Esther Fawole
Jason Chukwuma Njoku is a British-Nigerian businessman. He is the co-founder and CEO of iROKOtv, a video-on-demand service for Nigerian movies. A self-proclaimed serial entrepreneur, iROKOtv is Njoku’s 11th attempt at starting a business.
Jason Njoku decided to give out some success tips that will help entrepreneurs make positive impacts on the ecosystem and Nigeria as a whole.
Here are the success tips:
Build a product that works; it will sell itself
The first issues that start ups have is when they believe ‘aggressive marketing’ can solve their problems. Marketing can be recommended until they have a certified product market fit.
Startups tend to believe publicity is the cure. But before you delve into sending paid and unpaid PR materials to news houses, ask yourself if that product is interesting enough. The truth is if the product cannot sell itself by word of mouth, extensive marketing can be counterproductive.
In Funding, Less Is More Sometimes
Jason Njoku said, the one thing he knows is that a lot can be achieved with less capital.
Like marketing, raising money is really overrated! Considering the large amounts being raised here and there, the first thought that comes to mind is what all those monies are used for.
According to Jason, the efficiency of redeploying funds is a very important factor to consider. It is even more important than raising lump sums without planning. If adequate preparations are not put into structuring a strategy, the monies can and will be wasted.
You Are Going To Make Mistakes
We will make mistakes but at the minimum, we learned from them. Mistakes which I believe others will join in making as they try to deploy capital locally.
Being afraid of mistakes and failure
is the start of failing itself. As an entrepreneur and a human being making mistakes is normal.
Failure should be a way to gain experience and an eventual breakthrough. In Jason’s words, “Embrace failure!”.
