Market systems are inherently imperfect because of information asymmetry which makes it difficult for demand and supply to attain an optimal equilibrium point. To fix that imperfection, you need companies to operate in markets. Companies provide the platforms, which bring the demand and supply together, so that transactions can take place. 

You are hungry, you simply go to a company called restaurant to buy food instead of knocking at people’s doors hoping to find someone who may have food to sell. (Supply also will not be waiting at home expecting somebody to knock so that he can sell food; he simply takes the food to the restaurant.)

But when you are starting a new venture, how do you begin? Sometimes, you need to focus on creating “passionate” products with leverageable market demand even if the current market size is small. You have a higher chance of success if you can find extremely dedicated adopters who believe in you than trying to serve everyone and end up serving none. I have called this Minimum Viable Demand (MVD). It is a great tool when building digital products as you have more freedom to iterate and relaunch at scale.

With MVD, the demand is real and viable which means it is leverageable even though you are focusing on the smallest demand possible. The key is that the demand is viable to be leverageable even though it may be small at the moment.

In MVD, you get higher margin, lower competition and fanatical demand.  The construct is that it is better to appeal to the first 1,000 fanatical users than one  million users. Once you have won those first 1,000 users, you begin to plot how to scale for the one million users, leaving the ultra-differentiation, price-insensitivity, and niche-offering to products that appeal to more people.

In some markets, MVD will help you. If you pursue it, the innovator’s dilemma can set in for many incumbents and before they know it, you have expanded your territory.  This is what happens as I explained in startup incentive construct.

In this piece, I explain why startups win, despite the efforts of older companies who challenge them in new areas they are pioneering. The older companies can come with money, experience and technology, but most times, they are solving problems, with the wrong incentives. Consequently, they adjust the problems to accommodate their incentives and in the process, solve an entirely different problem, resulting to loss. You read it from me: African and specifically Nigerian startups, you can win and do not be bothered by the big companies. Your incentives are different and those are inherent advantages for you.

As the president of Ukraine addresses the African Union Commission, I want to remind African leaders of the necessity of having a nuanced, meticulous and careful strategy on the Russia-Ukraine war. The foreign minister of South Africa in a recent BBC interview  was poised, and on the money, on the way forward. We must remember Kwame Nkrumah’s philosophical framework that Africa cannot go east, west, but only forward.

What Russia did was evil* by attacking Ukraine. Make that clear but do not bring harm to your citizens through needless actions. As I write, German companies are still running on Russian gas. That is to explain that leaders do not want to throw their people under the bus.

Welcome Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky but do not make this an African conflict. Every war ends on an “agreement”; Ukraine and Russia will determine when they want to do just that. Africa cannot make enemies with the US, Europe, Russia, China and – Ukraine!

Comment on LinkedIn Feed

Comment 1: It is an address. We are not great at taking action after listening to an impassioned speech. We will clap hands, give vote of thanks, commiserate with the bereaved, and go home. I don’t see any issue here, we are not even in a position to sanction any country.

After Zelensky’s address, Putin should also address us, so that we can let both of them know how their scuffles are messing things up down here, so they should calm down. Even in peace times, we are in crisis, let alone when there is turbulence in strategic countries; we understand our history, and our fate is in our hands.

Africa is the Mother of all continents, so all the warring parties can always come here for peace agreement, including the US and China, they are all welcome. We do not take sides, because it is Africa.

God bless Mother Africa.

Comment 2: “What Russia did was evil by attacking Ukraine. Make that clear but do not bring harm to your citizens through needless actions.”
So what do you classify as ‘needful’ action?

What did Abraham Lincoln have to gain by abolishing slavery, resulting in the American civil war? Where would Africa have been today if not for that selfless act by Lincoln and the millions of Americans who perished?

Evil thrives because of only one reason – because good men do nothing, often because of self-preservation. Doing nothing out of self-preservation is never a good strategy. Remember WWII, remember Pearl Harbour.

Whether we stand to gain or not, we should make our stand known and back it up with actions. Only then can we take our place on the world stage.

My Response: “we should make our stand known and back it up with actions. ” – Africa has done that. And this is clear: Russia and Ukraine should talk and end the war.  That statement is the action.  I understand that some people will want Africa to “sanction” Russian fertilizers, cereals, etc, to show “action”, in my opinion that would be stupidity. Until Germany stops buying Russian gas, I will not recommend for Africa to sanction Russia.

*As a boy who grew up in Southeast Nigeria, I see attacking people via war as evil. While most wars are being justified , they remain evil.  Nigeria committed evil when it killed its citizens in Southeast. Russia is doing the same in Ukraine. The US did the same in Iraq. NATO did the same in Libya. Sure, in realpolitik, wars bring immediate practical solutions but they remain evil because they leave evil behind.

Apple’s employees have become the latest to successfully vote to form a union, signaling a potential increase in unionization amid resistance by big US tech companies.

The union vote was finalized on Saturday after the majority of employees at an Apple store in Towson, Maryland voted yes to a union, marking the first Apple store in the US. Apple, like others, has strongly opposed unionization efforts, pushing back at attempts by workers at the company’s other retail locations to unionize. The vote could set a unionization precedent for other Apple retail location workers.

A total of 65 workers voted yes and 33 opposed. Per CNBC, approximately 110 employees were eligible to vote to join the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. Voting started on Wednesday and ran through Saturday evening.

“We did it Towson! We won our union vote! Thanks to all who worked so hard and all who supported!” Towson organizers tweeted.

The National Labor Relations Board has provided support for workers in different US companies seeking to unionize, as long as they meet the labor requirements.

The NLRB still needs to certify the votes. That could take around a week. The watchdog said Apple is required to bargain with the union over working conditions after the vote is certified.

In a further report, CNBC gives details of the Towson store, which isn’t one of Apple’s so-called “flagship” stores in high-traffic areas in big cities, but a smaller location inside a mall, made its unionization success.

The store received attention from Apple management as soon as workers announced plans to unionize. Apple’s head of retail and HR, Deirdre O’Brien, visited the location in May. A recorded message from O’Brien distributed to employees after union drives went public discouraged retail workers from joining unions, saying that doing so would make it harder for Apple to respond to employee concerns. She said unions are not committed to the company’s employees.

Workers are seeking more input over pay and working conditions, like how the stores handle Covid safety and other operations.

“To be clear, the decision to form a union is about us as workers gaining access to rights that we do not currently have,” Towson organizers wrote in a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook.

The Towson store is one of several Apple locations that have publicly announced union drives and other retail organizers at other locations are watching its results closely. Two high-traffic, high-volume stores in New York, the Grand Central Terminal and World Trade Center locations, have signaled that they are unionizing, but have yet to advance to the stage of having an official vote.

One store in Atlanta, Georgia was scheduled to have an election earlier this month that was delayed indefinitely after the union, Communication Workers of America, alleged that Apple intimidated its employees. Stores in Louisville, Kentucky and Nashville, Tennessee are also in the process of organizing, according to NBC News.

The Apple retail union at the Towson store is unlikely to jeopardize Apple’s core business model of selling devices and services. Although Apple stores are a key channel for selling products, Apple also sells through its website and retail partners like carriers. Apple’s hourly workforce is smaller than other companies currently facing waves of union drives, like Amazon and Starbucks.

Apple is one of the most profitable companies in the world. It reported over $365 billion in global sales in 2021, and says its retail employees in the U.S. make at least $22 per hour.