My printing business stayed alive because of COVID-19 - Temitope Ekundayo, Co-founder, GetEquity

[00:00:00] Sometimes your ideal customers may not be your most profitable customers. You need your business to answer where you are now, where you're headed to, and how to get there. Any business you start when you think, oh, I have the most innovative idea that the world has never seen, already eats into an existing market. There is nothing you are starting that does not exist. The first most important thing is first, really, really understanding where you need to go. Second is your customers. Who are you selling to? Who is your, what we call ideal customer profile? There's no point in you going to sell a software as a service to a market woman who first and foremost does not even understand your products. If they are very comfortable using WhatsApp, why are you going to build a software as a service platform that they have to join online when you can reach them directly on WhatsApp that they know how to use? [00:00:54] Everybody has a business. So you have a business idea. Yes. [00:00:59] And then you're thinking of, how do I scale that business idea, and how do I even grow? How do I get my first customer? How did I get them to pay? How do I get them to make money? Or how do I make money, basically. And so you're thinking extensively, how do, basically, how to grow and also what to use to build out this thing. Go to market. Right. It's not like you're actually walking to a physical market in Yanaguru, or you're going to k two or my twelve, or anywhere you might be in Abuja, Port Harcourt, and wherever it might be around the world, listening. I think the first, most important thing is first, really, really understanding where you need to go. So I'm here to just talk through, but I would like to take questions. I like my conversation interactive. I'm also building a class from my own experience. Right. [00:01:55] And I hope that this will just be a pretty tiny form of what you get to learn when you get my class. All right. So you can just begin our next slide. So, yeah, about me. I think what this looks like you always seen around is just something I'm building. Right. The business education arm of my business. The idea is to train people who, if I knew what I know now, I would love to train people because I like teaching, but also because as a founder, is a very lonely road. You don't get to understand sometimes how lonely it is until you are in that spot. Right. Because the first question is, who do I talk to? Who do I tell? My problems? Maybe I can't meet payroll for this month. Um, you're down. You think the world is over. [00:02:44] Okay. You think the world is over. I can't meet payroll, and so you'll be ashamed. But then who do you want to talk to? Your friend. Oh, so sorry. But he can relate. Your mom, your dad. Oh, sorry. We'll pray for you. Right. So at that point in time, you kind of have that. And that's why you say it's always good to check your mental health and sometimes always good to talk to other fellow founders who have been there. And they are like, okay, guy. It's about relating to your team, communicating to them and you guys figuring out how to meet more sales, right? So that you can get revenue or your margins increase or you find something or you let people go, because at the end of day, it's that maturity and you keep going. [00:03:31] So, yeah, this should help you how that does work. [00:03:40] Yeah, I think you can read that later. But again, what is a go to market strategy? This thing we've been talking about, I'll just leave you with this first word for me. It's a percentage of a bigger market, right? [00:03:56] Plus more transaction, plus volume, plus profits. And ideally, right? So when you're thinking about growing or a strategy to grow, that's what you should have on the back of your mind, how many percentage of an existing market that is big that I can do, transactions that are high volume that can give me a profit, ideally. And that's why I said the very first thing I put was a bigger market. [00:04:26] And there's a reason. Next slide. [00:04:30] And that's because any business you start when you think, oh, I have the most innovative idea that the world has never seen, already eats into an existing market. There is nothing you are starting that does not exist. Blue Ocean strategy, whatever it's in the market, a market exists for it. [00:04:50] You're building your solution to it into that market. [00:04:54] And so when you look at it diagonally, it's total marketplace. That's the 100%. So let's say you can take someone like pets, a pet market. There's dogs, there's cats, there's snakes. It's someone's pet, right? And then your competition might have this current existing share, which is the other green account. And then you building a starting out you want to capture. [00:05:24] Let's say the competition makes dog food. You now want to do dog food with pepper. So it's still dog food market, but you are going with one that has more spice because you feel that something different. So you can see that we are all in the pet market. But I came with a differential strategy and my goal is that the more people like that pepper type of dog food, I become the market leader. And that's essentially what this whole thing around business is about. So when you see someone comes with social network, okay, what market did social network come to target? It came to target a community, right? [00:06:08] People are naturally lonely, they need to connect. And so social networks help you connect, they help you connect and that is that market that they captured but then they adjacent with advertisements, right? And brought ads to people's face and now everybody tries to be one. Okay, so moving on. [00:06:31] We want to understand what is in the go to market plan. Usually it's seven things. First and I always like to start with the market. [00:06:41] Customers, channels, products, price and brand positioning. So if there's nothing else, at least just have this at the back of your mind for markets. So which market are you pursuing? Right? [00:06:55] Which market has the most urgent pay? What are their gaps? [00:07:00] Which market aligns to your own strategy as a business, which market matches your own competency as a business, which market is easy to reach? Which market has the largest size and less friction or barrier to entry? All your thinking should figure out that because if you're going to a market, let's give for example telecoms, you're going into telecom industry and you want to come with a market. [00:07:28] By nature you already met with the NCC regulations so there's not, there's no way you can just do anything without reading what the Nigeria Communication Commissions regulation will be on that two infrastructure. You need to build your own towers, your own infrastructure or your rent at the cost, right, from the already existing tower operators like IHS and co. And then you still need to figure out marketing. How do you get more people to come? The average revenue per user. When you look at the average pattern as people, the economy people get poorer. So you have a lot to figure out, right? As against, if you just decide, you know what, I was going to create a platform, put it online, leverage an existing platform and just charge cheaper, right? You see now the difference between figuring out that market, figuring out how to enter that market. Second is your customers. Who are you selling to? Who is your, what we call ideal customer profile? Now sometimes I see people when they are talking of ideal customer profiles, they don't get it right. They feel, they feel. When I say okay, who is your customer? If I say at this skill, who is your customer? For example you might say oh it's, this, is this person maybe, oh, I'm looking, I'm doing b, two, c and I'm reaching someone here, out there like. It's a bit vague, but when you wake, when you know you have an ideal customer, you can define the person to this direct. So when you ask me who is Printivo's ideal customer, I can tell you, for example, a creator who is looking to build a great print experience for their product they are launching. Is definitely within the ages of 18 to 25 to 30 years at max. [00:09:31] Is mobile friendly, has Internet probably in Lagos. Works for my dear customer, works for an agency. [00:09:39] Is trying to test for first time leaving that company or trying to test out their artwork or monetize their skill needs to work with a professional printing service that will give them the quality and speed that they expect. And willing to pay for that service will also be because it's very busy. He likes the convenience my platform provides for him. [00:10:09] And I know that that kind of person, there are over 4 million of them within Lagos that I can reach. And I can reach them by ads, I can reach them in communities, I can reach them at events. [00:10:25] They are this type, their demography. They like to go out. So they most likely will hang out here. What am I doing? That's my ideal customer. I'm defining who that person is exactly. [00:10:36] And I know where to go and hit them. So I will not now be going out to the strategy of saying let me reach that person by hosting it. I might say hosting a party will likely get me my customer. So I'll host a party and I'll sponsor a party. Maybe then you find me start sponsoring chibiverse or you find me start sponsoring the ones by I think it's Lagos mainland block party and I'll be there because those are my customers and I'll likely reach them. And what will happen. I'll now give a percentage or an incentive for them to join and use me. So usually you need to know who you are selling to. You need to know who you are targeting. Exactly. The reason why most times people never get to grow is because they don't really understand it. And this is something that is normal. It's not easy. I've sat down with a lot of marketing managers. I've had to define ideal customer profiles like I do it in my sleep now. Because sometimes your ideal customers may not be your most profitable customers. And that's also something you understand. [00:11:44] So you don't have just one ideal customer profile. You have multiple profiles and personnel. And then you also then define those Personas by what choice. It's just like you are thinking and trying to psychoanalyze what this person might likely do. So with this person, if I have this kind of ideal customer. Now, my second ideal customer in Printivo is the business owner who is setting up a business, who wants to stand out, who is looking for quality product, who with him, price is not the major issue, but the brand he creates which can spend and who needs that convenience because he's trying to scale and grow quickly. That's ICP two. And so I will target that founder. But in that same ICP, I have the third ICP human resource manager who looks to create a system that will pay for them, so centralize and procure things and is looking for a platform that has reliability as a key factor and is affordable. [00:12:57] I'll give you three icps. Number four, I can give you 25. I've done 50 of my business type. The fourth one, a business owner school. [00:13:08] Right. [00:13:09] A school owner who needs, who needs uniforms standardized, that can provide it for their students and also needs stationaries that will be used in the school. So you can see, the more you go, you find out these people that really need your product. And sometimes the issue is that you don't want to stop because you feel, do these people truly read my product? No, because there's no point in you going to sell a software as a service to a market woman who first and foremost does not have, does not even understand your product. [00:13:46] That's not going to be you think the person will need it. But look, look at their condition. If they are very comfortable using WhatsApp, why are you going to build a software as a service platform that they have to join online when you can reach them directly on WhatsApp that they know how to use. [00:14:05] So sometimes we like to look out like make our MVP's so complex when MVP's are just supposed to be very simple. The concept of what a minimum, viable minimum. Minimum is by the word minimum. [00:14:21] Do something that works, people can pay for. That's just all. So, yeah, how would they use your product or your service? Right. Think about it deeply. And sometimes that's why some people build MVP's on other MVP's. Some people have built MVP's on airtable and excel. [00:14:42] Right again, you, you overthink it. I must be an app. [00:14:47] No, not the same way. [00:14:50] And interestingly, if you not doubt it, some of the largest, most innovative companies, Airbnb started out of this way. Literally there wasn't any website. It was basically Craig list. They went to Craig lists and airtable and today they are different. So don't think that the biggest ideas can, needs to start with technology. It just needs to work right. [00:15:21] The most important thing is if you are trying to raise venture capital, is the investors understanding that you have a product that people will pay for. And that's the most critical point. Then, of course, your offering, your product or service offering, what are you offering? [00:15:39] What unique value do they offer? And of course, your price. How much are you charging? [00:15:44] Do you have a benchmark that you're pricing with? Do you understand your pricing model? When I ask people for pricing, do they understand the concept of volume, your margins, and of course, your unit economics? So again, that's something. As a founder, you need to, if they wake you up this night and tell you, how do you make money? And you say, okay, yes, I'm a b, two b business. Okay, you offer b, two b. What percentage? Okay, I can tell you, yeah, I offer businesses this amount. I make 40% gross margin, maybe 20% net. I need to do 200 of those people to be able to provide, meet breakeven. So I need to reach 200 people every given month, for example. That makes sense for you. So how do you reach 200 people that can spend 50k on your platform every given month? That would now be what your baseline target will be as a business owner. [00:16:45] So those are the things to help you build a proper go to market that will actually help you. And then, of course, your brand positioning as a brand today, if you want to build a great business, you have to stand out. The reason for brand positioning is that if you're in a room of everybody wearing white, they're the same. But make sure you, the moment you wear red and enter the room of white, every eyes is on you. So think about that same analogy online. [00:17:17] When Apple began, they came with a ad and they're like, be different, right? They came out to stand out, and they stood out with simplicity. When everybody was building complex, big boxes, this went minimal. They compressed all those things into a tiny, tiny, flat platform. It was not as flat as this, but it was not as big as the others at the IBM Zanko. And then if you also look at our own products, where people have come out with several innovation in packaging, from big, complex things to very small things, as they are today. So brand positioning is also about what people relate to your brand. How do you want to communicate with them? The tone of voice, it's not usually the visual element side of things, right. The creative identity, like your logo in brand positioning, is also sound, right? And if you notice, I can give you, number one, brand positioning that works well, which is when you hear chicken in public, what do you hear about sound? When you hear nice? Nice, right. They interestingly have understood psychology and now anybody I say nice night. They say chicken in public. Yes. That's a very sound idea about branding. And that's something that helps people remember sound and beyond just the visual elements. Because sometimes people always mistake the visual elements of branding and forget that there are strategic approaches in branding also. [00:18:55] And also even the experience around your product creates a brand by its nature. So that's why we now see concept of product led growth, because the product is so good, its experience is so good that it brands you, right? Sometimes. All right, next slide. [00:19:14] So again, why you need it is quite simple. You want to reduce time to market, right? You want to understand the associated cost and how to reduce it. So we'll take questions, watch later. You want to increase the adaptability to change because you have to change. You have to quickly figure out your market. You want to ensure a successful launch of your products. [00:19:35] You want to avoid the wrong path. You want to set up a path for growth or a direction. [00:19:42] And then of course you want to manage the challenges that come next slide. Sorry, your go to market needs to answer. Treating where you are now, right. [00:19:55] What is your current state of your affairs? Write it down. Oh, we don't have a website, we don't have staff, nothing, everything, right? Write it down. [00:20:04] You need to take inventory of where you are right now. Then of course, next is where do you want to head to? [00:20:11] What is that end goal, the desired outcome and walk backwards. Right? And you define that vision. [00:20:21] Now you can clearly see that, okay. For me to be the biggest bank in the world, what does it entail when I start today for me to be the biggest bank in the world, it means that I need to have people that bank with me and not just people that bank with me. Businesses, the top, let's use by public markets, the top ranking companies, let's say top 50, right? If you check New York Stock Exchange, they have an index. So all those index. If all the top ranking indexes around the World bank with me and building a global bank or the governments or people whereby my position in terms of free cash flow or my investors fund or my shareholder assets under management are bigger than anything combined, right? That, that gives me the thing. So for that it means that I have to build a system that allows people trust me to put their savings, their assets, their information and everything that is vital to them on to bank with me. And I also need to be growing, like astronomically, to be able to reach multiple markets and create a process that is used globally and keeps building and acquiring, because sometimes my growth strategy might be to acquire other banks and add to my collection and keep swelling. So that's just something again you can try. But then what has to happen to get you there? So I've achieved that. I want to be the biggest bank. What has to happen from today? [00:22:04] I need to go out and set up to build a bank, meaning I need to start looking at the core things that make a bank a bank. My risk framework, my treasury management, my regulations, my compliance, my service, my channel, my route to market, who I'm targeting, who I'm going to be working with. [00:22:24] How am I going to serve people? Why would people serve me? Who am I targeting? All those things have to start coming into place, the talents that's going to work on this, how am I going to get people there? All of those things are important for a business. [00:22:43] Next slide. [00:22:45] All right, so when you want to deploy it, how do you go about it? Next slide. [00:22:54] Hello. [00:22:57] Let's just move on because I want to ask the question, so why do you need to spend resources on launching? [00:23:04] The answer is very simple. There's budgets and time, so I could start up this business and before it takes me what I need, going steadily, not moving fast, it could take me 40 years to achieve that. [00:23:20] But then if I decide that I want to go quickly, acquisition of other banks will be a fast way to scale and become one of the biggest. Right, but it's going to cost me a lot of money. [00:23:37] Right. [00:23:39] So that is something you always need to see costs as against time, which your go to market has to answer. And that's why you see some banks today, one of the notable ones has been acquiring. [00:23:55] He can easily go and set up in those markets. It's been acquired and starts, but he's looking at the time like the time I'm going to take to start up this brand in this market will take two time. Let me just go and look for a bank, a brand that is maybe high ranking, top ten, that needs capital injection to scale. And I just buy it, put my brand there and I mean, and that's what that bank is doing in his go to even it to his shareholders. He wrote that strategic plan in. By 2027, we have acquired 13 banks. It's 2024. It has acquired ten by my count so far, recent one being Tanzania. It just bought. So it has beaten his gold projection. And do you know why they are doing that? Because it invested heavily in their m and a department. They have literally one of the best. I know, and that's because they want. They knew that a point for them to grow. They will acquire multi assets and then use that to increase the group's holdings. Because they don't want to just only be banking. They want to be the total financial solution. In fact, if you heard about what they said prior to one of the founders mounting is at every pin from pension, right from pension to insurance to banking to financial technology. [00:25:25] They want to be the access for everything around the world. And if you notice, that's why they've been in pension, they bought also one, a legacy brand that is also well known. Very interesting. And then in insurance they also, they bought another very legacy brand. [00:25:46] And in banking they've been buying multiple infinitech. They built their their own and is growing. I know you know the brand, I just don't want to mention them. But. But what am I saying? I'm just mentioning it's sticking to your head because that's also a branding positioning. So that's just sometimes budget versus time they are going to acquire to save time to scale, to achieve their plans. They can might as well built it from scratch. They of course have the financial powerhouse, they have the talent, powers, but they chose not to. [00:26:20] There's also the kind of the opportunity matrix. [00:26:24] What have you and your management team talked about when building from scratch? So usually from a management perspective, you do some analysis to know if and where you are. The typical one is what analysis? Current weakness, opportunity, threat. I'm sure everybody here knows what SWAT is, but the little less known ones are pestle, porter forces and vrail. [00:26:53] And you can just check them out. They are very good topics that do justice to them. But then your pesto looks at your political, your environmental, your social, your technology, your legal, and then of course, what's the other? E. G. Environmental. [00:27:12] So imagine if you're in an environment that there's war. [00:27:18] If you're in a war zone, what you build will determine the environment you are in. Right? As against peaceful time in a political volatile region, the type of and how you build your business would determine different. Because one, let's give a political volatile region UK currently because labor conservative today is social, it changes. And so most times, new policies, new changes, new effects from socialism or midway left or right. So you as a business owner needs to know how to change your policies. Because today if the libs or the Dems come or the social houses or whatever comes on board this new policy, they are coming with, I might not favor you. So you have to be smart about that. Again, just give you an example. It's not like I'm saying it's real. [00:28:20] But then, of course, there's portal forces, and that is just five forces. There's also, one of them says, threat of entrance by other third parties. Because you are fintech, right? [00:28:37] You might think, okay, apart from the bank, those are the only threats I might have because banks are also getting into the fintech space. You might just find out that it might be a large superstore or even a church. [00:28:52] And the church decides that by nature of we have 5 million or 10 million people, we decide to want to build our own business and use other churches to scale. And before you know, it has done hundreds, that's a threat that you never saw coming. [00:29:09] So you always, constantly, as a management team, always look at where the most possible threats to your business will come from. Again, it can come from businesses that by nature of where they are, you don't recognize them as threats. But you should be able to have a response even if you're not thinking about it. So I'll give you an example of how portal five forces works for us in Printivo at 2019. When the very, very, very first case of COVID happened, we saw that, and I jokingly told my partner then that there's a straight time. One day we just wake up and Nigeria is locked. Jokingly, this was beginning 2019, but I started just browsing channels, like, okay, you know, most times it's conspiracy theories, and they're telling you of lockdown and all those things. And I was in one of those channels, and they posed the question of what will happen? What do you do? And the question was, well, we'll make masks and we'll move on. But I never left. Took it. I just wrote it one day, a very funny story. I put it at mask and. And I threw the. [00:30:13] And then it happened. [00:30:15] It happened. I remember that everybody was running on what to do, right. Business were shutting down. And I was like, okay. I went by and said, let's check masks. And then I called my mom, who is a doctor, and she. [00:30:29] She told me, like, okay, this is what would help. Like, it has to be the, basically, should not allow that. [00:30:40] Sorry. Yeah, the barrier. Sorry. That was the word I was trying to find. You have to be able to block the barrier and all that. They started testing out and even going online to forums, then manufacturing forums. They're coming up and people say, testing masks and even showing schematics of how to build. And with that we had a working prototype. But we made it fun that you could brand it and we sold it. And that's how we started. Stayed alive, right, for the entire Covid and masks served and made me profitable. Die. [00:31:11] So again, if I did not think about what will happen to my business dying. [00:31:17] And again, it doesn't have to be like, oh, you wrote one solid matter. Just write something that you think, if this person comes, I'll do this. It might be crazy, but he has something to respond at every given time. [00:31:30] Vra also is around risk analysis. What happens. So take these four things in the management team as part of your strategy. All right, next slide. [00:31:44] Which market to enter? Selecting a market. Very good question. I usually have and use a lot of different frameworks. One of the frameworks is the penetration rates, ecommerce penetration rate, which. Because why? When you go to a country that has people buying online, it helps you understand how, how well connected that they are, right? Because if people are buying online means there's payment, there's a mature payment infrastructure or market there, and means there's also a thriving consumer index of if my business will survive or not. So I checked that rate. [00:32:22] And so you see, sometimes, although this data might be old, but you can see that, oh, United Arab Emirates has like 4.2% of Saudi Arabia or the rest of the GCC or Egypt or MEna in the percentage. So you're like, hmm, if I launch here, or maybe you see that there's no much happening, and then you're a payment company, you're like, oh, Mao, that means there's an opportunity for me to go and launch in Egypt and build out their infrastructure so that people can come online. So everybody, for me now, maybe it's too low as an e commerce business. I won't run there for a payment. Business will say, ah, this is the best opportunity for me. All right, next slide, just to give you a bit of short data. I mean, Mena, as you know, is the Middle east and North Africa, right? So gross domestic product, there's 3.7 trillion as of 2019. [00:33:19] The population together as a region is 456 million as of 2019. Of course, the data has changed. We're 24. Right. [00:33:28] And GNI. Right, which is the gross national index is 7600 per person or life expectancy, 74 years education, enrollment and the countries under them. I said, I got that from the World Bank's open data bank, but you can get the latest data. But what is this telling me? It's telling me that this is a good, fairly moderate middle income consumer base. Right. Means they have the potential to spend. Right? [00:34:05] All right, next slide. Now we compare that to sub Saharan Africa. [00:34:12] The GDP is 1.7. Remember those ones was what, 3.8? So that regions is literally twice the region I might be starting out with. My population is more 1.1 billion as it gains 156 million there. Smaller population, much more cost as it gains larger population, lesser amounts. [00:34:36] Education, enrollment as an idea today is lesser, right? There's been wars, there's been strife. There's been farming. I think that number should have dropped to 70%. [00:34:51] When you even consider a country like one country we're in, I will mention before they come out fights me. [00:34:57] Look at the JNI 1550 against the average for that place. 7000 times seven. So you just imagine someone by 2019 as I. Then when we compare this data, it means the average person here was earning 1550 a year. They were only 7000. So there are seven x my. Maybe my existing market. So if I'm thinking of even going, I'll find a place that they have enough liquidity. I mean, it might be me or you might see you. You will see more opportunity here. So again, that's something. Everybody's in the way. We call it. One man's meat is another man's poison. It's the same thing. One man's poison and Aman's meat, right? [00:35:41] And then 46 countries under here, that one was 13. So next slide. South Africa as a continent, not South Africa as a country. Don't get me wrong. Southern Africa, 350 billion, population 58. [00:36:00] So you can do the math. But look at their GNI 6040. That's six x. Again, if you are from a south sub Saharan Africa country, and yeah, this is the country alone, it's wealthier cities. So if you are trying to even grow, if you are not setting up your business in these places, what are you doing? Right? Something like that. So why is all this short data important? It's helping you know the kind of city. And it's also why you need to do the same thing. Let's say you are in Nigeria. [00:36:34] Is Lagos the number one market for your type of business model? [00:36:39] If it's trade, where would be the number one trade center? Will it be Abba? [00:36:45] If it's letter work, what would be number one place where you can get leather for cheap? Will it be cano? So why starting in Lagos when your major resource is far north? Who says you should start here? Okay, route to market. If you start there and you have a proper route to market that can bring the product here still maintains the price and quality. Saves you cost because your production center is there. You don't have to spend Lagos exorbitant prices. [00:37:15] You do it again. That's what you need. Your, your search needs to figure out. Okay, next slide. [00:37:22] Of course, Nigeria. [00:37:27] Next slide. [00:37:30] City expansion. Right. [00:37:32] I did more breakdowns. I'm just doing all this just for the data because I like, I think with Yemi I've shared the same passion of, of throwing through data. But yeah, this is by the new world wealth and afresha bank reports. So when you look at the wealth and the residents in terms of people who earn a million dollars and above. People earn 10 million and above. [00:37:59] There is $722 billion made from which people that earn 210 million dollars and above is 2200. And if you are building a product that is ultra luxury. [00:38:13] You only have 2000 people to target in that country. [00:38:17] You can make margins well with those targeting even just hundred of them. Right. [00:38:23] If you're targeting a million dollar plus customers you can grow to at most one hundred forty two k. And so it means that you already know your target market. The potential you can make from that market from day one. Like if you are using this type of demography segmentation to choose who you are targeting. Next slide. [00:38:49] Same thing by amount of from Africa. This is business tech and he's showing you that more. Look at Nairobi, Lagos and Nairobi. So Lagos is still popping, right? If you touch, if you target Lagos for wealthy people you, you should survive. All right, next slide. [00:39:10] Hnis. Same interesting thing. Even by asset classes in Lagos you see 96 billion and HN, HNWIs at least to this definition is people that earn a million dollars were around 5400. I don't know what it is then. Now as I then next slide. [00:39:32] So things you need to look out for when you are looking at this segmentation is your return on investment potential. So if you go into this market and put money in that market, will it return your investments? So you don't need to lie to yourself. If it will not, it will not. Because if you run the projection, if you know the cost for rent, if you know the Internet cost, if you know every cost you will spend cost of maybe frames cost of all these things and you put it to what you potentially will get from that place by even the most conservative nature and it is not more than that market then it's not a good market to invest in. Simple and period. [00:40:17] You just want to do that because oh, I want to hear, I want to be in Kenya. If you're in Lagos, I mean Nigerian in Lagos and Anambra, you're earning. Then stay in Nigeria and deepen your hold here. Why do you want to be there? Because you just want to be. Say I'm in two cities or I'm in two countries. Yes, you just fooling yourself then. Of course, again, the concept and framework of competition analysis. [00:40:41] Never underestimate the incumbents. [00:40:44] The incubants are the incubator for a reason, right? [00:40:51] Sometimes I hear people, oh, I want to talk with the banks. They've created their own system. Someone was there prior, before this one came and this one uprooted them. So if you. You have to uproot them. So you have to learn incumbent versus challenger. You are the challenger. They are the ones that are now currently reigning. How do you win? So what strategy do you win? Used to win them or uproot them? [00:41:16] You need to look at the customer sizing, who they target, how distributed they are, are they legacy, are they government backed? [00:41:27] Do they have money or a war chest against you? Because if, for example, you are targeting a government backed business to topple, of course, know that you are fighting with government and the policies that will come next will either destroy your business in one write up or it will become tight for you. At the same time, if you are fighting in a business that has money and they will just wait for you, spend, make noise, do all these things by nature of who has staying power, you will die. So, yes, you change, you come out with your innovation and they'll just be there, continue where they are. But after some years, you fizzle out and then people like, they enjoy that. But you're like back to regular programming because that guy is still alive because he has money. So sometimes, sometimes, no, I don't say it every time, but sometimes it could be a strategy for them. So, ease of entry, how long is it to entertain? Sometimes we. I talk about people that see, if you want to set up a us company today, it's far easier than setting up in Nigeria. [00:42:41] In Nigeria, you pay your lawyer. Lawyer might take 21 days average. [00:42:47] You still apply to Kama, Kama side to be up going, CSE side to be going up and down. [00:42:53] Today is going up to me is not advised. In that place, you just go to stripe, Atlas, palm Entertainment, your address, put your thing, make your payment $300. They give you ein, open a bank account. In ten days you have a us company. [00:43:08] So ease of entry is also important. And that's why most people are opening up Delaware companies around the world. And it's because it's easy to set up a business in Delaware and the Delaware states, the government and everyone looked at a process of how to set up business the fastest way possible. And they make millions of dollars from that. That's their revenue state franchise tax is small, it's 200. But that 200 $300 people pay brings millions of dollars, multi millions. But they focused on what makes us different is that we can help businesses set up and have very reduced used laws, right. For taxes and for also business support tools, just for them to be alive. So that's why that state is more popular. It doesn't mean you don't set up businesses around other cities or other states. And all of them have their advantages. I'll just give you an example. [00:44:14] So the ease of doing business if you come to a place that the corruption index is totally high, meaning you already know what you're getting into. [00:44:24] So imagine you enter that country, and from day one, they started asking you how far you know what you're getting into. So you know that to move an inch, you have to actually graze hands. And sometimes some of them obviously don't want to. I mean, who wants to be. To be associated with that is wrong, right? By. Call it a spade, it is wrong. But they also understand that they can move forward. That's why a particular group likes a particular country. [00:44:59] They feel well at home, because they know what they need to do to scale, and they have enough cash to move. [00:45:06] But then the city laws, the business laws, the purchasing power of that company, also determines how easy it is to scale execution. How do you execute from plan to when you deploy? And of course, your speed. How do you quickly go from zero to 100 is important. Then, of course, the team. [00:45:28] You need a team that can run a proper one. The team is everything. [00:45:32] And that's why sometimes when people are investing in you, and when we're investing in you, we invest in the team, because it's your team that will work with you to grow this business. [00:45:47] You need to have a way to test and experiment, experiment properly, right? It means that you need to. Experimentations can be different. So let's say I want to get into the breakfast crowd. How do I experiment? Quickly. I can experiment by saying I can do two things. Either I'll get a pop up, pop up van and make bread and eggs and tea, and position at most likely financial centers, because those are people that reach the office early, and sometimes most of them will have breakfast, they will run. So they most likely will be my target markets, I'm keeping something they can just grab on the go and pay and, and get it, or I can just decide to sell it as a park to go. So it's not, it's not custom made is going. Right? And sometimes that's why you see some interesting spots. Normal SME's, they have puff, puff and burns at some corners of the streets because they also know where the demand is coming from. Yeah, but the cost die by your CAC, right? Which is a cost of customer acquisition. Cost die by it. [00:47:03] I mean, ideally you need your customer cost dropping every time so that you survive. Because if you spend too much, acquire customers, then it makes no sense. At a point in time, you're just throwing money at a problem. You should be able to build a business that your cost of acquisition over time drops. It's not easy when you start out. That's why you do the initial brand push, you spend. But when you become a household name, people start coming to you. I'll give for example, for us, our CSE is literally zero. Our major revenue people come to our website, they know us, they already remember us ten years on because we spent millions and millions and millions in the initial time to sync it into everybody's head. [00:47:47] So you can try that. It paid for us down the line. It might not pay for some people. And that's why some people always do top of mind awareness, right? [00:47:57] And that's because their product or their service is something that is everywhere. So they pay to remain top of mind that you remember me at any time you are thinking of that product because tens and thousands of people, it's like pure water. Pure water is everywhere. But to be in top of mind, they'll be pushing it in. [00:48:22] I mean, theirs are b two b. So they'll go to all those retail and be moving their product there and make sure that they are buying their pure water business. It's also a cultural market. So any market is saturated, people have to spend in branding to remember them because everybody is in that market. [00:48:39] All right, next slide. I think, number two, I have to say this, but do not use your gut feeling to launch, as they always say, oga led marketing. [00:48:53] I feel this, do never use that. Next slide. Why? [00:48:57] Because. [00:48:59] Okay, let's move. [00:49:03] Because one thing you need to look at is these two things, your market value versus your market volume. Market volume. Quite interesting. How many transactions can a market see, right? Ideally. [00:49:21] So the next is your market value. What is the highest price people are willing to pay for that thing? So I would take for example food inflation in this country. We used to buy things are cheap. [00:49:34] Now it's not longer, it's more expensive. And prices keep growing every day. At a point in time you to get to a point in time people will stop buying that product. [00:49:46] And then they'll move towards something that they think is an alternative and is cheaper. And that's why some products will get to a point that then by even their own cost cannot promote the willingly demand. And that's why you see some major ones with head have shutting down. [00:50:07] Because a lot of people look at this. If I'm going to be for example, I like beer a lot, right? And this particular favorite brand is selling. I used to buy it at 300, it's now 1000, it's 1525. At a point in time, it's 5000. At a point in time I'm like, I can only. I used to drink this maybe five times a week, for example, I will start drinking it twice. Then once at the point in time it becomes luxury. [00:50:33] Exactly. Then I start looking for alternatives. And that's essentially the consumer pattern we're seeing with how people are consuming these products. [00:50:43] And that's essentially why you need to look at the volume. And that's why you see some businesses telling you we're leaving. It's not like they don't have money to still remain in the upcoming market. But they already have done the mathematic that there is no amount we are going to sell. There's no amount of volume we are going to sell that will make us profitable again. As long as these economic factors remain, even if we sell 2 billion bottles, we will never be profitable. So what's the point? When we know that the cost of diesel will keep going. When we know that the cost of raw materials will keep going. [00:51:19] When we know the supply to those raw materials will be high. When we know the effects cost to those things will be high and it's volatile. We cannot even predict the percentage. They already done their matter and say, you know what, there's no point. Let's not even go into when we already know the outcome. [00:51:37] So this is very important. Market volume versus market value. Right, next slide. [00:51:44] You also need potential in the same reason why some of them have left. Some have seen, okay, that potential. That's the place we are going in by nature. Because there's a vacuum. Once that person leaves, someone needs to fill that hole. And so someone steps in. Now the entire size of the market for a product at a specific time. So because there's a volume there's a gap. Someone steps in and then finds a way to do it cheaper. It won't be the same in tastes, size or look but Shah is it somehow and then the person prices that way and takes off the mantle of the new generation and that's how products are. We currently look at the current products here but look at our parents time. There are products that existed then that don't exist now, right? And there was I think even some washing ingredients. One that was we call blue. It was blue by nature and some people used to use that to even dye their white shirt. It's not again, there's new detergents who have taken that volume because those people had to leave at a point in time. So it's the nature of life but sometimes it happens. So next slide, you need to do a competition analysis Robin, in computer analysis is critical for any business. So the first I guess said look at incumbents which are businesses that are already established in the market. [00:53:22] The concept I use for incubancy is the experience curve when a business has existed in the market when you go and check who is my competition, you see that business has been in that market for 109 years. [00:53:37] That's the business you want to fight. They've been dead. They've seen everything. [00:53:41] So they all look at you and laugh okay, come. Nice idea. But you see they've made it cheaper to do what they do for that long with more experience. [00:53:53] And so they would adapt to when we look at our markets and all in the US, even the stripes that we see, it's not the biggest payment company in the US. [00:54:10] It surprises you, right? [00:54:12] You can check it, it has great volumes but some of them are larger. You just don't know them. [00:54:20] And if you think financial technology companies, I mean Visa, we all know Visa and Mastercard but we don't know about discovery. It's also another business that has been there. It's also a card network that's been also as long as Visa. But I think they just launched one in Nigeria through a partnership. [00:54:39] But those are businesses that have been thriving for hundreds of years. [00:54:44] The bear brands, some have existed for centuries. [00:54:49] They have an economic of scale that you starting out will not have. So you always look at that as a challenger business. Look at if it's trying to grow aggressively market share. The reason for that is because it wants to. It's willing to cut down prices to have many people in it because the concept is we will not make money today but we'll make money someday. And so they are willing to fight and cut you out and be very cheap and until they win. So typically currently right now in the e commerce market, we have Temu. Temu has come to beat Alibaba and Aliexpress and even going toe to toe to Amazon. But Amazon of course has been more experienced so it has deflected with other products. But e commerce, e commerce wise, the share of markets, Temu is now grabbing more people on a daily basis. Same thing with TikTok. Google was de facto the only search engine till tikka came about. [00:55:58] The chinese people are also coming with their own version and brand of how they do business, which is good to always see from two perspectives. But yeah, the challenger comes and that's why they have their own aggressive way to enter the market. And before you know there are millions of users because they're not thinking about profitability, it's not even in their watch world, they don't know what that is. For them is grow and acquire as fast as possible. And if you typically work with chinese person, you understand what I mean when you are telling them, oh, we, you do a plan and say, okay, we're going to acquire 2 million people by end of three months. They are laughing at you. They want it done within three weeks. [00:56:45] And you are like, excuse me, did you, they are saying, yes, three weeks. And you always see them because they want that now and they have their own model, it works for them. And do you know why? Because think about it, there is a company called Mutant. Mutant delivers almost 4 million food every day. You know what it is to do 4 million packs every single day at scale. And they grow because over time they've learned to build at scale businesses. And so when they go into other markets, when they understand the market, they go at scale. [00:57:24] That's what works for them. But for other people, different market is long time slow, steady growth. But over time you see them expand to all the countries in the world. [00:57:38] Legacy New startup again, that's the concept of where we're fighting startup understanding the startup young company founded by one or more to develop unique products, bring it to market. By nature it tends to be shoestring, grows fast, has a unique position or selling point, technology enabled, right? [00:58:04] And I said a government backed enterprise or government owned enterprise area the government has invested, has full control, has significant joint venture with you, will be your one policy away from dying. [00:58:23] And they can allow you to grow and become big, like big enough to swallow because maybe they'll say, let's see what he can build. And when you build to a point they build all the technology. They just come one day and one policy and decree wave, your company becomes theirs. [00:58:44] That's rough. But it exists. It has happened plenty times. [00:58:51] Typical standard oil. They let standard oil become very massive. And then the government came one day and said, standard Oil, you must break apart. [00:59:01] And then that's the theory of the seven oil companies. You go check them out. Some of them we know, Chevron, total, all these companies came up from one company, right? So money bags again, they have Runway to allow steel. So either the bigger incumbent, so it's either an incubator of another market that has a subsidiary of your market, that big one will be funding that one forever. [00:59:28] They keep funding. Ah, you've made loss. No problem. Bah, here's one, 5 billion. You are there trying to find customers. They are just there. Just be there. Just be there. Because sometimes the strategy is use that guy to enter the big market. So sometimes they'll position a product. And typically when you look at what the pampers market or when the marketing was happening is that they were targeting. Of course, the customer in this case is the baby, right? It's the baby that wears the pampers. But then the secondary market, who they sell to are the parents, who are the purchasing decision makers who buy the product for the child. [01:00:05] And so ideally they will have those marketing going on this product. It will be an entry to the main product. And so that's the same strategy. So that product could just be set up to help them get more customers for their main service. There are some people that they win you through. [01:00:27] So let's take example. Some companies will give you less streaming companies. You can watch movie free, right? You can watch a movie for free. And then when the trial period happens, you watch that movie for free. You've enjoyed it, and you're like, I want to watch more. You open your wallets, right? And, but they've already looked at it that this guy, by his profile, you might only watch 30 movies at max in the entire 30 days. [01:00:58] But there are some people they know that will watch movie for 500 times because they are, they love a lot of movies. Some. So these algorithms are so smart, they know. And they keep recommending you this one, because you get into the hole. You keep recommending, keep recommending until you just know one day higher is my day. I want to be. And that's just also interesting points. [01:01:20] And how do you now beat those competition? You start having to deeper because not every type of business, you just rush to copy. [01:01:29] All right, next slide. [01:01:31] So how do you test this market, how do you actually beat the market? All right, next slide. [01:01:36] You build an MVP. Of course, you test four or five of the markets you want to target with advertisements or community or organic. I like to do. Why is it paid? Advertise or organic? Organic takes time. Time. I want to really know if this thing will actually work. Goods paid. Right. Quickly test with the tiny budgets and know if I, I'm going to put my money there or just run away. [01:02:03] Localize your supply and sign strategic partnerships. [01:02:09] You run your analysis on what you may get. You prepare your entry, you deploy. So let's check what they mean when you build an MVP. Basically, like I said, the most minimum viable product necessarily does not have to be a full fledged website or not. And I'll tell you, for example, my Ramsuya business, I was testing, I've done this on excel sheets. I've had 300 customers as simple as that. And I've tested it week on week. If now I'm confident enough to go and build. [01:02:44] All right, next slide. [01:02:47] So we now know what an MVP, or do you need me to define it how? I see. I just did. So sorry. Next slide. [01:02:58] So let's test with an ad. You will create a separate campaign for each of your cities to be tested. If it's Port Harcourt, if it's Lagos, if it's Gombe, you segment the verticals based on the ideal customers. Ideal customer, 1234 or five target. Each of them have a test budget, no matter small. I heard sometimes people tell you, oh, you have 500. The test is too small. Again. Try it. [01:03:33] Try it by nature, of course, the more you spend, the advertisement platform, the Facebook, the Google, they want you to spend more. So of course, course they want you to increase your target and reach and tell you, oh, you need one, two, three. But sometimes if you perfectly understand where your icps are, you can target them better. All right? And that is by and again, if you have a very experienced marketing person with a little minimum budget of 1000 naira, 2000 naira, you could get something. I'm not saying it's going to be immediate. You could get something even if it's two people that just signifying interest. And why did those two people interest? And when you find down, you can see if there will be multiple two peoples like that. Would those multiple two peoples keep you in market? If they do, then you're good to go. If they don't, change strategy. That's, that's what that test is supposed to answer. [01:04:34] Again, nothing at scale. When you are testing, you're experimenting for some few things. [01:04:41] Run it as much as possible, differentiate it. When you differentiate, they call it ab. Run it multiple times by volume. [01:04:51] Collate all those things in information. Because you are collecting quantitative and qualitative data. And data is the key to helping you understand if you have anything abroad. So if you have your content, for example, fintech and you say pay easily with Michael, Michael Pay and decide to change that copy tomorrow to say never run out of airtime, top up with Michael, pay or you change the copy to say they let you pay. They collect money, they let you pay and it's expensive. Michael will never charge you more than $1. [01:05:32] Look at the copy. For some people, when they see that, it's like it's true. Those are stupid. Bank that will be charging me money this market promised me free. I joined our copy would have been pay easily, would have signified to them. Okay, I want to pay easily because currently I can't pay easily. Maybe I have to go to the bank and go and be depositing money on top. Like you don't know what the experience are. So each of those things changing your copy, changing your imagery, changing the time you send it, changing how you send it, the channel you send it, where you send it at the volume you want it to reach. If you are targeting old people, young people, if you are targeting young people, the way the pictures you use, the content you use, the language you use, changes when you're talking to a matured audience. [01:06:20] Or if you're talking to an audience. In the creative sector, there's a slang, the same way, different when you're talking to someone from the journalistic background, like a journalist, there are slangs that you guys talk to each other, that people will be lost when they are here together. But in the same way, when we have people from the marketing side, that would be when we are talking, you can, you can sell someone. So it's just the same way you need to know the audience, what they like, what is common with them, and get that going. [01:06:53] Analyze the user feedback and then work with that towards your business. Next slide. [01:07:02] So just a visual demo station of what I mean, can be one to three different set, broad and the type of audience you target just gives you an example. Next slide. [01:07:14] So by localizing supply, you can enter into channel partnerships. So what I mean by that is when you choose your partner, which you have to be careful, he could mar you or he could make you. [01:07:27] So let's say you sell. [01:07:32] Let's say you sell food stock and you're looking for the channel to reach and you decide to enter a partnership, like for example with Shoprite and also with chicken public. When they had an existing partner prior, there were some problems and then they decided to go with a new partner. Or sometimes it's also a new partner distribution strategy and that's why some people franchise in those in that market. [01:07:59] But sometimes you also look at the experience and the reach of what they do. So even as a tech company, when you're trying to strategically partner with other businesses, you look at the reach, the experience and understanding. [01:08:17] Sometimes by partnering with a existing, let's say you want to get a payment merchant by partnering with the popular people, you say okay, great, because people know them, recognize them, but then they will charge you more as against a new upstart that is hungry, that wants to build with you, that can give you more features and flexibility. With those kind of people, they reach the point where standardization makes sense. In this kind of people they able to build out a certain set of features that help you. So you have to always balance or use multiple approaches. So shorter supply chain is better, right? [01:08:59] When you have shorter supply chain, you have less cash tied up in it, less inventory. So if you have a partner, for example, in my own case, we might have people who supply us paper that we have partnered with. Because I know my demand on a monthly basis, I know how much I'm going to put in investing, getting the paper. So I can as well let those people and we've signed a kind of MoU in terms of what they priced to me at as against someone who doesn't know is the man. Because I'm able to say confidently I might be getting 60,000 orders this month. So Oga reduce your price for me. And he has worked with me so much that he knows what I say is true, right? And then yeah, able to do that so you can speak to other founders, you can get local leads. Any of all these things help reduce your supply in terms of localizing. Next slide. [01:10:01] Again to get an RI your value of investment minus the cost of investment helps you provide that. Next slide. [01:10:11] What do you measure in campaigns? Click through rates, cost per results landing pages, number of views, your cost of acquisition costs versus what you get as profits, what the feedback from your customers will be right. Those are things you measure. Next slide a market entity strategy is for you to do six things. Set a goal, helps you research, helps you know the mode of how you enter, how you do computer analysis, next slide financing and your budgets. Again, your outline. All this helps you in building out a market entry strategy. When you've already defined your go to market, you now know how you enter the market. Next slide. [01:10:55] So how long should it take? I think it should take between six to twelve months. Right. It's important to keep in mind that it is a long term approach and it's ever evolving. So your go to market document should be live and written. You need to change it as you adopt. Next slide. [01:11:13] Entering the market. [01:11:17] Next slide. [01:11:19] Right. Just keep going. [01:11:21] You need to prepare your product assets. Either you're offering a discount, which we call the incentive, and then your marketing plan. Next slide. [01:11:31] So your marketing plan should answer the target audience, who you're targeting, their age, are they male or female or binary or non binary? What activity? Where do they congregate? Who they are the channel you want to use, social, physical events, community. There are over 2030 types. Are you going to be doing a daily budget? Quarterly budget? Right. [01:11:59] Are you going to manage your ads? If you are doing an ad paid marketing approach, do you want to use agencies? Do you want to do it yourself? Do you want to outsource it? Any of the ways we can win? Next slide. So sometimes people always ask me, between marketing agencies and in house marketing team, what difference are right for the marketing agency? They come with experience, they've done it before, multiple places or they have a network that has done it before for multiple brands. They also have collaboration because they share work together. [01:12:36] Efficiency, right? They are very efficient. When you have a plan, they already prepare a plan for you, how to scale, how to enter. [01:12:46] But sometimes they might not understand your industry. [01:12:50] And so when you're choosing an agency, you. You need to have an agency that really gets what you do, not just what they think you do, but what you do. As it's easy to interview when you are looking for an agency and do a call for proposal and you write a that's why you write a brief and the brief needs to be as detailed as possible. [01:13:12] The brief needs to explain you your brand, your hope, your aspiration, who you target, who they are, all the things you write to. Then for them to come up with a plan for you and then some of them might be expensive. It costs hourly, hourly costs to get there. [01:13:29] It's against you that have your internal team. Either you are the marketing manager yourself, because you are the founder and you have your team. There's a skill advantage you scale as the business gives. In the case of an agency, you're still trying to figure things out and you will not be paying them on a retainer base means every month, whether you, whether you get customer or not, you are paying them as against the thing. That is when you need to execute on something, you do it. Industry awareness. We're in the industry. We know what's going on. We know how to get there. The process that you guys will do. Because sometimes you might have an agent and that's why I say the type of partner makes you, you might have an agency that you want to change. Let's move this copy. Let's move quickly and takes days to do that. I see someone that can do that in seconds. So those are some feedback. But then there's the weakness, right? The talent gap. You might not have talents that are strong enough to understand how to do things at scale. Maybe because you cannot attract them at this point when you are beginning. And then the island gap, right? Because you think you know the market, you have a very, you might have a, what do you call it? A small view of that is against the wider view where because these guys have done it for multiple business, they have a very broader understanding of human psychology and how to reach people. So you might fall into that trap. So I always say have a mix. [01:15:02] Not one way answers the market. So don't box yourself in. Try. [01:15:08] All right. [01:15:10] How to know if your market is good people buying. Is sales organically growing month on month? Is your market matching your expectation as against the initial assumption when you have it on strategy, when you're building a strategy, always focus. It ever changes when you are developing products, when you need to pitch higher and fire quickly, try to be organic as much as possible. Sorry, I know we soon end. [01:15:40] Move on, move on, move on. [01:15:45] So I'll just use the one slide, then we round up. So how do you acquire your first hundred users as most of you are here? Usually there is a guy I know I follow. He's called Lenny. Lenny was a product manager in Airbnb and then he has done quite a lot. I follow him because of how he writes and what he talks about. I follow a lot of people. I like Lenny's, Lenny Rashiski and his blog. [01:16:10] So how I got this from him because how do you acquire your first hundred users? Next slide. This he found the seven major ways next slide. Seven major ways of acquiring hundred to 1000 customers, mostly by b, two c type companies. B, two b type companies are different. And I can talk about that, right. With one framework that they now use that to end. [01:16:36] So for you to acquire your customers are within the 17 you go to your users offline. [01:16:43] In the world of online conversation, people forget. Going offline positions you differently. [01:16:50] And this has been used by very popular brands we know today, from Uber to Tinder to Snapchat to Lyft Etsy Doordash for Uber. What did they do? Uber hired people of the fiverr or. Yeah, and they also created, like, they went to taxi limo drivers, mostly people who did private chaff. [01:17:17] Oh, we're starting our new, our new driving system. Driving platform. Do you want to test. [01:17:25] Be at this location every day? We'll pay you. [01:17:29] Right. And then, because it's a marketplace on the other side, they say, asking people, do you want to test free ride, get a free ride. And so people say booking. And then say, people say booking the transport network telling each other, this thing works. This thing works. We're making money. We're making money. And a lot of them happened. And that's how they used that market launch and started growing. They tried it in one market, and that market showed them shaky. I wouldn't say that market, but you know what I'm saying, that they had to close down that thing quickly because they almost died in that market. [01:18:02] But that was their strategy. They went offline. They went, they were even doing things like, when people are passing, they will have people physically wearing placards to say yuzuba. [01:18:14] And you can learn from Andrew Chen, who was the growth manager at that time, what they used. They went offline to go online. And that's because they knew that they had to reach a kind of different audience, ideally, than typically and just anyone. Then, of course, they stayed rolling out to b two b, then to the Silicon Valley group of people. People go to users online. It's quite clear, a streaming platform. Where would they get users streaming? How did Netflix get its customers? They used, they went to literally to almost all the forums. They had a growth at that time. You literally go to every forum that was existing at that time to talk about and start conversation on movies. And then more movie fans will come and they'll be talking and they'll be arguing. And he would drop the link and say, go to Netflix. [01:19:08] And they started seeding and building a community of movie lovers that started going there and they started growing from there. [01:19:17] Dropbox, he literally did a YouTube ad. And, you know, Dropbox Girl story is very funny. They have a product. You didn't have a product when it started. You just basically say, come and store with me. And then people are throwing things there. And then they were pushing. But then when they had a product, they basically created a YouTube ad and said, tell your friend they can get, I think it was 550 gig, and then you get 50 gig. And that was a referral campaign. Well, that campaign brought them almost 100,000 customers because people are looking to store. And now they tell you you can get free thing by just telling your friends to store. Like, I'm looking to store something. My pictures I've been trying to store from school, and I can just tell my friend I get free storage. It blew them. [01:20:12] But then they latched on to the understanding of peer to peer. So all these things have reasons why. Invite your friends, right? Typically the same referral strategy and social networks use referral a lot. Invite your friend, bring your friend in. Because they used and tap into the power of networks. They know peer to peer is the strongest way. When your friends tell you, you believe your friends, then you believe their ads, right? [01:20:40] Create fear of missing out. The best example was recently with Clubhouse. [01:20:48] I think when it came out, people wanted to feel they wanted to belong to that thing, and they kept limiting and creating scarcity. Oh, you can't join. Tell your friends to invite you. And so everybody was rushing. They created fear of missing out. I want to, because why? We like recency human beings by psychological system. We want to be there. We want to be knowing the main thing. That's why people are on Twitter. People always want to know the most recent thing. That's why news as an industry exists, because people want to stay informed. That's why tech points exist, because they inform you of what is happening now and the most latest things happen, and that's why you stay engaged. [01:21:27] So FOMO used quite well. You leverage influencers, most of them. [01:21:34] I'll tell you about Quora. [01:21:36] Quora existed by using influencers. When they started, the very first seed conversations were started by them. They created the topic and they answered their own topic. They did this for over, I think, 220,000 topics. So that whenever you joined, you saw something and they said ransponding. And then they used influencers to drive people to Quora. And drove and drove and drove, and they built a community. [01:22:06] Community as a strategy was used perfectly by product. Hunt and the founders decided, if we're going to create a product like this, we'll be here. We'll have people support and test of which pay stack use community as a strategy to launch. Right. In the very old days, there was one thing called radar by a rival. I don't want to measure their bra because we're here. Well, arrival built forum, and it usually was a place where many nigerian tech founders and people used to fight their self online. And there was a particular ezra being governed was always a very interesting person dropping points. So people kind of looked up to him in the community. And then when he said, oh, I'm launching my product, would you use it? [01:22:52] The first set of people, because he has given back. And that's why when you're in a community, try not to ask give by nature of that giving first. When you give out, not just giving anything about quality, great things and helping people, by nature, you are standing out. People now come to you by nature to solve things and before you know, you start creating partnerships. So when you are in community, part of community building is to first give, but also have people with similar thought process wavelengths. And it's good to disagree have. You don't want a community that is, oh, yes or no, you have to blend it, right? And then view that. So product hunt had very great strategy to help. And then they started one thing that was new up voting down voting, and that thing they brought as a future, scaled them because people could show if they like their product. And before you knew, it became a place to catch, capture new audiences. Because I need to launch a product. How best can people know me than through product hunt? And how best can they try my global product than through there? And it just became an interesting approach. So for b two B, there are four frameworks, because b two B is not like this, right? B two B is interesting, but there are four frameworks I like. There's a framework I use for b two B, and it's called before use. Just going to call them out. I wouldn't forget them. But the B two B framework is the under saved. So it's for use. The four use means under saved. Under worked. [01:24:40] I always like to forget. But let's start with underserved. [01:24:43] Underserved means that there's a problem in that market and very few people are solving that problem. [01:24:51] And because of the nature of very few people are solving that thing, there's a market opportunity for you to solve it in a new way. [01:25:00] Unavoidable problems. These are problems you cannot avoid. For example, GDPR, NDPR, right. [01:25:08] NDPR and GDPR are created to solve issues around data control and privacy for you. And because that exists, you can't avoid it. [01:25:21] The government has said keep data secure in this particular way. And so businesses have sprung up to help businesses keep data securely. [01:25:33] Right? By nature, taxes, you can avoid taxes, right? [01:25:37] If you avoid taxes here, go and go make up for you, right? But then you can avoid taxes. So you have to pay taxes and means also businesses have set up to help you pay taxes better, faster, cheaper, more compliance. All that nine yards. Same way with on the safe problems. There were very few people solving commerce. People used to trade. But the day someone decided, let's make commerce online or e commerce build and has blown and keep blowing. And then there's fashion. But someone decided, let's do fast fashion, right? And fast fashion market grew. Zara became a billionaire from fast fashion, right? You know, the Zara people buydevelop, love ladies buy that and all. So then the fourth framework, I've talked about vulnerable, I've talked about unavailable product like. So the products or problems are so complex that businesses have to use other businesses to survive them. So customer support, it sounds like everybody needs to do that. But then there are some people who decide that we are going to build softwares that help your customer experience get better. Because we know that you cannot avoid, you cannot walk through. There are some customer experience problems that you cannot solve for. And so example will be hot jar. Hotjar is a company that is helping you understand where your customers are moving through your product, right? And they do that through heat map. So they are giving you a session to say, okay, your customers spent many times on this particular part point of your products. So there must be something you, on your style, start looking. Okay. Why are they spending so much time here? Then you discover, oh my God. When they are clicking that button, nothing happens. You quickly go and fix it. And then you start seeing growth. You won't know that because you built a product, but you don't know that the flow or the funnel to get there is different. So the way you approach businesses is to look at two things. You look at what within this framework, where do they fall? Urgent. There are some people that, because they need to solve problems. Now, what are the most urgent problems? You come to them to tell them, oh, I have this solution. But that guy is reasoning, how am I going to solve this problem? And so you come to sell to him. He's listening to you. But what is in his day and mind, what he sleeps and wakes up is not your problem. It's not your issue. Your issue is also important, but not as pressing as that. So example, imagine if you are selling a business serving a solution. And the business, what the business does is the banking business. And for example, has just been hit by fraud. [01:28:38] Will it come to listen to your software that helps helps them change their website layout? Or would they be looking for a cybersecurity personnel or someone that is within the cybersecurity field. You get it. The decision makers problem at that time is how to solve for fraud. You're coming to sell him how to make their website look nice. [01:29:03] By his order of priority, you are below. They are on top. And that's why sometimes your proposal is on the desk of someone phone. Yes. And that's because truthfully, you're not priority. [01:29:18] Right. So you need to look at businesses and see what their most urgent, critical problem or present it in a way that is urgent. So if it's not urgent, you can make it urgent. And sometimes the best way to go about it is to find your champion in b two B. If you don't have a champion, a champion can be basically you meet someone, you talk to them, you get to understand them. You can also read about them. Sometimes a lot of CEO's post things through their conversation, their comments. Either they've been in physical events like this and they're telling you about their businesses or what they do. Sometimes they make it, let it slip through. A joke. I don't joke with those things, but sometimes you actually go and check their profits and loss. So for example, for big companies that are public, I go to check their public statements as fun. What do I do? I go and check how much is spent, what is that major expenditure? Why am I doing that? Because one day, if I'm ever going to go and market to that company, I want to know what they spent as their most priority. [01:30:31] Because that is what was the priority. That's actually what was approved. There was a reason that is higher than every other thing. So if it's operational costs, what, what is eating them? So if I'm selling to them, I'm coming to either save them money and if you can help them save money, they will look at you. But that's just one framework. Because the other thing in that place is that how the procurement manager and the marketing manager and the HR and the CEO think in a large corporate business are different. [01:31:03] Procurement manager's job is to save costs. So if you are going to be selling a solution that will be three x of what they spend today, they are in trouble. [01:31:13] They won't say anything. In fact, marketing manager will say yes, everybody will say, yeah, but when it comes to procurement stable, they tell you, oh God, this is too expensive, we cannot spend. And that's the end. That's the end. Because in their power, you, they were, I mean, at the end of the day, because they have a board and then the board, sorry, just one month, they are round up the board, so don't fall. The board will talk to the, to you and they'll review the books and they're like, why is you have to justify some things. And so that's why you look at the type of system and even where you check by nature, when you see businesses that have procurements, it means the decision is not decentralized, it's centralized. Some places where the marketing manager call the short is a decentralized approach. So it's even by nature as a b, two b. How you sell, the route you sell, that is the channel how you sell. You want to sell to only procurement type management. And so you go to LinkedIn or any places and say procurement manager. And then you might decide to go and email them, text them, call someone that knows someone that knows them, have an event like this and bring everybody in and showcase to them. There are many ways to reach about them, but you have to know who the decision makers, what they gain by using your service, what they, sometimes when people are selling by nature because they have a bit of scared approach, they feel your product might come to eat or beat them or make them irrelevant and so they will block you. I'm being honest, there's some, there are some business like that would be selling and that's why I said, don't you be using two big buzzwords or big words. I am the AI. This because at the point in time the person is like, oh, in his back of mind, these people will make me redundant. [01:33:05] Why will I, why will I make you want to make me redundant? I will not accept your solution. So you need to think about that. But again, that's the decision making. So you have the champion who is making you see. I mean, imagine if you could see peer into what people's problems are. You would always have a solution, but the difficult part would be to be is you can't see what this person is. So you have to have someone who can help you peer or you have to do good research to know what that people. And sometimes the answers are just right in front of you. So I'm going to leave it here. [01:33:41] There are many frameworks I do to teach. Again, one most important thing and take home. Like I said, strategy is ever evolving in your go to market. [01:33:52] You need your business to answer where you are now, where you're headed to and how to get there. There is multiple paths to win, right? But you also need to look at the market volume and the market size, the potential of the market, the cost to reach there, your CSE cost, your cash flow, revenue, sustainability, and the team and plan to reach it must be worth it, or that's the end. So thank you all for being here. That will be my end of my speech. All right. Thank you. [01:34:25] Okay.