The Most Important Generation

"Why are you learning web development and trying to build web applications yourself? Why not hire someone to do that for you?"

That is one question I get a lot when I tell people about my new focus on web applications. I try to answer but I don't think I make much sense in the end. I only succeed in confirming their thoughts that I'm too rigid and obsessed with technical stuffs rather than business side of things.

Today, I will try to give a more convincing answer.

My focus on web applications is based on two big trends.

Trend 1: The world's biggest companies are internet/tech companies.
Remember your pre-university days, how intensely pressured you were to pick a course that is hot in the labour market and guarantees instant opportunities after university? Well, the real business world is just as pressurizing and with consequences more dire. If you pick a business line with all the odds stacked against you, it would look like all the old people in your village are after you. You will work multiple times harder than other people for the same result. And there will be those doing way better than you without working half as hard as you.

The only industry where one person without any team or capital investment can earn hundreds of millions or even billions of naira is the internet industry. And that person is Linda Ikeji.

The only industry where a company of less than 10 staff and no significant physical assets can sell itself for $19 billion (over 2 trillion naira) is the internet industry. And that company is Whatsapp.

The industry that can most reward my efforts and I can get more value from any team I eventually build is the internet industry. And that is why I am superfocused on it and have picked the less luck-dependent niche of web application (compared to blogging and content marketing).

Trend 2: Most Nigerians are below age 20.
I call them the most important generation. Any business that wants to thrive/flourish has to have them  at its core strategic focus. And for me, they are the goldmine. They were born internet ready.

They will be very comfortable with buying things online, using online based services and feeding the growth of any internet company that values them.


Those are my reasons and I hope, this time, they are convincing. I am trying to go where the ball will be. Positioning myself and business for the most important generation.

Thanks!