
Discuss a mandate
Still in every decision? Tell us what you need to hand over.