Everyday, I get to meet several people who are achieving great things in their chosen career.
I don’t know why, but I seem to like this young guy a lot. He has been able to innovate effectively in his chosen career with the fusion of photography and technology reporting. Our #TheInspiredDream for this episode is no other than Adewale Yusuf, the Publisher of Techpoint.ng and MD/CEO of Techpremier Limited.
On Monday evening around 7pm I was with Adewale in his Herbert Macaulay office in Yaba to get his thoughts about my upcoming book and a few other things, I used the opportunity to get an interview for TheInspiredDream.com.ng
Adewale’s dream, techpoint.ng started in late 2014 when he came back to the media space after six years of blogging. He says “I came back one day and thought, ‘what’s happening in the tech world? I discovered, ‘nothing!’ Nobody is saying anything, nobody is talking to anybody, I mean, we only had some group of people just talking about themselves, it can’t work like that.”
“That same week a friend saw me and he encouraged me. I was thinking, “I would start some time in the future, but not now’. He pushed me and we started in November 2014, we were building content and by January 2015 when everyone was screaming ‘happy new Year’, we went live!.”
We’ve had a lot of tech entrepreneurs in recent years, but Adewale’s Techpoint.ng has been able to get a share of voice in the Tech world. How were they able to achieve this in only about two years? He says, “I think its team work and focus with the energy and understanding to know what to do.”
Funding is one of the main challenges that entrepreneurs face all over the world, did Techpoint.ng face this? Adewale says, “Funding has been a problem for everybody. It is a global problem. We got some little money from friends and family. We have been generating revenue organically. However, money is not our motivation, it’s about building something sustainable. Now people wake up every morning and they read Techpoint. That’s our dream!”
His dream is for techpoint to be the one-stop shop for anything ‘tech’ in Africa, not just Nigeria alone. He says, “I want it to be that if you mention technology and you don’t mention techpoint then there’s something wrong.”
Recently, I was in a ‘Dev Ops’ event in Gbagada and someone was talking to some tech start up guys saying ‘don’t worry, techpoint would cover you soon.’ For me that was brand awareness, the brand equity was being built for Techpoint and people in the tech world were already owning the brand.
They were not always like this, but how did they get to this point? “Trust me its hard work, content is tough, its hard, I mean, waking up writing content, building content from scratch. We don’t curate, we create content and that’s tough! You start the body and bring everything together. We focus, we try not to get distracted, there are a lot of times when we have to shout on each other and remind each other that this is what we are trying to do. It’s a lot of focus, hard work and consistency.” He says.
There’s something unique that Techpoint, under Adewale’s leadership brought to the tech industry. It’s the fusion of photography in their reporting. But how did this come about? He says, “I love photography!The bridge between photography and what we do at techpoint is what makes us unique. That’s one of the things we brought to this market. I remember the first time which happened like an accident when I shot Jobberman office space and we posted it online and the traffic started increasing, the server started crashing and I went for an event and everyone was saying ‘I love the pictures’ and since then photography has been a major part of what we do at techpoint.”
Adewale’s advice to young start-ups is not the conventional. He says, “People have to focus, they have to forget that there’s one 30 billion naira somewhere, they need to focus on the N1 they can get from the customer. The best money is the customer’s money not an investor’s money. They need to focus on the work, because it is hard work. The little they contribute would pay off some day.”
That’s it!
It’s been a pleasure bringing to you another episode of #TheInspiredDream
Cheers!
Leke Ademo
Ghostwriter Extraordinaire
(I help you turn your story into best-sellers)
+2348077454779
leke@theinspireddream.com
You really make it seem so easy with your presentation but I find this matter to be actually something which I think I would never understand. It seems too complex and very broad for me. I’m looking forward for your next post, I will try to get the hang of it!