Recap: 7th Edition of BTNG
Show of hands ☝🏾
- Who knows what the current leading request for a lawyer is in Nigeria?
- Who knows why a lot of small businesses die too quickly?
- Who knows the disparity between online users and active online users in Nigeria?
The money is on attendees of our last event- BTNG7- to answer all three correctly. However, if you don’t fall into that category, you’re in luck as we shall answer those questions here shortly but first, some introduction...
The 7th edition of Building Things for NG London was once again a raving success and if you were not there physically, we hope you watched it live and if you did neither, well you missed out.
But not to worry, we jotted some highlights from the event to give you a recap of the eventful Friday.
If you are based in the UK and you are an entrepreneur, maker, tech enthusiast or passionate about building things for Nigeria but have not yet been to our events, then please register here to get updates on what’s next.
The Recap
Once again, it was a remarkable evening filled with lots of exceptional individuals doing incredible things in various verticals and it was good to see this concentration of talent in one room.
It was also good to see lots of repeat attendees at the event which gives us hope and encouragement that we are indeed brewing something.
For BTNG7 we had 3 speakers:
Babutunde, the founder of lawpadi.com, has been interested in providing innovative legal solutions to problems faced in Nigeria since 2010. He has a Master’s degree in Computer and Communications Law.
Oluwatobi is the MD and Senior Project Manager at Afriq Okin. Afriq Okin is a Tech and Fashion company. The company’s main creation is the AfriqOkin app which seeks to bring those interested in traditional African attire and connecting them to Tailors, Designers and Accessory makers on one mobile platform.
Nnamdi is the founder of Nigeria Property Centre, a leading property website in Nigeria that simplified the process of searching for property for rent and sale. Since established in 2011, Nnamdi has overseen the growth of the company which now has over 33,000 property listings on the website.
In chronological order, our first speaker Babatunde, talked to us about his startup journey, starting with a tech product right from university which aimed at augmenting the work-life of lawyers in established law firms. But he had to close it down due to the market size and rate of adoption.
However this then enabled him to start Lawpadi (a one stop destination for legal issues in Nigeria) as he saw the gap and need for Nigerians to get general and niche legal advice anytime anywhere.
Speaking of accessible legal advice Babatunde mentioned that he had seen a huge spike in requests for legal divorce advice and the general procedures for divorce in Nigeria. Which brings us to the first question, Babatunde has recently noticed the rate of divorce rising in Nigeria.
If you missed the presentation be sure to check out the latest feature- a chatbot that aims to answer your legal queries on Nigeria- on the lawpadi website.
Next, we had Oluwatobi talk to us about the patience to bring an idea to life.
Using her learnings as an entrepreneur, Oluwatobi presented the key steps to actually becoming an entrepreneur and one of the most important attributes you must exercise while running your business. She further touched on the culture of instant gratification, the mentality of ‘I must blow and I must blow now’ and why this is detrimental to a startup.
Which brings us to the answer of the second question, you must exercise incredible patience when building a startup and a way to think of it is by building a business you believe will last the next 10 years.
Oluwatobi is the MD of Afriq Okin an app that connects you with tailors and designers. Check it out on the app store.
Finally, we introduced Nnamdi who gave a presentation on Bootstrapping to Significance using his company Nigerian Property Centre as a case study.
An engaging presentation that laid out some beneficial tips on how Nigerian Property Centre became the defacto property search website with no outside investment. Nnamdi talked about the discipline on not focusing on vanity metrics but doubling down on what really matters, which he used as a segue to illustrate the differences between online users and active online users. This brings us to our third question... The running metric from a recent Vanguard article states that there are about 91 million users online, however, running a simple ad on Facebook shows the total reach is 18million for users in Nigeria. While this is not comprehensive enough to make conclusions, it illustrates the point of being careful with your metrics. You may infer that you have the potential to reach half the population in Nigeria but the pot is indeed a lot smaller than stated due to differences in how measurements are taken.
Nnamdi mentioned a lot of other things like automation, conversion and capability but vanity metrics really stuck with us.
If you have not used Nigerian Property Centre then please head over there and see why we are raving about it.
In conclusion, one of the fascinating things about all our 3 speakers is their tenacity and drive which propelled them to start (and also run) their businesses concurrently with a day job. An incredible feat to accomplish given time constraints but proven to be possible.
Special thank you to all that came and those that watched online. If you’re in London and would like to be part of our community please sign up here to get updates, follow us on Twitter and join our Facebook group.
More pictures on our Facebook group.
