Who will own our future unicorns? | Kola Aina | TEDxEuston

[Music] good evening I'd like you to indulge me for a moment by closing your eyes all eyes closed I'd like you to imagine a unicorn do you see it what does it look like you don't have to tell me we'll come to it by the way a unicorn in start-up lexicon is a company that's valued at over a billion u.s. dollars now my name is Colin ax and I'm the son of an African serial entrepreneur as far back as I can remember my siblings and I had a front row seats watching our dad go through several intrapreneurial adventures from Dublin in the beverage industry in the 80s to building a finance company that gave small loans to businesses before the financial crisis of the 90s from rearing cattle he actually read cattle like we had a huge ranch right to build in one of the most loved daily brands in northern Nigeria and finally he tried bottling water water guys like free water and then eventually built a pretty successful public printing and publishing business my dad worked really hard he was a hustler he never gave up he always tried something new and so I was privileged to have a firsthand immersive experience into building a startup at a very early age our home was the perfect start of foundry and so I learned very early but to build a successful business you had to work really hard and you had to be gritty ironically despite raising us in this really tense enterpreneur entrepreneurial environment my parents somehow felt expected that I will fit into the preconceived mold of sliding into taking over a family business as you would imagine this didn't work out very well so at the age of 25 with my engineering degree my MBA and some experienced corporate experience I essentially walked away from the chance of leaving a very secure safe life as my parents had imagined I'd rather chose to take my chance in life by finding my own way what is he thinking some said my mind was made up for some reason I was completely sold out to this idea that the only life worth living was one where you dance to your own music and so I decided that I was going to do something that would allow me solve lots of problems it also couldn't cost a lot of money because I didn't have any and of course I couldn't go back to my parents because I told them excel Avista but more importantly it had to lay the foundation for becoming an enabler of other people because I had discovered early on that this was the purpose of my life and so I decided I was going to do technology I was going to build software but I was just one problem I couldn't write a line of code and so I began to search for a co-founder and eventually chuka and I studied our software company and somehow decided that we were going to take on the challenge of Nigeria and so I moved back and started from the bottom bootstrapping the company one customer to the next way before startup investing became as cool as it is today many years later my focus has now moved from building the software company for myself to helping others build the companies of their dreams through our early-stage venture fund co ventures platform so allow me to reintroduce myself my name is Colin ax and I'm a builder my mansions in the forms of people and their ideas today I am focused on building platforms platforms that build community platforms that enable sharing and platforms that invest in young people to create opportunities adventures platform we are enabling the youth of the continent to turn the lemons we've been handed in to lemonade and in the last two years we've invested in 22 companies we've interacted with over 2,000 founders we've trained about 3,000 young people we've built a pretty amazing campus and we've seen our portfolio do multiples in returns it doesn't end there we've also served a couple thousand cups of coffee because coffee of course is the fuel of the future and we are just getting started you see when I was 13 I had a pretty bad accident and lost my memory I never really regained full capacity of it so you will have to forgive me if I forget your first name after the first time we meet I have a hack for that though so over the years I have focused on optimizing my memory for the pleasant past experiences of my life and I tend to rely on others to remind me of the negatives when it becomes important I also tend to rely on technology a lot to invite me remind me of the critical data points like birthdays meetings and telephone numbers fortunately it sounds terrible but this disability works out pretty well actually having very little recollection of the negative experiences of the past essentially makes me an incurable optimist and for this I am eternally grateful and so despite all that is wrong with and in Africa all I see are silver linings today more than ever young Africans are building the future and indeed they are the silver lining that is why my team and I are committed to building the future of the continent by investing capital I'm providing the much-needed supports to 100 startups over the next four years and so while my dad raised cattle many years ago today we support a company like thrive agric funded by two young men Luca and I Oh Luca Pharma IO a software engineer who are using technology to connect smallholder farmers with resources and helping to increase the I yield fourfold and while I passed on the opportunity to step into the easy shoes of taking over the family printing business today we now support Prince evil funded by Alou yummy who's building the future of digital printing in Africa but there's more much more than I can mention shall of a stock and in your flora wave a building payments infrastructure empowering billions of dollars in transaction Kendyl of chizetti recently raised 2.3 million dollars to connect more people to the internet more affordably and the lovely a foie who you just met was just in this stage is the empowering woman all over the continent building a community of hundreds of thousands of young women proving that what a man can do a woman can do this ladies are slaying all over the continent young Africans are exhibiting curiosity empathy and urgency at an unprecedented level and in doing so they are solving real problems but there just isn't enough African capital to support them in 2016 African startups raised about 400 million dollars to build the future the reality though is most of this capital comes from foreign investors and we're not complaining as a matter of fact we want more but that a few questions that keep me up at night the first one is who will own our future unicorns and more specifically how do we get Africans at home of means and those of you in this room in the Diaspora to get involved and invest in more of these companies the future of Africa will not be built by governments or grants but by entrepreneurs who leverage technology to build and scale businesses fast but building his future requires capital and in increasing numbers African capital capital with context and empathy capital on a mission your capital it turns out that early-stage technology investing in Africa can actually be a great bet so if you had put money in and Ella and Ella by the way is a software talent accelerator if you have put money in and Ella in the early days you would have made 10x on your investment iroko TV the African Netflix if invested when they started today you would have actually made three thousand two cents bye guys three thousand percent ladies and gentlemen in the beginning I asked you to close your eyes and thankfully some of you did let me guess what kind of unicorn you saw was it white blond head well let's try something different picture a unicorn that's black with a afropunk braids maybe picture a unicorn that kicks and hustles when he doesn't get the food it deserves in this in this case cash right and that gallops in celebration when it does ladies and gentlemen my name is Kalina and I'm an African investor we are invested in the future of Africa because we believe that with the right support gritty african founders would solve the toughest problems on the continent will create new markets will expand existing markets and deliver value for themselves and their investors I believe that Africa will produce unicorns and the time to get in on the ground floor is now and so I invite you to put your capital to good use now I'm not oblivious to the fact that the continent suffers a bad media rap neither am i unaware that we have insufficient stories of success I mean I just told you to write I could have try to tell you some more next time we also suffer a host of individual biases but I asked you to bill to be like me for a moment and lose your memory of that past but rather imagine a brighter African future a future that you and I can build together a future that you can invest in join us as we build the future of Africa thank you [Applause] [Music]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 4,416

Rating: 4.9736843 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Technology, Africa, Africans, Business, Creativity, Education, Entrepreneurship, Future, Innovation, Investment, Software, Struggle

Id: UFrRm7G1CQk

Length: 13min 4sec (784 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 18 2018