Funke Adeyemi · Homebase Baker
From WhatsApp Notebook to Real Dashboard
Funke had 40 orders a week and a spreadsheet that couldn't keep up. She didn't need more discipline. She needed infrastructure.
Before
Funke Adeyemi was running one of Abuja's most beloved home bakeries entirely through WhatsApp, taking orders via voice note, confirming them via screenshot, tracking them in a spreadsheet she updated every night after her daughter went to sleep. She had regular customers who loved her. She had a waiting list. She had a system that was collapsing under the weight of its own success.
“I was working until 2am just to know what I needed to bake the next morning.”
The Discovery
Ceoism found Funke through her WhatsApp community, a group she ran for home bakers in Abuja where members shared recipes, bulk-buy ingredients together, and referred customers to each other. She was the organiser, the expert, the person everyone leaned on. The community she built was already the product. It just didn't have infrastructure yet.
What Was Built
Homebase Baker was designed around how Funke already worked, not how a Silicon Valley designer imagined home bakers might work. WhatsApp-native ordering that didn't require customers to download anything. A baker profile system that let each baker control their availability, pricing, and specialties. A simple dashboard that showed today's orders, this week's revenue, and which customers were regulars.
Now
Funke stopped updating her spreadsheet the week Homebase Baker went live. The platform does what the spreadsheet did, and a hundred things the spreadsheet never could. Her name is on the product. Her community is its first users. And when she sits down at her kitchen table now, it's to bake, not to manage a broken system.
“I thought ownership was for people who had already made it. Turns out it's how you make it.”