I'm launching a new startup. Anticipate.

Yes, anticipate :)




In May, I resigned my position as a software developer at Interswitch to try to get out my dreams again. A number of things inspired this, but most notably was my friend, Abiola Olaniran's return from Nairobi after his business Gamsole's successful incubation with 88MPH.

I'm working on an idea I began working on last year, before I accepted the Interswitch job. I had built a working prototype, but due to my low morale which accompanied the outcome of Tiketmobile, I decided to shelf it and pick-up a regular job. I'm very grateful to Babafemi Ogungbamila, the CIO of Interswitch and to Chinenye Mba-Uzoukwu my indirect mentor for giving me great options at that time, when almost every other thing I heard/read about myself wasn't palatable.

The idea?

I'm building a marketplace which lets people organising occasions -- birthdays, weddings, etc -- easily find and pay for services and service providers that they need. I call it an occasions utility service. I'll keep the name off for now, until I'm ready to open it up.

Between the last week in May and now I've reworked my original idea from last year, and iterated both the concept and UI design 3 times, after creating and seeking feedback from a closed circle of people. Now I'm doing my internal testing and QA. By the first week of next month, it should be available for the first set of external users, the alpha testers. The MVP and current value proposition targets graphics designers. If you're a graphic designer and would love to be an alpha tester, please do send me an email at celestocalculus@gmail.com. I plan on keeping the number really small, so the sooner the better. Thanks.

It's the much expected comeback from the Tiketmobile Fiasco and, like Tiketmobile, I'm putting my all into it and looking forward to building a successful business that would gave massive value to the adopters.

P.S.
Much regards to Anthony Ezeokoye, Ope Adeoye, Mark Essien, Chinenye Mba-Uzoukwu, Emmanuel Oluwatosin, Depanka Rustagi and Abiola Olaniran, among others; for the inspiration, criticisms, feedback and belief I'm honoured to benefit from you guys. And for listening and giving advice too.

Most especially to my brother Anthony. Thanks a lot for being there always.

Impressions from the moderated discussions on Africapitalism held at The Guardian GDP website

Yesterday, The Africapitalism Institute engaged some members of the public in a discussion about the ideals of Africapitalism (check it out here). Being an advocate for capitalism, I was looking forward to it, but for reasons beyond my control, I missed the discussion. However, I took the pains to study all the arguments and there was a lot to learn in them.

My personal impressions are summarized below:

My personal summary of Africapitalism

Africapitalism is an improvement on traditional capitalism in that it advocates “inclusive growth”, such that “social good” is considered as a pass mark for corporations, along-side making profit.

Personally, I think that true capitalists, operating in societies where there is less corruption and better scrutiny should know this. Bringing it home in an African context is because the capitalists operating on the continent are mainly foreigners, who pay little mind to the state of the environment. They mainly want to extract all the values available and leave. This is made worst by the corruption in the land and the fact that government officials prefer to enrich their pockets by collecting bribes, as opposed to creating proper guidelines for operations of these foreigners.

Africapitalism wants to put an impression in the mind of the African business owner, who has the opportunity of side-stepping the government & maximizing profit as the foreigners do, that they are responsible not only for making profit for the shareholders, but also for ensuring that they don’t do this at the detriment of the society which they operate in. And where possible, they should make conscious and sincere efforts at bettering the lots of the consumers of their services.

The biggest questions are: Where does this leave the government? Do these theories absolve the government of responsibilities to the people who elected them? Should important functions of the state, such as security for instance, be left in the hands of Africapitalists due to government’s perceived incompetence? If this is the case? Won’t the common people suffer for these, as capitalists try to exploit them?

Real life scenario:

In Nigeria, everybody is their own government. Even though we have people in elected positions, each family is expected to handle every necessities on its own. A family would face certain difficulties if it doesn’t think about:

·         Its source of privately generated power (even though they pay a regular bill to the government);

·         Its source of water;

·         A small neighbourhood community that fills pot-holes on the road with sand or stone, when it goes bad;

·         Private security bill for the estate where they reside;

·         Etc.

All these issues exist even though the average Nigerian worker, who’s employed somewhere, pays tax regularly.

These are social issues that a capitalist – with happy shareholders and making decent profits – operating within the neighbourhood of such family can decide to take-up. But then, if this is the case, why don’t we just build a country filled with basic units of capitalists, instead of having elected government officials?

I have a few answers to these questions, such as advocating a “thin government”, whose major functions is the creation of policies that ensure inclusive actions from the Africapitalists. This would then result in a 3-step responsibility cycle, where the people hold the government responsible. The government in turn holds the corporations/capitalists responsible. And the capitalist look to the people to provide officials for government positions.

However, I’d rather that the drivers of the Africapitalism movement enlighten us on how they intend for this to go. 

What are the challenges facing Africapitalism?

From my point of view, the most obvious challenge is the dearth of influential businesses owned and operated by Africans. Or maybe just lack of local businesses which operate with these inclusive, Africapitalism mind frame – African owned or not!

The most obvious solution to this is to build more African businesses, operating with this mind-set. Either build a new class of business people, or try to integrate these ideals into existing businesses. Or both. There doesn’t seem to be a shortcut to this.

But the participants of this discussion run “social ventures”

Being more attuned to businesses that focus on profit, I couldn’t help noticing that most, if not all, participants of the discussions introduced themselves as running “social ventures”. By social ventures, I mean ventures that are “impact first” other than “profit first”. Not that all ventures shouldn’t be driven by making impact, but to clarify better: by “profit first”, I meant businesses whose activities directly influence their bottom-line.

This brings some pertinent questions.

·         Is Africapitalism meant to be attractive only to these kinds of ventures?

·         Can the concept be sold to a “Gabros & sons” who runs a chain of electrical/electronic supply stores in a number of neighbourhoods and want to maximize profit?

My thoughts on this is that, these kinds of venture — which depends on well-meaning foundations and people to funding their operations — may not be influential enough to push the true values of Africapitalism. Mainly because they aren’t meant to be self-sustaining. They could be the arm, through which bottom-line focused capitalist, looking to operate inclusively can give back to the community. But putting “social ventures” as the flag-bearers of Africapitalism might be a limitation to its adoption by bottom-line focused businesses.

 Conclusion

At the moment, these are the thoughts that occupied my mind after reading through the discussion threads. I know that if I immerse myself more into this, more thoughts would surface. However, I’ll like to conclude at this point for now.

I need to go back to building my soon-to-be-launched businesses. Thanks to all the participants for sharing the knowledge they shared. It was worthwhile and helped improve on the basic ideas I had about the Africapitalism movement.

Cheers.

Kudos to ABSOLUT

Last weekend, I published a post about how Absolut vodka took artist who took part in the Open Canvas and their work for granted. And how they kept using the works of these artist for marketing, without duly compensating the artists nor actually finishing the competition.

I'm glad to publish this post to let you know that they have made concrete moves to correct their errors. I think I'm responsible for letting the public know what the outcome of that post was, after literarily slaying the brand.

In an email reply sent to Anthony, they indicated that they only got to know that they're owing the artists from reading my blog post and they fixed a meeting to talk about it. The meeting held last Wednesday, where they apologized, explained the situation which led to the neglect and promised to remedy the issues.

Part of what they promised to do include:

1. They actually offered all of the artists present at the meeting a pass to the "Road to MAMA" party which held last Friday night. As a compensation for not inviting them for their "Art party" which held last weekend.
2. The promised to settle the stipends for transportation and logistics, which the artist used-up during the Open Canvas competition and also to give them certificate of participation.
3. They promised to integrate the artists better in their activities in the coming months/year by collaborating with them as brand ambassadors and stuffs.

Aren't we all happy about this?

I love me a brand that is sensitive to the public perception of their activities and take corrective steps when they make a mistake. Brands that don't see themselves above the scrutiny of the public and once they discover they're wrong, they don't get defensive. Instead they reach-out and create an inclusive policy.

If they keep to their promises, they might just become one of my favorite brands. Wish them all the best and success in the Nigerian market.

Kudos to ABSOLUT. Well done.

ABSOLUT Scammers

The video below begins with a voice over from Anthony, my talented artist brother...



When Anthony told me last year, that he was invited by the Absolut people to join a number of other artists in an art project around Lagos, I felt like: "Finally, a solid brand takes art seriously."

I was wrong. The ABSOLUT open canvas (Lagos Edition) is a scam and a ploy by the folks at Absolut to get free creative marketing contents, using lies and trickery.

Since December last year till today, not a single one of the participating artists have been compensated for taking part in this project. Emails have been sent back and forth. Phone calls have been made. But NOT ONE SINGLE ARTIST has been compensated. They didn't follow through with their promise of increasing the visibility of any of the artists, neither did they pay any of them off for their efforts. 20 artists in total.

The worst thing about this is that they use these materials for EVERY SINGLE MARKETING they are doing. EVERY-FUCKING-SINGLE-MARKETING!

NONSENSE.

Yesterday, they had a party with MTV Base, as a build-up to the MAMA awards and the artworks of these 20 creative geniuses was everywhere. The idiots didn't even think it was necessary to send out official invites to the artists.

I don't know why MTV would drag their brand in the mud by associating with these idiots. Dear MTV, Ciroc is both a better vodka and a better brand. See what they are doing at Rhapsody and Kudetta Lounge. They are better than the fuckers who call themselves Absolut.

Anyway, I've advised my brother to take legal actions against them. Get all the artists who took part in this to come together and sue these guys and make sure they pay with their last penny. We are educated enough not to allow some set of stupid people to come here and pull a fast one. That era passed away with the period of slavery, and intellectual rights MUST be respected. If that is how they do it, make them hold their kai kai, we no want!

P.S.
To try get some more free contents, the guys hired an unprofessional joker to side talk one of the artist to come and do another free art work at the party. This joker contacted my brother. Halfway into negotiation, the joker eloped without saying a word when the invoice was sent to him... and went on to restart negotiation with another of the artist involved in the open canvas project. The joker didn't know that they were all friends, so story went round.

Moral of the P.S.: These Absolut guys want contents but aren't ready to pay for it.

ABSOLUT Nonsense.

UPDATE:
The guys at Absolut read this and acted accordingly, to which all parties involved are grateful. I blogged about it here: http://ezeokoyecelestine.blogspot.com/2014/06/kudos-to-absolut.html. However, we are all looking forward to them keeping their promises.

I'll re-launch better

So on Tuesday, I had a meeting with the products arm of Quickteller team, along with the Founder/CEO of a very notable local start-up. It was actually a negotiation session, not a meeting per se.

Over the last couple of weeks/months, I've been the middleman trying to make a great deal happen between the good folks at Quickteller and this friend of mine, whom everyone acknowledges runs a kick-ass service. I try my best, being the mutual friend, to put a soft cushion for both parties, majorly because I believe it's a great deal and this person in particular has offered really great listening ears to my wahalas. One night, on the week of Jan 14th, 2013 after we officially opened-up Tiketmobile, he called to congratulate me and I think we spoke for an upward of 40 mins. That meant a lot to me. We speak a lot from time to time after that. So when something of this nature came-up, and I thought it could help his business make better headway, I tried my utmost best to make things happen.

Now this meeting/negotiation session isn't just about making a great deal happen between the awesome company which puts food on my table and my good friend. Nah. It's also an important drill for me, to keep myself on my grind. To pick-up as much as I could. To take my head out of the engineering hole I bury it in every workday and, once in a while, remind myself that my comfortable position should be at the intersection of engineering, business, teams management and strategy.

The entrepreneur in me is brewing stronger. Taking notes and nodding in acknowledgement.

I'll definitely re-launch better.

I have an eye for good technology tools ;)

The following are proofs that I've got great eyes for technology tools (A.K.A, I'm not your cheap-ass tech dude!):

1.

Yesterday, we had some folks from Microsoft came around to discuss with my development team (Quickteller team) about Windows Azure Notification Hub. It went so cool that the Quickteller product manager concluded on the spot that we were going to use it and started wondering why we hadn't adopted Windows Azure since.

I felt great!

Having used Windows Azure for Tiketmobile for almost two years now (since 2012), I'm the most experienced Windows Azure developer in my team. But that's not why I felt great. I felt great because, being responsible for the technology decisions on Tiketmobile, I had seen the prospect of Windows Azure and adopted it for our product. Even then, it was against the advice of our supporters, who suggested we go with Rackspace or AWS, because everyone in the hub was using those. Also it came with little local support... in fact, when we first started using it, it wasn't even available for Nigeria yet. I had to figure-out a lot of things, including roping-in PHP to the Cloud Service, from Visual Studio.

I'm glad that that skill of mine won't suddenly get redundant after all... Well, I would have used it during my nightshift anyway!


2.

My CIO shared a professional report with TechQuest yesterday which listed the frameworks that are in-vogue for developing web applications in Java, with their pros and cons, using several metrics. On the top 3 was Play! Framework. Vaadin was first, Grails was second and Play! was third.

Apart from me wondering why the fuck I hadn't heard of Vaadin before yesterday, I also felt great because, when I move to my nightshift (which is every night, after my 9 to 5), I'm mostly hacking off on Play! Framework... with Scala programing language though, not Java.


3.

CIO (of life!) also shared a great article about Reactive Application Development, which argued that it wasn't just hype, but would help applications better handle stress/load. I had earlier tried to bring-up the discussion of reactive programming with some of my colleagues, as a means of better understanding it, being a learner myself. Reception wasn't so great, so I relaxed my learnings to my personal space and when I'm on my nightshift.

I guess this is a little blessing of some sort to talk about how TechQuest could adopt Reactive app development in our methods... even if it's only talk we talk about it. Understandable, old systems might not need to be touched, I mean, why fix something that isn't broken? But new systems could benefit from the new cool ;)

Alternative title of this post:
Why it pays to have a CIO who's in-vogue (A.K.A hippie CIO aiye!)

I'm quite the adventurer

Whoever knows me by now, knows that I'm a software engineer, a proud one at that! I love my job, I mean, I love what I do, it's a passion... I sometimes can't imagine how it would be if I wake-up and I don't look forward to writing computer programs.

However, I haven't always been like this.

When I was a kid, in primary school, it used to be drawing that I couldn't imagine letting go of. I have a faint memory of me swearing that I would never stop drawing! Everywhere in Air Force Primary school 1, Ikeja, I was known by my peers. Not just me, my brothers too, all of us: Francis, Anthony & Chima! We defied all caution by my Dad, who would rather have us focus on school, to engage in this...

Well you can see the results in Anthony's Insecta + him being nominated for the future awards last year. Chima is also another person who would take everyone by surprise when he arrives  from his just concluded NYSC, having been second runner-up at the Commonwealth Art Competition in 2007.

As for me, as soon as I got to my senior secondary school, I dropped drawing for sciences and mathematics. I enjoyed advanced mathematics so much, I used to be the best in further mathematics. I loved it so much I added "calculus" to my name, hence "celestocalculus".

But then, after secondary school, I left it for programming.

Last weekend, I actually started learning to play the guitar I bought myself as a new year's present. I'd looked forward to playing a musical instrument for a long time, and this is just it. Now I'm wondering if mastering the guitar would (re)define my next 10 years.

The trend shows that I'm an adventurer in this life. I chase interests and master them, then I move on to the next. However, I love software development so much, I don't look forward to letting go of it anytime soon. I doubt I would, it makes me feel like a creator.

Besides, I  haven't even gotten to my perceived apex of software development: building world-class technology companies... Still I've got my guitar skills to learn.