Personally, I started exploring the idea of starting up and building the next Microsoft, Yahoo or Google from Africa in the year 2003. I started learning about Bill Gate, David Fillo & Jerry Yang, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. I was deeply fascinated and inspired by their record setting innovations and wealth.

I, like so many young people, wants to become the CEO (or Group CEO as the case may be) of large corporations or conglomerates. We want to be on front-cover of top magazines, on Forbes list, and become inspiring role models. They are indeed aspiration worth pursuing!

If there is anything I learnt about the people I named above, it is simply that they are known for one thing, even though they now control 100s of things, they are still known for that one thing and were able to leverage their achievements in that single area to other endeavors.

Society and Your Dream; Setup for Failure

The environment in the United State was crafted for success while our environment here was “conned” for failure. Think about it; No power, no funding, No legacy innovations to build on, and persistent uncertainty in the polity!

Our society even though setup for failure, requires a very thoughtful approach to achieve success. You can’t stretch yourself too thing and expect to be at your best innovatively! No way!

If there is one person (that I have personal encounter with during the startup period) in this industry that has successfully harnessed the power of focus to achieve prominence and wealth, it is Seun Osewa, the founder of Nairaland.com. When he started, he dropped virtually everything else he was doing to focus on the project; today Nairaland.com is a success story of Nigerian web asset. I personally wrote to Seun in year 2005 about my startup and invited him to get involved; his response for declining was so understandable that, looking back I give him kudos for that matured decision.

Why focus?

I know someone might want to ask, why the hell do I need to focus, when I have multiple ideas? Let’s explore it together;

1. In Africa/Nigeria, the web/technology industry is still in its infancy, profitability is very scarce and fewer people are interested in spending/investing online, so, your mileage is tied to availability of fund both to run the company and to innovate.
2. Running business in this part of the world is hell! If you have not really run a business (or manage finance in company) you definitely may not understand this. You buy diesel, you pay Nepa bills, pay your staff, pay for internet subscription, market your business and close sales. At a time I worked closely with those running cybercafé, I almost question their decision to be in that line of business given the profit margin; very low! Imagine spending as high as N80, 000 on diesel and another N120, 000 for internet subscription and pay staff salary monthly in 2004? No wonder many cybercafé closed shops!
   The story is not different from corporate setting where we spent sometimes about 200k on diesel monthly.
3. Consumers are still not spending much time as they should online. By that I am talking about consumer internet products. Talk about Facebook, Youtube, MySpace etc. how many people can spending as much as 10hours each day online without feeling the pinch (provided they are not accessing the internet from work which they don’t pay for). Understand this; consumer internet is the cash cow of the internet, the long tail as they call it!

Let me stop at these three, you can add more in the comment section.

How do we get there from here?

Yeah! There is surely a way out of this imbroglio;

1. Brainstorm on your startup ideas, then filter them and pick the best, the one you are most passionate about and that can be profitable earliest.
2. Trash every other things you are doing and focus on it.
3. You really need to generate money from your startup to sustain it.
4. Don’t start another startup until the first one can sustain itself.

I know you have many ideas; in fact you are an idea merchant. But here is the challenge; supposing you got funded on your first startup and are yet to make money, will those who funded you be willing to throw money at you? The only possible reason is for the new startup to help make your initial startup profitable faster or better.

Trying to shift focus will affect your ability to scale, given the limited resources at your disposal.

Investors in this space are not fully ready to take on your multiple ideas, likewise your customers. It will only make sense if you focus your passion and energy on the most viable (not necessarily clone or fantasy idea). Startup, stay focus and run with, you will get there!