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Osaretin Victor Asemota Profile picture
@asemota
Apr 5 • 9 tweets • 3 min read • Read on X
In Nigeria, I am a landlord in Benin and a tenant in Lagos. As a landlord, I don't want any interaction with tenants; someone else does that headache. As a tenant, I hated agents with a passion and used them only once. Our office has been at the same Oniru place since 2010. 🧵
It is a two-sided marketplace where sellers and buyers have different preferences. The only way to solve that is to examine why both have different preferences and then reconcile their differences. Unfortunately, the agent will still remain a necessary evil in this process.
It is not a simple UX problem but a trust and fairness problem. I spoke to a founder who was working with agents for his real estate sales platform recently and had an epiphany. Agents who are not efficient are the pain in the process. Efficient agents help both sides to win.
How can we achieve this "win-win-win" scenario? Data gathering and data sharing. Agents have an entire ecosystem on their own, with rules for dealing with each other. Very few people are trying to solve for efficiency in that ecosystem first, which is the problem.
How do agents store their data and communicate with each other? How can they show all their listings in one place? In England, agents are very efficient in aggregating supply and demand. They are professionals in the service industry and not touts. Ours is different in Nigeria.
In England, an agent will have all their listings on the window in their office; I can also go to them to make specific requests, and they will follow up. Online direct listing platforms like Zoopla, but all parties coexist as there is base data with realistic valuations.
The first problem in a place like Nigeria is data. Many landlords are secretive and don't want to be identified by tax authorities. Ghana is changing all that, as there is now data and tax enforcement. It is still a long way off, but there is a basic template that can work.
in India is completely data-driven, and the base data made everything built on top of it possible. I have been on this real estate app rodeo before and learned a lot from India. It is also why I highly value my involvement on the board of @ThisIsPLACE.Housing.com
We can't build something on what is not there. Plus, it will take a new generation of landlords to change the status quo. It is already happening, but slowly. It can be accelerated, but that is not the conversation today. My late Dad was closer to his tenants than I am today.

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More from @asemota

Osaretin Victor Asemota Profile picture
Mar 29
One area of study that fascinates me a lot is behavioral economics. African entrepreneurs don't study it enough and use data to validate frameworks or create new ones. It is never true whenever I hear that lack of disposable income is a reason for people not buying anything. Image
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Motive and motivation are much more important to look out for while selling. This is why we may laugh at Ola of Lagos and his antics, but he can pass a message through and probably will sell shitloads of stuff because he keys into vanity in a way MTV Cribs also did years ago.
If a house is sold in public as very expensive, but you manage to get it at a fraction of the price, which is the true value, you will believe it is a tremendous bargain. You can boast of it and show Ola's videos about it to others. Silly but true. People do this.
Read 13 tweets
Osaretin Victor Asemota Profile picture
Mar 25
In my grandfather and father's time, most people were farmers, and Western education was scarce. They got educated and got jobs that helped them to get property and retire. In my time, entrepreneurship was scarce, and we did it instead of choosing saturated workplaces. Now... Image
...legal entrepreneurship is no longer scarce, and many people who can't get jobs opt for it. This creates another problem of too much, and because criminality is scarce, it has become more lucrative.

Yahoo boys and criminals are much more common now than 20/30 years ago.
The problem with crime is that there is nothing like a halfway crook—most of those who opt for it never really leave it fully, which causes it to grow exponentially. This in itself creates a problem of competition, but criminals are smarter than most people; they collaborate.
Read 8 tweets
Osaretin Victor Asemota Profile picture
Mar 21
Listening to @ChimamandaReal and @Trevornoah's conversation on his podcast, I remember school in England in 2005 and how I couldn't make a complaint against a lecturer who was racist and sexually harassing me because she was a woman and I was a man.
It was a complicated situation that she exploited to her advantage. The conversation was buried because of political correctness. People on either side are doing so many bad things, and perceived "lack of privilege" was weaponized in many ways, leading to frustration.
Trump is an idiot, but American academia is also no longer a place where freedom of expression truly happens. The tyranny of the minority is a thing there, and political correctness can be taken to extremes. I still remember Dave Chapelle's warning about this in his Special.
Read 6 tweets
Osaretin Victor Asemota Profile picture
Mar 19
I have tried many Nigerian apps, got hooked somewhere in the onboarding process, and abandoned the apps. There is no follow-up to try to resolve this. There is no attempt to capture my basic email first in the easiest way possible, like Google or social sign-up. Missed chances.
Onboarding seems to be a headache for most apps built by our people. The smoothest onboarding process I have seen was with @MoMo_PSB, an existing MTN customer. Opay and Moniepoint tried. They seem to have the same onboarding template in tiers, which makes sense.
You need to take onboarding very seriously, as it is the interface between you and a future lucrative relationship. Many bungle support and still survive, but if you keep bungling onboarding, your chances of survival are slim, especially when there are alternatives.
Read 5 tweets
Osaretin Victor Asemota Profile picture
Feb 11
I have been wondering why most communities of Nigerians that have any financial goals or crowdfunding element always end up with someone stealing money?

This started from my departmental association in school as far back as in the 80s. The President embezzled and was sacked.
My estate association in Lagos had the same problem and the man ran away. Someone with a house that he owns in the estate escaped to Canada to avoid paying the money he stole. I have observed this in so many forms. Someone has to try to become too smart in the group.
This is worrying and it contributes to our low trust issues. A startup was trying to work with a union collecting dues from members, next thing we see is the union executive flexing online and living large. I think living large is the symptom and dishonesty is the root cause.
Read 5 tweets
Osaretin Victor Asemota Profile picture
Feb 4
How many African freelancers do we have in tech? Is there any real way to figure out the size of the African freelancer market?Most people I know trying to build products for them seem to be discovering that the market is not as large as we imagine. Plus many get jobs and churn. Image
There is a theory that most freelancers don’t survive doing freelancing long enough as most do not have experience and provide a lot of substandard services or products. This was very true in the early days but now, they are part of properly structured online teams quite early.
South Africa proves this theory wrong as there are many people who run their own show but are able to combine as one on teams when they have a gig that they need to do together. There are probably more experienced freelancers on their own there than people in paid employment.
Read 10 tweets

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