OLUWASEUN AZEEZ ADEBOWALE: BEYOND REVENUE, BUILDING BUSINESSES THAT CREATE VALUE

In a business environment where growth is often celebrated in headlines and fundraising figures, the numbers behind that growth can tell a very different story.

For Oluwaseun Azeez Adebowale (OAA), understanding those numbers has been the work of more than 15 years. A finance and business advisory professional, Adebowale has built a career spanning accounting, audit, financial management, transaction advisory and strategic finance. He spent a decade with Deloitte & Touche, rising to the position of Audit Manager, before moving into broader advisory work and founding MacAdebowale Advisory.

Today, he works with businesses on financial modelling and valuation, CFO advisory, financial planning and analysis, due diligence, transaction support, governance, controls and finance-function transformation. His experience cuts across sectors including technology, energy, manufacturing, financial services, aviation, media, education and social development.

But beyond the technical expertise is a perspective shaped by years of looking closely at how businesses actually operate, what drives sustainable growth, what weakens financial performance, and where founders can make better decisions with the right financial insight.

In this conversation with Nigeria Business Info (NBI), Oluwaseun Adebowale reflects on his journey from the Big Four to entrepreneurship, the financial blind spots he sees in growing businesses, what investors look for beyond the pitch deck, and why the difference between growth and value creation matters.

NBI:

You’ve spent about 15 years working across accounting, audit, finance and advisory, including a decade at Deloitte. Before the titles and credentials, what first drew you to finance, and what has kept you in the field?

OAA:

My interest in accounting was first triggered by my mum who was an accountant herself. She never pushed me to tow the same path, but growing up around the accounting textbooks she used while writing her ICAN professional exams must have ignited the very first spark of interest in the discipline.

In time, I became fascinated by the fact that accounting plays a huge role in supporting key business decisions by generating the financial information required for such decisions. Knowing that my work supports critical business and investment decisions that indirectly shape our nation’s economy is one of the major factors that has kept me in the field.

NBI:

You eventually moved from the Big Four environment into entrepreneurship and founded MacAdebowale Advisory. What did you see from inside the corporate world that made you decide it was time to build something of your own?

OAA:

To be honest, moving from the security and prestige of the Big Four accounting environment wasn’t an easy decision. I started my career as an auditor with one of the Big Four, and it gave me the opportunity to get a bird’s-eye view of the operations and finances of businesses across several industries quite early.

However, two key factors propelled me to move. The first was the desire to offer more value than auditing gave me room to deliver. While audit is a great discipline that gave me a solid foundation for other expressions of my career in finance, there was a limit to how much strategic value I could offer to businesses because it focuses mostly on historical performance.

As I progressed in my career, I got to a point where I really wanted to be involved in helping businesses shape the financial strategies that supported their growth. Because I had practised audit for about a decade at this time, it was difficult to transition into corporate finance or strategy consulting within the Big Four environment. So, I had to choose between starting afresh within the Big Four or stepping out to practise privately.

The second reason was divine direction. As much as I wanted to explore other aspects of finance, I wasn’t planning to start a firm at the time, but God directed me to do so. This established a greater sense of purpose for starting my firm, MacAdebowale Advisory. So, beyond passion and profit, there’s a purpose to starting my firm.

NBI:

Having looked under the hood of so many businesses, what is one thing about how Nigerian businesses manage money that continues to surprise you?

OAA:

One of my most surprising observations about how businesses manage their finances is the low priority for strategic financial planning and financial management. Most growing businesses don’t have a Chief Finance Officer (CFO). It is so common to find businesses, including venture capital funded businesses, have a Chief Operating Officer (COO), Chief Technology Officer (CTO) in addition to a Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and not have a dedicated senior finance role.

Many founders and CEOs limit their finance function/department to accounting and just try to coast through major financial decisions without a senior finance professional. The problem with this is that, even when they are able to raise capital, their decisions lack in-depth analysis and financial insight to create optimum value for the business.

If cash is the lifeblood of a business, then it is expected that the most qualified hands are engaged to manage it, but the irony is that such expertise is missing in many Nigerian businesses.

NBI:

There is often a tendency among founders to celebrate revenue as the ultimate measure of success. Why isn’t revenue enough, and what numbers should business owners really be paying attention to?

OAA:

Oh, this is so so true. There’s so much hype about revenue growth and raising capital, especially in the tech start-up space, that I wonder if they ever remember that it is profit and cashflow that keeps a business running.

Revenue growth is very important, but it isn’t enough because it is possible for revenue to grow while the business continues to record losses. The bigger issue then is how much of that revenue remains after deducting all costs to build the business and reward investors for their investment. There’s no use growing revenue when the business keeps bleeding cash.

The truth is that there’s no single ultimate measure of financial success, but 3 key measures of financial performance that business owners should evaluate together, not in isolation — revenue growth, profitability and liquidity.

Revenue growth indicates that a business is growing its customer size and market share, profitability indicates that it is managing its costs and keeping it below revenue while liquidity shows that it is translating its revenue into sufficient cashflows to meet its obligations and drive operations.

NBI:

You work across financial modelling, valuation, FP&A and CFO advisory. At what point should a growing business stop treating finance as bookkeeping and start treating it as a strategic function?

OAA:

Business owners and executives should actually handle the finances of their businesses strategically from the very beginning. However, as a function or department within the organization, bookkeeping and basic accounting no longer suffices when the business begins to experience significant growth and expansion. Growth in this context is not just increase in revenue, but in terms of the number of customers, employees, products, the size and complexity of operations.

The reason is that growth brings a level of complexity that basic financial planning cannot handle; it calls for a strategic approach to finance.

NBI:

You have been involved in financial due diligence and transactions involving high-growth companies. When an investor looks beyond the pitch deck and starts examining the numbers, what can make a promising company suddenly look much less investable?

OAA:

There are 3 major things that commercial investors look out for in the financials of a business — growth, profitability and cashflows. No matter how great a business idea looks on the pitch, it must also offer good returns to investors through these 3 indices for it to be attractive. However, the level of emphasis placed on each of these may vary depending on the investor’s investment goals and the stage of the business.

For early-stage start-ups that are yet to make profit, the priority is often on the prospects for growth and the unit economics, that is, revenue/cost/profit per unit of product. While greater preference may be placed on overall profitability and steady cashflows for mature businesses.

Ultimately, every commercial investor seeks to get a good return on investment, which may come in form of appreciation in the value of the investment through growth in the business or periodic payment of interest or dividend generated through profitable cashflows from the business.

NBI:

Valuation is one of the areas where founders and investors can see the same business very differently. What do entrepreneurs most often misunderstand about what their company is actually worth?

OAA:

The truth of the matter is that valuation is both an art and a science. While there are various quantitative methodologies to valuing a business, there are also other qualitative factors that influence the valuation of a business, ranging from investors’ speculations to sentiments about the market.

However, entrepreneurs sometimes focus too much on the numbers they want to see and not enough on how investors perceive the business. Factors such as the quality of earnings, growth prospects, risk, market conditions, investor sentiment and confidence in the management team can all influence what an investor is actually willing to pay. So, a company’s value is not necessarily what the founder believes it should be worth, but what the underlying business fundamentals and market conditions can credibly support.

NBI:

Nigeria’s business environment has become considerably more difficult, with inflation, currency volatility, rising costs and pressure on purchasing power. How should businesses rethink financial planning and decision-making in an environment where yesterday’s numbers may no longer predict tomorrow?

OAA:

First thing to clarify is that financial planning isn’t entirely based on the past. Even in a stable environment, it is more about the future goals and initiatives of the business.

It’s actually very difficult to plan in a volatile environment with a high degree of uncertainty about the future. However, business owners and executives need to be dynamic in their planning to navigate the uncertainty.

One practical way to introduce dynamism in planning includes scenario-based planning which involves planning for different possible future scenarios. For example, planning for different possibilities regarding inflation — 10%, 20% and 30%. This gives a more robust picture of the possibilities and helps business executives determine various courses of action under different possible future scenarios.

In a nutshell, businesses need to have Plan A, B and C to be more agile and adaptable under uncertainties.

NBI:

You’ve advised organisations across technology, energy, manufacturing, financial services, aviation, media and other sectors. What financial principles remain universal, regardless of the industry a business operates in?

OAA:

Regardless of the industry, I believe the fundamentals of good financial management remain the same. A business must understand how it makes money, protect its cash flow, allocate capital wisely, manage its risks and generate returns that justify the capital invested. The numbers may look different across sectors, but the principle is the same: growth must translate into sustainable value creation, not just higher revenue.

NBI:

One area of your work is strengthening financial processes, controls and governance. Why do many businesses wait until something goes wrong before taking these systems seriously, and what does that delay actually cost them?

OAA:

I think many businesses see controls as an administrative cost rather than as part of protecting and enabling growth. They tend to prioritise revenue and expansion first, and only pay attention to processes when there is a fraud, cash leak, reporting problem or compliance issue. The real cost of that delay is often much bigger than the immediate loss — it can lead to poor decisions, weak accountability, financial leakages and loss of investor confidence. Good controls should be built as the business grows, not after something goes wrong.

NBI:

After years of working with businesses at different stages of growth, what separates companies that merely survive from those that build sustainable enterprise value?

OAA:

What separates them is usually not just the ability to generate revenue, but how deliberately they manage and deploy their resources. Businesses that build sustainable enterprise value understand their economics, protect cash flow, allocate capital wisely, manage risk and continuously improve their business model. They also build the systems, people and governance needed to scale. In my experience, sustainable value comes from profitable growth, disciplined execution and the ability to build a business that is less dependent on the founder.

NBI:

Finally, if you had the opportunity to sit across the table from a room filled with ambitious Nigerian founders and could leave them with one financial principle they would remember for the rest of their entrepreneurial journey, what would you tell them?

OAA:

If I could leave Nigerian founders with one financial principle, it would be this: never confuse growth with value creation. Revenue can grow and the business can still destroy value if it is not generating healthy cash flows and returns on the capital invested. So, understand your numbers, protect your cash, and make every naira of capital work towards building a stronger, more valuable business.