The Billionaire Conference: Startups Experts Share Experiences At Nigeria Young Founders’ Week

On Friday, 3rd of November, 2023, the Nigeria Young Founders’ Week (NYFW) held her maiden conference at Oduduwa Hall, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife. It was indeed an epoch gathering of CEOs, entrepreneurs, business owners, techies, startup founders, and tech enthusiasts. The conference, titled ‘The Billion Dollar Conference: Building Africa’s Next Unicorn’ and moderated by Cooperate MC.

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The audience, a mixture of undergraduates and graduates were treated to a mix of insights from various speakers, panel sessions, and lots of giveaways while the event lasted. The first speaker, Nathaniel Luz, CEO Fincap, whose citation was read by Glory Innocent, spoke on ‘Yaba no be Silicon Valley’. In his presentation, he explained the contrast between Silicon Valley principles and Yaba realities. He likened Yaba realities to the challenges a pregnant woman faces before giving birth, emphasizing that for Africa to be a land of unicorns, Gen Zs must stay more with obligations rather than privileges. In his words, ‘startups in Nigeria must have a business outlook that is profit driven and a global outlook focused on growth for them to succeed’.

Thereafter, Mogaji Oluwadamilola, the Operation lead, Co- founder, Sparkhub in his welcome address explained the reason behind the Nigeria Young Founders’ Week as the need to create support for founders who are either in or aspire to be in tech, own a business, or a startup.

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The first panel session titled ‘Thriving as a Talent: Positioning for Exploits in the Startup and Entrepeneurship Landscape while starting out as a Student’ had Olumide Adaramoye, Community Organizer, GrowthHackers Africa, as the moderator, and Oluwasogo Ogundowole, Technical Lead for Data Pipelines at Plural, Temitayo Sadique, Founder of Deepbux, and Timileyin Idowu, Senior Analyst at Magic Fund, and Felix Ayoola, Designer at Fourth Canvas as the panelist. Regarding the topic, the panelist emphasized joining a community, showcasing and branding yourself around what you do, building a defined career path for yourself while in school and doing the things that you are excited about as the way for students to position themselves for exploit.

The second speaker at the conference, Jesudamilare Adesegun David, CEO of Ennovate Lab, spoke on ‘Nurturing Campus Entrepreneurship: From Idea to Profitable Action’ where he explained that although ‘unicorns don’t happen by chances’, ‘campuses should be hotbeds of innovation and enterprise’. Whilst he highlighted surfacing of generational insights, a culture of intellectual vigor, and intense exploratory conversations as key to building clusters of geniuses capable of building the next Africa unicorns, he expatiated that to convert ideas into profitable action, ideation, idea validation, revenue, and scale are key considerations.

At the billion dollar second panel session titled ‘The future of Africa’s Unicorn: Emerging industries and opportunities’, moderated by Eddiong Sebastian, Ecosystems Builder, and featuring Taiye Salami, Senior Vice President, Startup Program, Relinace Ecosystems, Kemisola Bolarinwa, Founder Nextwear Technologies, Yunus Ibrahim, Founders Factory Africa, and Nathaniel Luz, it was emphasized that proliferation of innovations that offer same solutions was why startups seem to be failing, and that the focus of budding startups in Africa should be sustainability and making profit.

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Key takeaway from the third panel session, titled ‘Evolution of Roles: From Contributor to Founder’, moderated by Blessing Emma, Blockchain Enginer and Web3 Developer Advocate, and featuring Oluwaleke Fakorede, CTO GoWagr, Samuel Iwiebo, Co-founder Huddle, Triplex, Kayode Elvis, Founder Mayhaven Hub, was the essence of self-awareness that allows you to hone your strengths, experimenting with different things until you find something that aligns with you, intentional self-discipline and hard work to overcome the Nigerian limitation. Giving final words to round off the session, Samuel said, ‘It is okay for you not to know, but not okay to spend the rest of your life not knowing’. While Elvis encouraged ‘that thing you are stressing about today, give it time, it will eventually work out’.

The conference added colour with a beautiful singing session by Muyiwa Adigun which emphasized being black and bold, able to break barriers and jump over heights before giving way for Oluwatimilehin Oluwapelumi, Head of Growth, Herconomy who spoke on ‘Speaking on innovative marketing strategies: creating buzz and traction for your venture on a budget as a young founder’ emphasizing getting the persona and the environment right as key to gain traction for venture.

The conference continued with Olatunbosun Olubode, Brand Strategist and Designer, spoke on ‘The Journey: Brilliant Student to Branding Genius’ where he emphasized that the biggest currency that actually exist is value—what can you offer and who can you offer it to and the need to stick to doing whatever you find happiness in it.

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Eventually, the last panel session for the conference, Campus Spark Panel, was moderated by Oluwatobi Omotayo, Programs and Community, Consonance, featured Clinton Oyelami, CEO Swyft, Sparkhub, Ogunranti Adebayo, Co-founder, Travella, David Olamide, Co-founder Dimension 11, and Akinropo Taiwo, CEO Heyfood. Speaking on the topic ‘Fueling Entrepreneurship: Unleashing your Entrepreneurial Spirit and Cultivating an Entrepreneurial Mindset when Navigating the Startup Landscape on Campus’, the panelist emphasized building projects to solve your pain such that there is enough passion to see it through to completion, and not getting bogged down with finding the right opportunity.

And at last, the day-long conference came to an end around 5:45pm with loud noises, and cheers from both the audience and volunteers for the event.

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When quizzed about his takeaway from today’s event, Temitope Akinsumade, a Computer Science and Engineer student, and a Web Developer, said the event has taught him to ‘find oneself’ , that is ‘You don’t need to build what Elon Musk has built. Face the problems you are passing through, and find solutions to them’.

Also, speaking with ACJOAU Correspondent, Tino, a graduate of Botany, a Web3 and Blockchain Developer, motioned that ‘networking, meeting the panelist, and listening to the sessions’ were his highlights for the event, with action points of ‘going back to his courses, joining and being active in the communities.

Favour Adeboye, a Mechanical Engineering finalist and data analyst, who came to the event to commune with industry professionals, network, got an internship opportunity thank the organizers because all her goals for the event were met. In her words, she said she learnt to ‘first focus on your own problem so as to pin-point the pain point of those you want to build value for as well as give you the passion to want to do more’.