How it started
While running an e-mobility social enterprise, Celeste Vogel was asked to build a financial model for an Acumen Academy accelerator program in 2024, and she nearly quit the accelerator on the spot.
“I told the program director, ‘I don’t do finance,’” Celeste said. “She replied, ‘Yes, you do, all founders do.’”
At the time, she had an accountant handling eWAKA’s financial management and had kept her distance from the details.
Over the months that followed, Celeste pushed through her discomfort and slowly embraced the language and tools of finance. This mindset shift marked a turning point in her late-career professional pivot — from corporate lawyer to founder and CEO of an emerging market social enterprise.
The journey began in Switzerland, where Celeste worked for a global reinsurance company as a lawyer while raising two teenage sons. Though she had lived outside of Africa since emigrating from Cameroon as a child, she traveled there often with her family.
Despite their annual vacations, Celeste knew her children didn’t embrace their African heritage the same way. So she planned a month-long trip from Benin to the Ivory Coast, away from the tourist hotspots, so they could “make Africa their own.” Seeing everyday life through her children’s eyes sparked an entrepreneurial fire.
“When you arrive in an African city, what really hits you is the number of people who walk everywhere. It’s not healthy walking. It’s 10 kilometers because they can’t afford to get on a bus and don’t have a car.”
The contrast was striking to her sons, who were raised in a culture where bicycles and e-bikes were part of the daily routine.
Their questions resurfaced a feeling that had been simmering inside her: Why are you in Switzerland when there are so many solvable problems where you grew up?
Over the next year, Celeste researched the mobility industry to find a niche where she could make an impact. She learned that last-mile delivery — the final step between the warehouse and the customer — was three to four times more expensive for African customers than in the United States1. In the delivery ecosystem, nobody won: Vendors and customers were frustrated by the high costs and lack of transparency, while motorbike drivers in the gig economy often earned less than $6–7 a day2.
In 2021, Celeste co-founded eWAKA Mobility Limited, a social enterprise that sells and rents electric bikes and motorcycles to riders in Kenya and Rwanda. The eWAKA app allows individual riders to book bikes and accept delivery jobs seamlessly, providing a pathway to prosperity. For delivery companies and other clients that depend on last-mile logistics, eWAKA solves common pain points by offering bike maintenance, rider training, and insurance.
Like many founders of social enterprises, Celeste didn’t have a background in financial management or accounting. When she entered her new role as CEO, she played to her strengths and was happy to outsource eWAKA’s financial management while focusing on building out the company’s mobility solution.
But after unprofitable decisions and challenging conversations with investors, Celeste knew it was her responsibility to get comfortable with the numbers. By strengthening her financial literacy and engaging deeply with the business’s unit economics, she gained the confidence and tools to make more informed decisions as CEO.
1 Samuel Odeloye and Demilade Onajobi. Innovations in Last-Mile Delivery: How Automation Can Revolutionize the Industry in Africa. Next Billion. May 15, 2023.
2 Hillary Bett. Average daily income from boda boda operations per rider. The Star. April 30, 2025.
What part of Celeste’s starting point feels most familiar to you right now?
What problem in your business are you most motivated to solve, but feel least equipped to evaluate financially?
The cost of distance from finance
In her early years of leading eWAKA, Celeste outsourced financial management to a remote accountant, believing that having the numbers handled by someone with formal financial training was the responsible choice.
That distance meant the accountant wasn’t involved in the company’s day-to-day strategy or operations.
“I really didn’t want to engage with the details...”
The downsides of this hands-off approach soon became clear.
Revenue targets disconnected from strategy
Celeste’s accountant would tell her: “You’ll make a million dollars this year if you sell this many bikes.” But he didn’t understand the steps required to make those sales a reality. Who would finance the bike purchases? What would happen if a rider defaulted on their bike payment? The revenue targets sounded feasible, but had no connection to how the business actually operated.
Invoices sitting unpaid for months
On paper, the company’s revenue seemed better than ever. But the accounts receivable — funds owed by customers but not yet paid — told a different story. Some clients weren’t paying, sometimes because eWAKA had never even sent an invoice. The company was leaving considerable money on the table.
Unprofitable contracts from incomplete unit economics
In her first year, Celeste was eager to land big clients, assuming more was always better. She later discovered that two of those customers were losing money for the business. The team hadn’t calculated the “all-in costs” of the mobility solution — from value-added tax (VAT) and bike maintenance to license plates and sales commissions — and had offered a price that didn’t cover expenses, so even if they increased their orders and the account revenue went up, the company would not benefit financially.
Confusion about sales commissions
The sales team assumed that every $1,200 bicycle sale meant $1,200 in profit for the business. When Celeste was disconnected from the numbers, she struggled to challenge this and explain that the profit per unit after costs was actually only $300. This created confusion about commission rates and overinflated expectations about cash flow.
Investor questions that went unanswered
In meetings with investors, Celeste found herself unable to answer basic questions about eWAKA’s value and unit costs. She couldn’t outsource these difficult conversations: The funders didn’t want to speak to her accountant; they wanted to discuss directly with the CEO.
What financial responsibility have you consciously or unconsciously outsourced in your business? What information do you not currently have because of that choice?
Where might you already be paying a hidden cost for not knowing your unit economics or cash position?
Which consequence of distance from the numbers worries you most in your own context?
First steps into the numbers
As a lawyer, Celeste had advised on financial transactions and negotiated terms. But those experiences hadn’t prepared her for leading a startup.
“It was a big realization that when you run a company, you’re not looking at financial statements that have been prepared for you. You’re part of the preparation. You’re the source of the information.”
As CEO, Celeste realized she already held much of that information. She knew what the company paid in salaries and rent, how long it took to onboard a new rider or client, how long they stayed on the platform, and what it cost to maintain and repair the bikes. These weren’t abstract accounting concepts — they were day-to-day realities of running the business.
While preparing financial statements was intimidating, Celeste’s distance from the company’s finances left her feeling even worse — unsettled and out of control. When she pitched to potential funders, she worried that her vision wasn’t grounded in reality.
The “aha” moment eventually came. “I’m not equipped to run this company,” she thought. “It’s not okay for me not to know these things.”
What worked for Celeste
Simple, practical teaching with real examples
During Acumen’s accelerator, Celeste built a bottom-up financial model from scratch. She calculated eWAKA’s unit economics, adding up the costs associated with the e-bike solution to find a sustainable price. The structure of the accelerator, with dedicated time and the requirement to present her work, meant she had to engage directly with the numbers rather than delegate them. For the first time, something clicked: She could see how each piece of the business contributed to its bottom line.
After the accelerator, she wanted to further develop her skills and knowledge and enrolled in an online accounting course. The facilitator illustrated concepts with clear, concrete examples. He explained that accounting is the language of business, and that numbers alone rarely tell the whole story. You must understand the accounting behind them. The course helped her make sense of the numbers in her own business and build her confidence.
Seeing the real-world impact on her business
When Celeste realized her revenue didn’t match her cash flow, everything changed. She identified unpaid invoices in accounts receivable and made it a habit to follow up on them personally each month. Because she now understood both how financial statements are built and how to read them, she could spot issues quickly and take action. Accounting was no longer a math exercise, but a critical tool for running the business.
What is one financial question you could answer this month that would reduce uncertainty?
What support (tool, person, information, time block) would make engaging with the numbers feel more manageable?
Turning finances into action
Celeste moved quickly to correct her past mistakes:
Terminating unprofitable contracts
Setting prices based on unit profitability
Recentering the business model around the bicycle, not the rider
Setting financial goals and metrics for every team member
“I realized that financial projections gave a reality check to my ideas,” she said. “I don’t think I’ll ever feel 100% comfortable with numbers. But now I’m quicker to take my calculator out to see: Does this make sense? Will we come out ahead?”
She shared two examples of how her decision-making has changed:
1. From freezing in valuation conversations to explaining growth
In earlier conversations with investors, questions about eWAKA’s valuation would stop Celeste in her tracks. When funders compared the company’s valuation to its past revenue, she struggled to explain how the business would grow into that number.
Today, those conversations look different. Celeste starts with the drivers of growth: confirmed partners, equipment manufacturers, and a platform she controls to onboard riders at scale. From there, she builds projections that show how those operational inputs translate into revenue over time.
“When investors said our valuation was 10 times our annual revenue and asked how we’d get there, that used to freeze me, now I know how to build projections with more certainty [...] I know how to calculate our unit economics, I know we have multiple revenue streams to cushion ourselves from unexpected blows. I can share a financial projection that I’ve calculated myself, with supporting documentation.”
Rather than defending a number in isolation, Celeste can now explain why looking backward at last year’s revenue isn’t the right lens, and how future growth is grounded in what the company has already put in place.
2. Pricing the subscription model
eWAKA offers a subscription program to make bicycles more affordable. But when pricing them, the company didn’t account for the cost of capital — the money tied up in bikes on the road — so the margins were much lower than expected.
First, Celeste and her team recalculated the subscription pricing to account for the cost of capital. Then they shifted from measuring unit profitability per rider (which was inconsistent) to per bicycle. That decision improved asset utilization, reduced credit risk, and made the subscription model more profitable.
Advice for other founders
Today, Celeste doesn’t just understand how to read a balance sheet. She knows how to use financial tools every day to make strategic, informed decisions:
Her advice to founders: You can’t afford to distance yourself from your company’s finances. Fortunately, it isn’t as complicated as you might think.
“Take an accounting class. Understand how your business actually makes money. Acumen didn’t give me a choice — they were very insistent that I do it, I really was scared. I thought, I don't want to do this. I can pay somebody to do it. I felt too old to learn new tricks. But as founders, we do so many hard things,” she said. “We navigate uncomfortable spaces and stretch ourselves. People like me deliberately stay away from [finances] because we’ve convinced ourselves this is not what we do, but we’re leaving a lot on the table. The clarity it gives you is so important. It allows you to protect yourself and protect the company.”
What belief about finance might be keeping you from engaging more directly?
What does “responsible enough with the numbers” look like for you at this stage?
Key takeaways
You don’t have to be a “numbers person” to understand your business, but avoiding your finances will hold you back.
Start simple and learn by doing. Building your own numbers, even imperfectly, is what makes things finally click.
Understanding your finances gives you control. It helps you spot problems early and make better decisions with confidence.