These are the Zenvus Loci concept designs as we move into production – prototype already done and solid. Concept 2 wins here for Loci Max. There is another design, not shown here, for Loci Mini. Loci is an IoT designed for the African market. We are creating everything from scratch through PCB to production.
We’re Launching A New Hardware Product (Loci), Distribution Partners Wanted
I have received many feedbacks on the ‘Getting paid” post from the community. After scanning few, the questions are along this line – “How do you position to get people/firms to pay for those services?” This is my answer: to get people to pay you, make them to see a business and not you (the person). If you can structure to have that distinction, between you and the business, you will get paid.
See it this way: if your landlord calls you to come and fix his computer, he expects you to do it free. Yes, the same landlord that collects rents from you and never gives you waivers. But your computer skill is free and should be accessed for free. (Get the context, I am not saying you should not help people or support your community). But if that landlord contacts a company for the same job, he will expect to pay for that service.
Personally, I have a non-profit, African Institution of Technology, which has a decent annual budget to do many things in African universities. Everything we do there is FREE. Simply, I advocate that you have a mindset to support communities and not just live on packing more money. Yet, it is important to know when you need that payment to actually make it happen.
To move from You to a company in Nigeria, all you need is a Business Name. It costs N5,000 (last quarter, government did bonanza by cutting it from N10k to N5K for Business Name registration). With a Business Name, you can position your service as coming from a company to get people to open their wallets to pay you. But when you parade all as YOU (the person), you will run out of luck.
Develop a strategy around this and work on it. What you are doing already is work. It does not have to be within NNPC or Dangote Group or Federal Ministry of Finance to be called work. Just ask to be paid when you want to be paid! Good luck.
Google+ (personal) has moved to museum and is now history; call it Google-. In announcing the closure, Google noted that “our decision to shut down Google+ for consumers in April 2019 [was] due to low usage and challenges involved in maintaining a successful product that meets consumers’ expectations”. Simply, Google+ failed.
In December 2018, we announced our decision to shut down Google+ for consumers in April 2019 due to low usage and challenges involved in maintaining a successful product that meets consumers’ expectations. We want to thank you for being part of Google+ and provide next steps, including how to download your photos and other content.
On April 2nd, your Google+ account and any Google+ pages you created will be shut down and we will begin deleting content from consumer Google+ accounts. Photos and videos from Google+ in your Album Archive and your Google+ pages will also be deleted. You can download and save your content, just make sure to do so before April. Note that photos and videos backed up in Google Photos will not be deleted.
The process of deleting content from consumer Google+ accounts, Google+ Pages, and Album Archive will take a few months, and content may remain through this time. For example, users may still see parts of their Google+ account via activity log and some consumer Google+ content may remain visible to G Suite users until consumer Google+ is deleted
Oh yes, Google+ experienced low usage and was a ghost town after few days of effervescence. Facebook had won the same business category and it was not possible for Google+ to bulldoze itself into the domain. This is consistent with all that we have known: winner-take-all per category. In this case, Facebook had won and all Google efforts failed.
A winner-take-all market is a market in which a product or service which is only slightly (1%) better than the competitors gets disproportionately large (90%-100%) share of or all revenues for that class of products or services. It occurs when the top producer of a product earns a lot more than their competitors.Examples of winner-take-all markets include the sports and entertainment markets.
The failure of Google+ reminds me of a piece I wrote in Harvard Business Review last year. I had written on the challenges before African startups in a world dominated by Google and Facebook in the digital space. Largely, if Google could not successfully challenge Facebook, who can in Africa, in any territory, Facebook does business? You can run the reverse: Facebook has no chance in domains like public search which Google has won.
Yet while ICT has produced great gains, the internet itself could cause massive dislocation in local economies. The unbounded and unconstrained nature of the internet has made it possible for competition to become global. Online, geography does not protect a company from competition. That unbounded competition is a challenge for local entrepreneurs. African consumers know about the best global products, and local ones are expected to match them on price and quality. The elite global technology firms typically offer better solutions at zero cost.
[…]
Across Africa, consumers may be thrilled to get free high-quality products from global ICT utilities. But local entrepreneurs still struggle to compete. Without these emerging companies, there would not be functioning economies in Africa
What is happening here is typical even in the offline world: if a business has perfected processes in a sector, new entrants will have huge barrier of entry. I explained that, on an Indomie Noodles piece, where the noodles maker won over Dangote Noodles by doing typical moves Dangote Group would have deployed to dislodge the company in the noodle business. With Indomie Noodles having improved and nearly perfected those processes, Dangote Group was unable to find anything to improve upon for competitive advantages in the noodles business in Nigeria. With no success, Dangote Noodles was sold to the company behind Indomie Noodles.
Market positioning is strategic, and the construct of winner-take-all is alive in the digital space. Google+ (personal) is history because Facebook had done anything Google could have hoped to do. The first-mover-advantage worked here. We need to understand that, not just in the digital space, but also in the physical domain – Indomie Noodles won over Dangote Noodles purely on the same principle.
Sure, while your scale may not be at the level of Google and Facebook, the lesson is the same: secure your flanks as the ageless book The Art of War noted. When you secure your flanks, Sun Tzu will remind you that you have a great chance of victory in any battle: commercial or military. Facebook had secured its flanks and Google+ (Google plus) became Google- (Google minus).
Technology platforms across Africa have been publishing total funds raised by startups in Africa. Techpoint is the first to narrow it down to Nigeria. It has already shared some quarterly numbers within 2018. For the whole of 2018, it noted that Nigerian startups raised $178 million. Certainly, 2019 will do far better as Andela in January 2019 raised $100 million to begin the New Year. Depending on the outcome of the general election in Q1 2019, we may hit $300 million on total raise this year for Nigeria.
Techpoint has put together the Q1 2018 funding universe of Nigerian startups. The total is about $9.3 million. Q2 which covers April – June would certainly do better as many companies raised money in April….Certainly, this is not the full picture since many companies do not publicly disclose fund-raise success. Nevertheless, you have to work with what you have.
Do not feel bad about it – when you ask people to pay for services you render to them. Yes, NEVER feel remorse that you are asking to be paid. The fact is this – if your service is good enough for that entity to need it, it must be good to be paid for.
Yet, you must know when you offer free services to support local communities, NGOs and build personal brands, but anything outside, emerge out of that fear: ask to be paid.
Many here have written thinking it is “stressful” to do so. Yes, that woman sings for free in the village while Beyonce makes tons of money for singing! It is very unfortunate.
Here – people know I charge fees to speak except in universities and NGOs or community-building related events. Anything else, the game plan is PAY. There is nothing wrong about it except that Hillary Clinton could be paid $500k per talk and Bill Clinton $1 million per talk when Ndubuisi Ekekwe can only command $10k per talk for most public talks ($5k within Africa). My number needs to move urgently because I think these guys have one head like me.
Hillary Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, combined to earn more than $153 million in paid speeches from 2001 until Hillary Clinton launched her presidential campaign last spring, a CNN analysis shows.
In total, the two gave 729 speeches from February 2001 until May, receiving an average payday of $210,795 for each address. The two also reported at least $7.7 million for at least 39 speeches to big banks, including Goldman Sachs and UBS, with Hillary Clinton, the Democratic 2016 front-runner, collecting at least $1.8 million for at least eight speeches to big banks.
The analysis was made at a time when Hillary Clinton has been under scrutiny for her ties to Wall Street, which has been a major focus of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders on the campaign trail
So, next time they invite you to speak in that conference, ask to be paid! Certainly, evaluate that platform and do the opportunity cost. If the derivable value is more than your projected monetary compensation, go and speak for free. But where your talk value is more than the value derivable from the event, ask them to pay.
May I repeat it again – do not go home to tell your spouse that there is no money in this house when you have missed an opportunity to bring money home. You should not talk for free unless it is a charity event or one with derivable value to advance your advance.
Be bold – make it clear to that institution that you would like to be paid. I was in Lagos two weeks ago – I helped a brilliant young man get paid to talk in a conference in Lagos. When they invited him, he was so excited and just wanted to talk. He called me (as a mentor) and I told him, to ask them, to pay him.. He ended up getting paid N90k. For him, that was progress.
Practically, I am surprised that Bill Clinton charges $1million which means I have rooms ahead. Please get out of the African mentality where people have water table underneath and yet cannot find water to drink. Your talent must pay your bills! It is not “stressful” to ask to be paid!