Venture capital provides a rush of artificial energy that allows a founder to ignore the basic laws of economic gravity. If you want to understand why many companies once seen as the ‘slice bread’ out of Africa just had to shutter, don't look at their logs or turnaround times. Look at their cap table. When Eden Life raised a $1.4 million seed round in 2021, the capital did exactly what cocaine does—it created a sense of euphoria and invincibility. It allowed the company to hallucinate a market that didn't actually exist at scale. It funded the belief that you could provide premium, tech-enabled home services to a Nigerian middle class that was, in reality, one currency devaluation away from poverty. Under the influence of VC, unit economics is treated as a problem for tomorrow, and the recent pause of Eden’s B2C operations is the inevitable comedown after a long, expensive venture capital high. Masking the pain In medicine, cocaine was once used as a local to numb the pain of patients. In tech, VC numbs the reality of a failing business model. As I argued in my piece about the Number Problem, the metrics we celebrate during funding rounds, like Eden’s 150,000 services delivered, are the dopamine hits that keep the party going. But those numbers were masking a brutal reality. VC provides the cash to subsidize meals and laundry, convincing everyone that ‘busy’ equals ‘healthy.’ While the capital was flowing, Eden didn't have to feel the sting of 40% food inflation or the japa wave that was exporting their best customers to the UK. The money acted as a buffer between the startup and the actual Nigerian economy. But the problem with a cocaine-fueled sprint is that the heart eventually gives out, or the supply runs dry, eventually landing the user in quicksand. We are in the funding winter in 2026, and the investors who once encouraged aggressive B2C expansion are likely now demanding sobriety. Eden’s pivot to B2B is the corporate version of entering rehab. B2C was the party, while B2B is the detox. It may be boring, industrial, and focused on the hard math of corporate catering. But it’s Eden admitting that they can no longer afford to live the high-life on someone else’s dime. An investor disagrees But as convincing as I imagine my analogy to be, an investor disagrees. “I wouldn’t describe venture capital as ‘cocaine,’” Tarek Chelaifa, Investment Director at Janngo Africa, told me in an email. “Capital doesn’t create structural weaknesses; it exposes them. If retention, contribution margins, and payback logic are fragile, funding may delay the pressure, but it won’t remove it. When the fundamentals are real, capital simply compresses time.” Tarek had read my last piece on Eden Life and agreed with the analysis of the gap between “optics and math”. But on this one, he insists: “The current pivot cycle feels less like a crisis and more like a normalization. Companies are realigning with sustainable revenue and resilience. That is healthy.” They say two truths can coexist. And in case one of us is wrong, my bet is on me. Tarek is an expert in the field. I’m not. The truth, however, is that we have spent years building a startup ecosystem that is addicted to the next hit of capital. We have celebrated unicorns that are essentially just companies that have managed to buy the most debt. And as the Eden Life story shows, you cannot stay high forever. Eventually, you have to face the cold, gray morning of the Nigerian macro-economy. Even Tarek said, “Markets eventually reconcile narratives with the reality of economics.” You have to build a business that can survive on revenue from customers, and not checks from VCs. Eden Life is trying to get clean. The question is: how many other startups in our ecosystem are still hiding their tremors behind a "Series A" press release?
