Today we are reading the startup story of a popular Nigerian internet entrepreneur, Bola Oni well known as Mr. Motivator! He blogs on naijamotivator.com and has trained over 1000 young people on web design and development during the course of his career (through his company). He just launched a startup; nollywoodfansclub.com; The online social networking platform for Nollywood practitioners and their fans. He founded Oneal Ventures in 2003, Naijamotivation in 2006 and Idealab Nigeria 2010. Let’s go on;

I started while still in the University some years back. I discovered the growing trend in the unemployment market and told myself I don’t want to have anything to do with that.

I ran into the Internet by chance and it was love at first sight and after some explorations, I told myself this is where I want to belong and that decision brought me this far. I was in my early twenties, say 22 or 23 when I started.

When I was starting out, there was this man in my church that believed so much in me, I got N5,000 from him and that is what I used in starting my business.

I started a Web Designing business and six months after, I got my first client. From there I started getting clients in bits.

If you ask how I scaled through the challenges of starting a business in this country; I was able to stay focused because I have a dream of where I was going. So when the challenges came, my dreams kept me going.

The key factor that helped grow my business was my ability to stay focused and learn all I need to learn in order to grow. There were so many distractions, so I thought myself to shut myself in and LEARN! So information is important in growing a business.

I want to reaffirm that by saying YES! It is possible to succeed in this country. Though it takes a lot of determination on the part of the entrepreneur.

The Internet is still growing and I believe the future is MASSIVE!

You can connect with him on Facebook here: