This episode features Francis Sani who is the Principal at Magic Fund MAGIC Fund is a $30M early-stage venture capital fund built by founders for founders. The fund has backed 70+ tech startups around the world including Bamboo Carrot, Mono, Oxygen, and many more. In this episode, we discussed Francis' journey getting into the innovation ecosystem and transitioning to a Venture Capital role. -Magic fund's investment thesis, investment size and deal structure. -The range of equity Magic fund aim ...
Mar 20, 2022•57 min•Season 1Ep. 30
Edwin's experience cut across building startups and supporting new ventures. He is currently the country manager at Eko Innovation Centre (EIC), where he is responsible for managing various innovation programs and startup portfolios. Edwin & I have a history of working together as entrepreneurs at Passion incubator so It's great to have him on the show as we discussed his entrepreneurship background, lessons learnt building e-Medrep, his fundraising story, work at Eko Innovation centre and h...
Mar 06, 2022•34 min•Season 1Ep. 29
My friends from Rad 5 Tech Hub reached out to me to speak to entrepreneurs in their startup club. John and Igwe founded the hub in 2017 and they have been working tirelessly to grow the startup ecosystem in Aba ( South East Nigeria). This week, I decided to share the presentation on my podcast. I hope you enjoy it. To learn more about Rad 5Tech hub visit https://rad5.com.ng/
Feb 13, 2022•36 min•Season 1Ep. 29
This episode features Temitope Babatunde Ekundayo who is CEO at Printivo | Co-Founder at Getequity.io We discussed his transition from Printivo to GetEquity which is a company that is challenging the status quo of startup financing and venture capital. Over $400,000 USD has been raised on the platform. We discuss his : Education background. Starting his consulting business. Story around joining Printivo founding team. Market product fit thesis for building startups. Starting GetEquity and it’s b...
Feb 06, 2022•50 min•Season 1Ep. 27
I spoke about some interesting quotes I have compiled for some years.
Jan 30, 2022•6 min•Season 1Ep. 26
Eunice Ajim (Cameroonian-American Tech Entrepreneur) is the founding partner of Ajim capital- a $10 million fund set to invest in African Tech Startups. Eunice has been a 2x tech founder and an executive having spent early years of her career with Apple & later leading a $10M+ revenue tech startup. The fund provides checks of $25,000- $125,000 to pre-seed and seed tech enabled companies across Africa. In the episode we discuss her background as an international student from Cameroon to USA. ...
Jan 23, 2022•26 min•Season 1Ep. 25
This episode feature Daniel Bloch who has spent the last nine years building blockchain solutions. Daniel is currently the CEO of Seso Global, Africa’s property super app that enables secure transaction in property management platform leveraging blockchain. Before Seso, he has co founded a cryptocurrency exchange platform and launched a blockchain Education Network, a nonprofit that provides Blockchain educational initiatives at Universities in over ten countries worldwide. Seso Global was launc...
Jan 16, 2022•38 min•Season 1Ep. 24
In 2014 Ayo Dawodu hosted the first lean startup Machine workshop in Africa. Ayo is not just an ecosystem builder, he founded Loystar in 2016 to help businesses build loyalty, not just sell. In this conversation we discuss lean startup methodology, starting out Loystar, fundraising, adoption of loyalty system by businesses, competition and challenges he has faced building loystar. Recommended Book: Lean Startup Methodology by Eric Ries The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Pr...
Jan 09, 2022•35 min•Season 1Ep. 23
Globally, the trade in counterfeit pharmaceuticals is worth up to $200bn. Over 100,000 people die annually in Africa as a result of counterfeit anti malaria drugs based on report from World health Organization. Dare Odumade is building Chekkit to solve this problem. Chekkit is not just an anti counterfeit technology, his platform is also a serialization and consumer intelligence platform. Chekkit specializes in developing software for food, beverage and medicine distribution, tracking & cons...
Dec 05, 2021•59 min•Season 1Ep. 22
This episode features Segun Adeyemi who built and exited Amplify payment to OneFi (Carbon) in March 2019. Segun started out as an investment banker with a career goal to become the Governor of the Central bank of Nigeria until he caught the tech bug. He recently served as the country Manager of Jumo in Nigeria which is a market leading banking as a service platform, enabling real-time access to funds at the lowest possible operating cost. Jumo was recently valued at $400 million, according to Th...
Nov 28, 2021•46 min•Season 1Ep. 21
In this episode, 'the 20th Episode' we hosted Abake Adenle on the Show, She is the founder of AJALA Studios, a company that make tools that enable enterprises build voice automation experiences in African Language with initial focus on voice recognition (something like Siri or Alexa) and speech synthesis. Her company is currently working on Yoruba, Igbo Hausa and Swahili. Before starting her company she has worked with Morgan Stanley as equity derivative strategist and had a very interesting edu...
Nov 14, 2021•31 min•Season 1Ep. 20
With over 44 million small businesses across the African Continent, access to credit for them has never been easy even though Small businesses has been referenced as the backbone of the economy and the key to growth in Africa in many publications. There is still a lot of market friction that happens to make credit accessible to them. For these businesses to grow, create more jobs, they need access to capital that is affordable. In this episode, my conversation with Timileyin, Co-founder of Guava...
Nov 07, 2021•28 min•Season 1Ep. 19
In this episode, we explored the innovative ecosystem of Botswana where I had a very cool conversation with two visionaries from Botswana building Ked- Liphi, an electrical technology company with an innovation division which focuses on creating practical everyday use inventions. During the lock-down in 2020 they invented an Automatic Diagnostic Combo machine, that assists in rapid COVID-19 tracking, the machine is a combination of face recognition & thermal temperature scanning that has app...
Oct 31, 2021•50 min•Season 1Ep. 18
Josh started building business as a teenager. In 2014 he founded Eazyhire which was venture backed then joined Mest Africa some years later as a Venture partner. He is currently working with United Nations as a consultant. In this Episode, we discussed How he started Eazyhire Eazyhire Plagiarism story Funding in Nigeria Tech Ecosystem Nigeria Startup bill and more Resources: Read more about Eazyhire Plagiarism story here: https://techpoint.africa/2016/03/10/eazyhire-vs-easyhire/
Oct 24, 2021•40 min•Season 1Ep. 17
While studying in Ukraine, Sandra Bakare witnessed firsthand her friends being expelled from school. The reason? not because of bad behavior or bad grades nor broke parents. It was simply because the parents could not effectively send school fees from Nigeria to Ukraine. This is one of the issues of outward remittance in Nigeria which is also inhibiting trade and growth within the African continent. In this episode I had a great conversation with Dr. Sandra Bakare who is solving the problem with...
Oct 17, 2021•35 min•Season 1Ep. 16
In this episode we explored how unpopular philosophical perception may actually be the key to unlocking the young African entrepreneurial spirit as opposed to running in a bottleneck popular framework of bringing ideas to fruition where a huge amount of money is needed. This episodes features Princewill Fidelis who is very passionate about African entrepreneurship, he has background in research, innovation, control systems, turbines technology, and strategic planning. He is a Nuclear Physicist w...
Oct 10, 2021•39 min•Season 1Ep. 15
Ahmad has been building tech solution as far back as mid 2000's in Nigeria. In 2010 he had his first acquisition and then moved his focus to building Gigalayer which is one of the biggest web hosting company in Nigeria with over 14,000 clients covering other countries in Africa. Ahmad is a full-stack developer with lots of passion for web technology & internet businesses. In this episode we discussed how he started Gigalayer Lean Startup methodology The Story behind his first acquisition His...
Oct 03, 2021•36 min•Season 1Ep. 14
Nicolas Waern Invested in my startup back in 2014. Ever since we have been friends and it's awesome to have him on the show. Nicolas has a passion to make the world a better place for everyone. In this episode, we discussed European stereotypes in investing in African Startups, issues around climate change, smart buildings and many more.
Sep 26, 2021•23 min•Season 1Ep. 13
Abraham Iyiola is the Co-founder/CEO of CareerBuddy and Tamborin. He had a very interesting career starting out as leading AIESEC International in Nigeria and later led Talent Management at Jumia Nigeria in the early days. In this episode we discussed his foray into entrepreneurship. How CareerBuddy is changing organization culture towards talents. Tech talent in Nigeria and the pace the Nigeria tech ecosystem is losing software developers to other countries. How we can build a continuous pipeli...
Sep 19, 2021•31 min•Season 1Ep. 12
By the end of the century, (2100) Lagos is forecasted to have a population of 0ver 80 million people, Dar Es Salaam over 70m. Emmanuel Adegboye as the Africa Strategy Lead for Utopia is working to make sure we have better cities across Africa as the population grows exponentially. In this podcast, we discussed Emmanuel's Journey into being an ecosystem leader, from being the Entrepreneurship Center Manager at Andela to Leading Utopia work in Africa and currently part of the Presidential Advisory...
Sep 12, 2021•31 min•Season 1Ep. 11
In this episode, the host of the kurious k podcast (Kolapo) took the time out to distil lessons from the first 9 episodes.
Sep 05, 2021•36 min•Season 1Ep. 10
In this episode, we had a great conversation with Confidence Odioinye, the founder and president of Beatdrone. Beatdrone was one of the pioneering businesses in the drone sector in Nigeria in 2017. Initially, in 2014, he started his journey as the first cohort of Passion Incubator with an idea of building a traffic management system and he later pivoted to using drones. The company currently provide services for companies in Agriculture, mining and oil and gas industry. In this podcast, we discu...
Aug 29, 2021•32 min•Season 1Ep. 9
In 2014 –Just before her 19th birthday – Blessing Kwomo launched De Rehoboth Therapeutic Studio, which offers a holistic approach to healthcare. The Company extends home-based health care through tailored family action plans for treating illness and addressing root causes to empower families to live healthier within the context of their surroundings/circumstances. We met in 2018 during a Slush Global Impact Accelerator Program I organised for social entrepreneurs in Nigeria in collaboration with...
Aug 22, 2021•26 min•Season 1Ep. 8
Andrew is a veteran entrepreneur in the Nigeria tech ecosystem who started building startups since his university days. In 2015 he co-founded ogaVenue, Nigeria's Largest online event venue booking portal with operation in 6 African countries which at its peak, before COVID 19 was doing 7 figures USD in Gross Merchandise Value. The platform was designed to make it easy for an event host to search, check availability and book a preferred venue in minutes and now he is building Lenco.ng , a pan-Afr...
Aug 15, 2021•37 min•Season 1Ep. 7
In this episode, we took a quick stop at Tanzania where I had an amazing conversation with Ng'winula Kingamkono. Ng’ winula has been building software solutions and startups for the past 10 years and recently launched Tunzaa which is a fintech startup that uses technology to transform the financial habits of consumers and connects businesses to buyers. During the podcast, we discussed Why he started Tunzaa Tanzania Startup Ecosystem Funding in East Africa Mobile Money in Tanzania Building Guumzo...
Aug 08, 2021•28 min•Season 1Ep. 6
Bankole Oloruntoba is one of the most respected leaders in the Nigerian Tech Ecosystem. He is the CEO of the Nigeria Climate Innovation Center (NCIC) a World Bank and Federal Government of Nigeria assisted innovation centre and the Honorary Consul of Finland in Nigeria and interestingly the youngest individual to occupy such a position in Finland embassy since its creation in 2012. In 2014, Bankole founded of Network of Incubators and Innovators in Nigeria (NINe) and he was the founding Incubati...
Aug 01, 2021•1 hr 7 min•Season 1Ep. 5
Dr Ebi has been a medical doctor for over 19 years. At a point in his career, he realized he had to do things differently after his Dad Suffered stroke two times in a year. This led to the establishment of Gerocare. With GeroCare, you can provide healthcare for your parents wherever you are in the world. One of the SDG's (Sustainable developments goal) is to ensure health and well-being for all and that’s also at the heart of Gerocare Foundation which was launched during the celebration of the 4...
Jul 24, 2021•40 min•Season 1Ep. 4
Paul Kelvin Founded Gas Monkey to solve the problem of "household air pollution" (HAP) in Nigeria mostly as a result of dirty cooking fuel (burning of firewood), which leads to the death of over 140,000 children under the age of 5 every year. His Company is also working to transform the real estate industry by pioneering a reticulated gas system in buildings that eliminate each apartment owning a gas cylinder and reducing the risk of fire outbreak. Statistics by the National LPG office states th...
Jul 17, 2021•31 min•Season 1Ep. 3
In our first episode, we are excited to host Hakeem Disu, Founder of Koinwa- A peer to peer Bitcoin trading platform in Nigeria. Hakeem founded Koinwa in 2019 and recently launched its mobile and web application and it has done impressive numbers in transactions ( 6 figures in USD). We will discuss the impact of government regulations on cryptocurrency in Nigeria, how he started and his plans for the future.
Jun 30, 2021•33 min•Season 1Ep. 1
Hello guys, welcome to Kurious K podcast. My name is Kolapo and I am excited to announce that I will be launching my podcast where I will be meeting some of the most amazing startup founders in Nigeria and across Africa and everyone playing in the space to make entrepreneurship thrive. We will be exploring how they see opportunities and taking the first step to launch their business. Based on World Bank’s 2020 Doing business report, Nigeria ranks 131 out of 190 countries on the world bank doing ...
Jun 16, 2021•2 min•Season 1Ep. 1
