Around 2007, with cheap money flooding international investors' pockets, Global startup funding began to pick up at a fast rate. Funding had been undergoing sluggish growth since the start of the hangover from the dot-com crash.
Social media startups were popping up, digg, reddit, del.icio.us, twitter, were becoming sites you had to visit daily. Mashable was also coming up as a half blog, half social site. New entrepreneur networks were forming online and news of new funding was being shared daily. Optimism was back and so were new ideas.
This time founding a tech company wasn't limited to Silicon Valley alone. After the crash, funding got really scarce and the cost of starting and running a startup was hitting rock bottom. This opened the doors to many, including us, a few innovative Nigerians.
If we rewind 3 to 4 years back, I was already running my startup. The African Music Network, a music and discussion site hosted on only 100mb of server space. this was during the days of Styl Plus, Plantashun Boiz and Tony Tetula. In less than 2 years, the service had to shut down, and not because it didn't gain traction, but because it was extremely difficult to make credit card payments to the American hosting company and monetization in Nigerian didn't exist at all back then.
Now I run 9flix, One of the front runners in the future of Nigerian video entertainment, well, according to them > What You Get From Video On-Demand Services - Premium Times NG
Folabi Ogunkoya - I think Folabi is one of Nigeria's first Internet success stories. He co-founded CaramelLounge together with Lawrence Bassey-Oden during the early days of social networking when it was dominated by MySpace. MySpace was more American than Global (probably one of the reasons for its failure) so it was tough to meet fellow Nigerians or Africans via the network, mostly because there were few.
Folabi and Lawrence built caramellounge to solve that, and they sold the company not long after launch. It became Afriville and later shut down (probably because of dominance of FaceBook).
Folabi Ogunkoya is now an investment banker in the UK.
Solomon Sydelle - After the reign of MothelandNigeria.com, the one time biggest Nigerian site, which was never updated, Another patriotic lady took the reigns from Boomie, the owner of MotherlandNigeria. Solomon Sydelle was an early Nigerian blogger with Nigerian Curiosity.
Loy Okezie - Loy returned and settled in Nigeria to be a part of the developing startup scene. He has played a significant role, with his blog TechLoy becoming a news platform and a launch pad for Nigerian startups. Many Nigerian startups have taken to TechLoy to announce their launch or funding news.
Loy Okezie still runs a few tech news outlets including Techloy and partakes in many Startup events.
Francis Oghuma - The Naija educated and South Africa based outgoing personality launched an innovative idea of a social networking engine for Nigerians. Together with Nanje Mambe, the founder of the AfroVision group and now Njorku the Cameroonian job search engine, Francis launched Naijaborn as a smart social network for Nigerians, which has a searchable user generated database of the global Nigerian community.
Francisnow lives in Germany and has launched other digital media businesses like Sowambe, House of Picha, and a music discovery platform Jamoflife.
Social media startups were popping up, digg, reddit, del.icio.us, twitter, were becoming sites you had to visit daily. Mashable was also coming up as a half blog, half social site. New entrepreneur networks were forming online and news of new funding was being shared daily. Optimism was back and so were new ideas.
This time founding a tech company wasn't limited to Silicon Valley alone. After the crash, funding got really scarce and the cost of starting and running a startup was hitting rock bottom. This opened the doors to many, including us, a few innovative Nigerians.
If we rewind 3 to 4 years back, I was already running my startup. The African Music Network, a music and discussion site hosted on only 100mb of server space. this was during the days of Styl Plus, Plantashun Boiz and Tony Tetula. In less than 2 years, the service had to shut down, and not because it didn't gain traction, but because it was extremely difficult to make credit card payments to the American hosting company and monetization in Nigerian didn't exist at all back then.
Folabi Ogunkoya - I think Folabi is one of Nigeria's first Internet success stories. He co-founded CaramelLounge together with Lawrence Bassey-Oden during the early days of social networking when it was dominated by MySpace. MySpace was more American than Global (probably one of the reasons for its failure) so it was tough to meet fellow Nigerians or Africans via the network, mostly because there were few.
Folabi and Lawrence built caramellounge to solve that, and they sold the company not long after launch. It became Afriville and later shut down (probably because of dominance of FaceBook).
Folabi Ogunkoya is now an investment banker in the UK.
Solomon Sydelle - After the reign of MothelandNigeria.com, the one time biggest Nigerian site, which was never updated, Another patriotic lady took the reigns from Boomie, the owner of MotherlandNigeria. Solomon Sydelle was an early Nigerian blogger with Nigerian Curiosity.
Loy Okezie still runs a few tech news outlets including Techloy and partakes in many Startup events.
Francis Oghuma - The Naija educated and South Africa based outgoing personality launched an innovative idea of a social networking engine for Nigerians. Together with Nanje Mambe, the founder of the AfroVision group and now Njorku the Cameroonian job search engine, Francis launched Naijaborn as a smart social network for Nigerians, which has a searchable user generated database of the global Nigerian community.
Francisnow lives in Germany and has launched other digital media businesses like Sowambe, House of Picha, and a music discovery platform Jamoflife.
2 comments:
haha this is a good trip back down memory lane those were the days. Still on the start up scene.
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