25th Core was built through real-world execution, not abstraction. It reflects over a decade of operational experience across payroll, compliance, recruitment, and workforce delivery for enterprise clients in the Nigerian market. Every capability exists because it was required, tested, and refined in live operational environments.
25th and Staffing served as Tenant Zero. The first full deployment of the system. The platform has been validated through real business operations supporting ₦3.32 billion in confirmed transaction history.
Note on revenue figure. The ₦3.32 billion represents aggregate transaction volume across nine verified bank accounts for the period 2015 to 2025, inclusive of outsourced workforce pass-through payments managed on behalf of enterprise clients. Statutory net turnover as filed with FIRS is available on request.
Nigeria has one of the largest and most fragmented workforce markets on the continent. 25th Core addresses three distinct segments that existing software has consistently failed to serve.
Every mandate and placement listed above is documented in the 25th operational records spanning 2015 to 2025. The pipeline is entirely referral-driven. No paid marketing. No cold outreach at scale. Growth has compounded through relationships built on delivery. The 200+ companies on the 25th Core waitlist were identified through that same decade of client relationships; they are warm, named, and known to 25th directly.
The core engineering infrastructure already exists. More than 167 structured product and infrastructure files have been developed and internally validated. At international engineering rates, rebuilding this infrastructure from scratch would require between $600,000 and $1.2 million. At Lagos market rates, between ₦120 million and ₦250 million.
| Core Infrastructure | Operational Governance |
|---|---|
| Recruitment OS and AI Recruiter | Task systems and escalation engines |
| Payroll infrastructure | Access control and credential vault |
| Compliance and regulatory systems | KPI framework and performance management |
| Customer intelligence engine | Meeting and conference system |
| Multi-jurisdiction configuration; Nigeria, UK, US, South Africa, Ghana | Executive and investor reporting layers |
Most early stage SaaS raises fund experimentation; product discovery, market validation, and operational uncertainty. 25th enters this stage differently.
| Risk Factor | Typical Pre-Seed | 25th Core |
|---|---|---|
| Market validation | Hypothesis | ₦3.32B in confirmed revenue. Validated. |
| Product readiness | MVP or prototype | 85% built. Three integration tasks to go-live. |
| Demand pipeline | Cold outreach | 200+ warm leads. Existing client relationships. |
| Operating history | 0 to 2 years | 10 years. Profitable services business. |
| Geographic expansion | Requires full rebuild | UK, US, SA, Ghana already configured. No rebuild required. |
Overage: ₦1,500 per additional staff record per month. Add-on modules available across all tiers. Average revenue per client increases as clients upgrade and expand headcount.
| Client Scale | MRR | ARR |
|---|---|---|
| 50 clients | ₦18,000,000 | ₦216,000,000 |
| 200 clients | ₦72,000,000 | ₦864,000,000 |
| 1,000 clients; Year 1 target | ₦350,000,000 | ₦4,200,000,000 |
| 5,000 clients; Year 2 target | ₦1,750,000,000 | ₦21,000,000,000 |
| 15,000 clients; Year 3 target | ₦5,250,000,000 | ₦63,000,000,000 |
Projections exclude AI Recruiter token usage, premium add-on modules, implementation fees, and partner referral commissions.
25th Core's client base creates direct commercial value for adjacent service providers. This revenue stream activates without additional headcount and compounds as the client base grows.
Three integration items remain before the platform accepts paying clients. All three are engineer tasks, not product decisions. On raise close the engineering team connects payment processing, email infrastructure, and the waitlist conversion form. The 200+ waitlist converts to paying clients in the first billing cycle. Revenue begins within 60 days of funds clearing.
The $3M to $5M pre-money valuation is supported by three independent methodologies.
| Method | Basis | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Asset-based | Platform assessed at $600K to $1.2M in engineering value at international rates. Pre-revenue SaaS companies typically carry a 3x to 5x build multiplier. | Floor: $3.6M |
| Forward revenue | Year 1 ARR target of $2.8M. At a conservative 1x to 2x forward revenue multiple the range is $2.8M to $5.6M. 25th Core sits squarely within that band. | $2.8M to $5.6M |
| Comparable transactions | Nigerian B2B SaaS pre-seed rounds 2023 to 2025 have cleared at $2M to $6M pre-money. 25th Core's 10-year operating history and confirmed revenue justify positioning at the upper end of that range. | Upper range: $5M to $6M |
| Allocation | Amount | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Engineering team | $800K–$1M | Backend engineers, DevOps, QA, and security. Scale from current build to production-grade multi-tenant infrastructure. |
| CS and onboarding | $300K–$400K | Customer success team. One CS Manager per 30 Premier clients. Onboarding specialists for enterprise migration. |
| Sales and marketing | $300K–$400K | Growth hire, content, waitlist conversion, and referral programme activation. |
| Infrastructure | $200K–$300K | AWS, Cloudflare, Paystack, SendGrid, monitoring, and security. Production-grade from day one. |
| Legal and compliance | $100K–$150K | Terms, privacy policy, NDPR compliance, employment contracts, and investor agreements. |
| Working capital | $300K–$400K | 12-month operational runway while revenue scales. Covers team salaries, office, and operating costs. Includes reimbursement of founder working capital contributions used to fund operations and salary during the pre-raise build phase, capped at $70,000 (2.8% of the raise). |
| Year | Clients | ARR | Valuation (5x) | $2M Stake | Return |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year 1 | 1,000 | $2.8M | $14M | $3.5M | 1.75x |
| Year 2 | 5,000 | $14M | $70M | $17.5M | 8.75x |
| Year 3 | 15,000 | $42M | $210M | $52.5M | 26x |
| Year 4 | 30,000 | $84M | $420M | $105M | 52x |
| Year 5 | 50,000 | $140M | $700M | $175M | 87x |
Base case. Excludes partner revenue, premium modules, and multi-country ARR uplift.
| Metric | Figure | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Average management fee | 11.2% of annual salary placed | Calculated from 167 confirmed closed placements 2015 to 2025. Range 5% to 25%. |
| Average salary placed | NGN 1,741,899 per annum | Across all closed mandates. Senior and executive placements generate significantly higher fees. |
| Average fee per placement | NGN 195,865 | Average salary x average fee rate. Enterprise placements generate NGN 840K to NGN 1.5M per mandate. |
| Average sales cycle | 3 to 4 weeks | Engagement to placement. Referral-driven pipeline with established client relationships. |
| Customer acquisition cost (CAC) | Near zero | 100 unique clients acquired over 10 years entirely through referrals and existing relationships. No paid marketing spend. |
| Estimated client lifetime value (LTV) | NGN 1,224,156 | Based on 2.5 mandates per year over an average 2.5-year client relationship at average fee rates. Enterprise clients significantly higher. |
| LTV to CAC ratio | Effectively uncapped | With near-zero acquisition cost and confirmed lifetime value, the ratio is exceptional. Growth compounds through relationships not spend. |
| Revenue protection | 10-day recoup clause | Contracts include a recoup fee triggered if a client fails to respond within 10 days of candidate submission. Revenue is protected regardless of client engagement levels. |
| Advantage | Detail | Replicable? |
|---|---|---|
| 10 years of proprietary candidate data | Every candidate screened, placed, or assessed since 2015 is in the 25th database. Behavioural patterns, performance outcomes, salary progression, and institutional knowledge accumulated over a decade. | No. Time is the moat. |
| 100 client relationships | Built entirely on delivery. No paid acquisition. Referral-compounding network across enterprise, SME, and MSME segments. | No. Trust is the moat. |
| Operator-built product | 25th Core was built by the people who ran the operations it automates. Every workflow, every escalation rule, every compliance trigger exists because 25th encountered it in live delivery. | No. Experience is the moat. |
| Contractual revenue protection | 10-day recoup clause on all retained mandates. Revenue is protected even when clients are unresponsive. Commercial sophistication that most competitors do not have. | No. Contracts are the moat. |
| Multi-jurisdiction architecture | Nigeria active. UK, US, South Africa, and Ghana configured. No competitor has this architecture ready without a rebuild. | No. Build time is the moat. |
25th and Staffing serves as the workforce architecture layer for the world's most demanding institutions. Our track record is anchored by executive placements for global strategy leaders including Bain & Company and eTranzact, alongside an extensive history of end-to-end workforce orchestration for Tech Mahindra and GSM Systems.
Our operational footprint includes the management and deployment of human capital across the critical infrastructure of MTN, Cisco, Mavenir, and Airtel. These relationships were built on a decade of forensic delivery, ensuring that African talent meets global enterprise standards within the continent's most rigorous technical environments. This ten-year cycle of high-stakes execution provided the operational reality required to build and harden 25th Core.
Every HR and payroll platform targeting Africa was built by people who studied the market. 25th Core was built by people who ran it.
Ten years of placement data. ₦3.32 billion in confirmed transactions. The product is not a hypothesis. It is a decade of operational knowledge encoded into software.
25th Core is built for long-term value creation. Three credible exit scenarios exist for investors seeking liquidity.
25th Core acknowledges the following material risks and has taken deliberate steps to mitigate each.
| Risk | Detail | Mitigation |
|---|---|---|
| Currency risk | Naira volatility against USD and GBP creates revenue uncertainty for multi-currency operations and investor return calculations. | Certain enterprise contracts benchmarked in USD. Multi-currency architecture built into 25th Core from day one. UK, US, SA, and Ghana markets provide natural currency diversification post-raise. |
| Talent and key-person risk | Concentration of technical knowledge in a small engineering team creates delivery risk if a key developer departs. | Full engineering specification documented across 167+ product files. A new engineer can onboard without extended briefing from the CEO. IP is in the documentation not in any individual. Post-raise team of 12 to 15 reduces single-person dependency significantly. |
| Market adoption risk | Nigerian SMEs have historically been slow to adopt paid software. Willingness to pay is a material assumption. | 200+ warm leads on the waitlist have already expressed intent to pay. The services business has collected payment from this market for 10 years across 100 unique clients. Demand is confirmed not assumed. Pricing at NGN 150K per month is calibrated to the market reality. |
| Historical Revenue | ₦3.32 Billion Confirmed |
| EBITDA | To be confirmed on receipt of audited accounts. Historical figures available on request. |
| Product Status | 85% Built. Production Ready. |
| Market Access | 200+ Warm Leads. 100 unique clients. 167 confirmed placements. |
| Total Addressable Market | 41.8M businesses. SME, MSME, and Corporate segments. |
| Pre-Raise Valuation | $3M–$5M Defensible |
| Target Return; Base Case | 26x by Year 3 |
| Target Return; Upside | 87x by Year 5 |
Emem Usen is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of 25th and Staffing Limited. Over the past decade she has built one of Nigeria's most operationally consistent workforce delivery businesses without external capital; generating ₦3.32 billion in confirmed revenue, closing 167 placements across 100 unique clients, and managing outsourced workforce infrastructure for some of the most demanding enterprise environments in Africa.
Her career spans recruitment, outsourced workforce management, and HR operations across enterprise clients including Tech Mahindra, GSM Systems, Bain and Company, and eTranzact, with managed staff deployed across MTN, Cisco, Mavenir, and Airtel.
25th Core is the direct product of that operational history. Every feature in the platform exists because Emem and her team lived the problem first across a decade of real delivery. She brings to the raise a proven commercial track record, 100 client relationships, and proprietary candidate and placement data spanning ten years that no new entrant can replicate. Emem is based in Lagos, Nigeria.
This document is confidential and provided for informational purposes only. It does not constitute an offer to sell securities or a solicitation to purchase securities. Any investment will be made only pursuant to definitive legal agreements.
Certain statements contained herein are forward-looking and based on current assumptions, expectations, and projections. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied.
Historical financial figures are supported by internal financial records and bank statement verification across nine accounts covering the period 2015 to 2025.
This document contains proprietary financial and commercial information and is intended solely for the named recipient. Unauthorised reproduction or distribution is strictly prohibited.