Connecting The Dots Backwards
It all started with a tweet I saw posted by Dotun Olowoporoku, (Founder, Starta and Associate Investment Director, Novastar Ventures), on the 17th of July, 2017. The rest, they say, is history.
First, I will share some background prior to me seeing the tweet and secondly, a bit of the history that followed.
I started my first and only startup called ChowHub, an online food discovery and ordering service, in 2015 with my close friends — Dara and Abbey. Prior to that, I had worked in the public sector as a quantity surveyor and the private sector as a PPP project analyst.
I first became aware of the tech and startup world in the second half of 2013 and I quickly fell in love with it. At the time, I was always eager to check TechCabal’s website every day just to know what the latest news was. Over the next couple of months, I exposed myself not only to local information but also international news, essays, and articles from TechCrunch, YC, 500 startups etc. It wasn’t long before I felt that I wanted to build something that will solve a problem.
In mid-2014, while reading through loads of tech blogs, I came across an article about DoorDash and it was really fascinating. After some deep dive, I discovered other companies like GrubHub, Seamless, Just Eat, Deliveroo etc. I immediately thought this was service worth having in Abuja, Nigeria. I had no practical experience of starting a startup or even knew what the online food delivery market was like. I just felt like a lot of people, like myself, have at one time or the other wanted food delivered to them at their homes or offices without having to go to a restaurant.
So I reached out to my very close friend, Dara, who at the time was in Lagos, Nigeria, and told him about the idea. I somehow convinced him to move to Abuja so we could build this together. He eventually joined me in January 2015 and we started thinking through what the product would look like. A few weeks later Abbey, another close friend of mine, joined us and in June 2015, I resigned from my job and focused on ChowHub full time.
As first-time founders, we learned a great deal. None of us had technical skills so we outsourced our product development. This turned out to be one of the costliest mistakes we made. It was a tough journey with many low points and a few highlights here and there. Through all of this, I never lost faith. In my mind, I always knew all this was just a learning curve for me and my co-founders.
In March 2016, Dara moved back to Lagos for personal reasons but was still working fully on ChowHub. In addition to being part of the first 1000 beneficiaries of the Tony Elumelu Foundation $5000 grant in 2015, we got selected for the SpeedUpAfrica bootcamp in Ghana alongside companies like Printivo, Hotels.ng etc. and also got selected for the 2016 GITEX event in Dubai alongside companies like DIYLaw, GoMyWay etc. All these experiences were very valuable to us and kept us going as a team.
Since we were not paying ourselves any salaries it was wise to have side hustles that paid the bills. I and Abbey got quantity surveying gigs while Dara worked briefly with Dotun and Yele at Starta for a few months before he left the country to pursue a Masters degree. I met Dotun and Yele for the first time at a network event Starta hosted in Abuja called Silicon DrinkUP in November 2016.
It gets interesting
By mid-2017, ChowHub was seriously struggling and we decided to stop working on it. However, we wanted it to die a slow death because there were folks who still discovered places to eat and hang out on our website. At this point, I wasn’t sure what my next step would be. The only thing I was sure of was that I wanted to remain and be a part of the growing tech ecosystem. I continued reading about the Nigerian startup ecosystem as well as getting more knowledge about what obtains in other parts of the world like Silicon Valley and China. I followed closely, folks like Victor Asemota, Paul G, Sim Shagaya, Justin Khan, Mark Essien, Jason Njoku, Mark Suster, and a few others. These folks shared a lot about how startups are run and the art of raising money from investors.
On the 17th of July 2017, I saw the tweet I mentioned earlier. Literally, my reaction was “What??? Isn’t this the same Yele from Starta? Wow!!! I need to reach out to him”. I immediately called Dara — who had previously worked with Yele at Starta — to inform him about Yele’s new gig, Microtraction. I told him we needed to reach out to him as this was an opportunity for us to learn a lot about angel investing in Nigeria and Africa. At this point, we just wanted to be involved and help out anyhow we could. We didn’t even mind if we were paid or not as long as we were part of what he was doing.
We thought of how we will structure the email and what the content will look like. We just wanted to get it right. Dara eventually sent an email a few hours after I saw that tweet. All this time, Yele had not publicly announced Microtraction.
Yele replied the following day, appreciating and thanking Dara for the kind words. I was not satisfied with that, I wanted more. So I sent him an email too and that night, he said we should both send our CVs. He shared Micrtraction’s OKRs at the time and asked for our thoughts on how we will achieve the results of the objectives we are most interested in. After completing that task, I guess we impressed him enough and he asked us to join him as one of the early employees at Microtraction on August 10, 2017. I worked from Abuja, Dara worked from Dublin, while Yele worked from Lagos. Dara eventually joined a fintech startup in Dublin a few months later.
Looking back, I am happy we seized the opportunity to work with Yele very early on and most grateful that he took a chance on us to be part of Microtraction. For me, the past 18 months have been for growth and learning. Working closely with Yele and learning a whole lot about angel investing in emerging markets has been one of the best experiences of my life. It hasn’t been easy but it has been worth it. I have also been privileged to work with some of the best founders and companies that we have invested in.
It is said that the journey of a thousand miles begins with a step, if we had not taken the action of sending that email, all of this might not have happened.
Microtraction’s thesis is simple — we believe that investing and backing entrepreneurs who leverage technology, capital, and innovation to try and solve some of the largest problems on the continent will accelerate Africa’s transition to a sustainable and developed economy. I will definitely continue with leading investments and supporting our portfolio companies, but in addition to that, I will be spending some time helping to build a vibrant community and network of extraordinary individuals alongside key stakeholders within the Nigerian and broadly, African ecosystem.
I believe that in order to achieve this, we must identify, early on, these exceptional founders that are passionate about solving everyday problems we face in Africa. Running a startup is tough and these founders need every support they can get, not just with capital, but also with a network and community that is driven to help them as they embark on this journey. In the coming weeks, I will be sharing with the tech community some of the things we have been working.
I am excited about this new phase and also for the future of Microtraction.
I want to say thank you to everyone who has directly or indirectly helped me on this journey. A very big thank you to Yele for being instrumental to my growth as an angel investor and most importantly for being a partner, my friend, and buddy.
I will keep learning and most importantly, I will keep helping!
As ever,
Dayo
You can read the official announcement from Microtraction here
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