Mohammed Dewji & I at the Invest Africa, Standard Chartered Bank private dinner. Last October, before moderating a panel at the Global Business Forum in Dubai, I was invited to the Invest Africa – sponsored by Standard Chartered – private dinner at the glitzy Arts Club ($75,000 per year membership
Failed Experiments The history of scientific developments has been in the total embracing of failure. Literally developing a hypothesis and then running multiple experiments to test against it, starting with the notion that it may take forever or never at all. Learning, documenting and ultimately opening up to peer review
For folks who’ve seen me in Dubai over the last 6 months or so, I could see why they would think it’s softlife & dorime living. It’s not. Everything I do is intentional. My next project I am co-founding has deep routes in the Arab world so exposure to GCC
Founders need love too. Spare a second for their plight. So much enthusiasm, but also so much anger and a feeling of exploitation and frustrations, and I feel a lot of misunderstanding of what founding and operating a company is like. Even when you work in a startup, it’s different
I got ideas. Lets get this mney Folks feel I am being negative about 🇳🇬 & Africa at large. I am actually not at all. But the relentless, unchallenged positivity doesn’t help fix any of our glaringly obvious underlying issues nor helps us win. And all I want is for
I was in Johannesburg recently, speaking to one of the largest retail real gaming operators in SA. The most interesting nugget from our discussions was when they were telling me about how their best customers are Nigerians. I was pretty surprised. In Johannesburg? Where I am sure Nigerians represent <1%
Firstly. For the record. Fintech has already proven to be the Holy Grail of tech startups in Nigeria. I applaud that. Man, it’s amazing, breathtaking. In 5 short years she has given us everything we ever asked for. A $200m exit. A $1B+ unicorn. A $50m+ non VC backed exit.
Bill Gates owned 45% of Microsoft post IPO In the money game it’s always about the money We eventually gave away, or sold, 5 percent of the company for a million dollars at a 20 million dollar valuation, just to get a venture capital company to join our board and
I have said this a thousand times since it dawned on me a few years back. Africa is functionally poor. In the absence of a special ‘Africa’ pricing, usually heavily subsidized by cashflow (from international operations) or investors’ capital , our people wouldn’t be able to afford most of the
Stepped out of the game IROKO hasn’t completed a priced fund raise since 2016. That’s 5 whole years. It was only when a journalist was asking me the other day about down rounds that I actually realised that. We’ve borrowed N500m ($1.6m) in Bank of Industry loans and paid that
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