Africa · business

5 Reasons Why HNIs Aren’t Investing in the African Tech Space

5 years ago Author By cumeadi

This is in response to a twitter thread

Nigerian startups are yet to be backed & championed by local high net-worth individuals on a large scale. The result is a tech ecosystem powered mainly by foreign capital.

With thoughts from @TomiDee, @asemota, @OtunbaSho, @oviosu, my @qzafrica latest: https://t.co/5DXBHxMcfv— Yomi Kazeem (@TheYomiKazeem) January 22, 2019

HNIs = High Net-worth Individuals

  1. They’re too old– Average age of an African billionaire is 62ish… They are probably struggling to manage in the current world of emails and text messages. How would they see the value technology can provide to society and even their companies?
  2. If it ain’t broke – If I amassed my wealth by relationships and tangible / assets, why would I take a chance, let alone several chances, in something that only holds paper value? I’ve already established several moats that will keep me rich forever, why do I have to speculate on an industry when I can focus on things I can see.
  3. It doesn’t make financial sense– Alright, maybe I want to invest but the risk start-ups take on in Africa is higher than their counterparts ( I’d love to do research on this but we all know its true). Why would I invest in such a risky proposition when I can just buy government bonds or some land and see better returns?
  4. Not enough 0s- Even a later stage investment in some tech companies don’t make sense. An entry point for investment doesn’t even seem viable in the way some of the HNIs. Scale seems to be a problem
  5. They are afraid of their own death – African tech could be so dangerous, they stand to destroy the companies HNIs built. They are collectively starving out the competition.

Ultimately, the best way for HNIs to engage the tech space are as partners and not competition. I believe working with tech companies to figure out ways applications can solve real business problems and create scalable opportunities is the way forward. Think of further integrating Dangote’s supply chain by leveraging more digital solutions, or improving Otedola’s exploratory efficiency leveraging predictive analytics and drone tech. All thats possible with collaboration.

#MentalNote · Education

New Hobby Alert

5 years ago Author By cumeadi
Shot with a One Plus 5. I was visiting my brother’s apartment in Jersey City overlooking New York City and Hudson River.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve been interested in tapping into my inner creative. I’ve been looking for areas to explore where I can capture moments and share my perspective and thought photography would be a great place to start. So, I got a phone with an excellent camera and got a Nikon DSLR starter kit and now I’m ready to start sharing my journey to explore the world of photography.

I’ll continue to post pics on my Instagram account here , but I’ll use my blog to explain some of the shots in more detail.

#MentalNote · Idea!!! · Leadership

Getting Past No: A Non-Sales Person Guide To Objection Handling

6 years ago Author By cumeadi

If you’re doing life right, you hear no or get objections frequently. I had one of those days last week. I heard no/ objections to a lot of different projects, clients, and opportunities. Objections is easy to handle on a one off basis, but when you get an overload in a day, you’ve got to have a system or framework to help navigate objections in an effective and positive way.

I thought back to my early start-up days when I got a chance to work intimately with the sales team. I had the privilege to train under a sales genius who imparted a lot of sales wisdom and business experience on to me and the team. We didn’t have a pure sales training regiment, but I felt like everyday was an opportunity to learn from a well seasoned sales executive.

One of the lessons he taught our team early was on how to handle objections from prospects. Potential clients often say no for several reasons and a good sales professional has tools to identify their reasons for saying no and help the prospect get to yes. But most importantly, great sales professionals re-frame objection as an opportunity to learn more about the client and their needs.

We learned the L.A.E.R framework to manage our responses to objections. When we hear an objection from a prospect, we :

  • Listen– Take a step back and just listen to the prospect. Let them discuss their main concerns uninterrupted.
  • Acknowledge– Repeat back to them their concerns as you hear it. This helps to make sure you understand what they are saying but also they understand what they said during your conversation. Re stating a prospects objections also demonstrates you’re really listening to them and looking to seek a solution.
  • Explore– Most no’s or objections need to be unpacked. A great sales professional uses an objection to get to know more about the prospects needs and values. For example, a prospect might say your product offering is too expensive. What does that really mean? Is there a budget issue? Did you demonstrate and communicate the value your product/service provides? Asking more questions to understand their objections helps get past no’s and find new opportunities to help the prospect see the value in your product or service.
  • Respond– After identifying the objections, acknowledging their concerns, explored and unpacked the reasons for the objection, now you can finally respond with some recommendations. This may not always go in your favor. The main goal is help your prospect understand if the concerns you’ve discussed still exist and if so, what are the next step.

Overall, the L.A.E.R framework really helps to guide conversations with prospects during the sales cycle. It’s definitely applicable to any type of objection handling moments you’ll have personally and professionally. At the core of the L.A.E.R framework is need and a goal to understand and empathize with the prospect. Using L.A.E.R will help you get past objection and hopefully closer to yes.

#MentalNote · Education · Random

Using the Fermi Method To Improve Estimations Skills

6 years ago Author By cumeadi

Physicist Enrico Fermi was one of the most brilliant minds of the 20th century. He won the Nobel prize in physics, held several patents and was best known for developing the first nuclear reactor. During career, he became well known for his ability to make fast, excellent approximate calculations with little or no concrete data. In one well-known example, when the first atomic bomb was detonated during the Manhattan Project, Fermi dropped a few scraps of paper as the shock wave from the detonation passed. After some coarse calculation, Fermi estimated the power of the blast from the motion of the scraps as they fell.

His estimation strategy spawned what we now call Fermi problems or estimates. These problems normally involve making justified estimations about an amount and their variance or minimum or maximum. These problems have been used in employee interviews (how effective they are is question for another day) to better identify a candidate’s ability to break down seemingly large unknown problems and create a reasonable estimate. Here’s an example of some common Fermi problems:

  1. How many plastic flamingos still exist in the United States?
  2. What is the total number of shots taken in one NBA season?
  3. How many hot dogs are bought at all the Major League Baseball games for one season?
  4. What is the average lifetime of a pencil?
  5. How many musical notes are played on your favorite radio station in a given year?
  6. How much popcorn is popped at the movie theater on an average Saturday?
  7. What is the probability that you have a doppelganger?
  8. How many hours of tv will you watch in your lifetime?
  9. How much gasoline does a typical automobile use during its lifetime?
  10. If everyone in our city donated one day’s wages to a good cause, how much money could be raised?

As you can see, most of these questions are abstract and unknowable but Fermi type problems rely on estimation, dimensional analysis, approximation, but most importantly, approaching the unknown from a knowable place. For example, taking a look at a question like how many hours will you watch tv in your lifetime, might look like a daunting and unknowable number. But we can approach it from a knowable place and come up with an estimate by asking a couple of key “knowable questions. For example, if I’m trying to figure out, “How many hours of tv will you watch in your life?”. Here are a couple of the questions you might ask to get you to a solid estimate;

  • What is the average lifespan of your gender based on where you live? (We know the average life expectancy of a male in the US is 78.4…based on US census data)
  • What tv shows do you watch frequently on a weekly basis – Daily Show (4*30 minutes), Dragon ball Super ( 1*30 minutes), GPS (1*1 hour) = 3.5 hours a week.
  • How does this extrapolate to other parts of my life?  (I probably watched 3.5 hours of tv now, including netflix, amazon prime, etc but I probably have decreased my tv watching as I’ve gotten older. I probably watched 15-20 hours a week when I was a child (4-17- thinking of my favorite tv shows and daily schedule) and 10-15 when I was a young adult. (18-29)
  • Do I think my time watching tv will increase or decrease? – Most likely increase. I’m pretty busy now so I’ll probably get to the point where its back to 6-8 hours per week. In the long term, I think i’ll have more free time and also will have kids that will want to watch tv with me.  

Once we’ve got a majority of the inputs, (duration of life, baseline on tv show hours) now we can start estimating amount of time per year and then develop an estimate.

  • 0-3 ( Not really sure but let’s just say I spent 30 hours a week watching television) – 4 years * 52 weeks * 30 hours = 6,240 hours
  • 4-17 (20 hours a week) – 14 years * 52 weeks * 20 hours = 14,560 hours
  • 18-29 (15 hours a week) – 12 years * 52 weeks * 15 hours = 9,360 hours
  • 30-40 (8 hours a week) – 11 years * 52 weeks * 8 hours = 8,580 hours
  • 41-50 (6 hours a week) – 10 years * 52 weeks * 6 hours=  3,120 hours
  • 51-60 (15 hours a week)  – 10 years * 52 weeks * 15 hours = 7,800 hours
  • 61- 78 (10 hours a week) – 18 years * 52 weeks * 10 hours = 9,360 hours

I will spend an estimated 59,020 hours, or about 7 years watching television during my lifetime.

With Fermi problems, it’s less about the primary questions and more about the questions you can ask to identify certainty and fundamental assumptions that  affect estimations. For example, three major assumptions I made to come up with 59,020 hours are:

  1. The rate of tv watching is consistent on a day to day.
  2. Tv watching is connected to the amount of free time I think I’ll have in a given week.
  3. I’ll live to be the average age (78.4 years)

There are other ways to go about approaching this question. You could take a subtractive approach and identify the minimum and maximum time you can have to watch tv. IE, if a sleep 6-8 hours for the rest of my life, spend 8 hours working, 1 hour exercising, 1 hour eating, how much time do I have to watch tv a day? What are some other pressures that can affect how much tv time I have? To get more granular, what does my weekend look like? What do I normally do on vacation. There are questions that could bring you to a more approximate estimate, but the time spent on the estimate should be proportional to the need for accuracy.

The Fermi method has practical applications, it can be helpful in day to day estimating in work and play. From a project management perspective, the Fermi method can be really helpful when developing out approximate hours for  for client / internal estimates on upcoming features or projects. Most importantly, start with what you know. How many people will interface with the project? Based on previous projects, how long do your processes like discovery, check-ins, QA, and etc. normally take? While each project is different in its own way, asking these questions help expose what you know and areas where you’re making assumptions. Over time, you can evaluate how well your assumptions play out after each project.

I challenge you to find ways you can estimate better buy identifying your assumptions and approaching unknown questions from a knowable place

business · Current Events · Technology · venture capital

The Real Opportunity to Re-Invent Healthcare

6 years ago Author By cumeadi

It’s been a while…. I’ve been quite busy over the last couple of months trying to build stuff….. I’ll explain in another post. In the mean time, I thought I’d share some content I had the chance to write for another reason on to my blog. I’ve realized I do a lot of writing but not a lot of posting. I hope with such a nice set up and audience, I’d switch that around for the rest of the year. So here’s an exercise I worked on a couple of weeks ago on defining an investment thesis for the healthcare sector. Thought it would be interesting to think of how the healthcare industry is changing as a whole and where the opportunities are for the entrepreneur, investor, and everyone else. 

Over the last 20 years, I’ve had a well rounded set of experience and exposure to the healthcare industry. I grew up in a healthcare household. My father worked for several cutting edge biotech companies and my mother has worked as a nurse in hospitals and did home care. I had cousins who all became different types of medical doctors. For several summers, I worked and interned at hospitals and pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities in my teens. I’ve been through two near-death experiences where I had to be hospitalized for an extended period of time due to mysterious diseases (a story for another day).

The healthcare industry faces some tough challenges in the next 10 to 20 years. An evolving regulatory environment and changing business models have created declining margins for public and private healthcare in the United States. While margins have declined, demand and costs have significantly increased. We’re seeing growth in our population but also a demographic transition. Baby boomers, for example, are entering a phase in their lives where healthcare will become the primary expense but with diminished savings and labor costs on the rise, how will baby boomers afford to have the same kind of care their accustomed to while dealing with a longer life expectancy and more expensive care?   

While the healthcare industry faces regulatory, demographic shifts, and margin challenges, there are some major themes that get me excited about its future. Healthcare, just like other industries, is shifting from responsive to preventative. With the proliferation of the internet, mobile, and other smart devices, healthcare is something that doesn’t just happen when you’re in a hospital. It has the potential to happen 24/7 and this has a significant implication on service delivery, business models, and product innovation.  Preventative medicine flips the traditional healthcare business model on its head and allows for an endless possibility in ways we can treat people before they ever step foot into a doctors office.

The shift to preventative health is also driven by access and the creation of information in ways we haven’t seen in the healthcare space. For example, I used 23&Me to learn about my genetic makeup/lineage but also received health reports. This information wouldn’t have been available to the average consumer or even a medical professional 10 or 15 years ago. We’ve also seen an increase in the digitization of health records too. Combined, I see a future trend of personalized and holistic healthcare service delivery that isn’t beholden to location or labor costs. This presents an amazing opportunity to solve for population growth and demographic shifts. We can improve quality of care and also deliver high-quality care at scale.