The Lagoon Chronicles

Just like FMCG, banking needs distribution

For the past nine months, the plumbers of OnePipe have been hard at work putting…

12 months a startup — Here are lessons I’m taking into the future

And now, my watch has ended. Thank you Interswitch.

When I joined Interswitch (the first coming) in 2006, I was a guy with an objective. I felt “the internet” was coming to Nigeria and I wanted to be on the forefront of creating services that fit very well with the coming wave. I dare say…

This tech talent exodus from Nigeria, how we go do?

In the last 8 months or so, I think I may have heard more than a few rumours/reports of Nigerian developers, designers and other tech talent moving to Europe and the middle east. Now, it’s hitting closer to home. Few of my colleagues have…

What do you indulge in?

Recently at work, we were asking one another this question.

What do you find yourself splurging on that you know you should kindof feel guilty about?

Dear Product Manager, here’s how to be awesome.

Once in a while, I get the opportunity to speak with PMs around me. Here’s a deck I often talk around. Hopefully, you can extract some sense out of the half-formed thoughts.

Dear Product Manager, start from the experience, not the tech

Coming from an engineering background, I spent most of my first years as a bumbling PM championing the building of some core tech, then hope we can put an effective customer experience around it. Then I came across this…

Dear Product Manager, you can’t avoid doing rogue projects.

Sigh… Leading the team to do things you were explicitly told not to do.

If you’ve been a PM long enough, then you would have been at this crossroads before. You are absolutely convinced about…

Are you a pipe, a tap or the water corporation?

I think all businesses (and products) fit into one of these three buckets.

The water corporation.

A pipe.

A tap.

Dear Product Manager, a strong vision is the real core of the product

The paramount skill a PM needs is the ability to influence people. Talk people into jumping off a cliff on your behalf. To commit long hours to an idea or initiative that may or may not work. And when it…

Dear Product Manager, here’s a tip for getting buy-in for your product design proposal

Here’s a story from my life as an overzealous Product Manager.

Once upon a time, we had an idea for a product extension. This extension required for a…