Co-founder and CEO of Shield
Banking, payments, and business credit for wholesalers, resellers, exporters and importers.
I was born in the US to Nigerian immigrants, the middle of five brothers. After Princeton I moved to Nigeria to run our factory with my own hands. Goods moved, but money had a tendency to stall. A supplier payment would vanish for days, then bounce with no reason.
I co-founded Shield. We started in Ecuador, went through a16z's accelerator in LA, and moved to Miami, the center of US and LatAm trade.
Our customers are importers, exporters and wholesalers. Many are new to stablecoins, and they should never have to think about them. They just want to pay suppliers and get paid.
I build a lot of our internal systems myself. Before I automate anything, I ask one question: can I undo it if it's wrong?
Miami
Shield provides trade businesses a US-dollar account, cross-border payments and business credit in one place. Shield is a registered MSB in the US and has $600M+ processed as of September 2026.
Before Shield, I was on the founding team of Releaf, a Y Combinator-backed trade business, and ran its agricultural processing factory in rural Nigeria. I then spent a year at McKinsey in Lagos building a risk and controls program for a $200B bank. I graduated from Princeton in 2019.
If you're building in trade, payments or credit, I'm glad to compare notes, especially on getting to first revenue, raising an institutional round, or running a US business from outside the US. Email me with what you're working on.