Great one from u,bro...dis was how bill gate and jobs started

Wowww. OP seems ur thread is on front page now. I must say your thread made me go ahead with my idea now. Tho m doing it alone for now as I can't find a worthy partner for now. I would be launching this idea say in 4 months.

Thank you so much for this thread. You are an inspiration to me and others. If u want someone to work for u for free, u can count on me. Would b able to do 1day a week for u free. I believe I can learn a lot from u in the process.

God Bless

Op keep doing you, success.

As for staff, sad story. Graduates keep crying out for jobs so I don't get it. Please when next you choose to employ, let the job seekers know what they are in for. I find some employers mask certain tasks or radically turn it around - now that sucks!

If their job involves marketing, spell it out, ask them about previous experiences and let them be under no illusion that it is something else.

Its a growing business so they need to know it entails going out there and talking. Give them free reign to talk during interview eg tell me about yourself. What do you think of this? If you don't like what you hear allow them go.

There are good graduates out there but at the end of the month, most just want to earn their wages and GO home! Find the ones with passion for your niche. The ones with fire in their bellies and spark in their eyes. Good luck. Will be following this thread.

Wow! I logged into Nairaland today just to catch up on the usual gist and couldn't believe my eyes!

Thank you all so much for your encouragement. I'll try to respond to each post individually.

To those who have gotten some inspiration, i'm glad i was able to help you along. Please come write your experiences so we can build a community of collaborators and entrepreneurs. We are only as good as our community. I hope we can build a great community via this thread. Who knows we may even take it offline someday.

As to revealing my start-up, I can safely say that i won't be doing so for quite a while.

Thanks again and keep the posts and experiences coming, love to read them. I certainly will be giving regular updates.

This is good. Wish you all the best

databoy247:


I appreciate you taking your time to read through my post and i am happy you picked a thing or two.

But i need to still throw more light.....

From your post, i deduced some factors which if you don't address, might still pose as setback blocks.

What you are putting on ground is a start-up! No matter the funds you have on ground you will not want to waste it on recruiting (the wrong person). From my experience, no matter how good and prospect-looking a graduate is, you still have to spend nothing less than six months teaching. If you can handle the time and expenses, then it's all good. Otherwise, you should go for an experienced hire. I know some guys, but i don't think they will come on board cheap. So, if you are ready to pay good, then there are always options.

This is Nigeria, recruiting is always a problem. You see a very bright candidate and by the time you expect the best from him, he ALWAYS disappoints. You just have to get this part right. And one way you can get it right is outsource the recruiting to an agency or a HR professional. But it's either you employ a secretary like i said before (secretaries can be converted to best selling pitchers if you want ) and the truth is that nobody understands a company more than a secretary. That's the way it works here in Nigeria. If you want to get ALL the details of a company, go and ask the secretary. OR you get an experienced hire (and be ready to pay super well and still expect disappointment).

Also, just like you said in your previous posts, partnership should not come on the basis of friendship. I am glad you got this part right. In fact the best partnership is that of when the only glue at the middle of you guys is business. I have run successful partnership with a startup for close to a year now, we are making money, the business is growing and till date we have not seen physically. Currently am also in the process of signing another partnership agreement with another new start-up of which the owner is based somewhere in Europe but wants his start-up to hit home strongly.

This is good but what happens when you are not there? It shouldn't be about you, it should be about the product. In fact, the product should be able to speak for itself. I have done a presentation for some peeps, i didn't convince them, the presentation did. In short, they were not even ready to listen to me because they were so glued to the presentation. The product should sell itself and not you selling the product. Like i emphasized on my previous post, invest more on online ads. One thing about online ads, is that it makes brands become a household name, and when it becomes a household name, you don't need to pitch for more than 3 minutes before closing a sale.

A good example is OLX. Now am not saying OLX is the best, but EVERYONE here have heard of it, have seen it through various ads. In fact if you open your opera mini on your phone, you will see it, on nairaland you will see it, on Google you will see it, on facebook you will see it, it's everywhere. Now i can bet my beans and roasted plantain that 96% of it's users knows nothing about the owners or people behind it. That is my point, let your product sell itself and this can be achieved via massive online ads. When that is accomplished, you will observe that everything will start falling into place (with proper planning).

What are the incentives for prospective partners? Make una nor mind me, i am a businessman, and one of our traits is dabbling into opportunities at any given space (that's how i got one small contract with Ministry of Education ). I am open to more discussion... nwakstar2020@gmail.com

Thanks a lot man, i'll be in contact in due course.

As regards recruiting, i take your point on board. I don't think i'll be hiring for another little while anyway. Will try and get a handle of things first and perhaps go for a secretary like you suggested. We'll see how it turns out.

You're right about the product speaking for itself. In my short experience, Nigerians like to know who is behind anything hence why i'm linking the product to my person. Over time i will be able to separate my person from the product. It also works for now as we can't afford any sole branding spend. All resources currently are directed towards acquiring users.

We are doing online ads and have acquired most of our users via it. It's only small scale as we have an MVP that can't do a lot of things we want it to do. We want to be guided by our users and not what we think will be good. Our website also needs a lot of work and features before it is ready for large scale online consumption. Thus we are focusing largely on direct offline sales.

Ibime:


Na wetin I dey ask since.

OP is on FP, one would think it's a good opportunity to tell us about the website

Thanks for reading and posting bro. If i tell you the website you'll be disappointed

More seriously, the interest from this thread is from a business side whereas my start-up is targeted at a non business niche. Two very different interests.

Media interest like this is only temporary and hardly ever enduring. The front page feature is only fleeting. I want to build a repeatable and scalable acquisition channel. Visits via this thread will be distracting as they weren't initially attracted by the value proposition i'm offering. People will only sign up out of curiosity. We don't have time for that distraction especially as we personally call everyone that signs up.

remsonik:
Op I read through every post on this thread and sure it's worth it. I am an entrepreneur too and I merchant for some ecommerce online shops here. I am thinking of dropping paid employment by the end of this month,I just got admission for a masters degree. I will further my studies and face my passion squarely.
Thank you for this thread,very insightful. A lot of startups just share their glories and never talk about where they faced difficulties and challenges. Entrepreneurship is good but not for the faint hearted!

Well done, i encourage you wholeheartedly to pursue your dream. You won't ever regret doing it but you will regret not pursuing your passion

goofyone:


Nice story. But did they also tell you how he tricked the Aztecs? How he deceived them? How he stole their history? How his obsession with their gold made him see them as less of a people? How his army infected them with foreign diseases?

I'm not trying to punch a hole in your efforts. Good efforts by the way. Just trying to let you know that not all these grand western stories are as lofty as they appear.

Thanks for reading and commenting. I didn't attempt to paint cortes as a saint. All i did was use an aspect of his story to illustrate a principle. As evil as he may have been, he clearly did some useful things one can draw from. Remember that even a broken clock tells the correct time twice a day.

Op,reading your stories brought me to tears..not sad but happy.
My family made the decision similar to yours about two years ago,the only difference is we were all in nobody was left behind. We have experienced a lot,from staff walking out on us to loosing all our hard earned money to a fraudster(how that happened is still a misery till date). Currently,i am trying so hard to support my husband looking at another business that can keep family going.

How are you able to cope with business to business in Nigeria?. The way Nigerians demand for money is alarming and frustrating!.

Wishing you success.

Oildichotomy:
I'm writing this as an employee of two big start-ups, There are some things diaspora owners of Nigerian start-ups don't understand about recruitment and hiring.

I started as one of the first set of employees for an online business about three years ago though it has grown so big presently after some investment dollars came in.
OP is wrong with the typical usual stereotype of Nigerian graduates and their competence especially when they have some stint overseas, going into recruitment with such mindset will definitely hand you the cheese as expected.

Be open to these guys (potential employees) and also be ready to teach and be disappointed in the process. If you get your recruitment right -- Success is sure!

I relate with what databoy247 suggested, about being street credible, it will definitely help your push to the streets, the only down-side is that your product is supposedly for the upper-class and middle-class and I just have to chip in this, the so-called Upper Class feed off the lower-class, so none is really unimportant in the circumstance.

One of my goals for this year, is to start something for myself and trust me, procrastination has been my companion the whole time, I doff my hat for budding entrepreneurs who threw away the comfort of good paid employment and tackle their dreams headlong, the grass is always greener at the other side.

Your post has really succeeded in pushing me to DO ME.

Thanks for your post. I've lived and schooled in Nigeria too so i know what's up. I interviewed quite a number of people myself before i formed the opinion i have. I wasn't looking for much, infact, i ignored CV's in many cases. I just asked open ended questions and listened. So many people just couldn't deal with this. These kind of people i can't hope to teach anything. People need a minimum set of skills that our schools are unfortunately not equipping them with. like databoy247 alluded too, I don't have the cash for them to learn on my watch.

As regards class distinctions, i'll take money from anyone who will give it to me. It is however hard to convince someone to part with 20 dollars for software when they're struggling to find food. So i hedge my efforts by going after the 'haves'.

I like you am a great procrastinator. I had a presentation to do at work today and didn't prepare it until this morning. What helped me not procrastinate my startup is:

1. I was extremely passionate about it.
2. I put some money into it early on. Not a lot just a little to buy a domain name. Once i did that i had skin the game and stopped procrastinating.
3. I read, listened and watched a lot of entrepreneurial stories. This motivated me plenty.

Good luck with your venture and please update us as you go along.

9japipper:


I love your posts.. Well articulated and inspiring. I have being in a similar journey for over a year now. Can we connect? Maybe via email or something.

Thanks. Would love to connect. Just send me a PM.

400billionman:
Sir, how much cash money has your start up earned ?

I hate stories..

Thank you for your comment. We are still managing tiny revenue, certainly not a billion man.

If you hate stories, i dare say that this thread might not be suitable as it is a story of a journey.

Liferace:
Op,reading your stories brought me to tears..not sad but happy.
My family made the decision similar to yours about two years ago,the only difference is we were all in nobody was left behind. We have experienced a lot,from staff walking out on us to loosing all our hard earned money to a fraudster(how that happened is still a misery till date). Currently,i am trying so hard to support my husband looking at another business that can keep family going.

How are you able to cope with business to business in Nigeria?. The way Nigerians demand for money is alarming and frustrating!.

Wishing you success.

Thank you. Well done in your support of your husband. My wife stepped up and took a lot of responsibility when i was let down. There's nothing like a supportive wife so please keep at it and don't lose the faith as hard as it may be.

B2B in Nigeria is hard, long and you have to deal with people who just want a cut for doing their job or nothing in some cases. When i've found a reliable method i'll tell you until then i'm doing trial and error.

Wishing you all the success in the world too.

I love your post and this would be the first time reading a tread till the end and i even have some text from it on my wordpad so i could make some research because am presently having some hard time working on a project ..i mean an idea.Great post though.

I quite agree with databoy my oga OP. For most startups, exposure is very critical in the initial stage in order gain public acceptance of your brand. You can create the much needed curiosity for the public through online ads.

I want to say that I have gained a lot from your experience. But you can even make your startup litle easier if you bring your wife onboard. You can teach her how she can buy into the you vision. Its easier you know. While you concentrate on other things on she focus on other things like marketing. Again instead of renting an office , you can use a friends house or your house. It saves money again.

OP you also forgot one good aspect of any business. and that is PR. If you are an introvert like me, then i think is good if you can hire a PR Specialist.

We are still in speculations of this your startup though. Nobody will steal your idea here since you have started operation and have made all legal rights. By telling us what your business is on this forum, some people will be in a better position to give more advise on how you can move your business to the next level. There is no point hiding it.

I have learnt alot on this topic. I am looking forward to starting my own eCommerce soon.

Am really interested in joining u to build this together...am in Nigeria tho,and we can work together...whatsapp@+2348185548236
Mcseunbayo@gmail.com.

I am so grateful op for this great piece. I have always wanted to start something of my own but my biggest problem is having an idea that is unique. So far from your post I have learnt I need to start reading and looking for problems to solve within my environment.

Good job......following.

1k001:
I've recently founded a tech start-up and it's been quite a whirlwind.

I've had to try figure out so many things on my own so thought it would be useful to relate some of the things i experience to help me reflect and perhaps help others who may be looking at something similar.

Feel free to jump in and comment or ask questions

Nice!

I'm currently in the same boat but my SAAS B2B startup is US based and I'm currently seeking Series A funding.

Dealing with institutional investors is nerve–wracking and time consuming especially when you're a solo founder like me. The amount of equity and terms they're seeking when you find a receptive investor almost makes you say "fu.k it', especially when you're looking at your burn rate! Couple the fund raising headache with customer development and acquisition, conversion of users to paying customers, attending trade expos, continued software development, resource issues, keeping an eye on VC funded competitors, uncertainties in some of your hypothesis, a full-time job, and family obligations...I will be writing a book once I exit. :-)

By the way, if any Nairalander attends Johns Hopkins, I will be participating in the 2015 Startup Fest at Carey Business School to recruit.

@ik001 i doff my hat to you man. You sir are a good example of the future generation we all clamour for in this country. If we have a quarter of graduates and unemployed alike who will stop lazying around waiting for the government to make them billionaires but rather take their destinies by the scruff of the neck, believe you me unemployement will no longer be a menace.

And you know what, i believe strongly in the Nigerian market, though others might see it as unpredictable and highly volatile, but you would agree with me that the guys with good eyesight, you sir included, know that this is an enterpreneural goldmine, dripping, untapped goldmine. Just that most of them wont dare admit in public, but these guys leave the organised life in foreign countries to run back here and set up shop, in the so called volatile market. wetin dem see wey carry them waka come?

Going through your article it freaked me to see how much we had in common, and yes there goes the phenomenom that we always identify with some of the best minds around. great minds attract and you sir are one.

Anyways i believe u have taken the most important step towards good success- stepping out, ur on the right track, just keep going undettered, this is by far one of the most rivetting and inspiring piece i've read on Nairaland and whoever piques my interest and that of other great minds here will def capture the interest of governors and decision makers up there. The sky is just ur basketball court bro, make sure God is the numero uno in all ur plans and endeavors, we'll def work on something together by His grace, from one success to another

ogbiwa:
... i believe strongly in the Nigerian market, though others might see it as unpredictable and highly volatile, but you would agree with me that the guys with good eyesight, you sir included, know that this is an enterpreneural goldmine, dripping, untapped goldmine...

I’ve done quite a few things in Nigeria but all I’ve ended up doing was dearly paying for the experience of knowing what not to do.

The question every entrepreneur should ask is, "do I fully understand my market and the customer segment I will be appealing to?" Once you understand your customer segment or have someone on your team that does, evaluate your plan to get the resources that you will need to be successful. If you do not have the knowledge AND resources needed, odds of being successful will be against you.

The Nigerian market is truly a gold mine and competent competitors are almost non-existent in some sectors but without the requisite knowledge and resources, one will just end up being another government-contract-seeking briefcase company but what do I know…

1k001:


Thanks for reading and posting bro. If i tell you the website you'll be disappointed

More seriously, the interest from this thread is from a business side whereas my start-up is targeted at a non business niche. Two very different interests.

Media interest like this is only temporary and hardly ever enduring. The front page feature is only fleeting. I want to build a repeatable and scalable acquisition channel. Visits via this thread will be distracting as they weren't initially attracted by the value proposition i'm offering. People will only sign up out of curiosity. We don't have time for that distraction especially as we personally call everyone that signs up.

I'm guessing it's an app to help people manage their health and access healthcare sha.

1k001:
I've recently founded a tech start-up and it's been quite a whirlwind.

I've had to try figure out so many things on my own so thought it would be useful to relate some of the things i experience to help me reflect and perhaps help others who may be looking at something similar.

Feel free to jump in and comment or ask questions

I have a social networking site. Please can I have your contact info?

Op, not to sound pedagogical, but your style of writing is one of the reasons I'm following your posts. The grammar is proper and very few typos, plus the content is totally enriching! I've not commented before now because I'm still on page one, this stuff is truly informative. It's good to see someone treading the path you're on, I'm a FinTech Entrepreneur just starting a company. I'll chip in more and ask a few questions as the need arises and also share a few of my resources. Keep up the good work

Ok Oga Ibime, thanks for the reply. But I've replied you again. Please do me that favor I asked for.

#Peace Spitzo

Great and eye opening thread.
God bless the soul that told me about this thread. #Jackoftrades

Great and eye opening thread.
God bless the soul that told me about this thread. #JackofalltradesMoi

1k001:


I got most of the books from amazon. I've seen some on konga or jumia, keep looking around, you'll be surprised where you'll find them.

As regards local application, you are right. Some of the stuff doesn't translate to our situation especially as the whole tech thing in Nigeria is quite new. Say for example all the Americans talk about 'early adopters' and how you need to find them. Well in America it easy because people congregate under many different auspices. In Nigeria i've been sweating for months to find so called early adopters for my product, they are really hard to find! So one just has to take a shotgun approach and see what sticks. There are many more examples like this.

The bottom line from the books is to take general principles and adapt it to our own situation. In another few years hopefully the successful pioneers in the Nigerian tech scene will write books for the guys coming along. I know i certainly will if i do become successful.

Such an inspirational topic. I wish you all the success in the world. I'll be keeping a close eye on this topic for updates. Another book I would recommend reading is - The 7 Day Startup by Dan Norris

surveycash:


Wow. First time I will be reading a thread from start to finish on the spot!

Good, interesting read filled with hands-on experience by both OP and commentators.

Three things I learned from you are LEARN, LEARN and LEARN.

I have downloaded all recommended literatures and heading to the library now

Good one.

Pls how did u download dem cox i need dem too. Any site or sumtin. thax