One of my biggest regrets in the startup space was Thepeer ( @thepeerHQ ). Sometimes I still blame myself for this. I started this company with Michael Okoh ( @ichtrojan ), I made Chike ( @chykeofafrica ) the CEO.
I brought in the major partners.
I left the company when we were no longer aligned but things were still okay.
The last disagreement was when I discovered $50,000 was spent to buy cars. For a company making less than $1000/year.

I found out the fraudulent activities and missing money that happened, it was initially $1.2M or so that I calculated was missing.

The shut down of the company was an attempt to cover the missing money that I discovered.
I was at EFCC’s office for 4 days ( going and coming)

It’s really sad. When we started this company, the whole concept started from (Michael Okoh) @ichtrojan , he called me and mentioned what he had in mind, Infact he had mapped out the whole money transfer architecture. I didn’t write one single line of code.
I drove down to Lagos to finish idealising the concept. ( this wasn’t our first startup idea together so I’m pretty confident in his technical skills.)

When we started, our name wasn’t “Thepeer”. It was “Peerstack”. Infact the only people on the Company registration was Myself and @ichtrojan We added KOSISOCHUKWU Chike ( @chykeofafrica ) later when I made him the CEO.

The initial equity split was simple, we had one designer ( @chykeofafrica ), two engineers and two founders ( myself and Trojan). Each employee had a small equity and the rest was on myself and Trojan.

We were going to build the new NIBBS. An amazing engine that allowed anybody move money from one wallet to another on any app.
We had 2 of the top 4 fintech founders in the country backing us.
Our preseed was from 3 people ( 2 of these people invested in my other companies so they know me ) I personally called the first angle that gave us the first cheque.

Let me tell you how different factors of this country is affecting your life as an average 25 years old with a medium job.

1. Marriage : You might shocked but in a lot of developed countries, 23-25 is a good age to get married, people already have plans for their life. You don’t have to have a lot but you can see the prospect, “If I do this and this and this, the future should look like this for my family” 2. Education : Once in a while, we have exceptional educational talents that the state of education in the country is not enough to dim their light, but we have so many talented people that couldn’t make it out. From your lectures to available resources and university budgets and strikes, your education is filled with handicapped.

If you’re in Africa and you plan to get your startup into @ycombinator, @Techstars or any top accelerator next year, here’s what I’ll advice you to do :

[ You can bookmark to read later, there’s no point retweeting and liking if you won’t read so no need for those ] 1. If you just start planning to apply when application is out, chances are you’re already too late. Start planning now…. If they require you to create an account, create it now…. You’re not too early, they sometimes fund at ideation stage actually.

2. Research and see the kind of industry they fund, some accelerators have a specific funds for AI, web3 etc, apply directly to those funds, and some don’t fund AI, web3, NFTs etc at all or very low. Make your research.
There’s also the one of regions also, pick the one closet to you. Techstars has around 54 regions/setups and they run 2 cycles each year, something similar to YC too.

Here’s a thread of the different tech fields you can explore based on what you’re studying/studied in school.  This can either be for you to learn or adjust your work into.
You’ll see their application &/ tech roles:

A good way to see how tech can be integrated into your… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… International Relations/History and Diplomatic studies : Development studies, communication/debate, trade and logistics, art, linguistics, AI & ML, language models

Chemistry : Environmental chemistry, forensic chemistry, industrial chemistry, Genomic data science.. Learn Data… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

It’s 2023, if you want to get into tech but don’t know what you’ll like. You can try these :

If you like aesthetics —-> Design
If you want to make fine web —> Frontend
If you like logic + responsibility —> Backend
If you like calculations + data —> Data Science/analytics. If you like being in charge —-> Product manager.
If you care a lot about security online —-> cybersecurity.
If you love sleek designs —-> graphics design.
If you like creating structures —> Program manager.
If you care about other people a lot —> HR