Sponge
Sells the diagnostic and convening work. Owns the method, the instruments and the prediction record. Builds nothing, which is the point — it is the only part of the group with no stake in what the diagnosis concludes.
We diagnose problems and we also own companies that build solutions. That is a conflict, and pretending otherwise would be the first sign we should not be trusted with the diagnosis. Here is how it is handled.
An assessment produced by the party hoping to win the resulting build is a hard thing for anyone to trust, ourselves included. If our diagnostic reliably concluded that the answer was the thing we happen to sell, it would be a sales process with a methodology attached.
The separation below exists for that reason and no other. It is not a tax structure and it is not a brand architecture.
Would the parties who granted us this authority — clients, regulators, participants — recognise this action as stewardship? If the answer requires explanation, it fails.
Sells the diagnostic and convening work. Owns the method, the instruments and the prediction record. Builds nothing, which is the point — it is the only part of the group with no stake in what the diagnosis concludes.
Premium factual programming, original IP and the platforms that carry it. Serves the two constraints that are audience work: Understanding and Momentum. media.spongegroup.com.ng
A Delaware corporation, formed to serve Access and Trust: rails, onboarding, protection and recourse design. It has not raised and is not yet operating, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise.
It is not credited with revenue earned downstream by Sponge Media or, in future, Sponge Lab. A diagnostician who is measured on referrals will produce referrals.
Not to volume, not to conversion, not to which company wins the work that follows.
Every engagement letter states that Sponge has related companies, that we may recommend them, and that the findings are yours to take anywhere.
Annually: what proportion of diagnoses led to work with a Sponge company, and what proportion went elsewhere. If that figure is never uncomfortable, the diagnostic is not independent — and the market would work that out long before we admitted it.
Where the binding constraint is Understanding or Momentum, Sponge Media may well be the right team, and we will say so. Where it is Access, Trust or Coordination, the work frequently sits outside the group entirely — with an infrastructure partner, a regulator, a payments provider, or a coalition of organisations who each hold part of the answer.
We would rather send you to the right builder than keep you and be wrong. The alternative is a group that quietly diagnoses its own capabilities into every brief. We have worked that way before, and we know how it reads from the outside.
Sponge and Sponge Media are separate registered companies today. The diagnostic P&L, the disclosure and the referral count are in place now.
Sponge Lab is incorporated but unfunded. When it raises, two commitments take effect: investors are never solicited during a live diagnostic engagement, and never by the person who ran it.
An independent oversight group is committed at the point of our first convening engagement, when a third party is first asked to accept us as a neutral party.
The first published referral split will cover our first full year of diagnostic work.
The diagnosis has to be believable.
Everything above is downstream of that.