The Special Adviser to the President on Media and Public Communications, Dr. Sunday Akin Dare, has urged entrepreneurs and business founders to look beyond raising capital and focus on building strong institutions capable of sustaining growth, attracting long-term investment and outliving their founders.
Dare made the call while delivering the keynote address titled “Building for Global Scale: The Venture Architecture That Attracts Institutions” at Investors Connect London 2026, held at Imperial College London on Thursday.
He said capital could only accelerate growth when an enterprise had already developed the technology, people, governance, processes and operating systems required to support sustainable expansion.
“Scale is not simply a function of ambition; it is a function of architecture,” Dare said.
The presidential aide urged founders to distinguish between market reach and genuine scalability, stressing that a large potential market did not automatically translate into a viable business opportunity.
According to him, the real test of scalability was whether a business could serve millions of customers, withstand regulatory and financial pressures, manage greater complexity and preserve quality and trust long after its founders had moved on.
Dare said strategic partnerships, aggregation and institutional alignment were often essential to achieving scale, noting that businesses did not have to build every capability themselves.
He advised entrepreneurs to identify partners with existing market access, infrastructure, knowledge and networks, while creating clear roles, shared objectives and systems capable of aligning different strengths.
Drawing on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s record of political organising and institution-building, Dare said the President had demonstrated how separate interests, networks and capabilities could be brought together within a coherent structure to create a stronger platform.
He cited the formation of the All Progressives Congress and its victory in the 2015 presidential election as an example of how political aggregation, supported by a clear architecture and common purpose, could achieve results beyond the capacity of any single component.
He stressed that the lesson from Tinubu’s approach was not merely the ability to assemble individuals and groups, but the capacity to convert that coalition into a functioning institution.
By defining a shared direction and creating a platform through which different interests could operate together, Dare said durable scale depended on organisation, trust, coordination and the ability to make an institution larger than its originator.
“An idea may begin with an individual, but if it is to achieve genuine scale, it must eventually become bigger than its originator,” Dare said.
He urged founders to ask not only what more they needed to build, but also who already possessed the capabilities that could help them scale faster.
Dare added that institutional investors ultimately wanted to invest in institutions rather than businesses permanently dependent on individuals, stressing that entrepreneurs must build systems capable of delivering value beyond the personality of the founder.
The former Minister of Youth and Sports Development also highlighted the importance of infrastructure, human capital, predictable regulation, financing and governance in creating an environment for sustainable business growth.
Reflecting on his experience at the Nigerian Communications Commission, Dare said investment, competition, standards, consumer protection and regulatory certainty were essential to creating markets capable of sustainable expansion.
“Regulatory risk is investment risk,” he said, warning that approved budgets alone could not guarantee impact without implementation capacity, accountability and predictable financing.
Using Uber’s exit from Nigeria as a case study, Dare cautioned global businesses against assuming that a model successful in one market would automatically succeed elsewhere.
He said population size should not be mistaken for an automatic customer base, urging founders to understand local purchasing power, consumer behaviour, operating costs, regulation and market economics before attempting to scale.
“Global scale is not the ability to reproduce exactly the same model everywhere,”. It is the ability to preserve what makes your model valuable while adapting sufficiently to the economics, behaviour and institutions of each market.”Dare said
He urged entrepreneurs seeking global relevance to combine innovation with institutional discipline, local intelligence and strategic partnerships, stressing that sustainable growth ultimately depends on building systems that can function effectively beyond the founder.
