When Adeyemi Adeniran received the "Steady Anchor" award for the most reliable and available team member at the just-concluded Startbutton retreat, it was a recognition of the intentional work he does every day. Adeyemi is known for his accessibility, his ability to resolve conflict with grace, and his capacity to make the most complex operational challenges sound simple.

I still remember my onboarding session into Startbutton. Adeyemi broke down what his team does so clearly, I almost considered joining them. Ever since, he's been my go-to guy for breaking down complex scenarios and explaining Startbutton’s internal frameworks, making sure I understood and left with more answers to the questions I came with.

Adeyemi strikes me as someone who respects work, who cares deeply for it and finds joy doing it, who sees work as something that should be earned by doing it so excellently. Watching him handle merchant issues, it’s clear that he doesn’t just solve problems; he listens, negotiates, and brings people to the table with empathy and strategy. 

He also understood that respecting work meant respecting the people you do it with, seeing them in their truest form. While most people would shy away from treating their co-workers as family, Adeyemi has a different opinion. 

On one memorable day after Children’s Day, I came into the office in a rush, stressed and barely holding it together. Adeyemi would come after me with a caprisonne and a note reminding me that I was still a child at heart and acknowledging the work I had been doing. Not that I expect everyone of my colleagues to give me a caprisonne every time, but everyone loves to be seen, and I truly felt seen by this act of service.

From Sports agent to FinOps leader

Before Startbutton, Adeyemi was no stranger to problem-solving or being a people person. In university, he founded Luminous Sports Agency, managing athletes and negotiating deals. This was his first taste of what it meant to reconcile interests, build trust, and operate under pressure.

He transitioned into finance, starting at Airtel as an Accounts Receivable Officer. There, he manually reconciled transactions across showrooms, designing new financial processes to make the work manageable. That experience led him to Cellulant in 2020, where he managed over 5,000 POS, tackled disputes, and handled daily reconciliations. He eventually led the Financial Operations (FinOps) team across Nigeria, Kenya, and Rwanda.

But Adeyemi always chased the next challenge, “I hate knowing exactly what to expect at work the next day. When things become monotonous, I get tired.”

Becoming the fulcrum at Startbutton

Adeyemi has always worked in multinational companies where there were structures and laid-down processes, and he just had to follow through, but he knew that, at Startbutton, he was going to be able to make more impact.

Adeyemi found both challenge and purpose working at Startbutton. Today, he leads financial and treasury operations, overseeing reconciliation, dispute resolution, chargebacks, and merchant engagement across 15 African markets.

When I asked him how he sees the work he does at Startbutton, Adeyemi likens himself to a fulcrum, the pivot point that quietly supports the business while bearing the weight of unpredictable issues. His work follows an end-to-end financial operational activity of the business, following a process from the customer request to the end of the transaction, so you are unlikely to know where there is going to be a blocker in the customer’s journey.

A Day in the Life of a FinOps Lead

A typical work day for Adeyemi can be chaotic, but here is what it looks like:

6:00 am

When he wakes up, he checks to see if there is an urgent escalation or if the system has gone down during the night, and he needs to tend to a merchant’s needs. He does all of these before anything else

7:00 am

To put his mind in the right frame of mind, he does some exercise that consists of squatting, push-ups, and stretching.

At around 8:00 am

He is on Slack and email, responding to messages, answering queries, and giving feedback. Kenya opens business two hours ahead of Nigeria’s time, while Ghana opens business an hour ahead. Noting the time difference, African businesses across all of the 15 markets Startbutton operates in, he checks to see the currency rates, as this helps him in settling merchants. He also does some liquidity management to prevent the business from losing out on currency volatility.

12:00 pm

He updates the afternoon currency rate and tends to merchants' queries, chargebacks, and disputes. He is on calls interacting with merchants in real time, sending responses to payment partners, and escalating customers' chargebacks and disputes to the Finance and Engineering teams.

4:00 pm

He does the same updates in the evening while tending to queries from merchants, customers, and payment partners. Adeyemi is on all of Startbutton’s merchants' channels, ensuring that everyone is having a good experience and that money flows from one end to the other end successfully

6:00 pm

If other things don't come up outside regular working hours, which he has to attend to, he closes for the day and heads to the gym


What it means to be a Steady anchor

Since joining Startbutton, Adeyemi has resolved long-standing chargeback issues from South African merchants and stabilized the FX desk, reconciled and maintained relationships with merchants and payment partners, all without losing money. For over 16 months now, he’s been keeping Startbutton’s financial operations running smoothly. 

What he enjoyed about working at Startbutton is that it feels like home; he liked the fact that the Company culture is built on respect, growth, and taking complete ownership of one’s role.

Beyond operations, Adeyemi likes hanging out with friends, particularly their karaoke sessions, and is a lover of African literature. He read every Chinua Achebe book before the age of 10. His dad often told him, "Know everything about little things, and little things about everything." That curiosity now shapes how he approaches work, allowing his mind to lead the way and always ready to make an impact in the most thoughtful ways.