In 2010, singer Asa gave us Bimpe, the meddling sister-in-law who wouldn't stay out of her business. But sixteen years later, Sam Adekunle has built a Bimpe businesses can’t live without. Sam’s Bimpe is an AI assistant who answers customers, checks inventory, and processes payments while the owner sleeps. The Yoruba-named no-code and agentic platform is quietly taking over the logistics and hospitality workflows from Lagos to London. Why Bimpe? When I sat down with Sam on LinkedIn, I asked what was behind the name, whether it was about a Nigerian girl he couldn’t stop thinking about. Sam laughed. “It was a play on words for ‘ask me’: Bi mi pe.” In the UK, BimpeAI is helping restaurants and boutique retailers manage the complex last-mile dance by connecting to systems like Shopify, Google Calendar, and local delivery platforms. Sam intends to integrate the AI with telecom providers like MTN to provision phone numbers for businesses back home. Imagine a market woman in Ibadan or a cafe owner in Peckham receiving a call. On the other end is BimpeAI, speaking in Nigerian Pidgin or English, taking an order and instantly updating a digital ledger. “For example, if you go to Jumia, you will search ‘TV’. [With BimpeAI], you can say, ‘I want a TV for my house that is this size,’ or ‘I want to order a tan suit for a winter wedding. What would you recommend under £450?’” Sam told Condia. But that’s just one use case, he said. “It’s a no-code tool for agencies, AI automation engineers or developers building agentic tools.” The challenge? Latency. A delay in translation can kill the experience. But with local infrastructure like Cassava’s data center and the recently released WAXAL, BimpeAI can get better and respond in real time. The community advantage Sam’s eight-year career journey began at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State, Nigeria, where he started StartupGrind as a community of students building tech solutions. At StartupGrind and Ife WordPress Community, he groomed business minds by organizing workshops and inviting professionals to teach students about entrepreneurship. He later moved to TechCircle, where he facilitated incubation and accelerator programs, before joining Turing to build a developer ecosystem for Africa. At Turing, Sam’s role expanded to South America and then Southeast Asia. “I’ve just moved to the UK to see how possible it is to do this on a global scale. I’ve worked with consulting companies like Deloitte, still building communities and programs. The last one I did was at Datamellon, where I was the head of startup programs. “I’m now doing the same thing at Meta, focusing more on developers and creators and helping them ship adoption.” Across several companies, Sam has learned the importance of community as the ultimate distribution engine. BimpeAI scales through partnerships with organizations. By leveraging the trust proxy of existing communities, Sam is building a strong user base that uses and markets the tool. Asa sang about Bimpe meddling in her affairs as a sign of disrespect. But in 2026, Sam Adekunle redefined that interference. In the hands of a smart founder, a meddling AI is the difference between a struggling side hustle and a scaling empire. Bimpe isn't just talking anymore; she’s working across borders.
