Thread by @awatiibadan

This is the story of @AdewaleYusuf_ and how he began what has become the biggest tech media company in Africa - Techpoint Africa.

He was magnanimous enough to share every detail - the good, bad & ugly and over the next 4 days, I'll be reposting the story here.

Here is 1/4

1/4

“People meet me and think I am one ajebota. I am not. My father had a block industry while growing up and I was always at hand to help me. My mother was a trader and so growing up was just the regular life. We lived within our means, no extravagance, no luxurious lifestyle.

Just the normal quiet, regular life.

After graduating from Loyola College in 2004, I couldn’t advance my education to the tertiary level at the time because there was no financial resources to do so at the time. I was introduced to computers in Ibadan. My father had a friend

who had these mainframe computers and I also did a training on how to repair phones in Bodija. However, my interest in computer kept growing.

At the time, I got a job offer to work as an attendant in a filling station – the filling station was going to pay me N15,000 which

was a lot of money for a young man who needed money to go to school.

On the day that I was supposed to resume at the filling station, I met a woman had just opened a cybercafé and she just randomly told me that she needed an administrator for the cybercafé and she was

offering a pay of N2,500. Because of my love for computers, I decided to resume at the cybercafé instead of the filling station. I just wanted to be close to computers, nothing else mattered.

Everyone around me thought I was crazy. They kept scolding me for choosing a N2,500

job over a N15,000 job. It didn’t even faze me.

It was while on the job as an admin at the cybercafé that I trained myself about computers. I would surf the internet and read everything I could find on the internet about computers. At the time, internet penetration was low.

That would eventually lay the foundation for my first major job. I eventually left the cybercafé and I moved to Lagos.

I moved to Lagos because I wanted more – I wanted more challenging stuff and Ibadan just didn’t have that ‘more’ I was looking for. I moved to Lagos –

not knowing anyone in Lagos. My first job in Lagos was as a security man in an organization in Lekki. I would wear uniform like the private security men you see around. I would open gate when people drive in etc.

While I was at that, I lived in Lekki but you know,

if you’re in Lekki, you are either rich or poor – no middle ground. I was living in the poor part of Lekki. I was going to take another security job but I had a little problem with the manager and so they were not going to give me the job.

While waiting to be attended to, I had

overheard the head of HR say something about needing someone who could run computers. So, when I had to walk up to her to make my case in order to get the security job, I sharply just added that I was good with computers too. That was how I got employed at the company.

It was a fleet management company. I was led me into the computer room and I saw computers all over the room. It was just me in the middle of computers.

I settled down and began to train myself to use the computers and run the various software. It was me alone and the manual

and I would read and read. Eventually when they recruited people to the computer room, I became the trainer, training the recruits.

That year, 2012, I gained admission into LASU and I was meant to pay my school fees on Friday but one thing or the other happened and

I couldn’t pay so I decided to pay on Monday. However, something happened on the Sunday preceding the Monday and it changed my life forever.

(2/4 runs tomorrow; 8pm)

RTs will be appreciated.🙏

❤️

📸: Adewale Yusuf