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Temidayo Ajisebutu
Temidayo Ajisebutu

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4 1

Sourcing for funds ain’t your problem, your customers are

All I have seen majorly in Nigeria is either people sourcing for funds or looking for cheap labor. Yes It is great to seek for funds but you don’t do that when your start up is just a new born baby.

Your primary focus should be problem solving not funds seeking. This which I see is a major reason why Nigerian start ups fail. They all think it’s all about the money, it’s not, yeah you would make a ton of money at the end of the day.

Please don’t shift your focus from making your customers happy to making your pocket happy. Your customers give you the required money you need at the end of the day not your investor. All your investor does is to kick start your business (And by kick starting I mean they just help you with your primary funds just after they see that you have a good product and see that you and your business are scalable ).

The technologies and strategies used for proper development of businesses are more important than the funding at the cradle stage of a business. By the way investors will only invest in something that works.

For example look at Hotels.ng, Mark Essien didn’t sit and wait for investments before figuring out Hotels.ng. He did his work.

Another thing is User Research, have you considered who will use your platform ? To understand this you have to carry out Design Sprints, Prototype testing and all before coming out to seek for funds.

I have a philosophy that if you are not as confident as the CEO of the American Start Up Party On Demand, you haven’t finished your research work.

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