Damilola Olokesusi is the Co-founder and CEO of Shuttlers, a tech transport startup. In 2015, Olokesusi and her friends — Damilola Quadry and Busola Majekodunmi — were frustrated by the stress of commuting in Lagos, Nigeria. And following some nasty experiences, they decided to start Shuttlers. “One of my sisters got into a one-chance bus (a commercial bus used for robbing passengers), and it was a traumatic experience for me. She was taken to another destination where they were abducted and robbed. Having had our different bus experiences, we realised it was a collective pain point for us.
During a short business trip to Nigeria in 2015, Ike Okosa witnessed firsthand the nascent but bubbling tech ecosystem in the country. At the time, Okosa was running Swoop Media, a UK-based company that provided IT and digital marketing solutions to UK private schools. The UK-born entrepreneur, who was visiting for the first time in over a decade, admits he was unaware that the country had a tech ecosystem. However, attending the 2015 edition of Social Media Week in Lagos changed his notion, and he formed vital connections there that proved helpful in
Divided into winter and summer batches, US seed accelerator, Y Combinator (YC) invests $150,000 yearly in selected startups in exchange for 7% equity. However, starting from next year, the ticket size will reduce to $125k for the same amount of equity. Usually, these startups spend three months with the San Francisco-based accelerator before finishing off their activities with a Demo Day. But things have been slightly different this year due to the coronavirus pandemic. While the 197 startups from the Winter batch had participated in some sessions in the Valley, they had to virtually
This article was written by Tage Kene-Okafor and was originally published on African based publication Techpoint.africa In 2012, Jesse Ghansah, Prince Boakye Boampong, and Dominic Mensah began trying their hands on a new project, OMG Ghana. Three years later, the project would become a media startup, OMG Digital. At the time, the Ghanaian startup was dubbed the “BuzzFeed of Africa” and as a founder, Ghansah co-led his team into Y Combinator (YC), participating in the accelerator with the likes of Envyl, Flutterwave, Instabug, and Paystack in 2016. Up until 2019, Ghansah remained at OMG Digital but he has now
