Three years of hyper-growth and the Lessons Learned

It is currently 3 a.m. (WAT), and the silence is deafening, quite apart from the constant cricket sound. Waking up before the crack of dawn has been a habit I have had for a while, but I took it up a notch by setting my alarm for 3 a.m., a decision that has made me way more productive than I used to be.

As someone who entered the tech scene at a relatively young age, entering 2020 was soul-wrenching for me. My days consisted of scrolling through LinkedIn and feeling the biggest imposter syndrome every day. I saw teenagers doing incredible things, like starting businesses and working remotely for multinational corporations, and there I was, with nothing tangible to show for myself as a "software developer," and my biggest project at the time was a half-baked website for my mother's business.

Then the lockdown period was announced (a blessing in disguise). I remember skipping almost all the online classes I had during that time and averaging about 6–8 hours every day of intense coding as well as reading, but overall taking daily, incremental steps toward achieving my goal.

I think that was the only thing that kept me sane during lockdown.

Fresh out of lockdown, 2021 came by, and that year I was determined to make the best use of the year, which led me to create my vision board (I did not complete up to 50%). However, it did ensure I was accountable for myself and what I spent my time doing.

If I were to pick a highlight from the year, it would be the amount of knowledge I gained from reading books—non-fiction books, to be precise; heck, I even read the whitepapers of Bitcoin and Ethereum. My reading diversity was evident because I read everything from 500+ page programming books to business books and everything in between.

Subsequently, my pursuit of growth led me to join the Google Developers Student Club (GDSC), and looking back, that was one of the best decisions I have made for my tech career. Through the community, I met three like-minded developers, two companies founded together, one national award, and several tech competitions later. I am grateful to have met them.

We came together to build an MVP of a product named Startvest for the 2021 Google Developers Solutions Challenge. The idea was simple: a crowdfunding platform for small businesses and startups to get access to funds as an alternative to VC funding, very similar to the business model of getEquity. The project won us a hackathon at our university and got us to the finals of the FSI National Competition, but ultimately it could not scale to a company for reasons we could not control at the time.

I ended the year on a high note, feeling like I finally had found my niche, and I was ready to take on the world the next year.

2022 year rolled by, and my plan was to continue to build on the clarity and momentum I had gained from the previous year. I wrote down my vision board for the year and somewhere in the list, I wrote down "Build a portfolio website" with a major imposter syndrome.

Somewhere down the line during the first version of my portfolio website, and it was my favourite project I had created till date.

On a cold, windy Saturday night, I was having a discussion with a friend (now co-founder) about our education and, more specifically, how we wanted to shape our careers. We talked for hours on end about what we see ourselves doing in 10 years. The highlight from that very night was me telling him how I wanted to build a product that people will use before I graduate from university, I then remember him vividly saying that he found that there was an information gap in the SIWES program for students, at that point, none of us have had IT experience outside family, and we truly did not have an idea on how to go about positioning ourselves for internship openings, and that was the birth of Interna

I was so bullish on the idea because I had talked to other students who faced the same challenge. The next day, I drafted a business pitch document and sent it to my friend. It was from there on that I reached out to the three developers that I built Startvest with, told them about the idea, they were bullish on it, and we went on to build the foundations of the company.

Building is hard; building in Nigeria is 10x harder

A few months later, we built out the MVP of Interna and we were in the stage of idea validation and market surveying. There was a particular career event our school hosted, and in the course of visiting different stands for companies to pitch our idea, we stumbled upon a stand occupied by representatives from the Professor Ayodele Awojobi Design Competition (PAADC). We pitched our idea to them, and their immediate response was:

"You have a strong idea, your presentation skills are good, apply for this year's cohort and you have a string chances of winning."

That was exactly what we did; we won the competition. It was a tough few months leading up to the grand finale at Lagos State University. The different stages were tough, and the competition was intense. I remember how we practiced days on end in school and still went over the pitch multiple times until midnight the night before the grand finale.

Five intense stages, 255 different teams from across universities in Nigeria, and a grand finale later, we emerged as the winners of the 6.0 edition. When our names were announced as the winners, I was filled with a sense of pride and accomplishment. It was a feeling of validation that all our hard work had paid off. The win was not just about us as individuals but also a reflection of the budding tech scene at Nile University.

I spent the better half of 2023 completing my SIWES program at a private IT consulting firm in Abuja.

Prior to this internship, I had been building products that have been used by thousands of users, and then suddenly I was entrusted to work on a project for the Ministry of Water Resources that had an impact on more than 20 million Nigerians. Within a few weeks, I was facilitating training of the portal for stakeholders in the committee and, subsequently, for the Minister of Water Resources. It was during this program that I realised that the skills and knowledge I learned outside the university curriculum were what I was applying most in the field, and that was what set me apart from my peers working at the same company. This is not so subtle advice to anyone out there to learn skills relevant to the industry you want to break into, it makes you an attractive hire.

In retrospect, my highlight of the year would be the public launch of Interna after almost a year in private beta. The reception has been good so far, and our plan is to double down for next year.

Looking forward, I am optimistic about the new year, the lessons I am yet to learn, the journey, and most importantly, the people I am yet to connect with. My journey started with passion and curiosity, and along the way I have had to learn public speaking, professional writing, managing teams, and most importantly, grit, among others.

My mantra this coming year is that rent is due; go hard or go home.

See you all here, same time next year. Cheers 🥂