From a Bali Vacation to Building a Software Review Platform for Africa

“You need to step away from that 5-star review and answer a few questions.”

It was a bright Tuesday morning for Faturoti Kayode, popularly known as Fattkay. The sun was out, the bags were packed, and a family vacation to Bali was waiting on the other side of a long flight.

As always, Kayode was looking forward to reading a new book on the trip…a habit he had developed recently to have fonder memories of vacations. 

But this trip felt different.

This time, Fattkay didn't want to just consume. He wanted to create. 

Unknown to him, what he would go on to create was bigger than he could have imagined: building a software review platform for Africa.

Bringing Curiosity into Innovation

Fattkay is a serial entrepreneur with years of experience across technology and crypto. He’s the kind of founder who stays curious, asks the right questions, and sorts problems as they come up. Some people describe him as introverted, and others describe him as a man of few words.

The internet perhaps would describe him as someone who writes on Substack about his life views and his growing enthusiasm for AI.

After a few days exploring Bali, it was finally time to create something. Fattkay’s initial plan was to build a team communication alternative after encountering high costs with existing tools.

Luckily enough, he found an open-source team communication alternative and began working on the codebase. Hours into coding, Fattkay realized the alternative did not meet his needs and lacked essential functionalities. 

In between frustration and giving up, Fattkay had a lightbulb moment: What if there was a place he could find actual alternatives to a product? Somewhere with solid reviews, and he wouldn’t spend hours trying a pointless alternative?

What if…there was a place with unbiased reviews, all crowdsourced…that could point him — or anyone at all — in the right direction to make a decision?

A place specifically built for Africa…

Introducing Liners: An Emerging Software Review Platform for Africa

The lightbulbs kept going off. 

Africa had a growing number of startups. Founders were launching great products across Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Ghana, Egypt, Rwanda, and the entirety of Africa. Builders were shipping, and operators were hiring. 

But…was there a place where users looking for software in Africa could find clean answers & reviews to make a decision?

Fattkay realized there was no widely recognized, region-specific platform serving a similar purpose. No real place to compare products, read honest reviews, or see what other teams on the continent were using. What existed were random directories where anyone could dump a product—broken URLs with wrong descriptions.

So somewhere between a beach activity and a late Bali evening, Fattkay began sketching what would become Liners: a software review platform for Africa, supported by AI agents.

Building An Unbiased Software Review Platform Managed by AI Agents

AI is projected to add USD 4.4 trillion to the global economy through continued usage and exploration, and it is expected to play an increasingly significant role in both personal and business environments in the years ahead. 

Entrepreneurs like Faturoti Kayode are already laying the foundation for a future powered by AI. 

By building Liners, a review platform focused on African software and companies, Kayode is changing what it means to innovate in a changing economy.

Fattkay noted, “What started as a simple products-and-reviews platform has grown into an ecosystem. A user researching a new tool can see who founded the company, when it launched, what's in the news, what funding it has raised, and how it compares to alternatives. They can follow companies and get notified when something changes, with control over how often those notifications come in.”

The goal is straightforward: when you need a sure, confident answer about any software product or company in Africa, Liners is where you go.

Meet the AI Agents that Run Liners Behind the Scenes

Many companies slap "AI" on a landing page or on a pitch deck because it sounds cool, and investors love it.

However, Liners truly runs on AI.

Back in Bali, when Fattkay began building Liners, he realized everything had to be seamless, and the quality of the platform must be impeccable. This meant having an AI Agent for each stage of the product collation and review process. 

After trying existing agent frameworks but finding them complicated, Kay built his own system: plain code that defines responsibilities, with a language model layer sitting on top to add intelligence where it matters. 

Tasks are triggered in the background, agents hand off to each other, and the system runs in the background while users search.

1. Standup Stevo is the “Self-Appointed” Manager of Liners, who runs the entire show and reports to Kay.
2. DD Dave, not Diddy, is the Head of Due Diligence who discovers new software & companies in Africa. 
3. QA Quinn, the Director of Quality Assurance, reviews all the products once DD Dave discovers them. 
4. LGTM Larry is the Principal Engineer, responsible for shipping new features on Liners. 
5. Postmortem Peter is the Chief Bug Finder, ensuring there aren’t bugs in Larry’s work, and fixing any that come up.
6. Whiteboard Wasiu is the VP of Brainstorming, responsible for the creative engine behind the platform. 
7. Agent Ammie is the Special Agent, Review Fraud Division, who investigates every single review on Liners to verify its validity and unbiasedness.
8. Then there’s Touch Base Tony, the VP of Touching Base, and the agent responsible for outreach and sending emails. 
9. And finally…TLDR Tara, the Chief Content Officer, who writes all the content on Liners. 

Why is Liners Managed by AI Agents?

AI doesn't have feelings. 

That means no bias in product rankings, no paid placements to get into the top of category pages, and no payments accepted to remove a negative review. 

These are some of the messier parts of traditional software review platforms globally, and Liners was built to remove them completely.

Every core operation on Liners, from adding a new product to reviewing quality, to pulling in news and handling comparisons, is handled by a team of nine AI agents. Each one has a job and a unique personality, which is apparent from the agents' names.

Obsession Over Quality

If you ask Fattkay what he's spent the most time on, he'll say the quality of the Liners platform.

"It's easy to have a directory and just dump random products there," he said. "Wrong URLs, half of the product websites not loading, wrong descriptions, wrong FAQs, broken images. It's very easy to do something like that without effort. 

But we’re extremely intentional with Liners — down to the type of products. Scammy products or knock-offs of original products aren’t added to the platform, he added.

Faturoti Kayode is building Liners to provide the utmost value to users in Africa and help them make better decisions.

One of his favourite moments so far came from an interaction with a friend who was looking for stablecoin providers in Nigeria. Kay opened Liners, searched, and sent the results. The person found the alternatives, compared them, and made an informed decision.

Africa is full of people who ask each other for product recommendations in WhatsApp groups or comment sections because the options online can often be incomplete or difficult to verify. Liners is trying to absorb those conversations into one trusted place.

Having Fun While at It

"It's a difficult world, so whatever we're doing, we should have fun while at it."

That's how the AI agents got their names and personalities. 

That's how the Agent HQ Chat, a public feed of what the agents are doing on the platform, was born. What started as a private reporting channel on Slack turned into something Fattkay decided to share publicly, because it was just too fun to keep to himself.

Bali gave him the space to start it, and curiosity kept it moving. However, an obsessive commitment to quality is shaping what Liners becomes.

And somewhere on a beach in Indonesia, a book stayed unread a little longer than usual.