The Iceberg Work

Chinedu Azodoh is the Co-founder and President of MAX, a mobility platform transforming the quality of life for commercial gig workers across Africa. From a background in finance and high-frequency trading at firms like Goldman Sachs, Chinedu walked away from a “nice job” to tackle fundamental infrastructure challenges. In this story, he reflects on how MAX had to build five to seven companies inside its core business and why success demands the relentless pursuit of scale and efficiency.

Walking Away: The Call of the Unsolved

I’ve had a very interesting journey. I come from a family of doctors; my father was in the army, and my mother led the health sector response to crises in Nigeria. I am one of the exceptions, choosing entrepreneurship.

MAX started as a class project at MIT Sloan. I had come to school intending to build a business that was Africa-facing, transformative, and job-creating. I initially tried something in the mother-and-child space, but couldn’t figure out the logistics. That led me to the MAX team.

I took my winter break, came back to Nigeria, and did an internship, commuting daily from Badore to Marina. I remember constantly being the tallest, biggest guy in the bus, struggling to get a seat. I lost four suits in six weeks, not from work, but just from the commute itself. I was trying to answer the question: was there an opportunity for MAX to create value? The answer was clear: life in Nigeria was challenging. So much didn’t make sense. There was a huge need for logistics and delivery infrastructure. MAX would thrive. I went back to Sloan, essentially stopped recruiting, rejected all the offers I had, and told the team I was moving forward with this full-time.

The Iceberg Work: Building the Infrastructure Layer

I think anybody with common sense, who fully understands what it takes to build what we’re all building, would not do it-you’d find a nice job somewhere. But for me, it’s been fulfilling. The kind of problems we’re solving, you don’t see them anywhere else.

What people miss when looking at Africa is that we may be raising money to build the same companies as elsewhere, but operationally, we’re building VERY different companies. If MAX in Nigeria raises $100 million and a similar company in Brazil raises $100 million, we’re doing way more iceberg work.

We’ve had to build five to seven companies inside MAX because the infrastructure required to deliver our service in this market didn’t exist. Now, many companies being built around us are actually seeded by former MAX employees on the back of the infrastructure we had to build from scratch. It’s a different level of challenge. You have to be crazy to take that kind of risk upfront. You have to be driven by the outcome, not the effort required to get there.

The Evolution of the ‘Why’: From Jobs to Infrastructure

The why evolves; it doesn’t necessarily change. It grows. Like a child, you grow, but people who knew you at five can still recognize you at 30. That’s how I think of it.

Initially, the goal was to build a logistics business that created jobs. Today, MAX delivers mobility infrastructure that enables others to do logistics. That’s a big shift. Our purpose now is to transform the quality of life for commercial taxi drivers and gig workers in the markets we operate in.

The core belief that consistently brings the founding team back into alignment is being driven primarily by outcomes. Everything else is noise. This is similar to building a marriage. You must agree on how to fight, not just how to work. If not, disrespect creeps in early and destroys companies before they even face the real market.

A defining moment for me was the policy change in 2020 that required an emergency pivot. What seemed like an insurmountable setback became the catalyst for our greatest transformation. It really changed how I think about building, opportunities, and managing stakeholders.

The Relentless Pursuit of Scale

When we first started MAX, I was, at the core, an engineer, an engineer with a lot of interest. Today, I’m significantly more than an engineer. I’m a product leader, a sales leader. My focus now is on margins, optimizing OPEX, and improving financial returns. We’ve evolved from doing everything ourselves to orchestrating a network of partners to drive down cost and improve operational efficiency. I’ve gone from an engineer obsessed with building to a business leader focused on delivering outcomes efficiently.

Building MAX has forced me to address my personal weaknesses by actively seeking external help and developing a problem-solving plan. We spent so many years trying to perfect everything. If I were starting MAX today, I think I could have built a unicorn within two to three years because we wouldn’t make the early mistakes we did.

When it’s all said and done, over the next two years, we need to build a network of roughly 250,000 vehicles—a behemoth. If we don’t build that, I wouldn’t consider it worth it, given all the equity we’d have to give up to raise capital. We don’t really have a choice but to build a monstrous organization in terms of size, revenue, and value. That’s what will make it worth it.