Kurious K

This episode features Abiodun Lawal Head, Tech Ecosystem and Ventures at First City Monument Bank (FCMB) Prior to that Abiodun worked as Innovation Manager at Seedstars and Business Development Manager at LoftyInc. In Today's episode with Abiodun, We Discuss: - His early childhood and his educational background - The story of  Abiodun getting into the innovation space -  keys lessons from running...

Ajay Ramasubramaniam is a seasoned executive with 17 years of experience in setting up, operating, and growing businesses, across diverse geographies such as Africa, Canada, India and Vietnam.  Currently, he is the Founder & CEO of Startup Réseau, a global startup accelerator and corporate innovation programs operator + Co-Founder & CEO, Hindsight Ventures, an Africa focusse...

Ammin Youssouf Started his career in Paris in  the 90’s just before the tech bubble. After freelancing for a while he founded Big youth, a digital agency company which grew organically to over 40 team members and worked with clients including Ferrari, Kenzo, Citroën, Kronenbourg and more. The company was later acquired. In 2016 he launched Afrobytes first event in Paris, a platform he tagged - the...

This episode features Opeyemi Owosho who is the co-founder & CEO of Homefort Energy. Homefort Energy is automating and digitalizing the distribution of cooking gas. In this episode, we discuss the problem Homefort is solving and some of the products they have built along with the way. The 90's story of cylinder distribution in Nigeria. Effect of government policies on product development. Homefort...

This episode features Mathew Marsden who is the Co-founder at getlion, a South African based company founded on the premise that Entrepreneurs are the key to Africa’s future. They identify problems, create solutions, build value and grow employment. But sadly, statistics show that 50% of their businesses will fail within the first 2 years.  Mathew is also the Founder at dealbase. Africa - The plat...

This episode features Gbolade Emmanuel who is the CEO at Termii, headquartered in California and a Y Combinator Alumni W20. Termii is a communications platform (CPaaS) that allows African businesses to send messages to anyone across SMS, email, voice and instant messaging channels.  In this episode, we discussed The story of founding Termii How Termii got into YC Why Emmanuel  started Aidi.africa...

This episode features Francis Sani  who is the Principal at Magic Fund MAGIC Fund is a $30M early-stage venture capital fund built by founders for founders. The fund has backed 70+ tech startups around the world including Bamboo Carrot, Mono, Oxygen, and many more. In this episode, we discussed Francis' journey getting into the innovation ecosystem and transitioning to a Venture Capital role. -Mag...

Edwin's experience cut across building startups and supporting new ventures. He is currently the country manager at Eko Innovation Centre (EIC), where he is responsible for managing various innovation programs and startup portfolios. Edwin & I  have a history of working together as entrepreneurs at Passion incubator so  It's great to have him on the show as we discussed his entrepreneurship backgr...

My friends from Rad 5 Tech Hub reached out to me to speak to entrepreneurs in their startup club. John and Igwe  founded the hub in 2017 and they have been working tirelessly to grow the startup ecosystem in Aba ( South East Nigeria).  This week, I decided to share the presentation  on my podcast. I hope you enjoy it.  To learn more about Rad 5Tech hub visit  https://rad5.com.ng/

This episode features Temitope Babatunde Ekundayo who is CEO at  Printivo | Co-Founder at Getequity.io We discussed his transition from Printivo to GetEquity which  is a company that is challenging the status quo of startup financing and venture capital. Over $400,000 USD has been raised on the platform. We discuss his : Education background. Starting his consulting business. Story around joining...

I spoke about some interesting quotes I have compiled for some years.

Eunice Ajim (Cameroonian-American Tech Entrepreneur) is the founding partner of Ajim capital- a $10 million fund set to invest in African Tech Startups.  Eunice has been a 2x tech founder and an executive having spent early years of her career with Apple & later leading a $10M+ revenue tech startup.   The fund provides checks of $25,000- $125,000 to pre-seed and seed tech enabled companies across...

This episode feature Daniel Bloch who has spent the last nine years building blockchain solutions. Daniel is currently the CEO of Seso Global, Africa’s property super app that enables secure transaction in property management platform leveraging blockchain. Before Seso, he has co founded a cryptocurrency exchange platform and launched a blockchain Education Network, a nonprofit that provides Block...

In 2014 Ayo Dawodu hosted the first lean startup Machine workshop in Africa. Ayo is not just an ecosystem builder, he founded Loystar in 2016 to help businesses build loyalty, not just sell. In this conversation we discuss lean startup methodology, starting out Loystar, fundraising, adoption of loyalty system by businesses, competition and challenges he has faced building loystar. Recommended Book...

Globally, the trade in counterfeit pharmaceuticals is worth up to $200bn. Over 100,000 people die annually in Africa as a result of counterfeit anti malaria drugs based on report from World health Organization. Dare Odumade is building Chekkit to solve this problem. Chekkit is not just an anti counterfeit technology, his platform is also a serialization and consumer intelligence platform. Chekkit...

This episode features Segun Adeyemi who built and exited Amplify payment to OneFi (Carbon) in March 2019. Segun started out as an investment banker with a career goal to become the Governor of the Central bank of Nigeria until he caught the tech bug.  He recently served as the country Manager of Jumo in Nigeria which is a market leading banking as a service platform, enabling real-time access to f...

In this episode, 'the 20th Episode' we hosted Abake Adenle on the Show, She is the founder of AJALA Studios, a company that make tools that enable enterprises build voice automation experiences in African Language with initial focus on voice recognition (something like Siri or Alexa) and speech synthesis. Her company is currently working on Yoruba, Igbo Hausa and Swahili. Before starting her compa...

With over 44 million small businesses across the African Continent, access to credit for them has never been easy even though Small businesses has been referenced as the backbone of the economy and the key to growth in Africa in  many publications. There is still a lot of market friction that happens to make credit accessible to them. For these businesses to grow, create more jobs, they need acces...

In this episode,  we explored the innovative ecosystem of Botswana where I  had a very cool conversation with two visionaries from Botswana building Ked- Liphi, an electrical technology company with an innovation division which focuses on creating practical everyday use inventions. During the lock-down in 2020  they invented an Automatic Diagnostic Combo machine, that assists in rapid COVID-19 tra...

Josh started building business as a teenager. In 2014 he founded Eazyhire which was venture backed then joined Mest Africa some years later as a Venture partner. He is currently working with United Nations as a consultant.  In this Episode, we discussed   How he started Eazyhire Eazyhire Plagiarism story  Funding in Nigeria Tech Ecosystem Nigeria Startup bill and more  Resources: Read more about E...

While studying in Ukraine, Sandra Bakare witnessed firsthand her friends being expelled from school. The reason? not because of bad behavior or bad grades nor broke parents. It was simply because the parents could not effectively send school fees from Nigeria to Ukraine. This is one of the issues of outward remittance in Nigeria which is also inhibiting trade and growth within the African continen...

In this episode we  explored how unpopular philosophical perception may actually be the key to unlocking the young African entrepreneurial spirit as opposed to running in a bottleneck popular framework of bringing ideas to fruition where a huge amount of money is needed.  This episodes features Princewill Fidelis who is very passionate about African entrepreneurship, he has background in research,...

Ahmad has been building tech solution as far back as mid 2000's in Nigeria.  In 2010 he had his first acquisition and then moved his focus to building Gigalayer which is one of the biggest web hosting company in Nigeria with over 14,000 clients covering other countries in Africa. Ahmad is a  full-stack developer with lots of passion for web technology & internet businesses.  In this episode we dis...

Nicolas Waern Invested in my startup back in 2014. Ever since we have been friends and it's awesome to have him on the show. Nicolas has a passion to make the world a better place for everyone. In this episode, we discussed European stereotypes in investing in African Startups, issues around climate change, smart buildings and many more.

Abraham Iyiola is the Co-founder/CEO of CareerBuddy and Tamborin. He  had a very interesting career starting out as leading AIESEC International in Nigeria and later led Talent Management at Jumia Nigeria in the early days. In this episode we discussed his foray into entrepreneurship. How CareerBuddy is changing organization culture towards talents. Tech talent in Nigeria and the pace the Nigeria...