It was another purposeful evening, at the premises of GoDo Hub, 53, Oladipo Bateye Street, GRA, Ikeja, Lagos, as the Stanbic IBTC Founder Institute Lagos, cohort II, enters its third week of classes.
The third week event was tagged, ‘Customers Development’, which was to teach founders the hack needed to, effectively, go about the process, of customers development and how to, strategically, build their start-ups, to meet up, to a customer’s need.
In case you missed it, you can read about the Stanbic IBTC Founder Institute Lagos second week event
Mentors for the day were Jane Egerton-Idehen, Country Manager Nigeria and Regional Sales Director, West Africa, at Avanti Communications, Oluyomi Ojo, Co-Founder / CEO, Printivo, Mohammed Kabiru Aliyu, COO Cloud Exchange West Africa, Founder and Executive Principal, of Cloud Exchange Technical School, (CETS).
The program kicked off for the day, with Ayowande Adelemo, CEO, Wave3 Wireless and Lead Director, Founder Institute Lagos, welcoming the founders and also, introducing the founders, to the mentors.
After the introduction, selected founders were called out, to pitch their business, for 3 minutes, in front of the mentors, who graded them, on a scale of 1, 2, 4 and 5, (Number 3 was excluded).
After the exercise, the first mentor to speak was Mohammed Kabiru Aliyu, COO Cloud Exchange West Africa, Founder and Executive Principal of Cloud Exchange Technical School, (CETS), who talked about the Practical Customer Development Approach.
He started by asking the founders 3 questions – What comes, easily, to you? When you were a child, what sort of things came easy to you? What are areas where you’ve received awards, won contests, or, received public praise?
“If you can be able to find answers to these questions, you are one step to understand, how you need to build your product”, stressed Mohammed.
“Founders need to have a clear understanding of their business idea”, stated Mohammed.
The second speaker, was Jane Egerton-Idehen, Country Manager Nigeria and Regional Sales Director, West Africa, at Avanti Communications, who talked about Customer discovery and customer validation.
Jane explained the processes involved, in customer development and these include, customer discovery, customer validation, customer creation, customer building.
“Founders must understand that, there must be a bridging gap, in product and market fit”, Jane stressed.
The third speaker was Oluyomi Ojo, Co-Founder / CEO, Printivo, who talked about reasons, why founders need to understand that, Nigerian market is, different and sometimes getting customers to pay attention to what you are selling, could be very difficult.
“The Nigeria market is very unique and that is why it is, highly, essential that, founders chart out an agenda that, will give more insight, into customers development”, Oluyomi concluded.
After the three mentors had spoken to the founders, it was time for questions, thrown by the founders, with insightful answers, coming from the mentors.
Chukwuemeka Fred Agbata Jnr. “CFA”, Co-founder, GoDo.ng & Presenter, Tech Trends on Channels TV, Founder Institute Regional Director, was called out to round off the event.
This is the third (3) week, with, only, 11 weeks to go.
