Funding the next phase of Paleon Training.

01 — Executive Summary

The platform is built. What's missing is capital, not code.

Between the two of you, the Paleon Training platform has already been built to a production-ready standard: a full learning management system with five complete curricula, a working payment system, and an admin back-office — represented on paper by roughly 950 hours of software development and 200 hours of curriculum authoring, contributed without either partner drawing a salary.

What the business needs now isn't more building — it's the cash to go from "built" to "selling": a real payment gateway for the Nigerian market, a marketing budget to acquire the first paying students, and a small working-capital buffer. This document sets out that cost, proposes a funding structure for a third partner to cover it, and works through — with real course pricing and cited market data — how the business breaks even and turns a profit.

02 — What's Been Built

A production LMS, not a prototype.

The platform is live and in active use. It includes:

• Five complete curricula — Cyber Security Fundamentals, Digital Marketing, GIS & Drone Mapping, Renewable Energy Digital Systems, and Social Media Management — 98 lessons total, each with custom illustrations and embedded video.
• A course, module, lesson, quiz, assignment and capstone system — the full structure of a real cohort-based learning product, not just static content pages.
• A working payment system — card payments (settled in GBP) and Nigerian bank-transfer payments (in Naira), with admin confirmation for bank transfers and single-source-of-truth pricing.
• An admin back-office — candidate management, payment confirmation, enrollment and online-status controls.
• A 10% referral program — already designed and documented, ready to activate as a low-cost acquisition channel.

03 — Market Opportunity: Nigeria

A large, young, underserved, mobile-first market.

Nigeria is not a speculative market to enter — it's already the platform's designed home currency and payment rail. The macro case is strong:

• 224 million people, the majority under 25 — the largest youth population in Africa, with 126 million children and adolescents projected by 2030.
• The World Bank estimates digital skills will be required for 35–45% of all jobs in Nigeria by 2030 — yet 23% of young Nigerians are actively unemployed and looking for work, and a further 32% are out of employment entirely.
• Nigeria's digital skills gap is estimated to cost the economy $11 billion a year — the Nigerian government's own National Digital Economy Policy commits $200 million to digital education and training as a response.
• Nigeria's e-learning/skills-development market is valued at roughly $1.5 billion, with the narrower EdTech segment alone projected near $185–200 million by the end of 2026 — Nigeria already accounts for over a fifth of Africa's entire e-learning market.
• 109 million internet users (45.5% penetration) and a smartphone base projected to approach 100 million by 2029, with 68.7% of web traffic already mobile — the market is built for a mobile-first product, which this platform already is.

Competitive landscape

The market is real enough that competitors already exist and are well-funded: Decagon, AltSchool Africa, and Utiva are the established names, alongside HNG Internship, Semicolon, and ALX Africa. None of them currently cover the specific mix this platform does — cyber security, GIS/drone mapping, and renewable energy digital systems alongside the more commonly-offered digital marketing and social media tracks — which is a genuine differentiation angle, not just a pricing one.

04 — Development Cost Breakdown

What it would cost to build this from a standing start.

At a blended rate of £30/hour for two developers, here is what the platform represents in market-rate development time — this is the sweat-equity basis for the ownership discussion in §7, not a bill either partner is owed.

This reflects two people working with heavy AI-assisted development, completed over roughly two weeks — not a claim about typical unassisted developer velocity. The hours are an itemized effort estimate by feature area, cross-checked against the codebase's actual scope (lines of code, migrations, services, components), not a reconstruction of the real calendar time spent.

05 — The Funding Ask

£10,000 covers the minimum. £15,000 is the safer number.

£10,000 is workable, but it's tight — it funds roughly three to four months of meaningful marketing spend before the business needs to be self-sustaining off enrollment revenue, with very little buffer if the first marketing channel underperforms. £15,000 gives the same plan a six-to-nine-month runway and a genuine contingency line, which matters more than the extra £5,000 given that customer acquisition cost for this market is currently unproven.

06 — Break-Even & Profit Projections

Grounded in the platform's real course pricing.

These figures use the platform's actual, already-live course prices — this is not a hypothetical pricing exercise.

At an illustrative £1 = ₦2,000 (verify against the live rate — the Naira has been volatile), the average course nets roughly £95, or £92 after a ~3% payment-processing fee. All projections below use £92 net revenue per enrollment.

Three enrollment scenarios

Year 1 net profit = 12 months of margin at that rate, less ~£3,000/year in ongoing hosting and platform costs. Figures are gross margin (revenue net of payment fees) before any owner drawings or tax.

These are illustrative, not forecasts — customer acquisition cost for this market is unproven. Treat the conservative case as the planning assumption and the other two as upside, and validate CAC with a small pilot spend before committing the full marketing budget in one go.

07 — Proposed Equity Structure

A starting point for negotiation, not a formula to accept as-is.

One defensible, transparent way to value the split: treat the £34,500 of development work as the two founding partners' contributed value, add the incoming partner's cash, and split ownership proportionally to what each side put in.

08 — Risks & Mitigations

What could go wrong, and what's already in the plan for it.

09 — Next 90 Days

What happens once the funding lands.

1. Days 1–30 — Get transaction-ready

   Integrate a real Nigerian payment gateway (Paystack or Flutterwave), complete company/legal formation, and review NDPA compliance before taking a single live payment.

2. Days 31–60 — First cohort

   Activate the referral program, start a small paid-marketing pilot, and onboard the first paying students with analytics in place to actually measure customer acquisition cost.

3. Days 61–90 — Read the data, then scale

   Review real CAC and conversion numbers against the scenarios in §6, adjust pricing or channel mix accordingly, and plan the second cohort's marketing spend based on what's actually working.