Kolawole
Twenty-nine-year-old Temi Kolawole is the Chief Executive Officer of Antigravity, a web design and development company. In this interview with COMFORT OSEGHALE, he shares his thoughts on the Internet business in Nigeria and why he quit his first job at 22
What informed your decision to start Antigravity?
My company started off as a hobby. It was a side business at the time. I had over the years learned how to design websites, carry out internet marketing, advertising and social media campaign. I had done all these for fun before I had the idea of establishing a company.
Even while I was working as the Chief Information Officer of a real estate firm in the United States, I was already running my business informally. My job was a very good one; I was well paid and worked with smart people who also saw my talent. After working for three years, I quit in 2008. I decided this was what I wanted to do. I wanted to run my company formally so I got it registered in the US.
Were you scared when you quit your job?
Of course I was; it is not easy to decide that you want to stop getting paid salary. I just had to look at the bigger picture and realise that I was aiming for something much more than a salary. Even though it might not materialise immediately or might take a longer time to get there, I knew what I wanted to do. For the first one year after quitting my job, I didn’t tell my family. If they asked how work was, I would just say it was fine.
When you are an entrepreneur, you are either making continuous money from sales if you are consulting or you are waiting for your clients to pay if you are into web design. If your clients don’t pay, it is almost like you are not eating. It was a bit rough at the beginning but when I moved back to Nigeria in 2009, things balanced out and the company was able to hire people and pay stuff.
When I moved back to Nigeria, I lived in Abuja at first and started out with some contracts for the Economic Community of West African States alongside a few other projects. I later moved to Lagos because I wanted to expand my team and get more talents for my business. So in Nigeria, Antigravity took off in 2009.
Did your choice of study in school prepare you in any way for what you are doing now?
Yes, in the sense that as a person, I am able to plan and meet deadlines. Apart from general life preparation that school gives, I didn’t learn any of this in college. I am a graduate of computer engineering which is more of electronics, circuits and hardware. Meanwhile what I do now is strictly software internet. Most of what I know, I learned on my own through individual practice. I am a little bit of a geek; one of the things I do for fun is that I write codes. Sometimes I just take my laptop and start playing around with stuff and have fun. Even now, I am still learning; each new project I take on becomes a new challenge and teaches me new things. I am learning every day.
Was it difficult building a customer base in Nigeria as there are so many web designers out there?
It wasn’t; from the US we already had some very good and popular clients. We built the very first version of Bellanaija which only just changed recently. We built some music websites like Notjustok.com. We have our own website Sturvs; we built netng.com, and several more in the entertainment industry. We have done works for BankyW and Dare Art Alade.
By the time I moved here, building a customer base was not a problem because the work we had done in the past spoke for us. We did not have to do any marketing; all our businesses came from referrals.
Bellanaija didn’t need to tell anyone that her website had been built by Antigravity; our name was already at the bottom of the site. So people knew us once they clicked on it. That brought quite a lot of referrals. It just stamped the reputation for us very early as a good website company. We equally did our best not to compromise that our work stood above the regular.
Before this industry became saturated with practitioners, we had already made a name for ourselves. That pushed us high into the corporate and public sector. So now we have a higher profile. We have done quite a number of works both in the public and private sector.
In the public sector, we manage Osun State’s website; everything from the design and maintenance. We also send out daily news letters to subscribers on the website. In the private sector, we handle all of Tony Elumelu’s websites; his group of companies, his foundation, and a few other subsidiaries in his group. We built and maintain the websites on an on-going basis.
We also just launched a new website for the Honeywell group. We are currently working on a website that never existed for Super Eagles. There has never really been any good online presence for them before apart from Wikipedia.
Did you require much start-up capital?
Not really. It is only when you are running a commerce website or a payment platform that you would need to spend more money to get the word out. However, for this business, you don’t really require much. Your basic needs are laptop and internet connectivity. Lots of people are starting to realise and appreciate that there are opportunities in this business.
Because this business does not require much capital, we started making profit almost immediately. The only investment I had to make was my computer and from the contracts, I made my money back
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What were the challenges you experienced?
First is finding good talents that are loyal enough to work for somebody else; it is hard. Because this is an industry that does not require too much capital, everybody believes that they can do it on their own. Once you have a laptop and internet connection, you can start this business. So the average graduate who has a computer wants to start his own web design company. I am not saying that there is anything wrong in that but there is a growth process required. I didn’t just wake up and start this kind of business; I grew, I learned.
Another problem which is getting a lot better is the infrastructure – our internet connectivity and electricity supply. There was a time years ago, my employees used to come to my house to work. This was before I got married. Now I can’t do that anymore. Then we were either having issues with the generator, the internet, etc. Although the situation has improved now, there is still downtime once in a while.
Next is the level of appreciation from the target market. Some people don’t understand the full scope of work involved when it comes to information technology. They think it is just like writing a power point presentation or word document. When you bill them, they would ask why they had to pay so much. Some don’t even see the importance of having a website for their business especially when they are already making so much money.
What they don’t realise is that you have to spend money to make money. They don’t know that a website is an online office; always open 24 hours. People need to appreciate the importance of having a website.
As a result of this mentality, it was hard to really charge such clients. Although corporate clients would always pay more but these other clients would ask if you could not build a website for N50, 000.
What advice will you give youths who want to be self-employed?
They need discipline; that is the most important skill. When you become an entrepreneur, you are just like a worker without a boss. You have to learn to be your own boss and enforce your own rules. You have to give yourself a realistic time to get out there and go ahead.
You might be working at a job that you don’t like and you have some ideas. I wouldn’t say quit your job and start suffering because every business has got its own take-off time. Establish your business while you are still employed and see where it goes.
I started my business while I was still employed until I got to a point where I knew I had to get to the next level. That was when I took the leap of faith. You never start learning from your mistakes until you have made them.
You might think in your head that things would go a certain way but in reality, they wouldn’t. Also be realistic with your ideas. The ideas that become profitable are ideas that meet a need. There is no way you will not be compensated for meeting a demand.
For those going into web development, I will advise them to build a team very early. Don’t try to do it all yourself. Two or three people are enough. And to do this, you look at people you know; perhaps your classmates or your friends – people you can trust.
Is there anything you wish you had done better when you started?
If I could have done anything better then, I would have stayed focused on online payments. We are working on a product that is similar to PayPal. The Nigerian online space is a huge market; billions of transactions are going on online every day. When I first started out, I focused a lot on the online content space, which had to do more with blogs and entertainment. I learnt a lot from it but if I could change anything, I would have gone back and focused on the payment space.
Culled from punchng.com
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