From Developer to Startup Founder, Nigerian techies who founded startups and raised fund

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Apr 26, 2021

Happy new week fellow devs, for me it was a rollercoaster week, thanks to Wakatime, I spent a long time coding this past week than the one before. You should check it out!

This week, I will review the career paths of developers who have gone ahead to start their own startups, raised funding, and build something great in Nigeria.

Roll call

Timi Ajiboye, Timi is the co-founder of Buycoins and currently doubles as both the CEO and CTO. His journey is impressive going from being a freelancer to building a website for a successful platform to launching his own startup. He also creates a startup studio, helloworld.ng where he builds up ideas and converts them to startups. One of the fast-rising products from the Studio is tix.africa Follow Timi on Twitter @timigod.

Ire Aderinokun, Co-founder, Buycoins: Ire is Nigeria’s first female Google Developer Expert. With career-spanning work at TechCabal, EyeO, and freelancing. Ire is well known as a sound frontend developer and speaks at various tech events. She currently serves as COO and VP of Engineering at Buycoins.

Mark Essien, Hotels.ng: Mark is arguably Nigeria’s most popular tech founder with engineering background. As a developer, Mark worked on video processing tools and consulted on software development projects. Mark raised funding of $1.2m for hotels.ng in 2015 and has been growing the company ever since. Mark also co-founder HNG where aspiring developers are trained and mentored to get a headstart in their careers.

Musty Mustapha, Kudabank; Musty is a career engineer and has been in the banking sector for some time. From working at Keystone to Firstbank and Stanbic. He dabled into startup when he co-founded Kudimoney in 2017. To say Musty is an x10 developer won’t be an understatement. He co-founder Kudabank in 2018 and has served as the CTO since then.

Fara Ashiru Jituboh, (CEO/CTO, Okra); Fara, currently the CTO of Okra. She has intercontinental experience as a software engineer and consultant. Before startup, she co-founded Shixels solutions and consulted for multiple clients across Nigeria. Since launching Okra, the company has raised more than $4.5m in funding.

Prosper Otemuyiwa, Co-founder and CTO, Eden; Prosper became a house-hold name as a developer trainer at Andela, helping to usher in new generation of developers that are not only sound but publicly sharing their knowledge and experiences. He currently serves as the CTO of Eden, where he use code to cook and deliver food one stroke at a time.

Nadayar Enegesi, CEO, co-founder Eden Life; Nadayar is a co-founder of Andela and was the founding trainer and curriculum designer for the Andela internship system. In the past, he ran Fora with Iyin as co-founder having joined up in the University of Waterloo. Nadayar' is developer’s senior developer and is well known in the industry as a world class engineer. Co-founded Eden with Prosper and slim and serves as the CEO.

Wale Akanbi, Aella Credit: Wale currently serves as CTO of Aella credit. He has worked multiple jobs as a developer. He was part of Gamesol team that built mobile games to worldwide acclaim. He has a wide range of experience building technology for video streaming over low bandwidth network.

There are so many more, and hopefully in the future we will cover it. If you are currently a developer and hope to found a startup some day, don’t worry your, stars will soon align as most people here.

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I’ll see you again next week. Have an interesting coding week!

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