Startup Lessons: 3 Ways Nairaland Got So Big!

Nairaland has been around for a long time.. So have so many other early Nigerian websites, but Nairaland has outlived them to become successful.

Here are 3 (THREE) reasons I think Nairaland lived and grew successful over the years.

1. FIRST MOVER ADVANTAGE

Nairaland started around 2001... A year or even 2 before I got my first web presence. Nairaland is one of the earliest web properties in Nigeria.

There are early Nigerian sites that haven't changed a bit since they first started and they have successfully made themselves forgotten.. look at Motherland Nigeria. I am not saying MotherlandNigeria.com is a failure. As a matter of fact, it was a pioneering and great site back in the day. But I don't think it has changed in it's 11 years of existence. I'm just saying....

I'm saying, Nairaland utilized it's early advantage and grew very large over time (since 2001). This huge over time growth means lots of posts on the forum, many threads, many topics, many users (readers and posters) and many pages of the forum indexed in many search engines overtime for a wide variety of search keywords/keyphrases and ranked high in search results due to long articles (threads), freshness of content and external links.

As a result of above, Nairaland gets a lot of traffic from search engines alone and new user are brought to the site, many end up registering to participate in the discussion..

It all goes back to the first mover advantage... now Half a million registered users.

2. VIRAL & WORD OR MOUTH.

People talk about Nairaland a lot, in real life, they talk about stories they have read on Nairaland and discussions or polls they have participated in to their friends and so on, thereby spreading news of Nairaland through word of mouth...

Viral, this happens when people forward or share links to Nairaland threads/pages on other sites, through email, on facebook or as tweets.. This causes a wave of commenting, sharing, resharing and retweeting. The story on Nairaland and the user participation make it go viraland grow bigger with fresh users discovering the site all the time.

3. USER ENGAGEMENT

The gists, the gossip and discussions make Nairaland engaging. A poll I once came across on Nairaland comparing the site and Facebook in user engagement, Nairaland beat Facebook hands down in Nairalanders perspective.


So there you have it... The 3 (THREE) secrets that made Nairaland once the most trafficked Nigerian website. You can still use the same secrets right now and build a 500000 user or even million user online empire in Nigeria.

Study these 3 points well and build them into your web service or application...

Venture Capital Funds for Nigerian Startups

I have written earlier on this blog about Venture Capital funding in Nigeria here - 4 reason why Nigerian startups aren't funded. As the title indicates, it wasn't a nice article to write because it spots failures of Nigerian Entrepreneurs, Investors and the country's infrastructure in general.

The truth is, there are some Venture Capital firms in Nigeria, though they hardly focus on Internet or technology startups. They are mostly into telecom, oil industry and services. I still think they are worth giving a short if you are confident with what you are building and the market size is HUGE! Yeah, you need a huge market for the kind of returns these VCs are looking for.

So if you are focusing your startup on Nigeria alone, then I am not sure if you should approach these Venture Capitalist because they make investments of around $10 million which is too large for a small market focus.

Anyway... Here is a list of some some Venture Capital firms focussed on Nigeria.

1. Travant Capital

2. Adlevo Capital

3. Menlo Ventures

4. Providence Equity Partners LLC

5. African Capital Allowance

So goodluck on pitching.

Most Importantly Find Angel Investors first. Rich people you know and try to explain your idea or project and see if you can make them understand.