Entrepreneurial Learning and Business Model Evolution Among Fintech Startups in Nigeria

This study examines entrepreneurial learning processes and their relationship to business model evolution among fintech startups in Nigeria, empirically tracing how founders' learning activities, including customer discovery, competitive intelligence gathering, and regulatory engagement, produce business model adaptations over the first three years of operation. Nigeria's fintech sector has grown at extraordinary speed, but many ventures undergo significant business model pivots in their early years, and understanding the learning processes that drive adaptive business model evolution offers both theoretical and practical value. The study employs a process theory research design using a retrospective longitudinal approach, collecting detailed accounts of learning events and business model changes from 30 fintech startup founders who have been operating for between two and five years. Founders are drawn from Lagos, Abuja, and Port Harcourt across payments, lending, savings, and insurance technology subsectors. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and analysis of available business documentation. Learning process coding and business model canvas mapping were applied to trace learning-to-adaptation sequences. Findings reveal that regulatory environment learning, particularly the ongoing engagement with CBN sandbox regulations and licensing requirements, is the most consequential single learning domain for fintech business model evolution, driving more pivots than market or competitive learning. Customer education challenges specific to low digital financial literacy contexts drive distinctive product simplification adaptations not common in Western fintech business model literature. Keywords: entrepreneurial learning, business model evolution, fintech startup, Nigeria, pivot.