Entrepreneurship in Nigeria.
A memo of my entrepreneurship journey as an African living in Nigeria.
Entrepreneurship is said to be an art rather than a science, some claimed otherwise, If I have to make a choice, I did pick both view and make a personal decision from them, which will always end with me picking both anyway.
Statistical data prove that for every ten companies started today, only one or two will make it to their next ten years birthday, and if your company is built in Nigeria for Nigerian, good luck having just one surviving company.
the rest will somehow bow to pressure bombarded on them from different direction by reason of different factors, and this happened all over the world.
I am 23, born and breed in Nigeria and here is the story of my Entrepreneurship journey for the last five years.
Nov, 19th 2017.
I wasn’t so surprised that I will be retaking another entrance exam after failing my English in the first one, what baffled me is the cheer number of people I have gotten to meet in just two days of starting the exam, as a guy laying between both intro and extrovert, I think it’s a commendable start.
It was on that very exam I was Introduced to the concept of Entrepreneurship, but more of a one man business model or something like self employment.
What book have you been reading lately, asked the macho guy whom have been walking along with me since, I choose that name for him because of his heavily builder body, he seem to be the terror of every students even though he never mean any harm to them.
The purple hibiscus by Chimamanda Adiche, I touted out with no air of intentionality.
Dude, you want to be a computer scientist, you should be reading more about Bill Gate, Jeff Benzo and Mark Zuckerberg not those novel that won’t help much… curious I asked, who are they, because that’s my first time hearing those name, except that I know Bill Gate to be the richest man in the world, something my current affairs knowledge confirmed.
With a faint chuckle, he let me in into his world, how he read fervently, his daily motivation routine, how he one day hope to become a self employed boss through Entrepreneurship, capitalizing on technologies and people’s times, he even offer me a book titled the “48 laws of power”, which is the first book I did read outside the regular novel I have gotten used to.
Truly, after finishing the book, I sort for more, and his Entrepreneurship initiation works very much on me, that I later compiled a list of 100 more books raging from motivation to business to autobiography and technology, to be read for that whole year.
So what is this story all about?
Lo and behold, as a once an aspiring nuclear engineer or a then computer engineer( both track runs out of grease), I have long shifted my mindset to the sweet tales talk of the young Zuckerberg who is rich founding his Facebook company at 19 and the all time rich Bill Gate who is nothing but everyone’s admiration.
I sort to replicated their success, I sort for luxurious housing, cars, a big companies, I sort for the CEO titles and that became my basic drive.
Today, after four years, of chasing this path, I came to admit reality with this in conclusion…
Entrepreneurship is great but hard, it comes with some set of rules and laws to adhere to, and that law is squared fold if by chance you happen to be coming from a third world country like mine.
While in my past reverie, I thought and the social media preaches that just by having a wonderful idea, pitching it to investors(if you find one by luck), getting them to invest thousand bucks in your ideas, you will be able to build another unicorn in five years, at least this is what the average person think
I soon realized that it doesn’t happened this way, not if you are an African dudes where trust is a major lacking factors.
So here is the reality of Entrepreneurship in Africa…
Funding as the foundation: Getting funded for your idea is hard, nobody knows you or care to, and people don’t trust who they don’t know.
Network is the key: Making a good networking connection requires a deep level of experience and expertise which on it’s own is the second foundation of your Entrepreneurship endeavor.
Intentionality: Startup that will one day become unicorn are not built by accident, they are a result of thorough precision, intentionality and persisting hard-works, they are built on solid foundation not a wobbling one.
Track record: Before Mark build Facebook, he has once sold a software of his own, the same is Bill Gate and Elon Musk, people didn’t invest in them by accident, they have gotten a good track record to prove their worth.
Invest in yourself first: Many of us are broke, I personally can’t bet a $50 on my account, so building a company and hoping someone is going to fund you when you have no financial investment of yourself is a mistake, investors money are meant to scale your business not to test your idea.
Technical and procedural competence: of course, I spent most of my fours years entwined with product management, I am not a programmer and even though I know the basic HTML, CSS and some Python doesn’t qualify me to build a SaaS, now that I am a copywriter, I find it more interesting building up my track record than anything else.
If I have to build a company that is heavily based on software, I have to capitalize on others peoples knowledge which on regular case might cost me money.
so between having the technical competence to build one yourself or having the financial capability to hired people who are skilled enough to build your idea, you did have to choose one, and for people who don’t have both, don’t dream of entrepreneurship or heavy investor’s dollar.
Failure the worst nightmare: the failure rate in company in comparison with the success rate is 9: 1
Going into entrepreneurship and hoping to make the next big millionaire wave is an illusion, better start as a businessman if this is your dream, at least there is a bit guarantee.
Entrepreneurs is not a way to be rich: It is finding small problem and solving it in a big ways, it’s a long journey requiring patience, perseverance, it’s an urge to see a need for changes and push forward to enact that changes, the end result are not always a good tales but comes with a good rewards of investment if you end up building a successful product.
So am I saying Entrepreneurship is not for you?
Nope! Nope nope!
It’s perfectly for you, in fact without Entrepreneurs, we did never have be enjoying all this innovation in different sectors as witnessed today,
we won’t have Facebook or Amazon or even this website I publish this post now,
but like all things in life, it requires a baby steps first, a lots of experience under your sleeves and some tenacity for success while at the same time being rootless and risk averse…
wait did I just defined that? We call it the “Founder’s trait” and every Entrepreneurs needed them to survive.
How do you do it right as an African?
To survive in Africa as an Entrepreneur, you better start by building up your networks first, getting experience even if it requires an internship entry jobs
building up your technical and interpersonal skills unless you aren’t building a tech enabled company
and finally, get money, get lots of money saved, since you will be out of job for the next few months at least until you can decide if you new found road is worth pursuing or not, still you may choose to work part-time while keeping your day job.
Finally hire great team: Great team makes your work less painful, but come at a price.
People won’t work with you unless you can prove that you are worthy to be worked with, this involve a kind of strategic leadership and coordination plus some fees to pay, as your team won’t be feeding on equity.
What else have I not cover here, contact me on Facebook let’s talk about it .
It’s Yakubu Yinusa.