How we accelerated the growth of the creative technology ecosystem in Nigeria
The Beginning
You see senpai is a company that started when I was still in college and was started mainly because of my passion to inspire, connect and empower creative people all over Nigeria and Africa. I had no idea how I would go about that, but I was sure that building senpai was all I wanted to do. You see as a creative person myself, I was fully aware of the struggles people different and expressive in a country like Nigeria, which is mainly conservative and highly cultural, face on a daily basis. I faced them myself, and I made the decision to drop out of school, move the Lagos and focus on building Senpai full-time.
Entering the Ecosystem
On moving the Lagos, there was a very young design community in fact, most of the designers could be fit into a room. There was one major design meetup at the time call usable which held at cchub and this was what I came to meet. The design ecosystem was still without much structure and was mostly not geared towards helping new people join the ecosystem but rather was designed to tooth the horns of already established designers in the ecosystem.
I had a burning passion to expand the community at a rapid pace and all the decisions I made revolved around expanding the community. It was clear to me that in other to grow the community a lot to training had to take place, I wasn't sure how I would go about the training as I lacked any of the resources needed to train any amount of people, I was literally homeless at this time but I didn't let that stop me. While still at cchub I used the little space I had access too to train people on a 1 on 1 basis and this was how it all started.
Training the Youths
As much as the fact I could train a handful of people in my year in cchub, this wasn't enough for me as I wanted to train hundreds if not thousands of people at a go. I can't overemphasize my burning passion for empowering creative people. So I had to try other alternatives, So I did. Late 2017 I created a slack group for the community and begun our first pilot training program on slack with 10 members from the community. This was my first attempt at training online as it was the only logical alternative because I didn't have access to any physical space. This was a huge learning experience for me because I now knew that I was indeed possible to train online ( though difficult ).
2018 came by and I moved to a new space where I had a little more space so I decided to try physical training. ( see picture above ). I was training people in user experience design and it was paid. Was able to train 6 people over the course of 2 months. The problem was although I made more money doing what I love, I wasn't reaching enough people. Also, there was a gap in skill as most people were not comfortable enough with the fundamentals of design so learning User experience was a bit more challenging also, after training those 6 people, I was asked to leave the new space I was using. This was the tipping point for me and I decided I would be best if I made the training completely online.
Design 101
It's now a full year after the first test training on slack, I knew I didn't want to use slack again I also knew I couldn't spend much time or resources building a training website. So with my little knowledge of web development which I picked up in 2018 I built a simple landing page for a design course and used airtable for the backend and Whatsapp instead of slack for the communication, Figma also happened to just gain popularity and was a fully online tool as well (which made sharing and commenting on students work easier). I launched a free design course late 2018 which was completely online and over 250 people enrolled for the course. YESSS!! This was a magical moment for me because, for the first time, I didn't feel handicapped for not having a physical space. I could still reach even more people than I thought by using the internet. The course was a huge success and we were able to graduate about 80 from the 250.
The course was such a huge success that I decided to run another set after the first, but this time full paid at N5000, This price was based on a survey we took earlier and to my surprise, 20 people paid and enrolled for it. But we were back to the first problem which is reach and scale of training. Money has never been my driver but instead, impact. Though we need money for sustainable impact, we also need the scale more in the long term.
This year we have are currently trying a hybrid model where the option to pay of enroll for free is available to the students. If you pay you get a certificate of completion and personal feedback and if you enroll for free you just get the recourses and general feedback. Though the free was capped at 100 students. This didn't increase the number of people to pay, as over 100 enrolled for the free ( before It was capped ) whereas 12 paid.
Moving forward
As the year progresses we plan to impact more creatives with the skill needed to begin their journey in the creative technology ecosystem. I never considered Senpai to be a hub but it seems what we are doing is what most hubs were designed to do. The difference is unlike most hubs we are actually intuned with our community and would continue to bring more value to the creative technology ecosystem.
The plan to do that is by teaching more and trying to create opportunities that allow for sharing and collaboration within the community
We are building a talent accelerator and incubator of creative people interested in technology. Some people may call us a hub, some may not. That is truly irrelevant to me. Our vision is to build a global community of creative people who are working together to design a better future for humanity and we plan to achieve that vision.
If you love our vision and would love to partner with us and help make that a reality. send an email to hello@thinksenpai.com. We are open to growth and disruption at all times.
