Role: Product Manager
Duration: 2025
Product: 390 Work — Lean ERP Software for African SMEs
Team Scope: Engineering (one engineer), Business Technology Consultant, Product Marketing Manager, Sales
390 is a Nigerian-first lean ERP software company designed to help small to large-sized businesses digitise their operations, build structure, gain clarity, and scale. The platform covers the toolkit a growing business needs — inventory, sales, financials, HR, task management, production, and more — in a single system designed to match how African SMEs actually operate.
I was brought in to lead core feature improvements and initiate product-led growth strategies. The product existed with 40+ features, a small but real user base, and a retention problem that needed diagnosing before it could be solved.
Many small business owners had difficulty managing inventory, tracking profits, and organizing business tasks with clarity. They needed a tool that aligned with their operational behavior and sales models.
Users were signing up but not staying. Some were churning after the free trial. Others had subscribed, used the product for a short period, and stopped. The product had broad feature coverage but the depth and polish of individual features was inconsistent — some worked well end-to-end, others had friction that made them hard to adopt in a real business context.
The 7-day free trial was not giving users enough time to explore the product and reach the point where they understood its value. Businesses were not returning — not because the product had nothing to offer, but because they were not getting far enough into it to find out.
I did not start by looking at Mixpanel. I started by talking to the businesses.
I ran physical business visits and discovery calls with two specific groups — existing users who were not recurring or actively using the product, and users who had churned entirely. I needed to understand from both groups: why did you stop? What problem did you face? What would need to be true for you to come back and pay?
These were not survey responses. They were real conversations with business owners — people running small shops, service businesses, bakeries, consulting firms — describing their actual experience with the product in their own words.