Y.A.M Entrepreneurial Spotlight: Tunde Kehinde

Interviewers: Bernadette Ikhena (BI), Tomiwa Igun (TI)

BI: Hello everyone, Tunde is on the line.

TI: Chairman!

TK: Hey Tomi! How are you man? How’s it going?

TI: Good man! Good. Long time

TK: Yeah I know! Sorry we couldn’t catch up when you were in Lagos

TI: Yeah I know you’re a busy man now. I was busy running around myself no problem.

TI: I’m mainly just listening just so you know. Bernadette is going to lead the conversation. I might chime in every now and then but thanks so much for agreeing to do this. I know you have a lot on your plate. I think your story is going to be wonderful for a lot of people. Many of our readers, I’m sure will resonate to it. This is actually the first one we’re doing as well so it’s something we’ve been thinking about and we have a lineup of people but just given your relationship with me and how we’ve been engaged from a YAM perspective, we thought you’ll be a good pioneer for this. So hopefully you share similar sentiments (laughs)

TK: Yes, great! No worries. Happy to help!

BI: And so just going off what Tomiwa said, thanks so much for taking some time to speak with YAM today. We recently started the member spotlight series to highlight the work that is being done by different YAM members and also provide inspiration and advice for members looking to perhaps follow a similar line of work on the continent and we’re kicking this off with a focus on entrepreneurship. So why don’t we start by learning more about your earlier days. Can you tell YAM a little bit about yourself? Where are you from? What are your earliest memories?

TK: Sure. Thanks for inviting me to speak. So I am from Lagos Nigeria. I grew up here until the end of high school and went to King’s College and from there I went to university in the US. I studied Finance at Howard University. And I kind of knew my entire life that I was going to be an entrepreneur because both of my parents have been entrepreneurs for as long as I can remember. My dad owns his own engineering firm. My mother has owned a variety of retail businesses since we were kids and so I was always inspired by the work that they do or they did and I knew that one day I wanted to launch a business; not just for the sake of it but with the idea of creating impact, empowering young people and just giving back to the society.

BI: What motivated you to be a part of Young African MBA’s? And how has the organization been valuable to you?

TK: I’ll be honest, I’m not an active participant in YAM but I will say I think that it’s a fantastic initiative because when I look back at my business school experience, what I take from it is [that] the network you build can be invaluable to you throughout your life in a variety of ways. For me, a number of my business school people…actually the funny thing is my first job out of business school came as a result of being part of the African Business Club at HBS. With my second venture or I guess third venture now, ACE. I think about 10–15% of the funding we’ve raised has come either directly from friends I met in business school or through their network so it’s been invaluable.

BI: Okay and that’s something we’re going to touch on as well later is the issue of financing

TI: And sorry Tunde let me just chime in there because I know YAM has also been helpful with your recruiting efforts at least to a certain extent so I just wanted to make sure I mention that (laughs)

TK: Yeah, yeah. Exactly. No I mean it’s a good thing. I mean look, it’s important that we are helping as many folks who are interested in Africa find great opportunities on the continent and particularly opportunities that people might not be readily aware of. So if you had asked me five years ago, would you have launched businesses in retail or in procurement or logistics? I would have said “no” because going into business school, I thought for sure I was going to go into Private Equity but the network really opened my mind to the opportunities out there so yeah to Tomi’s point, YAM has definitely been very helpful when it comes to recruiting.

BI: So let’s talk about ACE. You co-founded ACE in 2013. Can you describe the company to YAM in your own words?

TK: Sure. So we are a technology and fulfillment platform and what that means is our focus is on easing access to goods across Africa. How do we do that? We work with a variety of brands to help them go online, create awareness for their product and deliver those products to the end consumer. And it’s everything from nice-to-haves, so fashion items and electronics to must-haves so whether it’s healthcare items, bank products, FMCG products, etc. So we’ve delivered to close to 300,000 customers since we’ve launched. We have a team of about a hundred people across six cities and we’ve delivered to large-size consumer businesses, etc.

BI: Okay so in terms of thinking about the journey leading up to ACE, what motivated your decision to start ACE and what was the road leading up to that?

TK: So I co-founded Jumia which is a very large e-commerce business in Nigeria and my partner at ACE was our Chief Operating Officer for Africa. What we saw was there’s a huge demand to consume and to buy stuff whether it’s electronics, fashion etc. and more or less, there are enough suppliers in the country to supply those items to sell. The big challenge we had was how do we physically get these items from point A to point B. It was extremely difficult. We tried to solve it at Jumia by building our own in house delivery team; so literally buying cars, buying bikes and building an in house DHL and it got to the point where we had so many vehicles, we said, “look this is becoming a distraction from our core business” and that’s when the light bulb went off in my mind and Ercin’s mind (Ercin Eksin is the co-founder of ACE). Why not create a platform where across the entire continent, you can ship, you can track in real time and you can receive a payment at the point of delivery? And that’s how ACE was formed.

BI: And at the time you left Jumia, it was a company that was growing very quickly. How did you make that decision? Was that an easy decision to make; to leave and enter into a new venture?

TK: Um, it’s never easy of course to leave a venture that is doing well. But what I’ve come to appreciate is a certain string of synergy decisions. So the first thing I look at and encourage folks to look at is, “look, the market you’re going after, is it good and is it growing?” That’s one. The second thing is “do you have or do you think you can raise funding to really let you test your idea. And when I say test, [I mean] your initial idea will not be what ends up being or getting product market fit so you need enough funding to buy you enough time to actually really have a good work at it. And the third but most important thing is, “do you have the team that can really unlock the first two things I mentioned?” So unlock the market potential and also unlock funding because investors will only fund a team that they feel confident in. [In the case of ACE], so myself and my experience from Jumia, Ercin’s high logistics experience across 20 different countries mostly emerging markets, our tech team is really world class — so the folks who worked with us at Jumia and they joined us in our new venture. So these are the guys that built the back end for Jumia and Hellofood and Kaymu. And so those three things aligned and we said look,we’ll go for it; everyone knows trade is going to become a bigger and bigger part of the Africa growth story and getting items across the continent is critical and there is no real independent last mile provider doing it in a world class way. So these pretty much helped make the decision; big market, we were able to raise funding very early on, and most importantly, a really fantastic team.

BI: So going back to talking about Jumia, one thing a lot of entrepreneurs are concerned about is the financing aspect of starting a venture. How did you get seed financing to start and grow Jumia?

TK: So I’ll say a couple things. I’ll say one is it’s important to always do good work because what you’ll find is a lot of the folks that will come into your first round which will most likely be the family and friends round will be folks you’ve worked with in the past or just your friends who want to support you and if they know like look I’ve worked with Tomiwa or Bernadette and he or she does fantastic work, they won’t even look at your pitch book, they’ll just give you the money so that’s the first thing; always do good work. Now the second thing I will say is it’s extremely important to have a really really really strong team because one thing I’ve realized is people are looking to put money into Africa. The challenge they have is “look, who are the entrepreneurs I can back that can actually scale a business here?” And there’s been so much research that shows I think it’s less than 5,000 companies who have more than $50mn in revenue right? So it’s a small small subset of entrepreneurs who are able to scale a business and you need to build a team that you feel is truly world class. The mistake a lot of people make is [they think] you know I have a friend, we have an idea and so you both go ahead and launch a business. I made that same mistake myself because my very first venture, Bandeka, was with my very good friend, Yaw and both of us were business guys trying to build a tech business and we had no real engineering or tech background so from day one, we were more or less set up not to do well and Yaw is my really good friend and he supported me with ACE. So the second thing I’ll say is the team will help you get the financing. And what you find is when you start interacting with the market and talking to Venture Capital firms who are looking to invest, once they see your team, not only will they put money in you, they will also refer their friends in their VC community who will also back you.

BI: So you have talked about the vitality of building a good team. How do you approach growing a team? So when we initially started, you mentioned having classmates from school. In terms of building a much larger scale team, what were the most important criteria you had in mind in searching for people to get on board with both ACE and Jumia?

TK: Sure. I think you have to have a clear understanding of what it will take [for] your company to succeed. So for us what was very clear with ACE from the very beginning was [that] technology is extremely important because we decided to build our own from scratch delivery portal and so you need a world class team that understands how to build that kind of portal and to build it with a logistics mindset. That’s the first thing. The second thing is operations clearly is important right? So it’s easy for any smart person to ship 20 packages a day but if you’re going to ship 2000, you most likely need someone who’s done it before and that’s where Ercin comes in. So literally shipping thousands of packages a day [and] designing our operational process to achieve that and scale. Then the third thing is look, within the country, can you quickly get the businesses to sign up to your service? This is where I come in. My experience at Jumia was building the supplier network. So I built the initial supplier base of close to 500 suppliers. So that’s how I think about building your team; what do I need? And then who are the folks that can help me to get there? One thing you will find is, I encourage folks before you launch a business to really try and work for a company that is within that same industry because it will do two things for you; It will give you a lot of insight into what it takes to succeed with your idea and you will learn on someone else’s dime. The second thing is it will give you those relationships that you now need to build your team because myself and Ercin worked together for close to a year before we launched ACE (at Jumia). So beyond just the technical skill standpoint, from a personal standpoint, you determine that, “look, I can work with this person. I’ve seen his good side, I’ve seen his bad side and I’m happy to work with him.” Same thing with our tech team, we had worked together for almost 2 years when they joined us at ACE.

BI: True and talking about the personal standpoint as well, how do you think about corporate culture? So with a young company that was just starting, did you have a certain type of culture you wanted to have in place and how did you think about establishing that culture?

TK: So I’ll be honest, it took us maybe a year to get our culture right and I will say it’s super important to the success of any business. So now we’re very clear on the kind of people that will help us do well. So we think of two stages so every single person we hire tends to meet certain criteria. One is [that] they’re extremely intelligent, very very hard working and very ambitious. So they want to do something big and they’re willing to take the big portfolio and make amazing things happen. What I’ve now found is (that gets you in the door) but for you to succeed, you need two more things; one is no complacency — so you’re literally every single day focused on product. So you’re like look I did well yesterday, I did 5% or 10% but I want to do even more today. Whether it’s 1% or 0.1%, whatever it is. The second is you’re very thoughtful about your work. So you’re literally trying to think to yourself, “look, have I covered all the basis?” Which is extremely difficult right? Because it involves thinking of your immediate team, it involves thinking of stakeholders that may be affected by your decisions, it involves thinking of potentially investors, and it’s very rare to have that skillset. But we think we have that now on our team and it’s a truly exceptional team.

BI: Okay, thanks for sharing that. So looking at ACE again, starting a business like ACE probably comes with a number of challenges from infrastructure to sort of a less than par addressing system. What challenges do you currently face that are unique to starting a business in the logistics industry in Nigeria and how do you approach localizing your services to work around these challenges?

TK: Hmm. It’s a great question. So there are the obvious challenges. One addressing is very poor so it’s just tough to find a location which makes it very difficult for our line of work. The second thing is the physical infrastructure too is very difficult…poor roads. It’s actually cheaper in some cases to fly out and across the country than to go by road. But the biggest challenge is twofold; one is actually just to find the customer because even if you find the location, they might not be there. Particularly because we do a lot of work with retailers and most of the goods are pay on delivery, I have to find you to get you to pay for the item so just getting to your address is not enough. So it involves really trying to figure out how to prepare the customer to receive the package. So being very deliberate and alerting the customer as each delivery status changes. So, “Hi Bernadette, your package has been shipped,” “Hi it’s in transit to you. Please make sure you have this much cash or you have your debit card available.” But the biggest challenge beyond just finding a customer, is talent. And I know it sounds like a cliché but every entrepreneur will tell you [that] talent is the biggest thing because you can have the fanciest technology, you can have the fanciest processes, [but] there are so many things that will go wrong in a startup, a little bit of emergencies [and] you need fantastic talent that thrives in a startup environment. So they know how to design a process and how to implement a process and they have those attributes I mentioned earlier: extremely thoughtful, no complacency, very hardworking and happy to take the big portfolio. So there are the systematic issues around the company but for us, we just see that as a given. Everybody has those issues. The big thing that will help us win is do we have the people that can help us execute.

BI: True. So finding the customer, getting them to pay for the product and also building the talent?

TK: Yes, exactly.

BI: Okay so moving on a little bit, there is a common adage that dealing with failure often precedes success and much has been said about the difficulty of starting and growing your own company. When you think about your entrepreneurship journey, so from your earlier ventures to ACE, what was your breaking point? Was there a time when perhaps you made a significant mistake or felt like you were failing and how did you move forward?

TK: I’m thinking through the question. So my belief is you learn…of course you learn from failure. Our first venture, Bandeka didn’t do great. We learned a lot, we got some traction but we didn’t reach the scale we wanted to reach, right? So I got an appreciation of the power of the right team, the power of funding. But if I reflect on when I’ve grown the most, it’s been having the best people around me. And what I mean by that is…for instance our CTO more or less, used to run a 100-person developer team in Portugal so Rocket Internet and this guy, what he knows about building any kind of ecommerce or technology platform, I can’t think of anybody else in the world that will know like him. He’s built different kinds of platforms [and] scaled them, for emerging markets and I learn from him every single day. My partner, Ercin [has experience in] fulfillment across 20 different countries; from delivering meals to delivering fashion, to delivering electronics. What he knows about operations it’s a bit more stuff than I’ll know right? So I think you learn from failure of course but I think you learn more by having the best people around you who are on a consistent basis challenging you to think through problems [and] get better input. So for your readers, I’d say “look do not shortchange yourself on getting the best of the best close to you. And people will come and join you in your entrepreneurship journey if they believe that you’re going after a big business that is going to impact people’s lives and where they will have a chance to create a big company. They will join you. And they will join you more if you have the team around you that also makes them better. So I’ll focus on that more.

TI: I was just going to chime in there because I think that’s a very good point that you mentioned but I think maybe another angle to explore is what advice you would have for people in terms of how they manage their failures. So you know, you mentioned Bandeka and how maybe it wasn’t a failure but you know, by your standards and your expectations, let’s assume it was. What advice do you have for people that are either currently failing at a business venture or have failed recently, in terms of how they manage that failure and going forward in either their careers or their entrepreneurship journey.

TK: So two things that come to mind is just as much as you can, keep moving forward and what I mean by that is I didn’t really have time to wait and…I don’t know, I don’t want to use the word “wallow.” but really say look this thing failed, it’s a disaster because literally about a month or rather maybe 2 or 3 weeks after we decided to more or less cut back on Bandeka, I jumped into Jumia. I met Raphael and we had a discussion about what he was doing in Nigeria and I was in the country within two weeks helping him build our platform. Same thing with ACE. After I decided to leave Jumia, a month later, I jumped into ACE to start ACE. So the first thing I’ll say to folks is as much as you possibly can, move forward. And then the second thing I’ll say is you learn as an entrepreneur [that] your highs are never as high but you should appreciate them and your lows are never really as low so you should try not to get too downbeat. It’s never as bad as you think it is. And you will soon learn once you launch your company, you’ll have a quote-on-quote disaster every week. You’ll lose a big customer or something bad will happen to your backend or your one star employee you thought you couldn’t live without will resign but you quickly learn [that] things will be okay. And your team is looking at you for leadership so you have to most especially be as calm as possible and come back to them with a sound plan. A very practical thing you can do, which I advise every single person to do is get a co-founder, so a co-CEO on your same level because it’s a very lonely journey at that level because your investors, your employees, the press, your customers, they don’t want to see you in a moment of weakness. Because if you’re looking downbeat and you’re not looking as fresh as you possibly can, they begin to question “look, should I still work for this company?” or “should I invest more in this company?” or “should I be a customer to this company?” And what a cofounder does is, when you’re having your lowest of low days, typically your co-founder is not having a bad day and they tell you, “look, it’s going to be okay. Don’t worry. We’re going to pull through this.” And that’s a very practical thing I’d advise everyone to do particularly if you’re in an emerging market where you’re building an ecosystem. It goes beyond…if you’re in the States, certain things work right? You know if you jump on the train in the morning, you will get to your location. You know you have your power when you get home. But in an emerging market, every single thing can go wrong and [it can] feel like things are out of control. But if you have that one person you trust completely who you can share your concerns [with] without a filter, it goes a long way.

BI: That’s true. Thank you very much for sharing, Tunde. That’s very insightful especially with regards to sort of who you can share those down days with and the value of a cofounder in the entire process. So in terms of dealing with suppliers, consumers and investors, you mentioned earlier that these are different parties [whose expectations] you have to manage and manage your persona in front of. In terms of the actual dealings with them, what practical and strategic decisions do you think have contributed to your success in starting and growing companies in Africa.

TK: I think a couple things are important. I think the very first thing you should focus on is really try and understand the benefit of your product and what product you want to offer to the customer and who your customer is. I say that because when you’re new, you’re so desperate to get any kind of customer [that] you’ll bend to their needs. They say “look, discount this thing by 20%, I’m a big customer. I’ll give you volume” and because you want them so badly, you do that. But what I’ve found is the customer who appreciates your product will pay full price for it. And it leads to my second point that pricing is extremely important of course for your customer but overall for your entire business because you’ll work very hard and if you make a mistake with your pricing, an entire year of work could be worth nothing because when you step back and look at your unit economics or your overall cost…It could be very simple to other business students, if your revenue doesn’t cover your cost, you’re in big trouble. So you need to really have a core appreciation…what is my product? how much does it cost me to actually offer this product? and how much am I willing to price it to the customer? and who is the right customer for me? When you decide these things, there’ll be some business that you’re willing to say “look, I am not willing to do this for you” and you’ll walk away from that customer and that’s okay. So that’s one thing; the pricing and then product. The second thing I would encourage is: always think about “look, is this thing I’m offering a win-win for myself and for the customer?” Because that’s what will make your business with that customer sustainable assuming they’re the right customer. Because what I’ve found is, the right person might say “look you know what, I’m going to pay full price.” But if you haven’t put yourself in their shoes and said “look, if they pay what they’re paying for my product, over the course of the year will they make money?” And so when we go into dealings with our customers (and we work with banks, large retailers), we typically show them a P and L for them not for us, for them. Like look, I’ve done a model for you. If you use my product the way you plan to use it, here’s how much you’re going to make. Please see my assumptions, tell me if I’m right or wrong. And I’ve found that whenever we’ve done that, it always ends up being a long long standing relationship because you show them [that] you put deep thought into working with them, typically beyond what a normal vendor would do. You’re trying to be a partner. So the first step is make sure that they’re the right customer, price appropriately, then work with them to make it a win-win. And regardless of that, you will still make mistakes, you will still lose customers. I mean every entrepreneur I know here has lost a big customer and you thought, “look, I lost this person my company is going to die.” But it won’t die. You’ll persevere, you’ll move but always make sure you have your finger on the pulse of the market. If you see structural changes in your market, you need to move. An example for us is we saw very quickly that a number of retailers in Nigeria were looking to launch their own logistics arms which is a danger for us because if they do that, our business plan disappears almost overnight and so we moved up the value chain and started offering more services whether it’s inbound technology or warehousing or customer service to make us a more value-add partner to the retailer or to the bank or to the FMCG company.

BI: So you briefly mentioned an MBA in describing this. Would you say your MBA has been useful on your entrepreneurship journey and if so how?

TK: It’s been extremely useful actually but it’s interesting. I think…I’m not sure you will learn… You will learn some interesting stuff. You’ll do some interesting case studies but not for that reason. The two reasons that come to mind…I’ll give a few reasons. One is [that] it really opened my mind up to the world of opportunities in Business. Not everything is Private Equity, not everything is Investment Banking. There are multiple places you can add value. That’s the first thing. The second thing is it gives you a network that is truly valuable and I’ve used my MBA network to raise financing, to hire people, to get references and customers, to get new customers and that’s where you get a real bang for your buck when you’re in the business world because I think there is…my biggest customer now is the CEO of a large bank whose an alumnus of HBS. As I mentioned, 15% of our funding came from a great classmate of mine who’s not Nigerian but grew up in Nigeria and introduced me to a network of folks who invested in the business so I’d encourage your readers to really try and maximize meeting as many folks who have interests in whatever your interest is while you’re on campus. What I mean by that is you can’t meet every single person and be best friends with every single person but if you’re very clear [that] within the next 5 to 10 years, I am going to be on the African continent or I’m going to be focused on Retail or I’m going to be focused on Technology, be as close to those people as possible. Join the Africa club, join the Tech club, become as close to those folks as possible because those relationships will stand you in good stead throughout your business career.

BI: That’s true. Thank you for sharing that. And when you reflect on your entire entrepreneurship journey, what would you say has been the most rewarding part?

TK: Umm it’s a few things. One is it’s extremely cool to see young people making impact. So between Jumia and ACE, I think directly, we’ve hired close to 2,000 people and indirectly of course there’s been another few thousand jobs that have been created. And in both businesses, the average age must have been under 25 [or] 26 max. And it’s amazing to see with young hungry intelligent people, if you give them a big portfolio, push them, guide them, the things that they can do is truly amazing. So that has been very cool right? Particularly if you think about how they’re struggling with high unemployment across the continent so that has been very very good to see. I think the second thing that has been really interesting is the impact that we’re having overall on our customers’ businesses. So we are helping people to scale across the country, reach new markets, grow their business and it’s directly impacting the economy. Which when I applied to business school is what I said, “I want to come back and impact the continent positively.” I thought it was going to be through Private Equity or Banking so the path to that impact has changed but I’m still achieving my goal and that has been the most rewarding part. It’s frustrating, it’s tiring, it’s exhausting and you make a ton of sacrifices, but it’s worth it. It’s worth it.

BI: True. We’ve talked a lot and you’ve given a lot of advice to our readers and to entrepreneurs but if you could reiterate or highlight one piece of advice to other entrepreneurs that are looking to start and grow a business in Africa. Perhaps the most significant lesson you believe you’ve learned along the way, what would it be?

TK: I guess two fold; one is hire the absolute best team you can hire. It will carry you so far if you really try and over compensate on that. And the second thing is try and have fun along the way. It’s going to be a tiring journey. It’s going to be exhausting to still make time for your family, for your friends [and] workers. And think always for the long term.

BI: True. I’m sure they [our readers] would appreciate that. Also, what matters most to you?

TK: Hmm, great question again. So for me, I’m very focused on my family. It’s important to me that whatever I do is a channel to make their lives better so that comes first in every single thing I do. I’m very passionate about my team. I think that we have a really really fantastic team that’s really doing amazing things [and] working very hard, so that’s the second thing. And then the third is really the country. I mean I’m back home because I want to make an impact and I want to be a positive influence on this generation and beyond and we’re trying to do that through business. So those are the three things.

BI: Okay. So looking to round up the interview, do you have a favorite African leader? So it doesn’t have to be a business or political leader but someone whose leadership style you admire.

TK: Umm I like Babatunde Fashola a lot. You know, the ex-governor of Lagos. I think not only the impact of the work he’s done in Lagos state which has been fantastic but I think it’s also his approach and his desire for excellence consistently. It’s really inspiring. Of course even beyond Africa, I take much inspiration from a number of folks that we all know about. Whether it’s Elon musk and the work he’s doing with Tesla and SpaceX, or Jeff Bezos at Amazon. They inspire me greatly. But I also gain as much inspiration from a lot of local entrepreneurs that don’t make it into the press because you always year negative headlines about Africa. But they’re a number of people who build very large businesses here; who are training a fantastic team, who are making great impact that no one knows about and when you hear what they’ve been through; whether it’s with dictatorships or markets with crazy interest rates or cost to bring goods to the country, it’s amazing what they’ve been able to achieve. So they also inspire me.

TI: Sorry can you give some examples of those local entrepreneurs?

BI: [laughs] that was going to be my next question

TK: I think there are a couple folks. I mean Hakeem Belo-Osagie is fantastic. I think,…of course he’s done a good job. There’s a guy called Layi Gobir who runs Smart Mark which is a very large retail business here in Nigeria. I think he’s very fantastic as well.

TI: Okay

TK: So that’s a few. Those two jump out

BI: Alright. So finally Tunde, what’s the most memorable book you have read? Whether it’s a business book or something in the fiction genre. What’s the most memorable book you have read?

TK: Hmm there are a couple. So for general world affairs, there’s a book on Lee Kuan Yew, so the ex-ruler of Singapore and he had a book on how he sees the world from the rise of China, India’s place in the world, the USA’s place in the world. I’d advocate anybody to pick up that book. I forget the title but it’s a really really really amazing book and a very balanced view on the different world powers and how their roles will change over the next century. When it comes to business….

BI: What’s the name of the author again?

TI: It’s Lee Kuan Yew

TK: Yeah Lee Kuan Yew, exactly. It’s on him. I’m not sure what the author’s name is but if I find it, I’ll email it to you guys once I’m done. On business, I think “The Everything Story” is quite good so the book on the Amazon story. So how Jeff Bezos scaled that business. It’s a fantastic testament to being tenacious, being persistent and just having a very big vision. I think that’s very important. Those two stand out to me.

The book Tunde mentioned is “Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master’s Insights on China, the United States, and the World” by Graham Allison.

BI: Alright, thank you very much Tunde for sharing your experiences and advice with our readers and prospective entrepreneurs as well.

TK: Sure. And last book actually, this one is a must-read for all your investment entrepreneurs “The Hard Thing about Hard Things” by Horowitz I forget his first name but it’s a very big VC in Silicon Valley. He gives a really really great true picture on what it takes to launch a business, scale a business and deal with failure.

The book referenced here is “The Hard Thing about Hard Things” by Ben Horowitz.

BI: Okay, we will definitely include that in the recommendations as well. Alright, thank you very much Tunde! I’m sure our readers will find the information you have shared very valuable so thanks for taking some time out to speak with YAM today.

TK: Of course! Thanks so much.