Lameda
In DevelopmentCommerce infrastructure for Nigerian merchants.
The Problem
Nigerian commerce happens in friction. Merchants manage inquiries across WhatsApp, Instagram, and in-person simultaneously. There is no unified system that takes a buyer from discovery to payment without manual intervention at every step.
The tools that exist in the market are either too expensive, too generic, or not built for the Nigerian commerce context.
What Lameda Is
An AI-powered commerce platform that gives Nigerian merchants a single operating layer from inquiry to payment. The platform handles merchant onboarding, buyer conversations, order management, payment processing, post-purchase support, and automated reconciliation. The Lagos Signal design philosophy, named after and rooted in the density and precision of Lagos commerce culture, runs through every design decision.
Key Product Decisions
Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) for every major technical choice.
10 documented ADRs covering stack selection (Supabase, Vercel, pgvector), multi-tenancy model (RLS-based), communication provider (Termii), and AI routing strategy. Each ADR documents the alternatives considered and the consequences accepted. This is the same discipline used in enterprise delivery, applied to a product being built from scratch.
Multi-tenancy from day one, not retrofitted.
The platform is designed to serve multiple merchants on a single infrastructure from the first line of code. Row-Level Security (RLS) handles data isolation at the database layer. Retrofitting multi-tenancy into a single-tenant architecture is one of the most expensive rework problems in SaaS. The decision to build it correctly from the start is a product architecture call, not just a technical one.
Reconciliation as a first-class concern.
Coming from payment infrastructure delivery at a Tier 1 bank, building reconciliation as an afterthought is not an option. The platform's payment layer is designed with automated reconciliation and dispute management built in from the first release, the same principle applied on the NIBSS (Nigerian Interbank Settlement System) NPS (National Payment System) project at Stanbic IBTC.
AI routing on Haiku, not the most powerful model available.
The platform uses Claude Haiku for classification and routing decisions, reserving heavier inference for tasks that require it. This is a cost architecture decision, keeping per-conversation AI cost low enough to serve SME (Small and Medium Enterprise) merchants at a viable margin.
What Has Been Built
- ◦System Design Document with full state machine spec and C4 architecture diagrams
- ◦10 Architecture Decision Records
- ◦Competitive brief covering 6 competitors with a 12-dimension feature matrix
- ◦Risk register: 24 risks scored across 6 domains, 7 high/critical risks with mitigation plans
- ◦6-month product roadmap (Now/Next/Later)
- ◦Lagos Signal design philosophy and visual identity
What This Demonstrates
Lameda shows product thinking at the systems level. The ADRs alone demonstrate a product leader who understands that the decisions made in month one constrain what is possible in month twelve. The competitive analysis, risk register, and roadmap show a full commercial view, not just feature specification.