Solomon Olalemi
Head of Product, VFD Microfinance Bank
Lagos, Nigeria
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Solomon Olalemi is a seasoned product manager with a rich background spanning over 6+ years in the industry. His journey in product management has been marked by a diverse portfolio of projects, each contributing to his expertise and insight into the field.
Solomon's career began with groundbreaking work at Payercoins Inc., where he spearheaded the development of a cryptocurrency infrastructure, laying the foundation for innovative financial solutions. His passion for driving impactful change led him to the forefront of the remittance industry in Africa, where he played a pivotal role in building a remittance platform that revolutionized payment systems across the continent.
Transitioning to the banking sector, Solomon joined the ranks of a prominent Nigerian bank, where he currently leads the charge in developing a cutting-edge digital banking platform. Under his guidance, the bank, Polaris Bank, has garnered prestigious accolades, including the coveted title of Digital Bank of the Year in Nigeria for three consecutive years, affirming Solomon's prowess in the realm of digital innovation.
Beyond his professional endeavours, Solomon is known for his unwavering dedication to personal growth and knowledge acquisition. A voracious reader, he embarked on a remarkable journey in 2017, devouring an impressive 104 books in a single year—an achievement that speaks volumes about his thirst for learning and self-improvement.
When he's not at the helm of the product team, Solomon can often be found immersed in the intricacies of revamping lending products, leveraging his expertise to drive innovation and excellence in financial services.
With a relentless drive for excellence and a passion for pushing boundaries, Solomon Olalemi continues to make indelible contributions to the world of product management, shaping the future of fintech and digital innovation one breakthrough at a time.
When I am not working, you will find me reading or talking to friends.
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The Product Mindset in a Tech-First World: Building for People, Not Just Platforms
In a world where code is shipped faster than ever and platforms evolve overnight, it's easy to lose sight of the one thing that truly matters: people. This keynote challenges developers, architects, and technology leaders to shift from a build-first mindset to a product mindset, one rooted in empathy, outcomes, and long-term impact.
Drawing from real-world experience leading digital innovation in financial services across Africa and the UK, this talk explores how tech teams can build not just technically sound systems, but products that solve real human problems. We'll unpack what it means to move beyond features and frameworks, and start designing with clarity, purpose, and user obsession.
Whether you're building cloud-native applications, implementing AI features, or architecting enterprise platforms, this session will help you reconnect your work to what truly drives value: the user. Because in a tech-first world, the most successful teams are those that build with people-first thinking.
Scaling Design Without Losing Soul: How to Grow Your Impact Beyond Just Screens
As designers grow in their careers, many begin to feel a tension: “Is this all there is?”
The portfolio is strong, the visuals are clean, and the animations are smooth, but a more profound question lingers: Am I really making an impact?
This session would be a raw, insightful exploration of how designers can scale their influence beyond visual execution and contribute meaningfully to product, business, and user outcomes without losing their creative essence.
What I seek to unpack is;
1. The product-thinking mindset every designer should adopt, especially senior designers.
2. How to move from designing interfaces to designing systems and outcomes
3. Real-life stories of how subtle design choices affected customer experience, adoption, and even revenue
4. How to stay creatively fulfilled while operating in cross-functional teams
Whether you’re a UI/UX designer, motion artist, or creative technologist, you’ll walk away with a new lens on how to lead with design, influence decision-making, and keep your soul intact in high-growth environments.
Product Management: From Concept to Market with Agile Practices and Team Inclusivity
This session provides an in-depth look at the critical stages of product development, including market research, user needs assessment, product road mapping, and iterative testing. Attendees will gain insights into creating robust product strategies, leveraging user feedback, and employing Agile methodologies. Additionally, the session highlights the importance of involving the tech team during the conceptualization phase to foster collaboration and inclusivity.
Open Source in the Real World: How Corporates and Communities Can Build Together
Open source is no longer just a developer’s playground—it’s becoming a strategic lever for innovation across industries. Yet many corporate teams still struggle with how to meaningfully engage with open source communities without being extractive, performative, or disconnected.
In this session, I'll unpack what real-world collaboration between corporates and open source communities looks like. Drawing from my experience in leading digital product teams within regulated environments, I’ll share insights on how companies can:
1. Contribute without controlling
2. Partner without overstepping
3. Leverage open source for real business outcomes while empowering the community
We’ll explore case studies, engagement models, and the practical realities of introducing open source principles into traditional organisations—especially across Africa’s growing tech ecosystem. Whether you're an engineer, community builder, or product leader, this session will inspire you to rethink the role of open source in your work and how we can build better, together.
Product Management in the Age of Intelligence: Decision-Making with AI Insights
As product managers, we make hundreds of decisions every month — but what happens when AI joins the conversation? In this session, we’ll explore how product teams can use AI not just to automate, but to illuminate: surfacing insights, predicting behavior, and guiding better decisions.
I’ll walk through real examples where AI improved product outcomes, from personalization in fintech to intelligent prioritization in roadmapping. We’ll talk about the tools that can be plugged into your workflow today, and how to frame AI as a co-pilot, not a black box.
Most importantly, we’ll discuss how to stay grounded. AI should enhance human empathy, not replace it. We’ll talk about navigating ethical grey zones, interpreting outputs, and communicating AI decisions to both users and stakeholders.
If you’ve ever wondered how to bring AI into your product strategy without losing your compass, this talk will offer you a clear, balanced path forward.
Measuring API Success and KPIs
Explore the metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) to assess the success of your APIs. We will be discussing metrics like API usage, error rates, response times, developer engagement, and customer satisfaction.
We will also look into how API can be properly monitored and measure for high performance.
From Data to Direction: Using Machine Learning to Uncover What Users Really Need
Great product decisions start with understanding what users need — but in a world of infinite data, finding that truth is harder than ever. In this talk, we’ll explore how product managers can partner with machine learning to uncover deep user insights, not just dashboards full of noise.
You don’t need to be a data scientist to benefit from ML. I’ll break down practical use cases — from segmenting users based on behavior to predicting churn before it happens — that can elevate your product decision-making. You’ll learn how to ask the right questions, set up the right data pipelines, and evaluate ML outputs with a critical lens.
We’ll also discuss the limitations: when ML can mislead, and how to keep the human element alive in data interpretation. If you’re working with cross-functional teams that touch data, this session will help you become a more confident, insight-driven product leader.
Whether you're in fintech, SaaS, or consumer products, this talk will give you the tools to move from raw data to real direction — and build products that serve what users actually need.
From Dashboards to Decisions: Embedding Business Intelligence into Product Workflows
Dashboards are great — until no one uses them. In this session, I will explore how to move beyond standalone reports and embed business intelligence directly into the product development lifecycle. For BI professionals, product managers, and business decision-makers, this session will showcase how to deliver insights that don’t just sit in a report — they drive decisions, improve user experiences, and accelerate product innovation.
Drawing from real-world product leadership experience, we’ll walk through how to identify high-impact data points, integrate them into feedback loops, and transform them into actionable insights across design, development, and strategy teams. I’ll also look at how tools like Power BI, Azure Synapse, and product analytics platforms can work together to keep your team continuously learning and iterating.
Whether you're in a startup or an enterprise, this talk will help you close the gap between data availability and data activation.
Digital Transformation in the Real World: What Private Sector Lessons Can Government Use Now?
“Digital transformation” is no longer a buzzword — it’s a necessity. However, for many government teams, knowing where to start and how to scale remains a challenge. In this session, we’ll unpack lessons learned from the private sector, particularly in high-compliance industries like banking, and translate them into practical strategies for government leaders.
You’ll learn how to adopt agile, outcome-driven thinking; how to prioritise user experience alongside regulatory requirements; and how to foster a digital culture that embraces learning, iteration, and delivery at speed. We'll also discuss how to build cross-functional teams that align on mission outcomes and avoid the common traps of siloed, tech-first implementations.
If you’re serious about modernising government systems in a way that delivers real value to citizens, without over-promising or under-delivering, this session will give you the frameworks, mindset, and examples to get there.
Building Public Digital Services That Actually Work: Lessons from Product-Led Innovation
Public services should be as easy to use as the best consumer apps — but too often, they aren’t. This session dives into how government teams can rethink digital delivery using product-led innovation principles rooted in empathy, iteration, and measurable outcomes.
Drawing from real-world experience building inclusive digital products in highly regulated sectors like finance, this talk will explore what it truly takes to design, launch, and scale services that work for everyone — especially underserved or digitally cautious users. You’ll learn how to embed continuous feedback loops, use data to drive iteration, and break silos between policy, tech, and service delivery.
This isn’t about flashy apps or trendy platforms — it’s about making technology reliable, accessible, and human-centered, and ensuring every digital interaction moves the needle on public trust and citizen satisfaction.
AI Product Strategy Bootcamp: From Data to Deployment
AI is powerful — but without the right strategy, it’s just noise. In this hands-on, full-day workshop, we’ll walk through the end-to-end journey of building responsible AI-powered products, from identifying the right use case to deploying real solutions using Azure ML, Power Platform, and open-source tools.
Designed for product managers, developers, and tech leads, this session focuses not just on the “how,” but on the “why.” We’ll explore what makes an AI feature actually useful, how to embed ethics and transparency into the design, and how to work with cross-functional teams to bring your AI product to life.
💡 By the end of the day, participants will:
1. Define an AI opportunity using real business/user context
2. Design a responsible product strategy using practical frameworks
3. Build and test a basic AI model using Azure ML
4. Deploy that model into a user-facing experience with the Power Platform
5. Learn best practices for communicating AI outcomes to users and stakeholders
Whether you're prototyping your first AI feature or looking to sharpen your strategic toolkit, this bootcamp will equip you with the tools to deliver AI that works for your product, your business, and most importantly, your users.
Building Generational Products That Last: A Blueprint for Product Success
This topic on "Building Generational Product That Last: A Blueprint for Product Success" seeks to help everyone see what it takes to build product that will last more than two decades. The hallmark of innovation is to ensure that it gets better in terms of improvement and not that it diminishes and dies.
I hope to inspire the audience to adopt a continuous improvement-building approach mindset.
Growth from the Ground Up: Building Trust and Retention into the Product Experience
Growth is not just about flashy launches or hitting acquisition numbers. It’s about creating an experience that earns a user’s trust — and keeps it. In this talk, I’ll explore the critical link between trust and retention, especially in markets where users are skeptical, digitally cautious, or new to digital products altogether.
Drawing from my experience leading digital product teams in Nigeria and the UK, I’ll share practical strategies for embedding trust into onboarding flows, micro-interactions, and long-term product engagement. We’ll unpack how small product decisions — like language, timing, and visibility — can make the difference between a one-time user and a loyal advocate.
This talk is especially relevant for product managers building in competitive, resource-constrained, or trust-deficient markets — where gaining a user is tough and keeping them is tougher. If your team is serious about building growth that lasts, not just spikes, this session will offer tools, examples, and mindsets to help you do just that.
From Vision to Execution: Building APIs as Scalable Products in Fintech
In the fast-paced world of fintech, building scalable APIs isn't just about exposing endpoints—it's about crafting products that can evolve with customer needs, regulatory expectations, and business growth.
In this talk, I (Solomon Olalemi), a seasoned technical product leader in Nigeria’s fintech ecosystem, will share practical product-led approach to designing and managing APIs as real, scalable products. Drawing from my multiple experiences across microfinance banking, digital banking, payment infrastructures, and cross-border payment platforms, Solomon will walk attendees through the following;
1. How to go from a product vision to an API delivery roadmap.
2. Techniques to align engineers, operations, compliance, and marketing teams.
3. Designing APIs with business scalability and partner integrations in mind.
4. Creating lifecycle plans for APIs: versioning, onboarding, feedback loops.
5. Managing internal vs. external APIs and monetizing API platforms
Attendees will leave with a framework for transforming API efforts from one-off projects into strategic, revenue-driving products—ready to serve thousands of users, partners, and ecosystems.
Whether you're a product manager, API engineer, or startup founder, this session will equip you with the mindset, tools, and real-world insights to lead successful API-first initiatives in fintech and beyond.
API Conf Lagos 2025 Sessionize Event Upcoming
Solomon Olalemi
Head of Product, VFD Microfinance Bank
Lagos, Nigeria
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