Thanks to you; 2016 was awesome!

This post is about gratitude, accountability & the future of our work at Ventures Platform.

Published in

Kola Aina

5 min readDec 27, 2016

On June 3rd 2016 Ventures Platform Hub was officially opened by the Honourbale Minister of Communications, Barrister Adebayo Shittu with a mission to “become the most ideal community in Africa for nurturing disruptive and financially sustainable technology ventures that also have a social impact” — long for “becoming the most awesome startup launchpad.”

Almost immediately, the incubation team swung to action and opened the applications for the first cohort #VPHub1. Combing through, well-over 500 applications from across Africa was lots of fun :-). After 2 application stages including video pitches, final interviews were held in Lagos and Abuja.
7 startups were selected for Cohort 1:Jalo, Lizzie’s Creations, Mobile Forms Africa, PayConnect, ProTeach, Wesabi, DriversNG.
The program officially started on the 19th of September 2016. During the program we provided work & living space, invested in, coached, shared with, challenged and stressed the hell-out of the very awesome founders in Cohort1. We also learnt lots from them to make the program better.
We were very fortunate to have 20 amazing mentors and 5 advisors be an integral part of the program, sacrificing their scarce time to support the founders. We owe our mentors and advisors everything, they are the true MVPs!
As of today all our startups have shown healthy traction and are making good revenues. 2 of the 7 startups have gained international recognition, representing Nigeria in SLUSH Global Impact Accelerator in Finland (PayConnect), and at the African Entrepreneurship Awards in Morrocco (Wesabi). Together, our startups have now cumulatively reached 8,756 new customers and counting.

Between working with our 7 companies, we also found some time to do good in the ecosystem.

Working with SLUSH Global Impact Accelerator (Europe’s leading startup and technology event) was an awesome experience culminating in one of our incubated companies — Payconnect and Adaeze Sokan of Ventures Platform representing Nigeria in Helsinki Finland.
We hosted the Aso Villa Demo Day (AVDD) bootcamp. This was an interesting one!
An august-visitor, Michael Seibel — CEO of Y Combinator came calling while on his international tour and held office hours at VP for the startup community in Abuja and beyond. Michael was gracious enough to share from their experiences at YC.

We collaborated with the American Embassy in hosting a round table discussion with selected entrepreneurs during the visit of Macon Philips — Coordinator of the United States Department of State, Bureau of International Information. Macon is the former White House Director of New Media and worked on digital startegy for the Obama campaign.
Techpoint embarked on their Innovation tour engaging with the startup community in North Central Nigeria and made a stop at VPHub for a few days, complete with a super-cool tour bus.
VP Office Hours was opened for entrepreneurs to get free business advise from our pool of business experts; with over 60 startups getting help in 2016.
We began working with Microsoft to foster a vibrant developer community in Abuja and met regularly at the hub to share ideas, opportunities, engage and hangout in an informal setting, tagged: “Developers Hangout.”

We kick-started an Early stage/ Angel Investor Meet Up series in Abuja/North central Regional, and had the plesure of the presence of; Mr Adedotun Sulaiman, Mr Kyari Bukar, Lexi Novitske, Yemi Keri and Bankole Oloruntoba at the first edition as speakers.

Looking back now, one realizes that none of the baby steps we took this year would have been possible without the support of so many people like; Micheal Sibel, YCobminator, the SLUSH team, The United States Embassy, Macon Philips, Microsoft, The office of the Vice President of Nigeria — Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, The Honorable Minister of Communications Technology — Barrister Abdur-Raheem Adebayo Shittu, Starta, MEST, YALI, June, Longe Practice, SLA, OO Nwoye, Danjuma Enebi, Victor Ehikhamenor, Bunmi Okunowo, Afolabi Imoukhuede, Wole Olabanji, Techpoint, Techcabal, Techloy, all our partners, service providers, investors, co-workers, founders, mentors, advisors, friends, family, the EP Team, the VP Team and most importantly You!

Thank you for making 2016 awesome!

In closing I am happy to announce that we will be hosting our first Demo Day on the 27th of January 2017 in Abuja, Nigeria.

Spaces are limited, but if you would like to join us as an investor or to learn more about the startups to be featured, please drop us a line at demoday@venturesplatform.com.
Applications for cohort2 will also open in January 2017, so keep an eye out on our website.
If you haven’t visited Ventures Park yet, please do so in 2017, till then you can take a Virtual tour by clicking here.
Know how we can be better? Please drop us a line at feedback@venturesplatform.com.

May you take flight in 2017!