Chai …

I just listened to this podcast story by Eldee

Chai …

I just listened to this podcast story by Eldee

Listen to The Big Picture [Episode 13] on TuneIn http://tun.in/timT5Z

And said wow… I can relate to what Femi felt in the beginning of his meetings with Mr Williams.

Sometime not too long ago something not similar but similar would have happened to me.

I was fundraising… the amount I wanted to raise. I was told by advisors was too small.

To raise the kind of investment that will be required to do the hard work of Digital health in Africa I had to be a bit more ambitious and dream bigger 😁

First of all the way I was looking at the market was too small.

Expand it.

We spent 6 months creating a big strategy another one full month on financials.

A 7 month biz plan.

Validating with a lead investor every week in the process.

Mind you these were legit non African strategy and finance consultants.

They had 70% success rate at helping startups raise.

They were very good at what they did.

And we were on-course to raise almost half a million dollars.

As the thing was going I was progressively feeling … inadequate to comprehend the scope of the scale.

I’m a one step at a time kinda guy.

I told myself, if you are feeling uncomfortable it’s because you are growing.

And like Femi, I was telling myself I needed to develop personally faster to step into the shoes of this kind of CEO that would make all these millions of dollars per annum 😁

Mind you I did grow … fast

But God saved me from what would have been a mess.

Thanks for Tony Elumelu Bootcamp last year.

I saw people from all over Africa selling small small things and were like me just looking to scale it small.

It helped put me back into reality.

I looked and didn’t see any validation of the Silicon Valley Type tech businesses in Nigeria.

The success stories were nonexistent.

Mind you this was even before the Konga saga.

I looked at all the big businesses in tech in Nigeria.. Tenece, Zinox

Ofcos there are a ton of them but this was the guys I knew.

They had been in business for decades to get to where they were.

There were a ton of insights to glean from how the started and what their customer segment was.

Building expertise, grit, network and the right to win.

I told myself, brotherly wisdom is profitable to direct.

I reached out to a few of the guys I was working with and said … I don’t want to do this again.

We want to take a chill pill, validate a bit more of this growth strategy when we have more traction to show it works w’ll now raise all these money for it.

Mind you many tech businesses in Nigeria raise a ton of more money than what we were going to raise.

But alas, I prefer to build strong foundations first, own my journey.

I have a dream, and I’ll see it through patiently.

Ofcos I could be wrong, but I do advise young tech entrepreneurs like me.

Take a chill pill … it’s a long term game.

Don’t buy all the fast growth yadiyadiya. Africa is still a young market.

Forget the whole VC craze about Africa.

Don’t be anybody’s experiment.

And be a collateral damage left after they are done.

Patiently build your dream, if you are feeling things are moving too fast it probably is.

Cheers :)