₦airaland Forum

dominique:
If you cannot adhere to simple instructions

codeigniter:
I’m not here to cap you on being a 16 year old founder of multi billion naira corporation, but to show gratitude for me and my company little wins. I joined tech industry in 2018, solely driven by the value I can create via software, similar to most people I learnt HTML, CSS and js, moved to node, node was too hard for me then since I had no tutor just YouTube.

I move to Python, thanks to beau from free code camp, I got it, I started working on my own version of Nairaland with Django called africonn (Africa connections) thinking it will take over, as Nairaland wasn’t changing. I poured in my best but obviously there was way more to doing tech business than the tech.

So I wouldn’t say it failed, i just simply wasn’t mature enough to understand the nuances. But the experience got me gigs and jobs, that engaged me for the next 4years. Last year, I rekindled the fire, with my cofounder with the goal of solving Nigerians/business tech problems.

As the founder/CEO I had to where many hats and still work at my job (man must chop and finance our little hustle). We wanted to do IT consulting aka Dataslid Softwares. Get jobs, manage, outsource and supervise it, but we need crazy talent at affordable rates that we could grow with. Hence we were like let’s give people the opportunity I never had to learn in a structured way under a mentor, so we created Dataslid Academy, a physical office in Osogbo to learn tech. We chose Osogbo to test, because light 😂

Mind you we don’t know what we are doing yet, still very confused. So I couldn’t hire. I have to bootstrap, idéate, and execute myself, I started wearing hats of sales manager, customer support, learnt SEO digital marketing, ads. I iterated and tried a lot of things, radio, billboards, stickers, banner, meta ads, flyers name it. Only a few gave back results.

Opened August last year (2024), but started mainly 2025 January. We went to churches and mosque with proposal literally begging people to come and learn for free, we saw nobody. We went to universities like Unilesa, Uniosun etc nothing. I was shocked at some point I was begging God for people to just come in, sit and learn, like for FREE.

We got our big break when we partnered with skill Afrika by omoalhaja on Twitter, for people to come and learn in Osogbo for free, for the first time people showed up in droves. Which was good, I was over the world. We trained them in Frontend and cybersecurity, lot of them dropped off but we still have some of them around till date. We did a lot of free trainings, Until we figure out our target audiences which are siwes student looking for placements, nysc, parents interested in IT, and random audience I can’t quite place yet. And the most loved course which we are focusing on, which surprising is Data analytics.

After that we started getting paid students tho still subsidized for affordability. We partnered with NGOs like NYCN, we partnered with NYSC as SAED trainers etc. we increased head counts to like 10, you will think at this stage life is GOOD and sweet. Hell fucking NO.


The biggest problem now is scaling with real estate issues, like if we want to go to Ibadan or Lagos, we have to spend almost 10m per location and re-encounter the whole issues we encountered at Osogbo, though we are wiser now with experience at Osogbo but without investors, it won’t work and all we will succeed at is spreading our selves thin.

So I thought of two solutions dataslid AI, https://dataslid.xyz which will help people with what they should study, with road map, and structure learning in an interactive manner, inspired by sololearn but for all aspect of tech not just coding.

I developed the app, when it came to promoting and sales. It hit me that Omo, the resource I will need to promote, maintain, acquire customers has been greatly under estimated , so I had to shelve it. I don’t want to make the mistake of backing half way. Even though I used AI to aid development it still took a lot of time, again for now it’s a wasted effort but at the same time. I learnt AI biggest limitations, cos at point I had to take the development off lovable AI. At the point, I want to make sure there is revenue/traction before chasing investments.

Second solution was a mentor/virtual learning platform.
We are still doing what we do at dataslid academy but now we will use the internet to scale it. That sounds plausible to our line of business, so I got to work.
Named it Dataslid Africa https://dataslid.africa, because it can potentially serve all of Africa. And my team got to work, and developed it.

Now comes to the hard part, marketing and sales. I will say this is where we currently are in the story. I have lots of ideas, some we have started, some are still in backlogs. The general idea is to build a community and give people as much free value as possible, career advices, road maps, jobs etc. and before I forget I also added affiliate marketing with referral link to promote word of mouth. Right now we are on the verge of starting our first virtual cohort, wish us luck!!!

Don’t hesitate to drop your suggestions, it might be able to help us in ways, you never intended, or understood

I am not sharing to promote or market, or simply brag. I just want to put this online so one day, I get back to this to smile or cry, or to simply inspire others.

Thomanad:
Hope you know much about the Air force bro.
This shortlist is just for the screening which is stage 1. After this stage another list of those who passed will be released for stage 2 screening. Stage 2 is the medical screening at Kaduna. After which the final list would be released, these are the ones that would proceed on training in Kaduna.
I would advice you go ahead with your university admission.
Reasons:
1. You are not even sure of making it to the training stage, unless you have a godfather of course.
2. You would be in the 'other rank' cadre. Do you know the humiliation we go through?
3. When you see officers ( those in the commissioned officer cadre) after you might have joined the service, you will regret joining with an ssce cert.
4. Don't think going to school in the military is very easy o. It is when you join that you will understand. Going to school is very very very difficult.

Go ahead with your university admission, get your degree, then come back and join with your degree. You will be a commissioned officer, and you will command those that joined even before you were born (other rank though).

Just my point of view....... if anyone disagrees, just read and pass.

BabbanBura:
This is the best advise I have seen here. I have brothers (same parents), uncles and aunties and plenty friends who have taken both options and believe me those that enter with ssce are greatly regretting, many have finished their degrees now, with CAN and Masters/PGDs but couldn't get converted to officer cadars. They are now at staff sergeants, airmen/airwomen, after 15 - 17yrs of service both in the Army and Airforce. On the flip side, their counterparts that entered with degrees as officers are now majors. The youngest with about 10yrs of service are now lieutentnts earning over 200k per month.

NEVER ENTER MILITARY WITH SSCE, DO YOUR DEGREE, EVEN IF NA IRK OR CRK, THEN JOIN SHORT SERVICE. send me PM if you want us to talk more. I can even connect you to both categories so you can hear from them directly.

Alot of Nairalanders are ignorant, they will advise u on what they know nothing about.

Shalom

babywhite:
I have finally gotten it in late 2021

KillIgbohoN0W:
Name ONE Afonja artiste that can ride in a PJ. None!!!

Nwafor always lead the way

missexcel01:
Was a badorian too ...

Oburu202:
Make a video

Oburu202:
Make a video

Oburu202:
Make a video

Oburu202:
Make a video

Oburu202:
Make a video

Oburu202:
Make a video

post=105554646:
Seems things like this happen in our darling country once in a while also.......Abi