Obviously, there is always a gap between the young startups and old startups that have become successful over the years.
The gap keeps widening, although the young startups are always looking for ways to bridge the gap, so as to catch up with them. It becomes an issue when a young startup becomes lackadaisical to learn from those who have gone through those entrepreneurial strides.
Meanwhile, there are always pioneers in every industry. In Nigeria, we have group of successful technopreneurs who existed from the very beginning, setting the pace and collectively laid the foundation of what we now enjoy and call the “Tech ecosystem”.
On the other side, we have the future entrepreneurs, mostly the young startups, who are brilliant programmers and have been trained to be daring and confident in many ways than one. In fact some of them have a particular way of speaking and interacting which can be regarded as a more modern style.
Personally, I would say I am neither new or old, I consider myself the middle guy, a bridge if you’d like and this one of the key reasons we decided to take our bridging mandate one step further.
How do we Bridge the Gap and Catch Up?
It’s basically through an initiative called CFA Startup Hangout, a monthly evening gathering where the old and new can meet, interact, network, learn and grow. Visit http://startups.cfatech.ng/
By now you should know that I am a firm believer in events. I believe that well thought out events have the capacity to transform not just a life but a generation and one idea can serve as a launchpad for chains of businesses if properly nurtured.
I honestly want the old to positively impact the new who make up the bulk of the startup ecosystem because I believe that the Nigerian startup ecosystem has not levelled up and I believe there is a bubble that may burst soon. I am not saying that there has been no advancement or growth, of course, there are results that we have made progress, but then again we continue to observe some startups who living a lie.
Recently, news filtered that Efritin.com, one of the international startups that came into the country with bang is closing shop and one of its top management listed some challenges that made them arrive at that conclusion. Now this is a company that came into the country with a truckload of cash, so to speak but after expending human and material resources trying to push their trade, they gave up and walked away.
What do you think is a lot of startups with little or no funding or income to stay afloat?
Be that as it may, I believe that opportunities lie coded in the midst of challenges as in the case of Nigeria therefore we want to be able to bring together startups who want to be real. Startups who would like learn from those who have been there before them. The maiden edition filled up in less than five days, which points to the fact that there is an enormous hunger to learn.
The maiden edition holds later this week,Friday, and we’d gladly share our experiences.
