This is a Short Note.

Through my non-profit, we come in contact with people across our continent. I have visited many universities in Africa. Through this work, I always get people asking for career advice. Largely, no career advice is bullet-proof. You, the recipient, have to make your career work. Even the person giving you advice needs one. I want to move up the ladder, so I talk to people about career, not for job, but business opportunities.

You cannot be running a startup and also be wiring CVs for jobs daily. I understand the concept of hedging. But when you are out there as a startup founder, and at the same time you are looking for a job, you will likely not be at optimum execution. You want money from investors, and yet you’re polishing your CV. That overlap will even make it harder to have traction to raise that money.

The reality is this: if the startup is not a job you think you deserve to have, simply stop it and focus on looking for a job. It is very unlikely you will do well in the startup if that is a second choice. Besides, startup is not something you enter just because you lost a job or have no job, without making up your mind that it is the best job as you transition. That moment of truth must come that the business is the best I can have.

Confidence comes from dignity of labour. You must commit to what you do to thrive in it. Even if you do not like it, you must commit to it. Your job does not necessarily need to be your hobby, in Africa, because jobs are scarce. Like it or not, excellence in it is the only path to the next level.

NB: Startup in this content means going to create something of value with transformational impacts in the market. It is different from small business which could be barbing salon, selling corn along the roads, etc that rarely scales. You do not build such firms without focus.

“A company five years old can still be a startup,” writes Y Combinator accelerator head Paul Graham via email. “Ten [years old] would start to be a stretch.”…

One thing we can all agree on: the key attribute of a startup is its ability to grow. As Graham explains, a startup is a company designed to scale very quickly. It is this focus on growth unconstrained by geography which differentiates startups from small businesses. A restaurant in one town is not a startup, nor is a franchise a startup.

This is a Short Note.

For  graduates, a key thing I have learnt for getting ahead, in careers, is not necessarily what you studied in universities. But rather, how adaptive and anticipatory you are, as you move on your career.

As a boy that grew up in a village with many military people, I saw success from the lens of military service because many of them in my village were “successful”. Good enough, someone taught us that we could get ahead by doing well in our traditional schools. We listened.

There are people that believe that unless they work in banking, telecom or energy, nothing will work for them in Nigeria. That is not really bad, but obsession with that mindset could be dangerous. There are many paths to getting to those “good sectors” in life. The key is making sure you are moving and not just static. When people waste two years after graduation waiting for jobs from the likes of Shell, GTBank and MTN, passing over little ones, from smaller companies, they may not be making the best decisions.

We read of robots, AI and other emerging areas in technology. We hail engineers and other wickedly smart people building these systems. But behind these geeks is a rush for liberal arts people who are humanizing the systems. They are helping to make science fiction become realities in our daily lives. They do write the sci-fi, engineers do not write sci-fi. Without them, the chips will be hardware with no nice games to power.

I have come to see that what matters, in career advancement, is pursuit of excellence in what you do. Sure, there are areas that make finding opportunities easier, in our modern global economy. But the fact remains  that anybody can be anything. Your life tenacity matters more than what degree you have in the bag. It is dangerous to have self-pity because of your degree or the school you attended. Looking into the future and finding energy to advance your life is what will drive you into abundance in your career.

There is abundance in Africa, across our cities with their hidden acres of diamonds. You will not notice if you are always looking up. Sometimes, careers advance when you look a little bit downward. Good luck.

Update: On this note Linkedin Feed, Dr Noimot Balogun shared this insight which we can all learn from.

I used to be in this situation, wanting to work in the best of NGOs, not really because of value but for the status and prestige. I eventually discovered myself, found out about my unused potentials and found out that those other BIG places can come back to even start chasing you with much more. But first, you have to situate yourself as a personality that can create value and sustain valuable discussions. It’s all about finding the untapped potentials in Africa.

This is a Short Note.

Most times, for tech startups, investors care for only tech founders. If you are three and only one is technical, you have one founder. There is a reason for that: you must have a problem solved before you can market it.

Apple will likely pay $8 billion to Qualcomm on royalties. The latter took it to International Trade Commission which now wants to hear the compliant. According to Credit Suisse, Apple will likely settle. Why? ITC can block imports of iPhone to US. From Fortune Newsletter,

Apple is likely to pay around $8 billion to settle its dispute with chipmaker Qualcomm out of court – possibly as early as this month. So reckons Credit Suisse analyst Kulbinder Garcha, anyways. The International Trade Commission has formally agreed to hear Qualcomm’s complaint, opening the door to a possible ban on imports of iPhones into the U.S

Samsung commands 97% global market share of the OLED display which Apple will have in its new devices. That is a huge positioning power over a major competitor.

Microsoft wants to build in-house the chip for Hololens, the AR system. It is obvious chips for AR must be customized the Apple A8 way. From Google to Facebook, most make some chips for their servers. Google has a really fast one..

On Sunday, the software giant unveiled a new microprocessor of its own design that will go into future hardware products, such as the next version of its HoloLens augmented reality glasses, to perform artificial intelligence tasks. The AI coprocessor will analyze visual, auditory, and other sensor data locally on the device instead of relying on sending the information to a cloud-based server for review.

 “This is the kind of thinking you need if you’re going to develop mixed reality devices that are themselves intelligent,” Marc Pollefeys, Microsoft’s director of science for the HoloLens, wrote in a blog post. “Mixed reality and artificial intelligence represent the future of computing, and we’re excited to be advancing this frontier.”

This is it: what you are seeing in these titans is happening at local level. Succeeding in a business now is tough because the cost of doing business is lower. The implication is that incumbents can advance to attack new business models with minimal pains. You make a chip, someone can easily make it because Internet has made knowledge abundant. A bank you want to partner can integrate that feature overnight in its app.

So, as you plan, be flexible for whatever comes. You must be aware of these challenges, understanding that even your best client can do what you are doing. Apple did just that to Imagination Technologies when it decided to make its mobile chip in-house.

So solution is innovation – making sure you stay ahead of the curve. And you must be flexible with deep awareness to pivot with capacities to see problems before they arise. Being a tech founder today requires lots of vision. You must be the Chief Product Officer.