Succeed In Startups: Why African Startups Fail - The Brutal Truth About Building Tech in Nigeria with Glory Olami Ngoke

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1:23I think it's really knowledge that the kind of product you've been kind of industry are planning, detainees the channels of marketing. Now it's not just about using the right channels, it's also about I need to use it language. Yeah, understand. Yes. How do I get funded? Investors basically will fund based on traction, based on trust. Now let's talk about traction. You wanted to be a medical doctor? Yes. How did you end up in tech? I do feel like I enjoyed school, university. I didn't. While I was doing my human anatomy course, I didn't know that this was in social media. But when I was seven, that's my NYC. So in Nigeria we had something called NYC. I was posted through cross-reverse states. Yeah, near the website. I had school landhows, a few websites. Talk to yourself. Yes, soft thoughts. I see. When to the freelance and then landhows to quote, that's how I translate into tech. Are you happy with the decision you made? Absolutely. I was happy. Leaving a country that has a lot of problems, but then also there's a lot of copy mechanisms. Correct. That's true.

2:24How many fintech companies do we have in Nigeria? Let's plant. My point is that we shouldn't all be building fintech companies. So some of them should give up on and then build something else. Let's have a conversation for the startups in Africa. Those that are looking for opportunities, looking to develop themselves, how to build their products properly. This is going to be a master class for people aside. So my guest today is Glory, or Lamy and Gokie. And we are in Lagos. Still, having amazing conversations with people who are willing to educate our audience. Hi, my brother. I'm well. Thank you. You stay in Lagos? Yes. But do you spend time elsewhere? I would say that because of work, my engagement and other things, I spend time primarily in Lagos, but I lost the travel as well. So talk to me. There are a lot of startups in Africa. In Nigeria, so much. And I'm sure with the advent of AI, a lot of young people are building

3:29really fast. Yes. But then the issue we have is that there's a lot of startups as well that fail. Very few succeed. Why? This is a good question, right? Because when you consider African Nigerian markets, right? They are setting key things that need to be in place, which increase the chances of likely startup success. Now, before I talk about some distance, we should know that the default outcome, the most likely outcome of every startup is failure. Yes. Recently, I give an opening speech at my conference, Tech Revolution Africa. We had it here, Lagos. We had pretty big and all that. And I talked about why failure is a catalyst, right? Or how failure can be a catalyst to success, eventual success. Now, I will talk about how startups can succeed. But I wanted to be clear that even the most

4:35successful startups today, globally, fail that some point. We have kids to this everywhere. Look at the big guys, the Google's, the Microsoft's, the Apple, the failed at some point. And they were able to learn from failure to pivot into things they are doing now that are successful. Right? So when you do your, when you do your series such and check, a good number of these guys did not start out in the beginning doing what they're doing now. So failure taught them lessons and they pivoted. Now, first and established, what can startups do currently? What are factors that impact or determine failure's success? One, the quality of the kind of product you're building. As a founder, have you done enough research? What industry are you building in? Have you researched that industry sufficiently? Have you researched your potential markets sufficiently? Have you researched your community to success sufficiently? If you get the product wrong, if you are building something that doesn't solve a clear problem, you will feel. If you are building something for which there is

5:39not sufficient market for, when I see software market, I'm referring to having enough potential customers, what keeps the startup light on is money is revenue. To make money, I have to have enough customers out there, not just enough customers. I need to have enough customers willing to pay me money, what I'm offering. So having the right product that solves the right kind of problem with enough market to customers is one of the things that gains is we will increase the chances of success. There are many other things out there that are building the right kind of team, that's building the right kind of operational structure in the startup. Basically, what I would focus on would be on the product side, when you start off without doing your due diligence, I mean, even startups I've seen have had the right product, but did not do enough investigation on their competitor. So for example, if I'm building a launching a Finset product D in Nigeria,

6:40I knew that in that industry, the top five guys, big guns, these guys have owned the markets in terms of market share. Now, if I'm trying to launch something to that C market without understanding what they are offering and using that to figure out what they are not offering at the market want, which will be my unique competitive advantage. It means that we are offering something that already exists and it means likely failure, right? So many things, but I touched on the product, building the right kind of product, I've touched on research, I've touched on the market, right? So these are things, things like this is used in a way a lot of things. I mean, there are people, especially with the advent of AI, there's somebody in his room right now. Trying to do something. He's built something that for him is going to change the world. And you know how a lot of these tech guys are, they just endorse, you know, constantly, always, they don't focus on just making sure that they get a product right. How does he know

7:41that he comes on the market and there's competition everywhere, you know, it's not going to work. Because some people are building out of passion. Correct, that's true, that's true. The same AI, which like you mentioned, rightly mentioned, is a tool that has made building technically of a product a lot faster and easier. It's also a very critical tool that it's in research. So I think it's a, I think it's really knowledge gap, right? And you're correct. Once a person has a technical skill, and now with AI, there's the field that I compute, that Facebook app, for example, that took months to build ESBAC, I compute it in a week, and that's true. But that does guarantee success. Now, if I were launching a new product in the market, right? I would carry out sufficient research. And I thought that in a previous question. And so I just go into the little more details now. Warren, do people actually have the problem

8:46I am trying to build for? You talk about something, it'll be built out of passion. It's, I've seen presence, if you're myself, I've built things that I wanted to use a loan. That's fine. But if I was building for the public, I can't build for the public without talking to the public. And the start of war is called making assumptions. Research helps you validate those assumptions. So when I'm building something for a problem, I believe it exists. It's an assumption, until I can talk to people to validate it is correct. What am I assuming? I mean, I'm assuming you have a problem. And so without talking to you to validate that, then the chances of failure in there, right? So research is required. Talk to people. And the difference to do that, we had a recent program where a few startups that originated from my tech time and platform, tech networks, as well as tech, revolution, Africa, which I co-founded. We send them out, we're incubating a couple of startups to get some funding, just more funding, about $6,000.

9:51In the face of the program, we send them out on the streets. Go talk to users, one of them, an tech platform, building something for kids. And they want kids to learn our local African languages. We said, okay, this is fine. For the category of kids you are building for, the people who talk to other parents. So go out there and find parents, go to schools on ground, and go online, medium to find parents, talk to them. So just to put different things together, you cannot build for a market you have not engaged. You cannot build for a market for whom you've not validated your assumptions. So that's something critical for Saddle founders. I think the other thing as well would most likely be that today everybody can build fast and and all of that. But then what becomes even more critical is marketing. True. Another critical element. And once you have researched the product,

10:57built the product, then you need to learn how to do marketing, which I also find that a lot of, your kids who are building startups are not very good at. True. So I mean, marketing is critical. Once you've built, once you've launched, so what I tell a lot of Saddle founders that I mentor is that you need to start thinking of marketing even before the product is complete. Okay. Yes. So you have something called good to market strategy. Because market strategy is a strategy or plan you create to successfully launch your product to the market for the first time. You also have things that are called, you have something called your post launch strategy. Post launch strategy is not that I've launched the market. How can I keep the boss ongoing? Right. And there are different methods around this. For example, one thing I encourage a lot for founders when it comes to good to market strategies is creating a week list. Like I kid you not even in this deal of AI, there's literally been startups or founders that have caught this sense. And what do you do? Three months, four months, five months, six months

12:02to the launch of the product. They start talking about it. Guys, we're building X. Guess what X is going to solve it, you know, YZ, ABC is going to be valuable. You like this and all that. If you'd like to be part of the facet of persons to use this, right? Maybe on the free plan, for example, sign up. Have literally seen startups build week lists of hundreds of thousands like that. Does it actually translate? So, so typically, right? You build a week list of 100,000. You probably, you can safely expect maybe 10%. I see. Yeah, to convert from that. So, marketing in some sense ultimately is a game of numbers. If I want to have 100,000 dedicated customers, I need to reach two million people. Okay. Okay. Right. If I want to have found 100,000 dedicated persons in my ecosystem, I need to reach five million, for example. So, it's really game of numbers. Right. But then piggyback into what, you know, you asked around marketing is a

13:05critical foundation. Right. And at every stage of the startup journey, marketing is critical. Right. So many are touching as well as the fact that the kind of product you're building, the kind of industry you're playing in determines the channels of marketing. Okay. You get an employee engage. For example, if I were building a product of which the Gen Z generation, we know what Gen Z generation, right? Was we in product for which the Gen Z generation will immense be primary customers for was my target market audience for. Then I will be looking at leveraging specific social media channels, Instagram being one of them. Twitter being one of them. Why? Because the idea is I need to go to the police where my target audience, I don't miss out. I need to go to them. Now, it's not just about using the right channels. It's also about the narrative you're creating. I need to use it in language. They understand. Yes. So it's not that that's why everything about products, building startups, it's

14:08rest on data. And that data is insights from the people I'm building for. So it's not about my language. It's about the language my audience understands. Right. So there are many facets to that. And I think that I encourage every startup from now who's listening beyond technical skills. Right. Business skills are critical. Len, you know, marketing, then, then project management. That would help school you in terms of execution. Yep. In the land of Prisons of structure, in the land, legal bits, in the land compliance. So all this critical components are critical things are found as needed. Len, if you're deficient in one, for example, you can do all of these exciting things and only compliance side your deficient. I mean, so for startup founders, there's a curriculum. Sexy areas. Right. Eventually, as you grow and skill in the startup sense, you start to build your team.

15:08Okay. You start to get experts in this breakout areas who can drive around. But I think that every founder needs to know good enough around this different areas to increase trends of success. So now now I've built the products, you know, I have some data around potential customers. How do I get funded? Good question, right. So I will talk about Dan versus now. And this is very interesting, interesting question because I've had recent concerns around this and around like the transitions that the African tech ecosystem has faced many, so investment, VC funding, engine investors, you know, equity funding, debt funding and all that. Dan, we had scenarios where because of increased attention on the African space, the tech ecosystem and the opportunities that have bounded, we had scenarios where a lot of African startups could get funded at the idea stage. That means I don't have a product.

16:09I just have an incredible idea. I've done my research and I'm coming to invest on saying, you know what I have this idea. This is the potential, potential based on the data from my research. Comedy journey me giving me million dollars or something. So we had a lot of investments coming in like that to the ecosystem. But I think that there's been changes and shifts, shifts in global trends, which has impacted Africa. And right now, and I knew this because I talked and interacted with investors, put African investors on phone investors, who have invested in the local space. Right now for the average investor to take you seriously. You have to have built a product. Not just that. You have to have launched to the market. Okay. And you have to be able to show some good traction. Now, let's talk about traction. Traction means that I have launched my product to the market and there is a there's

17:12clarity month. There's clear adoption. Customers love what they see. A customer's are coming on board. It doesn't necessarily it doesn't mean you have to have profit already or you have to be probably have to profit about the startup or you have to have like millions of dollars in revenue. You know, it just means it means traction. You know, because we want to work potential. There's potential at the idea stage. There's potential from the market. So traction means I've launched and there's great demand. The data shows there's great demand. There's excitement. There's adoption. Meaning I'm solving a problem. And based on that, I can't see you know what this is what the potential looks like. Give me money so I can double down. What does double down? I mean, give you funds a hundred thousand, five hundred thousand dollars a million dollars to scale my marketing. You know what I mean? So because let's say I used at least I started my startup with my personal fund or I from your friends. And so with five thousand dollars, this is real that I have. If you give me five hundred key, it would change the game. So that's the idea. So the current trend right now

18:14is that investors want to see traction. If I were in a B2B business, for example, I was speaking with a top investor. I don't want to mention his name. And he mentioned that, you know, seeing what are some of the things you've checked. He's got checks for top setups that we own. I was asking him what are some of the things you checked before you invest. He said, for example, B2B startup. That's business to business. He looks at one of these. He can look at what he looks at is the quality of cost money you have. That's quality of cost of money you have. Right? So it's possible. What I mean is there's some big companies, there's some popular brands or big companies that you call. If you mention them as your customers, your value in my mind just goes up. Why? Because if this company's web-table brands can be associated with you, can be using your product, then it means you're solid. So investors basically will fund based on traction, based on trust. Right? And so that's where things are currently. So if as a founder, I just need to this, you'll be a product you've launched in the markets and do all you can to get traction.

19:16Traction cannot be fixed. Is it that it works or it doesn't work? Right? But when you when you're able to showcase sufficient demand, then your ground is able to get funded. It's significantly improved. Let me stop you here for a minute. So if it's your first time watching connected minds or you have been here before but still have not subscribed, do as a favor because majority of the people that watch our videos have not subscribed. This doesn't help us grow beyond what we expect. So help us by hitting the subscribe button. Thank you. Now let's get back to the conversation. You wanted to be a medical doctor. Yes. And what happened? How did you end up in tech? I wanted to be a doctor because in my time when I was growing up, the thing was it'll be a doctor on engineer. I remember then a few persons, a few persons, when it's been teachers, it was you know, parents wanted, you know, what I wanted to doctor,

20:20what I wanted to engineer, stuff like that. Or lawyer. That's 2010. And so in my family, my mom wanted me to be a doctor. And that's what I applied for. My dad on the other hand, had said, ah, this is my son. It looks like he likes computers. I see something around comes to engineering for him. Of course, I went and applied for medicine. I didn't get medicine. I got something called human anatomy. Right. I think I've had a quite interesting journey because personally for me, I don't feel like I enjoyed school at university. Yes, I didn't. And where conferences go, I speak around a lot. Global conferences where I have transformed my story. When I touched this part, I tried to ensure I don't talk down on school formal education. I knew it. But I got human anatomy. Did that for a couple of years. Came out. Thankfully, when I was seven, that's my NYC. So in Nigeria, we have something called NYC. National Youth Service Cops. And it's a mandatory one year. You know, like every Ghana has a similar system. Oh, okay. Cool. Cool. So I was posted to cross reverse state. And that's where I

21:22served for one year. Well, I got to be connected with a studio, a Christian broadcast and studio and all that. And that was where I got that's where my tech journey started. There were some needs. They had to need other websites that that was my first for me. I had to go learn how to build websites. I see. Yeah. And it taught yourself. Yes. Yes. Softot. I started with WordPress. Web design, basically, and all that. I saw you smile when I measured what. As a usage for quite a bit. I did a lot of development with that as well. Okay. Also, so I still WordPress. Did that for a while. Went to the freelancing and then learned how to code. You know, your HTML, CSS JavaScript, React.js. That's front end development. Where I transferred into tech during my NYC. So I'm really grateful for how everything was really aligned and all that. And from freelancing, I started a tech agency called CLINIFI. So it was stages of development for me. I learned the skill. I started using to solve local programs and then I started freelancing, offering it to the public for to end. And then later, when

22:28more demand goes, I start a company to do that at scale. So I started, I launched CLINIFI, and go to small things together. And we're going to build like, you know, websites, web applications, mobile apps. And we worked with clients like in almost every continent. Well, clients in the US and the UK and kind of, and Australia and Asia and all that building out stuff for them. So that's how I'm transferring to tech. From that, in one of my projects, I discovered something called product management. Okay. Yeah. So the truth was, while I was developing, you know, a hands-on writing code, using WordPress and stuff, I looked at it and I said, man, like, I don't see myself doing this for the next 10, 15, 20 years. So like I said, in one of the projects, I discovered something called product management, which, you know, is a skill or empowers a person basically to build products. But you're not the one writing code. You're not you're not the engineer. You're just coordinating teams to build. Yeah. Yeah. Co-ordinates in design. Yeah. Co-ordinates in engineering. Yeah. Co-ordinates in your

23:33your quality assurance test. Yeah. You're also collaborating other teams. Right. So that's how my journey, so I did a transition into that. It's a really large ship role and that's what I've been doing since. But transition for me was, you know, my NYC here. That's how it goes into tech and it's been incredibly right. Are you happy with the decision you made? Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes. You think you would have not liked being a doctor as much? While I was doing my human anatomy course, I didn't know that this was in this was it for me. I mean, it was clear, right? I just, but I have to try and get out finished. I mean, look, it's been many years. Today, there's there's somebody who is our university and they also think it's themselves. They know exactly happy with what he has studied. Sure. Especially because you know, you go to university and sometimes you don't you don't get a course you want. And the university picks a course for you because they want to fill up their space. True. So it means that a lot there could be a lot of young people who are not happy with what he has studied. That's going to this world. Would you advise that young

24:35boy to learn? So before I talk about the skills, I would give I get this I've got this question a few times. I would encourage anyone who's listening right now. You feel like you're stuck in school. You're doing something you don't like, you know, passion is about you don't feel has potential in the future. I would encourage encourage us to do something. Do two things actually. One is you have to learn the skill. The world has changed. And I'll touch on the skills second right things they can learn. But the world today is such that the students in school leveraging the internet. Sorry. Has the world changed or people are just not coming to realize it? I mean, because I think it's always been like this. It's always been like this. You finish university, you apply for a job and you ask you for experience. True. Right. And I'm sorry, I have to chip this in because anytime we say that all right, it's changed. It's changed so much that we need to build skills. I actually think you did it. Nobody told you to know. I started learning WordPress when I was about 17 years old. Interesting. Right. Jumla, Drupal. Yeah. But nobody

25:36told me that the world was going to be like this. True. I always knew that the people who knew how to do who were picked over the people who just had a certificate. Absolutely. Yes, I mean, the change I'm referring to is your correct. You lent your time. I lent it my time. But it's never been easier globally right now to lend to lend. Right. That's changed. Gotcha. Yeah. So it's never been easier. So what that means really is that if you're in school and you're stuck, you will have to lend. You don't have a choice. Like you don't have any excuse. Now for the skills they can lend, I'll touch on that. But the other thing I wanted to add is, and I feel to mention is a mistake I made or almost made. Why would you look and get trendy skills to lend or relevant skills to lend and tech? Please don't sacrifice your current degree. Like what I mean is putting efforts to finish it to finish it. I finished it well. I need to emphasize that because again, this thing is resonating with me because I lived the life, right. Now that's it. What are skills that passes that lend and tech as a lot? And I like seeing this when people get tech, you to do

26:40it. If I see that my first course, engineering, coding and all that, but there's a lot you can do outside of coding engineering. There's design, for example, right. On that design, you have graphic design where you design like graphics. You have product design, or probably also called UI UX design. That's really designing the experiences for mobile applications, websites, web applications, digital products basically. You have brand design, right. When you come to management, you have product management, which is what I do. My core tech skill. And for me, it's a leadership position where I own a product and I build it. And I'm responsible for the figure of success with that product. But that's product management. There's also project management. Right. Where you get to manage the successful execution of projects. So across, so I see like you have technology, which is broad. Yep. I have sectors in there where they are tech skills you can learn, which are non-technical. So if you want to look at support, there's IT

27:41supports. Yeah. So I mean, there are different things you can do. And then you also come to the engineering side of things in tech. There's marketing. There's sales. There's no tech startups that you have a marketing team. In fact, without marketing, I mean, they owe me growth. So there's marketing, there's sales in tech. And depending on even specific industries, there are different things you can. So what I would encourage is the biggest issue usually is figuring out what to learn. What to island. How do I know? So what I usually say is look inwards. What are things that I'm naturally good at. For example, I am good. One of that helps me in my web design track. And what I'm good with color combinations. Yeah, aesthetics, colors, you know, botting colors, text colors and all that. I'm good at color combinations. So looking at what that, what that areas, I feel like I'm good at. That will be some sort of guide or map to what

28:41you should learn. Right. So leverage the online platform, leverage disk space, leverage internet to lend skills. The platforms out there is you, they're me, there's Coursera and they have thousands of like free courses. Oh, YouTube. Yeah, I mean, YouTube. Yeah. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, you see, and you know something I found about YouTube. The channels I've had the most value from are not popular channels. Two, our courses, three, our courses for our courses is nothing you can't find in your job. It's a good, it's a silent goods. Well, like I've seen someone who had, I think about the thousand subscribers. Okay. And he had a marketing course. And it was one of the best. Absolutely. Not ever watched. And then you, you find those big channels and it's like, they're doing as a funnel. Yeah, yeah, fun. You give like a two, three, five minutes, then tell you go piece on things somewhere. Yeah. You know, so yes, if you're looking to build skill today, you know, the avenue is there. That you can do it. But why do people struggle to

29:45land for themselves then? Because if because if you told them to go to school and go through the the, the, the, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they will do it. But go, go home, sit in front of the PC and learn a skill. Can be a problem for people. Why? I talk, talk about the iron toothed ends, right? Warren will be down to personality. Personality. Yes. I think that people, so don't give a scenario. Like you said, I once land is killed by struggle. The desire is there, but I still struggle. It's a valid issue. Why is it happening? I think it happens because a lot of persons have not yet understood how best they land. I think that people who struggle to land, they're online digital skills, have not yet understood the best ways they are able to land. Let me break that down. There are people that land better, primarily to audio. Yes. They land better and faster,

30:49catch things better by listening to someone saying something. There are other persons that land by watching videos, but that's not where stops. There are people that fare better with short video clips and not long clips. So for example, we're talking about YouTube videos that are two hours three hours. If you give that to some persons, they won't, they are bringing over loot and over boots the first five minutes. But they can sit in an exam for three hours. When I was studying pharmacy, some of my exams were three hours. If you ask persons like that or ask me why I would sit in an exam for three hours, of course, I didn't have any of that choice in my life. So people should approach skill building as if they have no other choice because you know what the truth is? You don't have any choice. Yeah, but if you are trying to land in a way you are not suited with, you will struggle. That's why I said I think it's valid. For example, if I had to land web developments or let's

31:49take product design. Now, if I have come to understand that I'll fare better with shorter clips, because I have two options. I have the option of a three hour product design course. Or that same course, or similar course, broken down into smaller modules, three to five minutes each. So you find out that as long as the person has the desire and as long as they want to understood how they land, giving them what works for them increases the chances of successfully learning. But if you try to force them, it's like people raising kids. And you try to force your kid down a specific line of path. That is not just how what you used to do struggle. Yeah, I mean, I grew 200%. But I guess you can also say that that is the reason why some people struggle in school because it's a forced system and everybody's following exactly what I agree with it's an accurate. But I've got something for you. For you, that you can't sit in a tour video and focus on what. So Google has got a platform called notebook.

32:56Okay. Yeah, no, no. Okay. You know, you can just take a link of that video and then drop it in there is going to break it down into graphs into, you know, the cards, flow chart, you're going to enjoy it. And that's how sometimes I learn. I just take a long video, drop it in there, breaks it down into different things and then I can learn. So if you're struggling, you can use that. Yeah, so some of those to add to that as well is I've seen persons who will tell you that even for digital skills, it protects the land physically with people as opposed to being alone. And I think that's where like what you're talking about, that's where the discipline problem comes. Now, I think that everyone has their ability to lend themselves. But not everyone is discipling enough to do so. And like I said, some people like that and they tell you, if I see all my laptop trying to lend myself a loan, I have internet, I have food. In, give me five minutes, I mean, Netflix. So yes, we actually have an aspect that's due to

33:59discipline problem. Yeah. And that's why they would want to be part of the system, whether it's increased accountability. So if I'm learning with people, well, learning, you know, so we have bootcamps, physical bootcamps, people, you know, travel down hundreds or maybe 56 people travel down. And a house somewhere where it gets an inflexix, there are some platforms that run stuff like that. It's and shows accountability and shows that you're learning with people that schools monitoring. That's also people that I think is a discipline problem. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, look, I was speaking with the wine gentleman here. And he says that he genuinely believed that there are more jobs in Nigeria than they're talented. And a talent to actually go for the job. And that could also mean the reason why a lot of people will be unemployed because the truth is that if you can't build skills as out of what you have been told to do, then that job that is available, you will not be able to get it. Do you agree? Yes, I do. Let me add some nuance, my unique context. Now, if you look at the

35:00talent pyramid at the bottom, the early stage, early talent, the beginner talent. So the beginner skilled person, beginner level, in terms of skill, intermediate, expert, at the bottom, there are millions of persons. Okay. Yes. Now, at this level, there are more talents than jobs available. Like I said, I'm giving my own unique context to this. These are my studies. So what are beginner rules, beginner rules, web designer, web developer, a lot of tech talents are still at the beginner level. And that's where a lot of them are stuck at. At that level, they are more talented than jobs. So it's high competitive. What are the other way? I know, checking them, a company puts out like an ad for web design rule or product design, or software engineer rule. In the first one hour or 30 minutes, you already have 5,000 applicants. How many do they need one? How many do you need two? Every, I can't you know, check like every similar

36:01post on like, it's very platforms, very platforms like that where you can see applications. For example, you have a job come out and then in the first 30 minutes, it's like 1,000 already, and I need just one. Now, when you go up from there, intermediate skill level, a lot of persons stuck yet don't transition in terms of skill, knowledge of the skill and experience, and problem solving ability to the intermediate skill level, for which, I would say that there's a balance between the jobs available and talent. So this place is less competitive because you requires more knowledge of the skill, more, more experience, a track record. I have been solving problems at this beginner level, good enough to be in here, right? And so at this place, not a lot of this, let's say in here, you have one million when you get in here, you probably have like, like, 80k. So yeah, they are more opportunities and that's why I always tell talent, when it's not about starting, you need to start, the same energy you need to start, you need to push, push,

37:02with drive, discipline, consistency, become experienced, become knowledge people, solve problems and go your skill. Now, when you get to the highest, the higher category, that's the experts, right? Experts in their fields are persons who have solved complex problems. In fact, you are good enough to be able to drive ecosystem changes, improvements, that's an expert. At that place, there's no competition. This place extremely few, there are more opportunities in here than talents available. And that's why, and I know a lot of companies, I don't want to mention names like talk companies and think that space, when you come to setting aspects that have to do with their operations, they need to go higher from other countries, Africa. Why do, why do, why do they hire lots of Indians, Indians, Indians, Indians, right? So beginner level, more opportunities than talents, everybody's here, most people are here. Expert level, there's a balance. If you can get in here, you won't struggle, you'll find a job, good job, good company, depending on what you're doing. Expert level, which they are much fewer persons and there's a lot

38:04more opportunity, that, and I'll do truly seeing companies trying to hire for rules that require experts and they cannot find. They can't find within an area and they have to go probably higher externally, right? So that's my context too. So, do I agree with that? Yes. But I think it's a little nuanced, a bit of different levels or skills and talents. That's very interesting. I've never heard it being said the way you have, and I'm going to have to think about it. I'm going to have to think about it. But I think there must be some truth in what you're saying. My audience would choose to. It's true. It's true. Is there any other conversation we can have that we have not spoken about? I personally, for example, studied driving initiatives about five, six years back. I wasn't even an expert in industry, my skill, yet, I just had the passion for the African industries. How can we raise more talents? How can we get more investment,

39:05community, ecosystem? How can we grow more startups? How can we go to Rekindock founders? How can we actually build products that will solve our critical problems? Right. I think that overall, my passion and burden is really around seeing Africa come to the forefront, the true forefront of technology. I think that we've been on the back foot. Yeah. I think that's great ambition, which I'd love for that to happen. What are we seeing happening now? Where there's no alternatives to the LLMs are there. And now the skill is moving to a giant decay. And we still don't have our visions. Yeah. Right. So we are really going really fast in even the whole AI systems. But we are still not building our own systems. True. Right. And I think that's what if I have anything to say with, you know, talents out there, we should really focus on building our own. But it's a systemic problem. Right. So, see, like, in my journey, I've just called out that, forget like me, who's passionate about the African

40:07context and all that. There's only so much that an individual can do. Now, let me break, let me break things up into the private sector and the public sector, private public sector. There's only so much we can do on the private side without getting to points or positions where we can have conversations on the public sector side with the government. Now, let's talk about LLMs, I think AI and all that. Your way encouraging found us to build. But these things are insanely expensive. I'm sorry, but in the West, was it the government that supported them to build it? Yes, there's been some support. But the companies, the companies at the forefront have incredible funding. That's what USBIT, look at the guys building, went to the AI, and went and talked about being, being, was what, like, when you talk about AI, being self-dominant,

41:10right, not relying on the Western world. You need to have critical infrastructure, please. You need to have data centers. So, Google's building data centers, open data centers, Microsoft's is building data centers, cost them billions of dollars, right? Can we do that in here? Can we not? We can't. No, yeah, I mean, we can't. But funding is required, right? Let's be funding. Let's be funding. How many Fintech companies do we have in Nigeria? Let's play. It's true. My point is that sometimes we can focus on the same thing. How we do it? How we should do it? How we should do it? No, I play the Fintech space. No, no, I think, no, yeah, I know. I know, I know you do. But my point is that sometimes we just like to be part of what everybody else is doing, rather than do something different. And I'm asking you the question, even for Nigeria alone, how many Fintech companies do I have? Very many. There are thousands of them. Half of those companies have been funded. Yeah, but not a lot of money. But my point is that we shouldn't all be building Fintech companies.

42:12Not great. That is saturated. So, some of them should give up on and then build something else. Yeah, okay. So, now, there's a, there's a, there's a vest, you know, the scriptwriter that talks about, it's constantly cost. I'm, I'm leading the cost. Funding. Yes. Billions of dollars for true self-sufficiency. Yes. For Africa in the area. Yes. Let's get to infrastructure energy. Do you know how much energy is required? Somebody should start a conversation. It's, it's, it's, in fact, it's so much that the big guys, the biggest companies in the world, guys I mentioned Google Amazon, this guy's building the last centers. A buying thousands of acres of land in the US to set up energy centers. It's so much as well that they've not even got such a way they're going through. This is, they have a 50% coverage. But what, what they've done so far is so big, so huge that it's already impacting the

43:13environment's ecologically. Yes. So no, so that's about energy. How much power do we have in Nigeria? Like, I mean, African countries, I know that other African countries that have better power than we have in here. But I was getting the cost down. So there's funding required, billions of dollars. That's one issue. There's energy required. Millions of dollars. There's talent required. I think on the talent side, one, not doing too bad. We're not doing too bad. Right. On the talent side. So there energy is the part. Yes. So energy and the funding. And funding. Yes. Right. So, so when we say founders, so let's, let's be practical. A founder has an idea. FinTech. We say, you know what? Job this thing. You ask you to air compute something. That's founder. The roadmap is clear. The journey is clear. What does he need to do? He needs to create a business plan. He's reset blah blah blah. No, no, one is doing. He needs to get risk money. Right. What's the maximum amount we've reached in Africa as a continent or in Nigeria? Like, like, I mean, okay, so money point recently reached front, I think, 100 and 10 million. Right. We've had some guys who we risked this in the

44:14amounts. But how does that guy, without direct contact, where are the connections? It's going to be difficult for that guy to risk as much money. So I'm just, again, lean out like the parts we require. Like, essentially, you're saying we can't do it. No, I'm not saying we can't. Okay. I'm saying, what does it take for us to be able to do it? That's my. Yes. So it would take things I've mentioned already. Okay. And then it would take the funding. The energy in my opinion is something I believe the government has a huge part. No, I knew privately in videos can. Yeah. The energy we want energy. Yes. The Nigerian government. I think, I think, I think the government has a key role to clean that. How are they doing? So, I mean, we, you've been in Nigeria for a bit. It's been fine. Yeah. You're missing where you are. Right. Right. I think that it's not great yet from an African context. There's only also, I, you know, that came to mind a few moments and that's connectivity.

45:16Right. In terms of connectivity, spread, internet, spread, across the agenda, all that. It's not even up up there yet. Now, I see. So being all of this together, I'm not saying it can't be done. I spent last five, six years, two things I'm doing conferences, the mentorship and all that. Advocating that this has to happen. The conference I organized, I co-founded Tech Revision Africa. It's an, it's an annual conference we have where we pull together. The global technical system leaders, the last edition we had in this January in Lagos here. We had the federal government's in attendance. We had legal state governments in attendance. We had investors travel from the US down. We had all of that, right. So, these conversations are happening. But I guess what I'm trying to say is that they are, it looks like they have bigger factors at play that need to be solved on the foundation level, which would level the playing field for us to be able to step up. Right. Which is the government? Yeah. Government, power, funding, connectivity. Without distance, it looks like the quality of what we can achieve has a peak or has a roof door.

46:21Right. See them. As a limit to what we can see. Yeah. Pretty much. Obviously, it can be broken. Persons would have to push true, maybe get into the office or get positions of the world, but it can't be broken. But it's just, I mean, I'm sure even when the conversation of paystack and flutter wave was going around, people would have thought that, you know what? There's a limit to what these boys can achieve. True. And then the broken, the broken. And then now everybody else is doing fintech. Not for me, that's my issue. Right. The my issue is that. That's correct. You know, we we we we live in a country that has a lot of problems. And but then but then also there's a lot of, you know, copy mechanisms. Sure. Yeah. Sure. Where, you know, some of the talents can be focused on other issues. True. Absolutely. Absolutely. But then we just find that when we see this works, this works. And everybody wants to do the same thing. Yeah. I mean, I've seen a few decks like recently, the past few months from guys who want to start fintech companies, I'm like,

47:22man, what do you want to do that? It could have money points. What are you doing? Like, do you have the money? The money? Yeah. The watch has no like, please craft decent. Do something. So yeah, right. Fintech is saturated. There's other things to do. There's health tech. There's ed tech. There's plenty other things logistics and more. Yeah. As AI as well. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. No, but glory. Thank you so much. Yeah. I think this has been a glorious conversation. Mike, thank you. Thank you so much. Very cool. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm going to put your details in the description. Okay. So my viewers and my listeners will find you. Okay. This conversation is going to be on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube and all the other audio platforms that people use. It's been a lovely conversation. It's taking turns that I did not expect. But it's all in good faith for the African continent. And to my viewers and to my listeners, thank you so much for being here with me. And if you made it to the end, as usual, I'd love to know that you are one of my champions. If you're new here, I really want to recognize you. So drop it in the comments. And let's say hello

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