Tasker4U is a Nigeria-first freelance marketplace that connects clients with skilled taskers. I built it end-to-end — product design, full-stack engineering, payment infrastructure, and launch. The core thesis: Nigerian freelancers need a platform built for Nigerian realities — Naira payments, local trust signals, and escrow that actually works.
Global freelance platforms like Fiverr and Upwork don't work well in Nigeria. Payments get blocked, dollar rates are unpredictable, and there's no local trust layer. Nigerian freelancers and clients were stuck in informal WhatsApp groups, losing money to scams and delays. I wanted to fix that — build a platform where money moves safely and work gets done.
The most critical piece. Clients fund a job, money sits in escrow, and only releases to the tasker when work is approved. I built this on top of Kora (a Nigerian payment processor) with a custom wallet system. Getting this right took weeks of edge-case testing — partial releases, dispute states, refund flows.
Every job has a live chat between client and tasker. Built with WebSockets on the FastAPI backend, with message persistence in PostgreSQL. The UX challenge was making it feel lightweight without a native app.
Trust is everything in a marketplace. I built a multi-step verification flow: phone number, BVN check, and portfolio review. This reduced fake accounts significantly and gave clients confidence to transact.
When things go wrong, someone has to intervene. I built an internal admin dashboard to view disputes, release or freeze escrow, and contact both parties. This was designed for me to run solo until the platform scales.
I chose FastAPI because the escrow logic and payment webhooks needed to be rock-solid and easy to test. Python's type hints + Pydantic made the financial logic much safer. The async performance was also a bonus for real-time features.
There were no Nigerian escrow SaaS options that fit. I built it myself — more work upfront, but full control over dispute logic, release conditions, and fee structure. This ended up being a competitive advantage.
- →Payments are where products die. Spend 3× as long on payment flows as you think you need to.
- →Trust is a product feature, not an afterthought. Verification and review systems should be built before launch.
- →Building in Nigeria means offline-first thinking. Flaky connections, slow devices — design for it.
- →Solo founding is a skill. You learn to ship faster, cut scope ruthlessly, and validate before you build.