Brad Schiller, the Founder and CEO of Prompt, has spearheaded a remarkable journey in the education sector. Prompt, the largest college admissions essay coaching company globally, offers a sophisticated software platform that simplifies the college application process for over 15,000 students.
Additionally, Prompt’s network of around 100 part-time writing coaches assists over 5,000 students with over 30,000 hours of writing coaching. The company’s revenue is projected to hit $4 million in 2023, showcasing an impressive 20-60% growth rate over the past seven years.
Interestingly, about two-thirds of Prompt’s revenue comes from selling to businesses. The company white-labels its software platform and essay coaching for over 500 private college counselors and high schools worldwide. The remaining third of the revenue is generated by directly serving families under the Prompt brand.
In a recent expansion, Prompt launched “Pen,” a literacy curriculum that empowers English learners across India and Latin America to confidently use English in academic and workplace settings, aiming to surpass 20,000 learners by the end of 2023.
Schiller’s journey began with a personal passion for enhancing written communication and critical thinking skills. Having recognized the need for effective communication during his tenure at McKinsey, Schiller’s mission evolved into enabling widespread proficiency in structured and impactful communication.
Prompt’s path to success was characterized by iterative development. Starting as a marketplace for obtaining feedback on writing content and structure, the company eventually focused on college admissions essays, where initial customer traction was found. This niche specialization paved the way for Prompt’s growth, and the company released a software and coaching services product tailored for private college counselors in 2017, generating $200,000 in annual recurring revenue.
The journey, however, wasn’t without challenges. Schiller’s persistent drive to enhance literacy and critical thinking skills led to various product diversifications. While some ventures incurred significant investment and time, Prompt’s recent literacy curriculum, “Pen,” seems to have struck the right chord.
Schiller’s grit is evident in his personal journey as well. Despite starting Prompt in 2014 with minimal resources and while facing financial challenges, Schiller’s dedication led to steady growth. With four children and his wife pursuing a PhD, Schiller even resorted to independent consulting to support his family while building Prompt.
An “oh shit” moment in 2021 posed an existential threat to Prompt. Operational inefficiencies caused delays in essay reviews, jeopardizing the upcoming college admissions season. Schiller took decisive action, revamping operations and streamlining costs, saving the business from a dire situation.
Key to Prompt’s success is exceptional operational efficiency and a keen focus on customer satisfaction. The company’s business model thrives on selling to businesses and leveraging referrals for consumer sales. The ability to understand customer needs, offer exceptional service, and automate operations has been pivotal.
Schiller’s leadership philosophy emphasizes hiring independent thinkers who excel in navigating ambiguity. His belief in minimizing managerial layers allows him to remain close to the core challenges and prioritize high-value problem-solving.
Schiller’s journey with Prompt is an inspiring tale of perseverance, iterative development, and a relentless commitment to enhancing literacy and communication skills on a global scale. Through Prompt and its ventures like “Pen,” Schiller is making a profound impact on education and communication.
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Lagos, Nigeria – August 21, 2023 – Nigerian blockchain payments startup, Bingtellar, proudly announces the debut of its groundbreaking instant crypto-to-fiat conversion service. This cutting-edge solution empowers individuals and businesses to seamlessly engage in cryptocurrency transactions, effortlessly buying and selling digital assets while receiving payments in their local currencies.
Since its inception in 2021, Bingtellar has pioneered real-time crypto-to-fiat conversions, ensuring users have access to immediate liquidity in their preferred local currency. Leveraging a robust payment infrastructure, Bingtellar has bridged the gap between cryptocurrencies and fiat currencies, transforming complex transactions into streamlined processes that can be completed in less than three minutes.
Founder and visionary behind Bingtellar, Joshua Tebepina, explains the driving force behind this innovation: “With the increasing prominence of cryptocurrencies, the demand for flexible transactions like paying for goods and services or funding bank accounts from crypto wallets has surged. Our goal was to eliminate the time-consuming delays associated with such transactions. Conventional payment systems often take 24-72 hours to remit funds from a crypto wallet to a fiat account, which can be quite inconvenient for instant transfers.”
A significant factor contributing to this inefficiency is the involvement of third-party intermediaries. Some platforms necessitate users to first convert their cryptocurrency to fiat in a designated wallet on the cryptocurrency platform before transferring funds to a bank account.
Tebepina adds, “Bingtellar addresses these challenges by offering a seamless platform that enables transactions within three minutes without third-party involvement. We recognized the need for a hassle-free, rapid solution, and we’re proud to deliver on that promise.”
Driven by user demand and guided by a vision of innovation, Bingtellar has already successfully processed over US$300,000 in transactions, signaling a promising trajectory for growth. The startup is actively raising a pre-seed round to further enhance its capabilities and expand its reach.
Tebepina reflects on Bingtellar’s journey, “Our growth has exceeded expectations, and the feedback from users has been nothing short of remarkable. What started as a personal endeavor to address challenges faced by friends using P2P exchanges has now evolved into a game-changing solution. We are excited to witness the impact we’re making.”
Currently accessible exclusively in Nigeria, Bingtellar has ambitious plans for expansion across other African countries in the near future. Tebepina shares, “We’re actively testing our beta payment payouts in Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda. Our unwavering commitment to top-tier user experience and customer service is driving our meticulous approach to expansion.”
For more information about Bingtellar and its revolutionary crypto-to-fiat conversion service, please visit www.bingtellar.com.
Joseph Mambwe is the sole founder of GymStreak, a fitness app that uses high-end animation and augmented reality to enhance exercise understanding and track user progress. Born in Zambia, raised in Botswana, and later moving to the UK, Joseph’s diverse experiences and passion for learning from a young age contributed to his unique perspective and determination as an entrepreneur.
While studying Engineering at the University of Cambridge, Joseph’s passion for fitness and UI design led him to envision the GymStreak app. He identified the importance of consistency in fitness journeys and aimed to create a user-friendly platform that encouraged sustained commitment.
Building GymStreak required implementing a 3D engine to animate exercises, which demanded significant effort. Despite the challenges, Joseph’s determination to be future-ready with augmented reality technology and 3D animation showcased his foresight and commitment to innovation.
Despite having no employees, Joseph achieved remarkable success, generating $2.5 million in revenue last year. He relied on a team of skilled freelancers for marketing and customer support, allowing him to maintain control over the company’s growth. The app’s bootstrapped nature grants Joseph the flexibility to control the pace of growth, allowing him to balance business expansion with personal life goals.
GymStreak’s growth primarily stems from highly effective paid marketing campaigns on Facebook and TikTok, boasting an impressive return on ad spend. The app’s unique features and compelling creative content contributed to its success. Although faced with challenges, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and plateaued growth, Joseph’s determination and ability to adapt drove continuous improvement and eventual success.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit and gyms closed worldwide, GymStreak faced a significant challenge. However, Joseph quickly adapted the app to include home workout options, demonstrating his agility and ability to respond to changing circumstances.
Despite impressive growth, Joseph recognized the importance of product optimization to enhance user experience. He spent six months rebuilding the app to improve key conversion points and increase revenue tenfold.
Joseph’s leadership style prioritizes empowering his team of contractors with autonomy. By allowing them to make independent decisions, he fosters a culture of trust, creativity, and individual ownership within the company.
The strength of GymStreak’s business model lies in its ability to recoup ad spend almost immediately, enabling rapid and profitable scaling. However, like many consumer SaaS products, GymStreak encounters retention challenges, emphasizing the importance of enhancing customer retention and renewals.
Looking to the future, Joseph foresees untapped potential in the market, particularly through an affiliate system for mobile apps that facilitates partnerships and revenue-sharing, potentially bolstering user acquisition and retention strategies. With a focus on maximizing customer retention and renewals, Joseph aims to grow GymStreak to an impressive $15-$20 million in annual recurring revenue in the coming years.
Joseph Mambwe’s entrepreneurial journey with GymStreak exemplifies the power of dedication, creativity, and resourcefulness in building a successful app business with a strong emphasis on user experience and growth.
Here are some of the key takeaways from Joseph’s story:
Joseph Mambwe is a visionary entrepreneur who saw the potential of using high-end animation and augmented reality to create a more engaging and effective fitness app.
GymStreak’s success is due in part to Joseph’s determination and ability to adapt to changing circumstances.
The app’s bootstrapped nature has allowed Joseph to maintain control over the company’s growth and focus on user experience.
Joseph is focused on future growth and is looking to expand into new markets.
What do you think about Joseph’s Story? Share your thought in the comment below.
My name is Grace Youpele, I’m a mobile developer and I’ve been in tech for the past three years. I started with a couple of things but I landed in mobile development and I decided to stick with it. I am also a community lead, public speaker, technical writer, and the founder of the LadiesInFlutter community.
This is awesome. When we were going through your page we realized that you have a community about women learning Flutter. What is it about?
It’s a community of women that are interested in mobile development. Our aim is to help the ladies grow and become more confident in their tech craft. We usually do have classes every Friday to boost their knowledge of mobile development and also we have monthly meet up where we get to bring ladies that are already doing well in their tech careers to come to speak to the ladies. We have also had training sessions on confidence to help build their confidence in public speaking as well as the confidence to strive in the tech space.
This is great. You guys are doing awesomely well. The question now is Why women?
I’ll try not to be biased here but you’ll agree with me that the male is dominated in the tech space. For every company I’ve worked in, I literarily was the only female developer with lots of guys. Lately, I’m happy to say that women are showing up and breaking through the space. When I started, I thought I was the only lady in Flutter Nigeria but I later figured out that there were few ladies out there but probably they were just too shy to come out. So I thought having our safe space to relate, know each other, and help ourselves grow would be great.
This is great. Since you started your NGO, how many women have you trained?
We started early this year and right now we have over a hundred registered in the community.
What motivated you to be a mobile developer?
I actually studied computer science in school but the educational system in Nigeria doesn’t qualify you based on what you studied. There used to be those tech guys in school I admire a lot but I was more interested in fashion, that was my dream. My dream was literary to have a shoe line. I didn’t take anything tech seriously till after school. After my NYSC I was working for this company and there was a digital marketer I was impressed by how much he loved what he was doing. I randomly asked him on what to do if I want to come into tech and he explained some things to me. I tried a couple of things like web development, and UI/UX till I got to know about mobile development and when I transitioned, it felt like home. That was how I got to where I am.
Would you say it’s been a rollercoaster ever since you joined?
Yeah, it’s been a rollercoaster. At times I rant that I’m not doing this tech thing again. But there’s nothing without a downside. There are the good days and there are the bad days but then there’s the passion too for problem solving so it keeps me going regardless.
Awesome. Why do you choose to train people and not just make money?
I will say what inspired me was an event where I happened to be a speaker. After the whole event, I figured out that we were just two ladies that were there as a speaker. I thought about it after that and thought if we ladies don’t know what we were doing or were shy to come out and display our craft. So I randomly tweeted if the ladies would be interested in a ladies-exclusive community and the response was inspiring and that was it, LadiesInFlutter was born. It’s a safe space where we can be free to express ourselves and help each other grow and the responses so far have been impressive I must say.
What are some of the challenges you faced while running the NGO?
One thing about humans is that in as much as we love free things we sometimes don’t commit to these free things. I am a community lead of CodeClan Nigeria with over 3,000 participants and last year we had several bootcamps which I spearheaded all were successful but one thing I noticed was that a lot of people started and then fall off because there isn’t any money commitment and with so much number of people and fewer volunteers to keep track of the mentees. And currently, I’m a mentor to one bootcamp that’s ongoing, so I have mentees, luckily these mentees are few so it’s easy to have them in check and to make sure that everybody is on their feet and they are doing what they are supposed to be doing. But with large numbers in ladiesInFlutter, it’s difficult to get everyone together at the same time. So usually we have our classes on Fridays, and even with the reminder it’s still difficult to get people together at that particular time. However, the turnout is mostly good and the fact is that people are really gaining a lot from it.
How do you finance your NGO and what are the financial challenges?
In March we had a program that we needed to sort out gifts like airtime, a router for people that won a few games and I financed it and yeah there was someone that also supported us with cash. But mostly I do the financing from my pocket right now.
Are you looking to get others to finance your NGO?
Yes, sure.
Fantastic. Aside from this, what other things do you do?
I am a full-time developer so I have a full-time job.
That’s quite interesting. I’m sure there are a lot of women who want to move into tech as well, how can they be part of your community?
Okay, the name of my community is LadiesInFlutter and it’s basically for ladies that want to go into tech and learn mobile development. We have our Twitter handle as well as our LinkedIn page but our Twitter handle is more active because it all started from Twitter. The Twitter handle is LadiesinFlutter and there is a form that you get to fill and we mail you the community link to join.
Perfect. Do you have any advice for people that are looking to get into tech?
Some people believe tech is a get-rich-quick scheme and that’s the impression they come into tech with. But I think if you don’t have some level of resilience and patience, you will be quick to fall off the grid. There are a lot of people in the tech space doing what you intend to come in and do and even doing it better so there has to be some level of willingness to go the extra mile to stand out from the crowd and to be seen. You must be ready to put in the best of your time, attention, and some extra spice to what you are doing. There’s enough room to shine so don’t be afraid to start, spread your wings and fly as high as you can dream of.
This is amazing. We want to appreciate your time and we don’t take it for granted. We love what you are doing. Thank you very much, we appreciate it.
My name is Ogbonna Ohakwe,I schooled in Nigeria. I had to do everything myself. I came from family of four. I am passionate about technology, building startups, businesses. I love creativity and I love people who try to help the community around them. I like people who try to fight unemployment in Nigeria. They help people earn money either through salary or commission.
What are you currently working on?
As it is now, I have couple of things I’m working on and what I intend to do is to use my little startup to empower Nigerians and Africans so that they can earn extra income online and also help their daily activities when it comes to online payments. The name of my company is Bigtink Digital Creation which has other subsidiaries. The one I started before helps Nigerians to buy data online, which is InstantTopUp, I just launched mobile app on playstore and the one I started this year is called SellPass which was launched in January with my team members (Kelvin and Chioma). SellPass is a digital course hosting and an affiliate marketing platform where people in any field can post/host their digital courses to reach more people across the world and we have affiliates who sign up and start selling those products. The next thing I’m working on is a payment system unlike Payday, Opay…. That will help people get a US bank account and help people get a virtual card so that they can be able to pay online anywhere they are in the world. SellPass is progressing, a lot of people earn from it daily by selling products and we pay our affiliates and vendors twice a week.
Fantastic. What motivated you to start SellPass?
The first thing that motivated me is hunger for success. Growing up in a middle class family is not an easy thing. I was already doing something online and I saw that there was a huge problem that people are facing in Nigeria like lack of Jobs and low salary payment. So, I thought of what I could do to help people and for them to earn extra income online. SellPass is not only for Nigerians. The whole world can earn from there and people can bring their products and sell and make money.
Another reason for building SellPass is to help people around me and in my community because the government can’t do anything for us. We need to help ourselves and be profitable. I have two teams in SellPass, we discuss about growth and how we can help people.
We have about 7,000 people who has subscribed to SellPass and we’ve been able to help Nigerians and Africans to make money using the digital world.
This is incredible. What has worked for you to attract customers and retain customers? What have you done specially to attract people?
The market space is very brutal. If you sleep you will not get a share in the market space. We have lots of competitors both in Nigeria and outside Nigeria. One thing that makes us unique is that we allow Non Nigerians to access our platform. We have two unique selling points, the first thing is accessibility worldwide. SellPass is accessible anywhere you are. We have four payment systems. The second thing is that we pay twice a week. Most of the affiliates in the market system pay once in a week. Most of our affiliates are making close to $600 to $5,000 monthly and it’s still growing. In marketing you need to strategize and be brutal. The market is not stable and what we try to do is to help people make money wherever they are.
Since you launched, what is your revenue like the revenue that you’ve transacted so far?
We started making sales even before launch. Our income kept on growing and we have close to $10,000 to over $50,000 on revenue, product sales and affiliate commission. The revenue kept on growing. We have two platforms one is the digital marketing platform the second one is the course hosting platform. The revenue comes from different angles.
I want you to explain how your platform SellPass works.
How SellPass work is extremely very easy. So far as you can read and understand English language. Very soon SellPass will be translated into many languages because we want to help people around the world to make money.
There are different ways in which SellPass can be used. For example, we have people who have skills, who are experts in their fields, people who have different products that people also need, but they have problem selling it online or getting it in front of people online, that is when SellPass comes in. We have a simple system where such people can follow and get they products listed on SellPass marketplace and our high performing affiliates can help them sell it and they start to make money. While at the other hand, people make money by selling products we have inside our marketplace as affiliate.
SellPass is not totally free; it is a premium platform where you pay an amount of #10,000 yearly to register on the platform to become an affiliate. There is also a course on our platform that helps a beginner that doesn’t know anything about internet marketing or how internet business works. It’s a beginner to pro course that helps those that wants to go into affiliate marketing, internet marketing, Facebook advertising, Instagram advertising. Also, whenyou register on SellPass there is a community on Telegram where you can ask various questions.
SellPass is not a get rich quick scheme, is not a crypto currency investment platform or a trading platform, which means, you can’t register on SellPass and money will start coming to you. You have to sell something (a product) to be able to make money using SellPass.
This is amazing. I want to ask Ogbonna, how do you fund SellPass?
Its personal funding. We are three founders at SellPass, we raised some funds within ourselves to build the platform to this stage and what we are trying to do next to build a platform that will help people make even more money online from the next update and the things we are building on the platform.
Awesome. Where do you see SellPass in the next 5yeas?
Okay, Firstly, i want to raise millionaires in Nigeria and Africa. In the next five years I believe there will be a lot of competition in the market space what I think will help us scale through. We will be able to raise close to 100,000 millionaires across the world. Another new technology will come up that will challenge the market and I believe that SellPass will be able to withstand the challenges.
What is your greatest business achievement that you’ve had till date?
My biggest business achievement so far is my first e-commerce startup. When I launched, I didn’t expect many users to come up. We had about 500-600 users in the first two weeks. I see great potential in the aspect of eCommerce and FinTech. I have spoken to lots of people, organized seminars, gone for seminars to teach people about internet business and how to use it to make money.
Incredible. What are some of the most influential book that you’ve read or podcasts that you’ve listened to?
In my library I have close to 100 books and my favorite is Brian Tracy, everything I’ve learnt about marketing is by Brian Tracy. He is my mentor. I’ve read some books by Brian Tracy like The art of selling, Focus, Vocal Points, Goals, Excuses. I listen to a Podcast daily called Seven Good Minute where I learn about finance, how to make money and a lot of things. I have watched several videos but there is particular one called Impossible is nothing by Obong King, that video is everything.
Zipline was founded in 2014 with the mission of creating the first logistics system that serves all humans equally. The San Francisco-based startup designs manufactures, and operates the world’s largest instant logistics and delivery system, which is used by businesses, governments, and consumers. The company’s innovative approach to delivery is transforming the way goods move, from powering Rwanda’s national blood delivery network to providing on-demand home delivery for e-commerce. Zipline uses autonomous, electric drones to provide a teleportation service that delivers what you need when you need it.
The technology is complex, but the idea is simple – to provide equitable access to essential goods and decarbonize delivery by transitioning to clean, electric, instant logistics. Zipline’s drones can fly to hard-to-reach areas, quickly and efficiently delivering medical supplies, vaccines, and other essential goods to healthcare workers and patients in need. The company operates on three continents (North America, Africa, and Asia) and in seven countries – Rwanda, Ghana, the United States, Nigeria, Japan, Kenya, and Côte D’Ivoire.
Since its inception, Zipline has made more than 540,000 deliveries to real customers and currently completes one every 90 seconds. The company has flown 40 million autonomous commercial miles and delivered almost 5 million products, including more than 8 million vaccine doses. Zipline has two delivery platforms – a long-range system, Platform 1, and its next-generation home delivery system, Platform 2. Behind each delivery is a complex network of airspace deconfliction tools, inventory management, fulfilment software, warehousing, performance management, cold chain storage, and more. The instant logistics system is a trusted partner for businesses, governments, and consumers and currently supports the medical, health, and retail sectors, delivering blood, vaccines, COVID supplies, prescriptions, e-commerce items, products that support human and animal health, and food.
Zipline’s innovative technology has received international recognition and numerous awards. The company has received significant funding from various investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, and Temasek Holdings. Zipline’s partnerships are extensive, and the company works with Walmart, Pfizer, Toyota Tsusho, Sweetgreen, NGOs, and large health systems and national governments around the world. Overall, Zipline’s innovative technology has the potential to revolutionize the delivery of essential goods and improve access to healthcare in areas where traditional transportation methods are limited or unavailable. The company continues to grow and expand its operations to more locations around the world, helping to make a positive impact on the lives of people in need.
My name is Ahmed Oyenuga, a Hardware Engineer / Developer and I’m the founder of AhmsvilleLabs. AhmsvilleLabs is a collection of innovative projects and accessible tools geared at streamlining the hardware design and development experience.
What motivated you to get started with Ahmsville Labs?
Imagine being able to solve complex problems using technology and turning your ideas into real-world solutions that benefit people far beyond your own expectations. As a hardware engineer and product developer, this is exactly what drives me. Ahmsville Labs started as a humble endeavour to share my knowledge and expertise in building innovative hardware projects. But as I delved deeper into the world of problem-solving through technology, I discovered that the solutions I created for myself could also benefit others in unexpected ways. This realization fueled my passion for developing my ideas into useful products, and that’s how Ahmsville Labs came to be.
What specific problem are you solving with your startup and how are you solving it?
At the core of my work lies a deep commitment to empowering professionals in the hardware design and development industry. I believe that everyone deserves access to the latest and greatest hardware tools, regardless of their level of expertise. That’s why the company is dedicated to making hardware tools accessible to more people.
In pursuit of this goal, I have developed a range of innovative products that are specifically geared toward professionals looking to improve how they create. These products can be broadly divided into two categories: new hardware/ software solutions and engineering tools, Both are tailored to meet the needs of hardware professionals who want to streamline their workflows and improve their work efficiency.
Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?
I have found honesty to be the most valuable resource when dealing directly with consumers. My customers are primarily hardware engineers like myself, so it is important to invent tools that I am happy to use myself. My customers are often part of my online community as a maker, and listening to their improvement recommendations has also helped improve the user experience for other customers.
Describe what makes your business/startup unique.
Ahmsville Labs is a product-driven business, and each of its products is unique in the problem it solves and in the way it solves them. You can explore these products on the website.
How did you raise capital to fund your startup, and what advice do you have for other entrepreneurs seeking investment?
Right out of university, I started working for ipNX, an internet service provider. It was a great job that promised a successful engineering career, but it wasn’t the career I wanted for myself, so I had to walk away from it. However, the job allowed me to save enough money to buy my first 3D printer in 2018, which set me on the path I am on today. If you are a maker in Nigeria, I strongly recommend getting a 3D printer, it’s like having a superpower that helps you quickly realize your ideas.
For the first two years, I worked as a freelance hardware designer, and I used part of my earnings to expand my capacity and tool arsenal. The other part went into developing the hardware products that Ahmsville Labs is known for today. Funding endeavours in this manner requires a lot of personal sacrifices, and knowledge of how to build MVPs, a concept I habitually live by. In 2019, I created my first product and sold it directly to customers through my online store on Tindie.com. This brought in more money, which I religiously reinvested into the company. Ahmsville Labs now has nine products in the hands of hundreds of people around the world.
What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources for you?
Hackster Cafe is a weekly live stream that features a lot of brilliant and amazing people in the hardware community, it’s been an inspiration and a guide for me, I also got a chance to interview with the host Alex Glow last year. see the interview here.
What were the biggest challenges you faced and the obstacles you overcame?
Nigeria is not a conducive environment for tech businesses, particularly in the hardware space where accessibility to tools and parts is crucial. As hardware creates hardware, the biggest challenge I face is the lack of accessibility to the tools and parts I need to operate at the level I do. Major electronics distributors rarely ship directly to Nigeria, and when they do, the shipping charges are exorbitant. Imagine having to pay $97 to ship a chip that costs only $0.50. This is ridiculous, but it’s what I’ve had to do to get the parts I need. The ongoing challenge of power, or lack thereof, is also a significant hurdle. Nigerian readers will understand this struggle. Despite these challenges, I remain committed to innovating and pushing the boundaries of what is possible in the hardware space.
What role did innovation play in the development of your business/startup, and how do you stay ahead of the competition?
The technology industry constantly evolves, and it’s easy to get left behind if you don’t keep up. At Ahmsville Labs, we take a different approach – we’re the ones creating the change. by focusing on identifying unexplored problems in the hardware design process and providing innovative solutions to get tasks done more efficiently. We don’t just follow the trends, we strive to set them, by pushing the boundaries of what’s possible and challenging the norms we’re guaranteeing our position in the industry as it grows.
Where would you like your startup to be in five years?
Ahmsville Labs will continue to develop groundbreaking hardware while making technology more accessible to hobbyists and professionals alike. In five years, I see the company disrupting the AR/VR and robotics industries, and becoming a multimillion-dollar operation. While I encourage dreaming big, I prefer to square my focus on what I can do now. So, what I am most looking forward to this year is launching the Pick n Place Wheel v2, a device that will revolutionize the way we assemble PCBs. Additionally, I am excited about establishing the interactive air quality map in Lagos to increase awareness about air pollution. This project recently received a seed fund of 10,000 pounds from RS Components /Designspark, a UK-based electronics distributor.
What software or technology has made the biggest difference to your business?
That would be additive manufacturing (3D printing) and PCB manufacturing.
What one thing do you wish someone had told you when you started on your business journey?
I wish someone had taught me all the creative solutions I have painfully learned and employed to keep my business going despite all the limitations imposed by the country, solutions in part sourcing, shipping, power, and time management.
Have you had any failed business?
Ahmsville Labs is my first company and I’ve weathered failed ideas and significant setbacks due to poor money management, but through it all, I’ve remained steadfast in my belief that experience will always teach you more. While some may wish for a chance to go back and make different choices, my mistakes are valuable lessons that have helped me grow both personally and professionally. And even now, as I continue to face new challenges and make mistakes, I am still looking forward to the journey and the lessons it has to offer.
What are some sources for learning you would recommend for entrepreneurs who are just starting?
Google and YouTube have been my best resources for learning so I have no reservations in recommending them to anyone looking to learn or improve a skill, there are a lot of amazing people out there who are happy to share their knowledge.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?
being featured among other amazing founders is a true honor. But first and foremost, I identify myself as a hardware engineer and an all-around giant nerd. Ahmsville Labs happens to be the perfect expression of my passion for innovation, which is what drives me to create and bring new ideas to life. As an aspiring entrepreneur, my first advice would be to find that thing that drives you, that thing that you’re passionate about. It’s the one thing that you can invest your time in without any regrets. For me, it’s tinkering with hardware and coming up with new and innovative solutions. But for you, it could be something completely different. The important thing is to find that spark and chase after it with all you’ve got.
My second piece of advice to aspiring entrepreneurs is to embrace the possibility of failure and see it as a valuable learning opportunity. Be prepared to make sacrifices and put in the hard work necessary to succeed. and if you truly love what you do, you will always be able to find the motivation to overcome any obstacles that come your way. So, don’t wait for the perfect time or the perfect conditions, start now and be prepared to fail and learn from it.
Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?
I’ll take an intern someone with some technical skills looking to learn hardware design and development.
I’m an interesting person, I’m a young inspirational Nigerian that has a passion for change and impact. I’m that person who wants to inspire the next generation to be great, I want to leave the world better than I found the world.
My name is Solomon Ogege Udukhokai, I’m from Edo State Nigeria. I’m a hardware Engineer, I’m the MD/CEO at AXAO Technology. At AXAO we create basic active lifestyle solutions. The goal is to be able to create hardware that is powered by software basically. We are forward-thinking, we are innovative, and we look at creating an ecosystem of everything that we have created so that we can keep our consumers at a close loop where they constantly refer to different products for solutions.
Incredible. How did you get started with AXAO technology?
As a child, I’ve been an innovator. I built things right from childhood, I’ve built insane things as a child. I wanted to study Aeronautic Engineer at some point. But due to the way the country is, I proceeded to study computer science where I started understanding computers and how things work. I left school and I started working and went further to do business development. Interestingly AXAO started seven years ago. I love watches and I started creating watches seven years ago for Corporate Organizations. I started creating industrial designs. I learnt what it takes to design a product seven years ago. I nurtured it from that period to 2021 when we started full-time.
It looks like you had it all figured out at a young age, was there a point where you got confused as to what you want to become in the future?
I’d say I was never confused as to what I wanted to do in the future. But confusion came when I was working as a salesperson because it was frustrating but I knew that was not what I wanted to do at that time. I knew what I wanted to do; I knew I wanted to create products. You need to submit to authority and train yourself before you’re fully baked enough to start on your own. It’s usually a process where you work for some organizations and then you develop yourself to be independent.
What advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs who have to work first to make ends meet and submit to the authority before pursuing their entrepreneurial dreams?
From my personal ideologies and philosophies. I’d only propagate what I believe. You might have the features of an entrepreneur but you might not understand the processes of becoming an entrepreneur. Your work will help you build connections and relationships that you can leverage. You are not going to sell your services or your products in a ghost town, you’re going to sell to your relatives and people in your close quarters. So, you really do need that relationship and the best place to create a relationship is through your workplace. You’d eventually appreciate the time you’ve spent in your 9-5 job.
It felt like pain when I was working but I realized that I have been trained to be a fine individual in terms of me putting forward documents or me putting forward research materials and all of that. Working for coming entrepreneurs is really you building yourself.
Excellent. How were you able to fund your startup? Were you bootstrapping or is there an investment somewhere that is helping?
Basically, we are bootstrapping. We did the first round of investment in 2022 and that helped us to get off the ground basically. You need people who believe in you, you need to be able to sell your story and sell yourself in a way where people that have the resources help you to get a head start. Hardware is very hard but there are people who believe in us. If you miss one thing, it means you’ve missed it by thousands. The great thing about hardware is that it comes out to become a product. That means you can sell the product and you can slowly build.
Incredible, what are the challenges you’re facing in AXAO Technology?
The first challenge is being an African and a Nigerian. There are shipping barriers; we work with a diverse set of people. Design and material specification is done in Milan and we manufacture in China. We had to communicate our vision to these people for them to understand what we are actually doing. We have an engineering team here in Nigeria and software is built locally. I have the most amazing team but it took time to communicate and for us to have the team dynamics that would help them discharge their duties expressly. No matter how tough something is just give it time. I believe in the process and I believe in growing organically. Penetrating the local market is also another challenge but we’ve been doing it. We didn’t get there overnight.
This is amazing and I wish you the best of luck. Are bigger brands a major competitor to you?
it’s interesting to understand that the market is actually big enough and it’s massive. If you don’t see them as competitors then they are not one but if you see them as an inspiration then they are an inspiration. I am creating a Niche and they are not a competition. We produce our products and you will get the same quality of what you will get from big brands. They are an inspiration and not a competition.
Great. If you are not an entrepreneur what will you be doing?
I will be an Entrepreneur with another expression. I am a salesperson and I love technology.
Fantastic. Any advice for other entrepreneurs who want to do what you’re doing?
The road with the least resistance often sends you to the poorest results. Think of hard and complex tasks. Don’t look for an easy route, study well and be the best at what you do. Dig well and you will find amazing answers. High resistance, high reward.
Festus Agbonifo is a visionary CEO who is passionate about reshaping African enterprise through innovative energy solutions. With over a decade of experience in the energy sector, Festus has a proven track record of delivering effective solutions for businesses across the continent.
As the head of Director of Sales and Strategy/International Operations for Fesbec Solutions a leading energy company, Festus is focused on providing Diesel/Fuel Efficiency Management, Back-Up Power Solutions, and Renewable Energy Solutions to companies in Africa. His mission is to empower businesses with the tools they need to become more sustainable, efficient, and profitable, while also reducing their environmental impact. Currently Fesbec have a strong presence in Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon and in Uganda (Eastern Africa).
Festus believes that the key to achieving these goals is through energy innovation. He is constantly exploring new technologies and approaches to help businesses thrive in an increasingly competitive market. For example, Fesbec has developed a unique diesel/fuel efficiency management system that helps companies reduce their fuel consumption and lower their operating costs, while also reducing their carbon footprint.
In addition to his work in the energy sector, Festus is also a respected thought leader in the industry. He frequently speaks at conferences and events to share his insights and expertise with others. He is committed to making a positive impact on the world and believes that by reshaping African enterprise through energy innovation, we can create a more sustainable and prosperous future for all.
Under Festus’ leadership, Fesbec has built a reputation for delivering reliable, cost-effective energy solutions. He is a strong leader who inspires his team to strive for excellence in all aspects of their work. He is dedicated to creating a culture of innovation and collaboration within his organization, where every employee is encouraged to bring their unique perspectives and ideas to the table.
Festus is also committed to giving back to the community. He is involved in several philanthropic initiatives aimed at improving access to energy and education in underserved communities especially in Nigeria and more recently Uganda. He believes that by empowering people with the tools they need to succeed, we can create a more just and equitable society.
Festus Agbonifo is a visionary leader who is reshaping African enterprise through energy innovation. His commitment to sustainability, innovation, and community empowerment is driving positive change across the continent. As businesses in Africa continue to face new challenges and opportunities, Festus and his team are well-positioned to help them succeed in a rapidly evolving energy landscape.
Learn more about the innovative work of Fesbec Consulting:
Who are you and what motivated you to get started with White Consult Technology?
I am Engr. Adebola Anofi. I am the lead consultant of White Consult Technology Ltd., a Renewable Energy Solution provider. My motivation is multidimensional. One, I was trying to overcome the stigma of my “new status” as a physically challenged person as a result of a neurological disorder borne out of an oversight during a medical examination from an accident I had. The other motivation is to fulfil a personal dream of adding value to the Nigerian system.
What specific problem are you solving with your startup and how are you?
Nigeria as we all know is the most populous nation in Africa with over 200 million population can offtake less than 5,000MW of electricity for both industrial and domestic usage. Looking at this figure, it is grossly inadequate and there is a very huge gap between the available energy and its demand. So, my start-up is to ensure we assist homes and offices to have access to affordable and environmentally friendly alternative power through Solar Energy Systems.
Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?
Our customer service has been top-notch. We ensure that our existing and potential customers have 24/7 access to us with a corresponding time for feedback and response to their inquiries. Our company’s CSR is also something we have been critical about. One of the things we take cognizance of is to be responsible corporate citizens by paying our taxes as and when due. We also try to give back to our community, and, one of them is our immediate environment and other public places.
Describe what makes your business/startup unique.
My start-up is not absolutely a unique one. But at the time we started about 9 years ago, there are very few people who are actually interested in adopting Renewable Energy Solutions as effective and efficient alternative means of power. Thankfully, we stick to our convictions, and to the glory of God, we are making progress.
How did you raise capital to fund your Start-up, and what advice do you have for other entrepreneurs seeking investment?
I did a lot of affiliate marketing for companies, and the commission gotten from this was very helpful in addition to the crowdfunding from family & friends.
What were the biggest challenges you faced and the obstacles you overcame?
Some of my challenges include having a consistent employee that will key into your work ethic and standard. So, what we do is to ensure we motivate our staff. For instance, we organize a family picnic for all cadres of staff and their immediate family members. We also give outstanding staff members awards and gifts at the end of the year. The other is funding. Nigeria’s Renewable Energy market requires big funding to source materials.
What role did innovation play in the development of your business/startup, and how do you stay ahead of the competition?
In Tech Business, innovation is what stands you out and we have always kept ourselves abreast of new trends in the industry by deploying any new innovation in vogue. We also always inform our clients and other stakeholders of any new trends so we all can be on the same page.
We don’t compromise quality and standards in our job. For us, it’s zero tolerance for compromising quality and standards… We’ve also made ourselves visible and available 24/7.
Where would you like your startup to be in five years?
Business operations across Africa.
What software or technology has made the biggest difference to your business?
What one thing do you wish someone had told you when you started on your business journey?
Failure is a catalyst for the success of the business.
If you had the chance to do things differently, what would you do?
If I could do things differently, I would have opened a vocational centre for people to come in a gain knowledge. In today’s world, knowledge is the new currency.
What funny or horrible story happened to you that made you almost give up your entrepreneurial journey?
I had gone for a site survey and the architect, seeing me in a wheelchair asked “How do you plan to do the job” in an unfriendly manner. This got me teary and I questioned my capabilities.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?
Offer service and money will come calling.
One business app and one personal app you can’t do without?
Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu was born in 1980 in the Zenabwork area of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Growing up, Bethlehem’s parents instilled in her a strong sense of social justice and a desire to make a difference in her community.
She was particularly inspired by her mother’s traditional weaving techniques, which she saw as having the potential to create high-quality, fashionable footwear. However, as she grew older, Bethlehem faced significant challenges. She struggled to find employment opportunities that aligned with her passion for social justice, and she saw firsthand the negative impact that poverty and lack of opportunity were having on her community. Despite these challenges, Bethlehem remained determined to create positive change. In 2005, she founded soleRebels, a footwear brand that utilized traditional Ethiopian weaving techniques to create stylish and eco-friendly shoes. However, Bethlehem faced many obstacles in growing her business. She lacked funding, had limited access to global markets, and had to navigate the complexities of global supply chains.
Despite these challenges, Bethlehem remained committed to her vision. She persevered, and with her hard work and determination, she was able to grow soleRebels into a successful global brand with stores and customers around the world. Along the way, Bethlehem also founded the Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu Foundation to support education, healthcare, and other initiatives in Ethiopia. She has worked tirelessly to promote social justice and economic empowerment in her country and beyond.
Lessons From Her Story
Bethlehem’s story is a testament to the power of innovation, creativity, and a deep commitment to social justice. Her journey demonstrates the importance of perseverance, resilience, and a willingness to take risks in pursuit of a larger vision. Despite the challenges she faced, Bethlehem never lost sight of her goal of creating positive change in her community and the world. Her story inspires others to believe in themselves and their abilities to make a difference in the world. Through her work, Bethlehem has shown that by following your passions, staying committed to your goals, and working hard, you can achieve incredible things and make a positive impact in the world.
As an internet marketer, I sell digital products online and I create products that people can also sell as an affiliate.
Awesome. Tell us your story about how you got started, was it all rosy?
This wasn’t how I started. The first time I made money online was in 2018 and I made money from a news website. I used part of my school fee to register for it back then and after registering, I made some money from it. After I made that money, I realized that people can actually make money online. As a student, it was a whole lot of money because I made about N15,000 a month. The second month, I tried to make more money but the stuff crashed.
I decided to start a blog with the 15k I made the first month so I contacted some guys online and they got a domain for me. It was all new to me. I got tired at some point because I wasn’t getting anything from it. There was one Ponzi scheme that came out at that time and I was interested but I didn’t have the complete money to register. The registration fee was N1,800 but I only had 1,000 so I contacted a friend of mine who gave me 800. I started and I made about N50,000 in a month. That one crashed and I kept on moving from one Ponzi site to another and I made about N300,000.
I made up my mind to start a company with it because I didn’t want to waste the money. I started a company that connects skilled and unskilled workers to people that need their services. I was new to business in general and there was no proper planning so it collapsed. I lost all I had back then. I thought of another business and something came to my mind. I knew how to book games at bet shops and all of that. I went on Facebook and Whatsapp to start booking games for people and I made a reasonable amount from it. Covid’19 came and football stopped so I was looking for another escape route.
I bought a course on mini importation back then but mini importation has ended because of Covid. So I started an online course on mini importation, I did it on Facebook and Whatsapp and a lot of people joined. I also taught graphic design and animation and I made money from it as well.
At some point I was banned on Whatsapp, I couldn’t register for Whatsapp with my number so I got tired. I came across a course on Twitter and it was about internet marketing. I bought the course and I started but it wasn’t an easy journey. With time I started making money from about N100,000 and it started increasing to something really reasonable.
That was when my eyes opened to internet marketing. I kept on doing what I was doing to the extent that I started making about N5,000,000 to N10,000,000 in a month. So I thought of doing the work of a product creator because I felt there will be more profit from it. I moved from being an affiliate marketer to a digital product creator. Right now, I am a product creator.
Wow. You just took us through a journey and it’s really amazing. You’ve really shown that there’s a process to it and you really need to learn. So, tell us how difficult the learning process was.
It was not very difficult though. At some point, I was working very hard but money wasn’t coming in. The fact is that you can do everything right but you need to have patience. I was really patient with what I was doing and it helped me. For you to do something great you have to go through a process.
Being a digital product creator wasn’t an easy task. It took me more than two months to learn before I could actually get everything done.
Incredible. What are the marketing strategies you use as a digital product creator?
Right now I use Facebook ads, Google ads, Instagram Ads and WhatsApp marketing. I do live webinars as well.
Awesome. What is your revenue like in a month?
I do eight figures.
Eight figures start from 10 million Naira and you make that in a month. If there’s anyone reading this and wants to get started whether as an affiliate or a digital creator, what are the strategies that the person can use?
The thing is that there’s no particular strategy. The thing is just get your thing right, keep testing and look for ways to do it better. Keep finding out what works and what doesn’t work. There’s no one way and there are so many things that can work. Set your goals and work towards them.
Fantastic. What advice do you have for people that are about to get into the digital world and for those that are into it and are still struggling?
One sure piece of advice is that whatever you want to do in the digital world is very possible. If you find one thing that works for it just stick to it and make the best out of it.
My name is Victory DM; I own an Ad agency where we basically use Facebook and Instagram to promote businesses. I recently just graduated from the University with a first-class honors. I started my agency while in school, when I was in my fourth year. I’ve been running ads for other businesses and I’ve also been hosting a lot of trainings to teach young Nigerians how they can actually start running ads and getting paid for this skill. That’s basically what I’ve been doing so far and lastly, I’ve been able to grow my business from six figures to eight figures.
How exactly did you get started?
The idea of starting an agency was when I realized how lucrative that skill was. I got to know about Facebook and Instagram Ads when I got physical product business, I was basically selling phone accessories to fellow students and people I could find around, I was looking for ways to promote this business online. I realized that most physical businesses promote their business through pleading with families and friends and pleading with people around to buy from them, they don’t have any competitive advantage.
I was actually looking for ways to promote my business without begging anyone. But people don’t know that there are lots of ways to do that and they’re comfortable with the average way of promoting their business but I was not. That was when I discovered Facebook advert, where I could just create a post about my own products and services and I could pay the platform to help me reach out to a large amount of persons that are interested in this stuff.
The best part was that I could target the type of people that I’m looking for. That was when I realized that Facebook Ad is a very powerful tool where I can reach out to a large amount of people, do a video of my products, sell my products and at the same time make money from it and help people alongside. You can actually do a low-key business and also make a lot of money without people knowing. I was Facebook Ad to promote my own business until I realized that lots of business owners need this skill.
There’s a high demand in this skill and lots of business owners are looking for competent people to promote their businesses but very few people can get the result. We understand that where there’s high demand people will make whole lots of money because the demand is higher than the supply. That was how I got to start my agency.
You graduated with a first-class and you were broke while in school. Can you tell us how broke you were and how you managed to still graduate with a first-class?
I was staying in one of the worse places when I was in 100L. The only money I had was the little that comes from home and it was just for survival. The point from my year one is that, when you have limited resources don’t think about what is outside your capacity, think about what is directly within your control. Before I gained admission, I knew I wanted to graduate with a first class and I wanted to make money while in school. There were things that were not within my capacity, I wanted to get a private space to myself to concentrate on my business and I didn’t have huge capital.
I had time because I was broke. I could study my books to get my first-class; I could borrow books from people and study for exam. I could also focus on learning some skills online. I started with YouTube, YouTube is a free platform and it doesn’t charge. I also learnt programming in my 100L. You need to look within the resources that you have and one of the valuable resources that you have when you’re broke Is time. You need to allocate your time to do things that will help you achieve results.
I begin to search for opportunities when I was in 200L. I was searching for scholarship opportunities. There are lots of oil companies in Delta state that are willing to sponsor your education. I was also working in a health product company; we look for shops, adults that we can sell to.
How much does your agency roughly make in a month?
In terms of revenue we are doing close to 5million Naira (#5,000,000) monthly
How many people do you have working for you?
We are about seven in number.
To the young guys out there, what message do you have for them?
Set clear target of what you want to achieve in life. Secondly, start with the resources you have within your control, don’t procrastinate things with the excuse of not having stuffs. Constantly improve with time and keep expanding with the resources you have within your control so that you can get the results that you are actually looking for.
Keep being relentless and keep putting in the work. Switch the objectives if you need to but the overall goal should still remain.
For those that has no idea of how this whole thing work and have been looking forward to start a business, can you pick an imaginary product and sell it to us within few second?
Let me start with an online training. When it comes to you selling an online training, you could start with a business model called affiliate marketing. I am recommending this because it is actually very fast to see results with affiliate marketing.
You can register on an affiliate platform and you ought to get proper training and guidance on how to promote the product. You can earn as much as six figures selling online courses. Affiliate marketing is like the fastest way you can actually build a business.
Awesome. With affiliate marketing you don’t need to have your own products, you can pick a product online and start making money.
Exactly, you can leverage on the knowledge on who created the product and you can make money too.
Perfect, this is the power of online business and the technology we have in our hands now. Finally, what exactly are you working on now?
I have a program where I want to show thousands of young Nigerians how they can learn this skill that changed my own life called Facebook and Instagram advertising where they can learn this skill in a matter of 4-6 weeks and actually get equipped with the knowledge they need to start running ads for businesses and to start making their 500k monthly doing this service. I will be hosting it very soon.
I will grant free access to the training for people from here. If you’d like to be part of that training just send the word FOUNDER STORY to this number on Whatsapp (09166601776).
What inspired you to start Treepz and what challenges did you face in the beginning?
What inspired me to start Treepz was that in 2009 I already decided that there were three sectors that I wanted to find means of using technology to have a positive impact. One of them was Agriculture, getting people to eat on a daily basis. The second was Real Estate, so that people will be able to stay in a house and the third one is Transportation because I want people to move better.
I already had these sectors in mind and I wanted to focus on their strength, technology and marketing. I had done something in the Agriculture space In 2016 with Farmcrowdy,I had done something in the real estate space in 2018 with RentSmallSmall.com and I was looking at something to do in the transportation space. In January 2019 we explored the use of public transportation just to know what it looks like. People had to use public transportation in Lagos and they had to do it without technology and I felt like it was an opportunity to bring some sanity into the transportation business. There are about 9 million people that use the bus in Lagos daily and I felt like it was so much opportunity to not ignore the technology in that sector.
I worked with my team, put together a plan and after 8-9 months we launched Treepz. Initially it was called PlentyWaka. We raised money from a crowdfunding portal to buy buses, it was a major challenge. Though it did well in the first 6 months and we were able to move about 100,000 people who started paying attention to what we were doing. But Covid hit us hard and those buses were grounded because there were no activities during lock-down which led to debts. That was one of the major challenges we faced. The second one was financing the business. Initially we were doing things on our own and by ourselves; we then got to that road block where Covid hit us hard, that was also a challenge. There was also a challenge of bringing something new to the market. No one before Treepz had used technology or mobile app to get people to move from one bus stop to the other in Nigeria and West Africa.
Something that I’ve always loved doing while we are breaking new grounds and trying to do new things and showing people that we can provide solutions to problems they didn’t even know existed and then get addicted to using our solutions really showed that there’s actually a major lead for that problem. Those were the early challenges we had to face while building Treepz but we’ve grown from there and glory be to God where it is now. We have about 3 million tickets sold over the last 3 years and expanding.
This is amazing. What are those factors that contributed to the success of Treepz?
A couple of things have helped us to continue to grow and push forward. One is the experience of the team. My background helped me to build other people businesses and my own businesses. That helped significantly in knowing what to do and avoiding some things even if I cannot avoid everything. I was an early team member in Wakanow in 2010, I was one of the first employees in Jumia in 2012 when it was called Sabunta and Kasuwa, I have built and sold two of my startups before, I’ve helped people to launch their businesses and I’ve worked in the corporate space with Deloitte, British Council and GTBank, I think the experience counted for me. My Co-founders have similar experiences. They’ve lead successful teams, they’ve build businesses and they are entrepreneurs as well. The other team members contribute and perform their magic as well.
The second thing is that we learnt from our mistakes. We’ve made many mistakes but we never repeat those mistakes. We learn very quickly and we are able to find better ways of doing things.
Three is that we take risk early so that it allows us to identify what we can scale. You can get everything right and just find yourself in the wrong time.
Excellent. It has shown that you’ve had a lot of experience and it has cumulated into the successes that you have today. Are there lessons that you’ve learnt about entrepreneurship and how are those lessons influenced your business decisions today?
I was introduced to the act of creating values at an early stage. My mum made me do this when I was 12years old, raising day old chicks into full grown chickens and selling them at Christmas to get money that you’ll use to buy whatever gifts that you’ll want to get for Christmas. At 15 I had set up a business centre in Ajah area of Lagos in 2000. I’ve always found means of using my skills to create value. There was a time I had to pay for my studies from websites I designed. That background helped in kick starting my entrepreneurship journey. Looking ahead into doing proper business, I had to learn the act of setting up a business and creating value, getting valued customers, getting feedback early, improving on the products, recruiting smart team members and delegating.
One key strength is that I have a background in software engineering and I’ve been able to understand technology and its implementation. I also learn how to market and sell technology. I focus on my strength and people focus on theirs to make whatever we are doing a success. These are some of the things that have helped.
How did you build a strong team and what are the qualities that you looked out for in your employees?
I call it relationship capital. I meet so many people, I’ve recruited so many people and I’ve spoken to so many people. In the process of doing this I focus on those that have similar core values and those I can work with, I also identify those that can work as co-founders with me in setting up businesses. I might find a co-founder five years before the idea and I’ll create a relationship where we can make things together in the future.
When it comes to recruiting team members, if you can get it right with the first set of people you’ll most likely get it right with the rest from there with strong core values and processes in place. In setting up my businesses, one of my early recruits is the HR Manager to set the tone for culture and people management processes. I try to set up the kind of culture we want in the organization, our core values and then we start recruiting people from there. I also focus on core value, you can have a perfect CV but if you have the wrong attitude you’ll not fit into our system.
This is incredible. Apart from skills, the right attitude also matters. What marketing strategy did you use and how did you measure their effectiveness?
When starting a new business you just want to get your first set of customers. My first set of business marketing tools are the networking on LinkedIn and the use of email newsletters. I try to sell my products to my networks first and I see if they’ll embrace it. I use email marketing to communicate ideas and I see how people will respond to that.
We always profile our customers, we have an identity of what they’ll look like and we target people that will fit that personnel, fit into it in the future or had passed through it in the past. We always target our audience. Our business has evolved to a place where we are smarter at how we do our marketing, we now know who our target audience should be at this stage of the business. You see a lot more of us around because you may just be part of our target market.
Fantastic. What role did innovation play in the development of your business and how do you play ahead of your competition?
The application of technology always brings about innovation to businesses because it makes it smarter, more structured and it helps to form decisions especially in the system where there was no technology. From an innovative perspective, finding means of applying technology to a sector that has no technology always makes one stand out. There’s nothing I’ve done that doesn’t have an application of technology. Technology helped us to generate funds from the public. Technology is always regarded as innovative.
We respect those that like to compete against us but what we’ve noticed over time is we create what every other person wants to imitate. We are ahead of the curve and we always think of what the next thing will be. We pay attention to what competition does but we don’t really have new things to learn so we rather focus on the opportunities ahead and create them. It starts with us and every other person comes along.
We always want to create values and we always want to make our customers happier. That pushes us to constantly innovating on things. Our attention is creating values for customers may be this makes us ahead of the rest.
Incredible. How did you raise capital and what advice do you have for entrepreneurs that are seeking investment?
Raising capital always starts from relationships, the first set of capital I’ve raised was capital from people within my network. Funds can be raised through an accelerator, through an investors or though customers. Just make sure that you keep sharing updates and your investors get constant results about your progress.
My advice to new entrepreneurs is that you should first put in your own money and that’s the biggest risk you can take. You can then start building traction and use the network you have to get new capital. You can get into accelerator programs if you can. Let investors see your progress.
During the course of your entrepreneurship journey, what are some of the biggest mistakes that you’ve made and how did you learn from them?
One mistake was when I raised money for my first start up and I decided to immediately move into a new business model. That was a very big mistake we have learned from. Today we raise money and we stay focused on what made us raise that money and make our customers happier. The second thing is just employing people for their CVs. Have people with passion on your team, have people that are driven, put people on the team based on passion and vision, people that are teachable and hungry to learn.
Another thing that I learnt is identifying the jurisdiction of the market that you’re in and something that fits your model. This will help you get your timing and environment right. Doing the right business at the wrong time will make a business fail also doing the wrong business at the right time will still make it fail, so just get the perfect timing and get it right.
This is amazing. How did you know that Treepz will not fail from the beginning?
People were already using their mobile apps to book for flight tickets and hotel tickets but not buses before we launched in 2019. I already knew that people were getting comfortable with commuting with mobile apps. There are some customers that will have the Uber apps on their phones but won’t use it because its expensive. In deciding that it was a right time for this, it was coming from a place where the technology around booking for your commute not new but using that to get a bus where you will share your ride with other people that booked on the same bus, that was new.
We spent about three months educating people on what the value was after launching in September 2019. Once one person use our service, we noticed they referred to friends and family. Word got out! It took us three months to get people to know our model and another 3 months to reach a point where we had more demand than supply to meet our customer’s need.
What advice do you have for aspiring entrepreneurs who wants to build a successful business as well?
One is getting a great network of people. Relationship capital cannot be underestimated. People focus more on financial capital, I focus more on relationship capital. You’d employ yourself when you’re building your start up; you’d employ what you were when you were working with other people. Be deliberate about your start up and be deliberate on how you help other people build their startups or businesses as well because karma is real. Be deliberate about the network you’re building around you. Give first so that people can give back to you. Always keep track of your growth from day one.
All business ideas don’t become a success, many times they become a lesson and how you can do better with the next business idea. Get people to mentor you and don’t take all the advice, use advice to sample your business and let your gut feeling tell you what to do. Don’t go on the journey alone, have a team around you.
What motivated you to get started with MaterialsPro?
With a background helping B2B clients manage end to end procurement it came as a culture shock to learn first hand, albeit the hard way, the extent home builders in the construction industry are plagued by challenges of materials sourcing, of logistics management, of price negotiation, etc. All these many issues take its toll on their business and time that should ordinarily be channeled to the core of their work which is to build durable, functional, and beautiful edifices. Much earlier on, I embarked on a personal building project. But even after employing the services of a professional builder, this phase of the project was marred by huge setbacks, resulting particularly in upward budget review, and missed project deadline. I saw this up-close and repeatedly for many other professional home builders, and people I believed should have a better work around. It was at this point that it dawned on me there is a need to provide solutions here. It literally was an ah ah moment given what I know is possible… And that became the basis for MaterialsPro.
What specific problem are you solving with your startup and how are you solving it?
We are helping home builders and contractors remove the challenges of seeking frequent project cost variations with clients, helping them plan and seamlessly manage the procurement of building materials to project sites, on time and as scheduled, and we are helping them reduce overall project costs. All the while giving them peace of mind so they can focus on their core specialization, the actual building itself.
Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers
We have been intentional about staying true to our brand promise of giving home builders peace of mind by making bulk building materials available to project sites on time and within budget. This has helped us retain most of our early customers who have continued to make repeated purchases to date and even referred our service to others.
Describe what makes your business unique?
With a cumulative of over 35 years experience across industries, our energetic founding team is formed around competence for the major challenges we are solving for the construction industry. Besides this, our people centered approach is helping us meet the needs of builders in our target customers segment.
How did you fund your startup?
We started out bootstrapping on the idea and we raised angel funding along the line. This has helped with our operations especially as we deal in an industry with a significant average order value.
What were the biggest challenges you faced and the obstacles you overcame?
There’s quite a number of them. One I’ll say relates to the hiring of staff with the right attitudes and capacities. We always want a square peg in a square hole. That’s the only way to ever get anything done. Yet, it’s a constant battle. One we take upon ourselves to win at.
What is your greatest business achievement to date?
We recently crossed 5,000,000 kilograms of building materials deliveries. This is such a big deal for me: it is progress! Interestingly, we’re barely scratching the surface based on the possibilities we see.
Where would you like your startup to be in five years?
To be the epic centre for innovative solutions and a reference point when it comes to how building materials are sourced in Nigeria and across Africa.
What one thing do you wish someone had told you when you started on your business journey?
That you can’t have it all figured out from the onset. Do not wait until you have a perfect solution before launching to the market. As fast as possible, you want to put a version of your solution in the hands of your users, get their feedback, and iterate on it, and repeat the process over and over.
If you had the chance to do things differently, what would you do?
Launch our solutions to the market much earlier than we did. Never wait until our solution is fully ready before hitting the market.
Have you had any failed business
Yes, I have. I once co-founded a marketing communication firm that did not do so well as we had a challenge putting up the right team. It affected us a great deal.
What are some sources for learning you would recommend for entrepreneurs who are just starting?
Mentorship Programs, and entrepreneurship networks – when the going gets tough, it can really be over your head to see past your situation or even have a fair assessment of it. You need these categories of people to pull through such periods.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?
The real validation of ideas comes from the market and users. Launch fast, gather feedback, iterate based on the feedback and launch again. It’s a continuous cycle! Cash flow is a major killer of business. Focus on earning revenue early to sustain your business while you look for alternative sources of funding to probably expand the business. Start with a committed founding team, people that share similar values with different competencies. It’s a long ride and it is easier not going it alone.
Entrepreneurship is a long and tough journey. Your persistence, perseverance and grit is what gets you through.
One business app and one personal app you can’t do without?
Google workspace Apps! Easy to use. 1 can collaborate and continue my work on the Go!
Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?
We will be hiring soon. We are planning to also share it on our Linkedin Page when we’re ready.
What motivated you to get started with (startup name)?
The name of our start-up is called KalloView, it is a decentralized review application where every review is been recorded on the blockchain. I wanted to renew my driver’s license, I noticed I can make the review from the comfort of my home but I wasn’t too sure because of how things can be over here. I had to search hard to find a credible review but couldn’t find one. I just took the risk and went ahead with the renewal, that was when creating a decentralized review came into life.
What specific problem are you solving with your startup and how are you solving it?
Problems Kalloview is solving with the help of the blockchain are fake reviews, paid reviews and:
Fake reviews Reviews are often fake, biased or manipulated, leading to mistrust among consumers.
Paid Review Online businesses that sell reviews and related services are available
Spam reviews One of the difficulties you might experience is dealing with spammers
Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?
Currently, we are in the beta stage which means we are yet to lunch but when we lunch, each reviewer will earn for making reviews or commenting on reviews.
Describe what makes your business unique.
What makes KalloView unique is the fact that KalloView is been built on the blockchain and it is transparent.
How did you fund your startup?
Reaching out to VC and angel investors, we are still having a private sale ongoing.
What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources for you?
Rich dad poor dad Crypto talk on clubhouse
What were the biggest challenges you faced and the obstacles you overcame?
Getting investors was one challenge. We were able to overcome it by building the app well and getting involved with hackathons to get recognition.
Where would you like your startup to be in five years?
In the next 5 years, KalloView will be on everybody’s lips, it will be the best and most authentic review platform on earth.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?
Never give up believe in your idea, plan and execute, execution is a major.
One business app and one personal app you can’t do without?
Raidonnews, the PR and marketing firm founded by Sameer Satyarth, has recently secured funding from V & E Consulting Group Ltd. The company received an investment of $61,000, with an investor’s equity of 15%. Raidonnews had a pre-money valuation of $345,141 and a post-money valuation of $405,971. Sameer Satyarth embarked on his entrepreneurial journey at the young age of 14 and founded Raidonnews in 2018.
With over four years of experience in the field, Sameer has honed his skills in the press release and public relations, social media marketing, digital marketing, web development, blogging, search engine optimization, graphics designing, HR operations, and leadership.
Raidonnews is a venture that focuses on promoting people, goods, and services. The team aims to promote anything from scratch and make it a brand by increasing its social media presence. Unlike many big players in the PR and marketing field, Raidonnews does not just cover the big celebrities and influencers but also someone who is very less known and wants to grow. Doing PR for those who are not at all known is a bigger task than promoting someone who is already known. And the biggest gap that Raidonnews is filling in the market is “Charges”.
Unlike other PR companies, Raidonnews understands the client’s needs and problems and charges the least amount from them to promote them. Raidonnews has already delivered its services to more than 1500 clients. Startups, new goods, new services, and new people often face the biggest problem of marketing and promotion.
Due to a lack of funds, they are prone to failure. However, Raidonnews picks all these small businesses, people, goods, and services from scratch and promotes them with the least charges. Raidonnews believes in empathy more than business and aims to promote each and every kind of people, good, and service to give them a fair chance of growth.
Sameer Satyarth is proud of his achievements and the growth of his ventures. He believes that his experience can be of great value to his college and its students and would be grateful for any guidance and support.
With the recent funding from V & E Consulting Group Ltd, Raidonnews is well-positioned to continue its mission of promoting and supporting startups and small businesses.
Introducing "Startup Focus" - a segment highlighting groundbreaking startups across various industries. Join us as we discover the latest innovations and disruptors shaping our world for the better.
Kyshi is a fintech company founded by Ayo Akindele that provides a platform for Africans to transact money across borders.
It all started in 2011 when Ayo conceived the idea of Kyshi, It was difficult for him and his community to receive and send funds from Nigeria to the UK. Ayo, being a firm believer of “if you don’t like it, fix it” – created Kyshi.
𝗪𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐘 𝐃𝐎
An app that provides a formal, simple and secure platform for Africans to transact across borders. Kyshi marketplace runs a peer-to-peer system that lets you create or accept an offer at a convenient rate. We are on a mission to unlock more countries while demystifying money transfers one currency at a time, connecting you to Africa.
Nicknamed the neo-bank for Africans, Kyshi was founded in 2020 by Ayo Akindele. The payment startup fees are flexible depending on a host of factors, but it’s not more than 3%. Kyshi also charges zero setup and maintenance fees.
We want to provide a formal, safe and efficient way for Africans to exchange currencies across borders. With us, you can determine how far your money can go at the click of a button ~ Ayo Akindele
Kyshi (pronounced kee-shee) comes from Kishi, the Nigerian and Ghanaian slang for “money”.
My name is Tobi Odukoya, I am a graduate of Chemical Engineering from Obafemi Awolowo University Ile-Ife. I am working on CDcare. I am working on CDcare because my family faced a lot of problem while I was growing up because we could not afford to buy basic gadgets like blenders, televisions, generators….. We struggled owning all of these items and that was because my parents could not afford to pay one big payment. The problem we are solving for Africans now with CDcare is that we know they can’t afford to pay one big payment because Africans earn money in bits either daily, weekly or monthly.With CDcare we make it convenient for Africans to easily own gadgets, appliances and cars…. Using smart installments that aligns with culture and beliefs.
This is incredible. You said you read Chemical Engineering. I am wondering, how did you find your way into entrepreneurship?
Background basically and that’s because my father despite being a civil servant, he was also an entrepreneur. He did business while I was growing up. I had that blood in me. I was a brilliant student back then in OAU and it got to a point where I had to ask myself if I wanted to be the best candidate for the job or if I want to employ the best candidate for the job. I choose to employ the best candidate for the job. I started looking for problems around me as a student and I realized that people had computer repair problems and the major computer repair problem was that when virus gets into their computers they usually have to lose all of their files. So I got home during strike and I goggled how to fix computers without people losing their files. That was the idea moment for me, I went back to school, started a computer repair business and I made money. I trained more than 200 students to become computer technicians as a student in OAU.
That was where the entrepreneurial journey started from. I did a lot of businesses as a student. Computer repairs brought us to Lagos. We launched Computer Doctor where we fix and sell computers. We’ve sold to Flutterwave, Piggyvest, Cowrywise, Paystack…… we fix computers for them earlier in the days. That’s how the entrepreneurial journey started.
What specific problem are you solving with CDcare?
My family couldn’t afford to get household items because we had to pay one big payment. My mother had to save for 10months before I could get my first laptop in the university, that was a big problem. And I realized that most of my classmates had the same problem and I decided to solve the problem. Because I wanted to solve that problem, I started Own-a-Laptop-Scheme which later failed.
We realized it didn’t work because people didn’t want to pay interest. What we learnt from that business is that Nigerians will rather save to buy and never borrow to buy. We started different installment models; we were selling on Jumia and Konga. We decided to do CDcare in a way that aligns with African culture. You’ll use CDcare to save towards owning items but we will ship the item to you before full payment at 50%. If youre using CDcare to save for an item for a year, we will ship your item to you at 6months and we will not charge you any interest. That is how we launched CDcare. Basically, we are building CDcare to help Africans to easily pay in bits for their needs in a way that suit their lifestyle.
This is amazing. I love this model but at the same time have you experienced people who abscond with the item after paying for just 6months?
I’ve experimented the installment models and I see that the fundamental problem with credit in Nigeria is people feeling cheated. Most people don’t pay back loan companies because they believe that the interest is too much and they don’t have to pay. One of the things we enjoy at CDcare is that people believe that we are not charging for any form of interest, they feel like it is morally right for them to pay us. Fundamentally, CDcare model encourages people to pay. We have never had a default problem where people will not pay our money.
We understand that people lose their jobs and livelihood for little or no reason, that is why we put measures in place where we tell our customers that if you’re not able to pay for the item that has been delivered to you, return it back to us, we will help you sell it, take our own balance and give the remaining money to you. When you’re stable and you’re able to buy come back to CDcare and we will get the item delivered to you again. This is just to ensure that people feel comfortable.
Amazing. How do you fund CDcare?
CDcare was bootstrapped earlier but right now we are in Techstars Accelerator which has helped us to have a bit of funding. Fundamentally, CDcare is a business that has been making profit from day one. Before we launched CDcare the unit economics was very important to us and up till today we are profitable at CDcare.
Thankfully, we are able to double our growth, we are able to have great partnerships and hopefully raise investment to help us get the CDcare out to more Nigerians and Africans so that we can help people to own things that they ordinarily will not be able to own. Building CDcare is hard but when we hear testimonials, all we just do is jump up, double on what we are doing so that we can touch the lives of more Africans.
Where do you see CDcare in the next five years?
In the next five years CDcare will be a Pan-African company. We will be in many Africa countries helping Africans to own appliances and gadgets. In the nearest future Africans will be able to pay in installment for homes and for anything they’ll own.
We are building a system that will make it easy for any working African to own anything without worries.
This is amazing and I can’t wait for CDcare to keep growing. How do you get relieved of the pressure that comes with running CDcare?
The fact is, ever since we started running CDcare I’ve not gone on a holiday and that is because the work is a lot. Thankfully we love what we are doing; we have lots of fun at work. Every member of CDcare team knows that you can come to work even when you’re stressed because you’ll always have a reason to laugh. We make work fun at CDcare.
We have fun while we are working, we just look for a way to do serious work and make it look like we are playing.
The truth of the matter is my co-founder and I are not the ones building CDcare. We might have envisioned it and started it. People that are doing the work are smart Africans like you. They’re the ones responding to emails and orders, my co-founder and I are just overseeing while working hard. These smart employees are the ones doing the job.
Fantastic. What are the resources that you read or listen to that has helped you?
I don’t really read books because there are lots of things to do. I listen to podcasts and watch videos a lot. I read a lot from people that are in the industry. I follow people that do savings, credit or e-commerce. I listen to the founder of Konga, the CEO of Carbon and the Piggyvest founders. Carbon covers the loan industry, Piggyvest covers the saving industry, Konga and Jumia covers e-commerce. I follow a lot of them and I listen to them. I just check things that will help me understand the industry better. I have consumed almost all articles that is online that has to do with my industry, technology and everything that concerns what I am doing.
What advice do you have for some entrepreneurs who are trying to weather the storm?
Truth of the matter is if you cannot die there, go and get a job. Forget about being your own boss. Entrepreneurship and business is tough. You can do it and it can be done only if you’re willing to give it what it takes. Entrepreneurship is good and it pays in the long run but you have to work extra hard, it is not a very easy journey.
What motivated you to get started with Bekkah Artificial Intelligence?
In 2021, after successfully planning and launching one of the most successful campaigns in Nigeria that glamorized Agriculture and raised over 3 billion Naira for the AgriTech/ Agriculture Real Estate company I worked for and the companies that benefited from the spill over of the campaign, I quit my day job to focus on my mental health (A lot of things come with success, I might share some in the cause of this interview). Looking back now I feel I am not made to take breaks off things that gives me joy (working on almost impossible things), I didn’t spend up to a month at home before I started Bekkah AI from scratch with less than dollar to my name. In that one month of being at home my therapist asked that I stayed away from strenuous mental activities that will lead to a relapse (I was clinically depressed, diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Intermittent Explosive Disorder and I was suicidal), but I realized I was feeling unfulfilled and sinking more into depression, I stayed off my Prescriptions and started building Bekkah from scratch with this main goals, to honor my Grandma (Rebecca, the business was named after her by the way), and to build a Company that will Align Africa for the future that is coming with Artificial Intelligence. I wanted to do something with my mind before I lost it to those mental struggle. So we can say my Major inspiration was to continually bless humanity with these beautiful mind God has blessed me with.
What specific problem are you solving with your startup and how are you solving it?
When we started Bekkah we had a goal to build one of the biggest Tech Company out of Africa, we wanted to help Automate the lives of Africans by utilizing Artificial Intelligence and Robotics in the safest way possible, we also wanted to create a database for African Histories, Culture and Languages, to help save endangered ethnic groups in Africa, these was to also help them learn about the modern world in their native tongues and have the ability to utilize modern tech to build local solutions for their Communities. These are mega projects that even companies with bigger capital base are struggling with, so how was someone with zero capital base going to achieve this great feats? We started off by rendering services to create cash flow for the company, then with the Cash flow, we created a great team, we attracted bigger partners and now we have generated revenue of over 100 thousand dollars in less than two years. We have built a paying game app called CYSTADS which will be launched in a few months which will be the first phase in building the Database for African Cultures, history and languages.
Describe what makes your business unique?
When majority of African Tech companies are looking at Fintech, we are looking at something different and unique, we are moving wild on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Big Data and Edtech. We do not just want to be another Fintech company, we have sophisticated Fintech apps we can launch but we want to tread path where a few or no one is treading. It is always difficult at first but once we gather the right momentum things will fall in line.
Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?
I feel what has helped us so far is consistency and delivery velocity. We have a team of over 40 developers who can help any business achieve their tech goals. We also recognize that no matter how much we spend on marketing nothing is as important as word of mouth so we ensured that we retain our clients by rendering quality service, in turn they refer us to other businesses and individuals, but we compensate them with up to 20% commission. Profits made from business are plunged back into our Company for expansion.
Like I previously stated I had almost nothing when I started out, apart from an Idea, brains and the drive we had zero capital, but Elon Musk was an inspiration in the sense that he explained the idea of fixing cash flow starting in the easiest way possible. Armed with that information and my five year background in the Technology industry we started rendering tech services, which we still do till now, we were able to gather the right team, and soon attracted partners that believed in our dreams as much as we did and we started scaling. We are still in our very early stage for where we are going. In our really early stage, we are in search of the right funding Partners for our next phase. We estimate that by next year we will stop the service part of the company, we will only be maintaining and updating what we have built.
What were the biggest challenges you faced and the obstacles you overcame?
Finance is one of the biggest challenges all Entrepreneurs face, but I have a saying “An Idea is as good as its ability to raise the funds to execute it”. If you have an idea and you do not have a way to raise funds for it then the idea is not concrete enough. We were able to sort our financial issues by rendering Tech Services. By doing this we have generated a revenue of over a 100 thousand dollar in less than 2 years.
What is your greatest business achievement to date?
Hmmmm, I will just say getting Bekkah off the ground, there are some come back from debt story and heart breaking stories but I will stick to getting her off the ground with zero capital. When something else beats that in my mind I will definitely update y’all (Lol).
Awesome. Where would you like your startup to be in five years?
In the next five years we want to have accomplished at least 30% of our founding goals, we want to have partnered with a lot of tech giants, we want to have trained about 2500 techies for free (Yeah we have an academy that trains people for free on digital skills, we do this in partnership with an American Tech Company) and employ the best trainees, we also want to be a profit making Tech Company by then, I am not a materialistic person but by then I want to see Bekkah Employees living their best lives, getting access to the luxury they deserve and have earned.
What one thing do you wish someone had told you when you started on your business journey?
I wish someone had said these is all the money you need to excel (Lol). Well, wishes aren’t horses, but one thing I wish I was told “No matter how persistent a problem seems, in the long run it will sort out itself”.
Have you had any failed business?
I have not had any failed businesses yet, but some strategies we applied to raise capital for Bekkah failed and landed us in serious debt, well it was not a total loss we raised awareness for the business, but the debt humbled me, I almost gave up on Bekkah, I was burnt terribly, and I was scared of even trying after, thank God for my Mother. She literally drew me out of the debt and shame that came with it. As an Entrepreneur if you have not failed and lost money, you are probably on a path of being too careful to be successful. One of the major factors in building an Entrepreneur’s character is debt management, you aren’t really ready for wealth when you have not managed Debt and the shames, pain, embarrassment and heartaches that comes with it.
What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources for you?
I listen more to Joe Rogan’s Podcasts and I watch YouTubers who help me learn more about people I want to be like. I have a motto that drives me which is ‘we live and we learn’. Also like Father would also say “we only die the moment we stop learning”.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?
Nike it! Yeah like the Swoosh said “Just do it!”, now that was the simplest form to put it. These is the thing, all the ideas in your head are brilliant, till you say it out then people will tell you how dumb it sounds, all you can’t achieve but once you have the courage to say it to people more than a thousand times, you have broken the barrier of communication, hence you are ready to go. This is what saying it to people more than a thousand times does to your idea, it helps you fine tune it. Their disgust, arguments, disbelief, questions, advice and so on are the furnace the idea needs for refinement. That’s how I do my thing, didn’t learn this from no one, it was from deep thoughts, after realizing everything around us as humans are just refined ideas from humans like us. Now don’t just sit on that refined idea, start and you will be marveled at how things will make more sense as you go. It is easier now to start a business, with internet connectivity you can own an office space online and reach people. Almost everything you need to excel initially are free.
One business app and one personal app you can’t do without?
I started my career in the banking industry and I used to be a writer at Ventures AFRICA. I studied English Language from Obafemi Awolowo University. The banking industry geared my passion for being a product manager and building PAGECHAP.
I interface with customers and I know what a good product should look like, I know what people want to see and what they don’t want to see. I sort of peered into their world and their problems and that was when I realized that I want to be a product manager to be honest. I started to transition; I started to work into becoming a product manager. I currently work as an associate product manager in CLAFIYA, it’s a health tech company. CLAFIYA provides health care services for people in Nigeria using USSD. I’ve always had PageChap in mind; I’ve always known that I was going to build a solution for content creators and creatives in general.
That was awesome. What motivated you to build PageChap?
My friend’s issue motivated me to build PageChap. There was a day I was waiting for him after work because he was trying to transfer some of his documents and it took a lot of time. It came to mind that there should be a solution where you can collate all your documents in one place so as to avoid lost documents. And I wanted to build a product that I could use and a product that was very unique to me.
There’s no better person to build a product order than a person in the same industry
Incredible. What problem are you exactly solving with PageChap?
It helps when you’re trying to put your work in one place. It helps when you’re trying to engage with your audience. It is one thing to push out some of your content, it is also another thing to keep a community or keep communication with your targeted audience. With PageChap you can communicate with your audience via several platforms. I just want every creative to see a part of them whenever they see PageChap.
How are you able to build PageChap? Did you do it yourself? Did you contract some people or do you have a technical co-founder?
I didn’t build it myself, I’m a product manager and I don’t write codes. I have a team and a co-founder. The team is made up of a backend engineer, a Frontend engineer, the social media person and a graphics designer. I handle most of the marketing stuff, so it is really a small team.
What is your business model for PageChap? How are you making money?
Right now we are not making money, we are bootstrapping. Our product is still a free product; it’s not going to be free forever. It’s just a lot of passion fueling whatever we are doing; everyone is just trying to make something out of it. There’s no money anywhere and we’ve not even gone public.
This is great. Where do you see this startup in the next five years?
PageChap is my baby and no mother gives up on a child. In five years, I want African curators to be able to access the global world. They should be able to showcase their work, engage their audience and also get paid for their skills, right there on PageChap. I want you to be able to see yourself in the brand; I also want to compete with a bigger and international audience.
I love that. Have you had any failed businesses or start-ups before?
This is my first attempt at starting a business. It’s okay to get it right the first time. There’s no failure story from me, I have to get it the first time.
I was wondering, how are you able to get users for PageChap?
People say that a good product speaks for itself. My product is good enough and it sells. Though we still need to put in a lot of work. Most of our customer base is through running sponsored ads on social media and a lot of referrals and word of mouth.
Our communities refer a lot of creators to us and that has helped to build the brand and increase our numbers. Marketing is a lot of strategizing and figuring out what works for us.
I love that. While you’re building PageChap what is the craziest thing that has happened to you from building your startup?
The hardest part of being a founder is the fact that I have to act like I know it all while in the true sense of it, I don’t know a damn thing. It’s crazy. As a founder, you have to be confident and know things. The hardest part is that I have to act like I know what I am doing because I am ‘supposedly’ the leader when half the time, i am equally trying to figure it out.
Interesting. What are the resources that get you motivated?
I’m grateful for the gift of people. It’s one thing to read books and listen to many motivational speakers as much as possible but sometimes you need a bit of human touch, you need someone that has worked through that path. My community is the biggest motivation for me, I’m surrounded by friends that I go back to and ask questions, and we sit down together and brainstorm. I tell my friends my problems, they might not give me solutions but we talk through them together. My community is my biggest motivation.
Incredible. Any advice for entrepreneurs who are also trying to weather the storm?
Take it daily and you’ll figure it out. It’s hard and tough especially when it’s not yielding the type of result you want but keeps showing up one day after the next and one day, the hindrances will not be there anymore.
Introducing "Startup Focus" - a segment highlighting groundbreaking startups across various industries. Join us as we discover the latest innovations and disruptors shaping our world for the better.
Keble is a platform that provides accessible and affordable real estate options for young Africans at home and in the diaspora. They’re democratizing the benefits of Real Estate investing, creating a safe and stable means for Africans to grow wealth in confidence
It enables Africans at home and abroad to purchase fractional shares of global real estate for as low as $10.
They connect their users to premium property investment options in the Global Real Estate Market, helping them save, invest, and diversify their portfolios.
Globally, real estate is worth over 300 trillion dollars. Keble is changing this narrative with its suite of solutions and impacting the lives of Africans along the way.
The side hustle idea of creating a marketplace that helps brands find influencers is essentially about creating a platform or service that connects brands with social media influencers who can promote their products or services.
Influencer marketing has become increasingly popular in recent years as a way for brands to reach their target audience through the voices of influencers who have large followings on social media. However, it can be challenging for brands to identify and connect with the right influencers for their specific campaign needs.
Asia vlogger woman influencer, SME retail store owner smile enjoy selling show live sale online screen in IG story reel tiktok work at home studio. Gen Z people record viral video selfie shoot app.
This is where a marketplace that helps brands find influencers comes in. The platform would provide a database of influencers that brands can search through based on factors such as location, niche, audience demographics, engagement rates, and more. The platform may also provide tools for brands to manage their campaigns, track results, and pay influencers.
Creating a marketplace that helps brands find influencers can be a lucrative and rewarding venture. Here are some steps you can take to get started:
Research your market: Before diving into creating your marketplace, research your potential customers – brands and influencers. Understand what their needs and pain points are and how you can address them with your platform.
Build your platform: Once you’ve identified your target market, you can start building your platform. You’ll need to create a website or app that makes it easy for brands to find and connect with influencers. Consider building features like search filters, analytics, and payment processing.
Attract influencers: To make your platform attractive to brands, you’ll need to have a diverse and active pool of influencers. Consider reaching out to influencers on social media, attending influencer events, or partnering with existing influencer networks to attract influencers to your platform.
Attract brands: Once you have a pool of influencers, start marketing your platform to brands. Consider reaching out to brands on social media or via email, offering free trials or discounts to early adopters, and attending industry events to promote your platform.
Maintain and grow your platform: As your platform grows, continue to make improvements and add new features to meet the needs of your customers. Listen to feedback from both brands and influencers, and make adjustments to improve user experience and satisfaction.
How Brett Owens Created A Two-Sided Marketplace That Helps Brands Find Influencers And Makes Over $2k Monthly.
Brett Owens is the founder and Chief Matchmaker of Afluencer, a company that matches brands with influencers for product promotion. Owens created Afluencer after hearing from store owners who wanted social media influencers and creators to spread the word about their products.
The company began as an agency and focused on influencer recruitment only for the first year, before adding brand recruitment in the second year.
Afluencer now has over 6,500 active influencer users and 1,000 active brand users. Owens learned the importance of specificity when searching for influencers and found the exercise helpful in knowing what to build for the app. The influencer marketing industry is still new, and Afluencer helps to connect brands and influencers.
My name is Joshua Tebepina and I’m the co-founder and CEO of Bingtellar. I’m from Bayelsa state, born in Lagos state and I’m the 4th of 6.
I studied Medical laboratory science and then computer science & informatics at the University where I started my software engineering journey. Crazy days indeed, I remember how I used to risk and miss exams for coding hackathons & tech gatherings and all of those was because I was obsessed with building, I wanted to do something that will impact lives and allow me the freedom to be creative, and that lead me to build lots of products and co-founding few startups.
Today, what I’m building is the future of finance and payments on the blockchain for users and businesses in Africa. At bingtellar, we are building the bridge and required rails for crypto, which would help connect Africans seamlessly to the digital economy.
In short words, Bingtellar is an all-in-one place for your crypto needs. On our platform, you can exchange crypto, and gift cards and also use crypto for everyday consumption like sending money within and out of Africa, paying bills and shopping.
What motivated you to get started with your startup?
I’ve been building solutions for web3 businesses for years, but experiencing a problem first-hand made me really go in to fix it.
So yeah, Bingtellar was started from a personal experience, a friend of mine was in the UK and wanted to send money to his sick mom in Nigeria but couldn’t find an affordable way to do it and it was an emergency so he reached out to me and I figured crypto could help save the day, so he sent me some money equivalent to naira in crypto and while I was trying to convert it to cash on a popular P2P crypto exchange I got scammed, after spending much time appealing nothing happened and so I had to do the cash settlement myself because it was an emergency. Right there I knew there was a problem and the problems were:
(1). Cross-border payments and money transfers are expensive, slow and broken.
(2). The ability to move between fiat and crypto is far too complicated and also the P2P way of exchanging crypto is risky, and not efficient.
I figured out things could be re-routed but really no one wants to shoulder the troubles. I like challenges so I picked it up as a side project and started building it, people loved it and we are here.
What specific problem are you solving with your startup and how is it unique?
The two key challenges users and businesses face when looking to onboard users into web3 and the crypto economy is access and utility.
Today there is significant unrealised potential for crypto utility in the real world, today users think crypto can only be used as an investment vehicle right? But there’s more to crypto and we want to change this narrative by building easy-to-use crypto-poweredproducts.
Our traditional currencies weren’t built to solve cross-border payments, the naira won’t work outside Nigeria; the cedi won’t work outside Ghana. It’s the same thing everywhere. Crypto is the only solution that really works right now and someone has to build a unified layer for this kind of transaction and that’s where we come in. Bingtellar is here to close the gap in order to drive real-world utility, whether that be in form of merchant payments, off-ramping to your bank account, remittance and many more untapped use cases.
And that’s really what makes us unique, we are people obsessed and we always want to be at the centre of innovation and importantly simplify processes for users.
For example, most crypto platforms operate using the P2P model thereby leaving users to manage risk themselves but we don’t do that, Bingtellar mitigates all the risk involved in P2P transactions. Thus, offers users the opportunity to self-liquidate their digital assets (Crypto, gift cards) instantly to cash at the best rates possible.
How do you fund your startup?
Bingtellar is self-funded, we’ve been bootstrapping and we’ve never felt money has to be the key essential point, building for our users has always been our core focus but lately, we got to a place where we decided we needed to ramp up our processes and expand globally so we are currently raising a pre-seed round to support that. We are definitely open to having you and other amazing people join us.
Awesome. Where do you see your startup in the next 5 years?
Tough one, Honestly, I want a billion-dollar company. Our goal is to help millions of Africans tap into the global digital economy. We believe to unlock global payments and crypto’s true potential, Fiat-to-crypto or Crypto-to-fiat transactions should simply just work. In 4-5 years, Bingtellar will be the go-to platform for crypto that provides users with modern financial services backed by cryptocurrencies, whenever you mention crypto utility Bingtellar will be the first startup you think of.
Tough job yeah but we will get it done, most definitely.
Have you had failed business before?
Oh, yea I have. I’ve built so many products and businesses, I’ve done a thing in entertainment, I’ve done an e-commerce business, I’ve co-founded a digital tech solutions firm, and so many and they somehow succeeded or basically just failed. Crazy how I never gave up, even when I decided to quit and focus on a career job, Bingtellar came knocking, guess it’s safe to say it was meant to happen.
How do you get users or customers to your startups?
We’ve been getting users by word of mouth and from our extended network, and we’ve always been active in the local crypto communities. We’ve seen over 40% average monthly active users over the last months from those channels.
We are really conscious about marketing, especially blitzscaling, you don’t want to onboard thousands of users and don’t satisfy them, so it’s better you grow at a reasonable rate and maintain it. Marketing is really more of experimentation till you get the one that works for you and it’s better when it’s organic, especially in the early days.
What’s the craziest story that happened from building your startup?
Maaaaaan, so much, can’t even pick. But really regulatory compliance has been one thing that’s always given me a headache. I have so many stories on that already, Imagine waking up with an insane product idea and then halfway coding it you remember you have some battles to fight. Almost every single person we told about what we were building at the start said we were crazy. But my answer is that if it can be done, we are the ones to do it.
What are some of the resources, books, podcasts or videos that you learn from?
Those books really helped me understand why companies scaled and how, essential things to consider when building products, and also how to experiment quickly and still maintain growth as a company.
Any advice for other entrepreneurs trying to weather the storm?
Start with what you have, do not wait for the perfect time. You’ve got to be resilient, nothing happens easily, every day as an entrepreneur is honestly you deciding to jump from a moving train and then repeating it every single day, so you have to be ready for the great times, tough times and all times. Build with people you care about and vice versa, people you can share moments with, people who would always be there for you even when things get tough. Lastly, ignore the hype and focus on the actual work, everything you’ve ever wished for is at the other side of your fears, keep it going, and to the moon it is.
My name is Goodness Kayode and I’m the co-founder and CEO of Sendchamp. I studied English Language at the university where I started my software engineering journey. I also built an agency called Sprinble Agency.
Today, what I am building is the future of omnichannel communication for businesses in Africa.
So what exactly is Sendchamp?
It’s pretty straightforward. I am a business person and I have customers that try to reach out to me maybe through Instagram, Facebook, SMS, or Twitter I have to switch between different platforms to be able to respond to customers apart from the hundred things that I have to do in a day; managing of employee, handling finances and things like that. So it becomes like a pain in the ass to manage these conversations from customers so basically Sendchamp has built a single platform that allows businesses to be able to manage these communication channels in one place and also manage business tools that they use for managing their businesses.
Fantastic, there are few messaging platforms as well, so what is unique about Sendchamp and how is it different from every other multichannel platform?
So, we are playing the infrastructure game. We’ve built messaging channel infrastructure for these businesses that are accessible by APIs. Basically, what we are trying to do is to ensure communication services are accessible over APIs and over a simple dashboard for businesses. One thing that makes us different is that we’ve gone further by providing no-code tools for non-technical business people. People that do not have a developer experience, people that cannot write JavaScript. We’ve been able to build tools that allow them to be able to onboard their customers, to be able to market to their customers and to be able to support their customers across the channels.
In the market today, a lot of players in our space are focused on enterprise businesses. You have to be an established business before you can make use of their solution. What we were able to do is build a product that allows SMEs too to be able to make use of the platform with little or no development knowledge.
Perfect, so in other words, you’ve democratized that system of “I don’t need much money before I can be able to build my platform and I can build my audience even as small as my business is right?”
Correct, we are democratizing it.
This is insane, great work!. So what exactly motivated you to start Sendchamp?
Sendchamp Started as a result of difficult situations that I’ve been in as a developer and also as a business owner. At my agency, we built solutions for venture-backed start-ups, enterprises and industries and we realized that the products we built required one or two messaging channels. Every single time we get to that point we have to review like four providers, we have to review them based on regulations, delivery, pricing and payment options. In Africa, we have so many SMS providers and this business wants to make use of Whatsapp, emails, USSD. We encountered this situation several times and it got us thinking that how can we solve it and how can we make it easy for businesses to be able to say that they need a particular platform that can give them all these channels that their customers want to reach them through. That’s where the idea of Sendchamp came from.
This is a game changer; if I can send bulk SMS, Emails and WhatsApp messages. What you’re doing is massive to be honest. I am wondering, how are you able to fund the startup?
We are a ventured backed startup. We raised about $100k in 2021, we also walked into some accelerators to get some money there.
That’s great. Since launched, what’s the success story like? In terms of revenue generation and user base.
Right now for Sendchamp, we’ve been able to get over 2,000 business signups spread across SMBs and startups. We’ve been able to process over 20m+ messages and we are still expanding and still building. We’ve also been able to serve different customers across different countries in the world.
Perfect, would you want to give an insight of where you want to see your start up in the next five years?
Honestly, I want a billion-dollar company. Our goal is to help businesses to be able to tap into Africa’s digital economy. Our goal is to ensure that traditional digital businesses are able to extract or reap the fruit of the digital economy today. So we are providing them with tools to handle their communication and make their business operations smoother.
That’s good and I wish you success in your start up. Would you say that this is your first attempt at starting a business? Basically, just share with us your failure story.
As an engineer, you start different projects. Some that die on your laptop, some that don’t die, and some that go live but you don’t have customer;, some that go live but you have one to five customers. I think the difference between other startups that I’ve done and Sendchamp is that I’m sharing the story of Sendchamp everywhere I go. I realized that it is not my families that will make use of my products nor will they make it a billion-dollar company. It is customers and we are solving a problem for businesses and it is very important that people know the problem that we are solving. Yes, I’ve had failed businesses. I’ve done car wash business before; I was one of the founding members of one Adtech placement company too. I’ve seen a couple of things. I have also played in the FinTech space.
This is great. Would you want to share some insights to what keeps you pumped up and what keeps you motivated? Resources that you learn from or some podcasts that you listen to that keeps you going.
I will say I’m lucky to have some friends that are doing well in their space and I have friends that don’t want to be poor, that is the most important motivation. I talk about my stuff when I’m with them and I get insights. I learn a lot from them too. I try to understand my space well. I equip myself with contents that revolve around my space and I also try to learn from people that have done it before. I hardly read books but I listen to podcasts. Most times I actually work with articles.
Excellent. How do you get users for your startup?
I’ll start with the general principles. I’ll always mention that execution is key when it comes to marketing. People know the basic strategy but how do you tailor it down to your own business. You want to understand the customers you’re looking for, you want to understand the channels; you want to understand your model well so that you’ll know that they are all in sync.
You want to look for channels that are very effective, you want to understand if your business is a B2B or a B2C product and understanding those that can get you to your customers or people that will make sure that the deal gets closed. There are very obvious and article friendly strategies like social media, running ads, sponsor programs and things like that, depending on your business.
There are strategies that you can use. We are a B2B business, we reach out to businesses, and we have other channels like our developer community which is over 1,500. We try to grow our community and get involved. Recently, we’ve partnered with like developers communities just to make sure that developers see us more and how we are useful for their startups and products. Marketing is more of experimentation till you get the one that works for you.
Awesome. Would you give advice to other entrepreneurs like you or younger one that are trying to weather the storm as well? What advice do you have for them?
To be honest, have money. You need to have money. A start up does not die because they’re not building the future, startup dies because of money. It will be a learning experience if you start without money.
There are actually some accelerators you can join. It’s always great when it comes from the point of “You’re building this and you also have the resources to be able to push it” because the journey is stressful. People find it easy to criticize founders but they don’t know that there are lots of decisions that we have to make and trying to decide on what works best for the business, for partners and team members.
We are trying to manage everything and make sure that you’re not being selfish at the same time. It’s a rollercoaster. The stories are always very sweet if you’re in for the right things. You just have to make it work.
