₦airaland Forum

adenuga33:
I make more dan dat on a good day so wot r u talkin?

blogexpert:
40k

charlyge:
Nigerian bloggers are just annoying. Nothing there to add to your life. The headlines always different from the blog content. OMG!! see what happened to tonto Dike.
You visit only to see a rubbish post

blogexpert:
Yes we do oh....................

obstead200:
two bottles of origin for u sir with a plate of fish pepper soup. Come to my house after service and enjoy them.

If u are a rich man, u don't have to announce it. Money speaks.

But then, who knows...........maybe he is only a billionaire in Zimbabwean dollars of 3yrs ago. When u convert that money to naira, u won't even see 500thousand

frankyskyboi:
@ op, I'm intrsted in affiliate marketing and freelancing @ peopleperhour...pls can u gv me full details about this coz I want to venture asap..email: obiefule111@yahoo.com

philcupid:
how do I,can you drop a contact or something, or you have other suggestions

philcupid:
can I possibly contact you privately

philcupid:
how do you do so bro

1k001:
Funding

This is the factor many cite as the greatest hindrance. Personally, i've been fortunate to have had a reasonably good paying job. Having a wife and a little girl on one income however meant that in order to fund my start-up the whole family had to make sacrifices. Again i'm thankful for my wonderful wife who saw my passion and bought into my dream. In fact she's now working for us part time ( story for another time).
So we went without luxuries, lived on the necessities, denied ourselves all the good things we know we can afford. All for our end goal of building a great company that creates value for its users and staff.

A start-up is indeed expensive, particularly where we are based. Things cost twice as much and take twice as long. Our office space costs a ridiculous amount. It was necessary however as people wouldn't do any business with us without an office. Forget all that garage story from America. Doesn't work in Nigeria, people too suspicious!

We have a budget, haven't really been able to stick to it due to the unpredictability of the start-up phase, but there's still hope. We use a free cloud accounting service - 'waveapps'. I highly recommend it. I was able to electronically integrate my bank and paypal accounts. I'm in the process of contracting a cloud accountant to look after the books. It's important a business starts as it means to continue, plan and record all your expenditure. Keep good books and budget for and use professional services. We haven't been great at keeping track of all the finances for various reasons but it is something we will be 100% good at once some more things solidify for us.

The advantage of being an African entrepreneur at this time is there are several grant funding options. We've applied for a number of them and are hoping for some success, they include:

Etisalat prize for innovation
Airtel catapult a startup
Tonny Elumelu entrepreneurship programme
YouWin 4
Gist-I
Anisha prize
USAID development innovation ventures
African prize for innovation
Hello tomorrow challenge
Lumia startup promo

Always be on the lookout for these competitions. Google alerts and startup blogs should be your friend as an entrepreneur.

They are also several incubators and accelerators that abound, they are a reasonably cost effective way of covering initial costs. Mark essien however seems to think they're flawed : https://medium.com/mark-essien/startup-incubators-in-africa-and-why-they-don-t-work-e44e8c80d2b0

I don't really have an opinion either way at the moment.

My overall strategy is to bootstrap for as long as possible on my funds or hopefully some grant funding. This is key for us so when it's time to raise some investment cash, we can do so on our terms. You read of founders who slave away for years and only end up with 3% equity at IPO. Methinks that is rather unfair, but hey, that's the world we live in. Cash is king, whoever has plenty of it wins.

On a final note, not having money is a good thing. Makes you very creative which is what you need as a start-up. When this creativity is in your DNA and the cash comes you can explode, before that, it will likely sink you.