Matthew Ademola exists for one reason: great projects shouldn't fail because the person behind them didn't speak "funding." Here's how we came to be, and who we are.
Matthew has spent his career at the intersection of storytelling and capital. After watching brilliant founders, many of them friends, lose months to rejected grant applications and stalled campaigns, he set out to build the advisory he wished they'd had.
Today he leads strategy across both practices: feasibility analysis for crowdfunding campaigns, grant eligibility audits, proposal direction and client relationships. Clients describe his style the same way, honest to the point of discomfort, then relentless on execution.
Direct line: advisory@matthewademola.com
Ajoke runs the crowdfunding engine of the firm. Her sweet spot is the unglamorous work that decides campaigns before they launch: audience funnels, $1 reservation systems, ad creative testing and the launch-day war room.
She has managed campaigns across consumer hardware, board games and cause-based fundraising, and is the reason the firm's pre-launch lists convert at multiples of the industry average. If your campaign funds in its first 48 hours, it's usually Ajoke's fingerprint.
Campaign enquiries: outreach@matthewademola.com
Every advisory firm has an origin. Ours is a collection of conversations we'd rather forget.
Matthew's first exposure to the funding world came informally, helping a friend's nonprofit rework a grant application that two consultants had already failed at. The problem wasn't the project; it was that nobody had read the scoring rubric. They won on the next submission. The lesson stuck: funding isn't luck, it's craft.
Over the following years, the same scene repeated: inventors pouring savings into prototypes then launching Kickstarter pages with no audience; community organizations writing grants without eligibility checks; startups giving away equity for money that grants would have provided free. Different sectors, identical root causes.
Matthew Ademola was founded to be the anti-template agency: audit before advice, strategy before spend, and honest "no" when a project isn't ready. Ajoke joined as co-founder to build the crowdfunding practice around one principle, validated audiences, not hope-based launches.
The firm now serves founders, nonprofits and researchers across three continents, still selective, still senior-led, still allergic to guarantees we can't control. The mission hasn't changed since day one: make funding expertise accessible to people doing work that matters.
We regularly talk clients out of engagements that would pay us. A campaign that shouldn't launch or a grant you don't qualify for is a conversation we have upfront, in writing.
No junior writers learning on your application. The strategists you meet on the call are the people doing the work.
Real numbers, realistic forecasts, weekly reporting. If the data turns against a campaign, you'll hear it from us first, with options, not excuses.
Everything we build, funnels, page copy, proposal templates, belongs to you. We succeed when your capability outgrows us.
