Ayobami Oyaleke

Ayobami Oyaleke is the co-founder and CEO of Mainstack, the no-code commerce and cross-border payments platform he built for Africa's creator economy. A serial founder who has launched four startups over a decade, Oyaleke previously built Placements.ng — connecting roughly 5,000 Nigerian graduates with internships at 2,000 companies — before stints at Danaher, Microsoft, and Meta sharpened his understanding of global product and business intelligence. He co-founded Mainstack in 2022 alongside Olamide Akinola, and the company now counts more than 55,000 active creators across 105-plus countries on its platform. A Techstars NYC Spring 2023 alumnus, Mainstack placed in the top 20 at TechCrunch Startup Battlefield and launched its fourth major platform version in June 2026, consolidating storefronts, payments, events, community tools, and AI-powered growth features into a single dashboard.

Oyaleke's bet — that African creators are systematically underserved by Western payment rails and need tailored, multi-currency infrastructure — has proven prescient. Mainstack accepts payments in over 150 currencies across more than 135 pay-in options, solving a cross-border complexity that previously required creators to stitch together half a dozen third-party tools. As the creator economy in Africa matures into a multi-billion-dollar force, Oyaleke has positioned Mainstack as its operating system.