Samuel Okwuada on building Healthtech in Nigeria and the Challenges that come with it

Samuel Okwuada sold his first software company for hundreds of thousands of dollars at 17 while studying pharmacy in the UK. Today, he runs Remedial Health, a YCombinator-backed Nigerian Healthtech startup that has raised over 50 million dollars, employs 450 people, operates 100 vehicles across three Nigerian cities, and delivers 100 million medicines annually to thousands of pharmacies and hospitals across Africa. But the journey from bedroom coder to healthcare logistics pioneer was anything but straightforward.You'll hear how Samuel started Remedial Health as healthtech without the tech, literally taking WhatsApp orders and scrambling to fulfill them manually before building the actual platform. He reveals why he would never build this company again, not even in his wildest dreams, despite raising over 50 million dollars and achieving massive scale. The operational nightmares of running what feels like running a city, managing 450 people from motor boys to engineers, dealing with law enforcement extortion on every delivery route, watching a truck carrying 50 million naira worth of medicine flip over on terrible roads just an hour after celebrating a major government contract.Samuel breaks down the real cost of building in Nigeria, explaining why Remedial Health is actually two businesses in one because you cannot outsource pharmaceutical logistics in a country with no dedicated cold chain infrastructure. This conversation goes deep into founder mental health, with Samuel candidly sharing how he oscillates between feeling invincible and wanting to quit every single day, how he manages burnout by binge-watching entire Netflix series in one sitting every two weeks, and why he stopped celebrating wins too much so failures don't hit as hard. He reveals the leadership lesson that changed everything when he crashed and burned trying to do everything himself, learning to throw new hires into the deep end and stay out of their way.For aspiring founders, Samuel shares tactical advice on raising venture capital as an African founder, explaining why you need to solve locally relevant problems that have proven models in developed markets so investors can see the vision, why resilience means taking countless rejections without taking them personally, and how to increase your surface area for luck by putting yourself in positions where opportunities can find you. He discusses the myth that startup journeys get easier with scale, the truth being you just face different problems whether it's having enough money in the bank or dealing with regulatory raids on your warehouses.The interview includes rapid-fire insights on honesty as his non-negotiable value, doing good while making profit in healthcare, why he would choose fundraising over bootstrapping despite the trade-offs, his leadership style of staying out of the way, early mornings with coffee as his productivity hack, and why if Remedial Health hits a billion dollar valuation he would only take one month off because more than that and he probably wouldn't come back to the company.Whether you're a founder navigating the chaos of African tech, an investor trying to understand the operational realities of frontier markets, or someone curious about what it really takes to digitize a traditional industry in Nigeria, this conversation delivers unfiltered truth about building at scale in challenging environments. Samuel doesn't sugarcoat the pain, the setbacks, or the moments where quitting felt like the rational choice. But he also shows why stubborn builders who refuse to give up eventually figure it out, one impossible problem at a time.This episode is sponsored by ObiexHQ