Six years ago, I ventured into the world of entrepreneurship; even with the experience I thought I had gathered from my previous bosses, this wasn't enough at all for the journey. I still went in blind, I thought I had all the ideas and all it took to run a company from ground zero to the top.

Within the first year of starting, I failed so big, the failure was monumental, At my lowest point, I had to lay off 90 percent of my staff in year one, including many of my best friends. I had failed. Each time I look back at that experience, I try to visualize what I could have done better, was it people management? I was very inexperienced at that, at least, I thought just being good, open and caring was key to getting everyone on my side; I was wrong for having such thoughts. Just one year prior, my life was good, I made about 12–15m naira annually working as a consultant and it felt cool, I had a small team to support the jobs I did for clients and my direct boss. How did I loose over 30m in savings within 10 months of starting out?

This is the inside story of what went wrong and how I managed through it all, this may help someone who is starting out and may need to know that the tough roads of entrepreneurship are conquerable.

2015

you can always take a back seat to review everything over and over, think through and get things right before you make a commit.

In 2015, I approached my boss at that time about building something which was relatable to educational and financial technology, two years before that time, I had made an earlier proposal which was rejected, we probably could have built a very strong fintech if my proposal was accepted, that’s another story, lets focus.

When the proposal was rejected for the second time, I started thinking there was no need for me to stick around working for a company that lacked vision and ambition, now I know better, I was definitely wrong in my assertions. Anyway, I left the company towards the tail end of 2015, burbled with energy to prove a point; this is probably the number one lesson, never go into business to prove a point to anyone, this never ends well, you alone know your abilities, build based on them, not based on showing others that you can do it.

I couldn’t wait for January of 2016 to come so quickly, by 21st of January my business Nugi Technologies Nig Limited was approved by the cooperate affairs commission. Four years earlier, my wife and I, then just love birds had made an ambitious move to seal our union by registering Nugi Technologies enterprises, Nugi was a combination of her name and mine, Nneotta and Ugi, the N from hers and the rest from mine.

By 2016, we were two years married and what other name do we call up other than our name from 2012? By the end of January, Nugi technologies was running and ready to roll-out our first product.

When we started the registration of Nugi, I had called up an old friend who worked with a bank, he then called another friend who worked in the oil and gas sector, he will provide backup funding for our operations, we could have been three directors and that could have been the end of what had just started.

Never go for funding, go for access, go for advisory investors, don’t take money from investors that won’t help with the company at all. Just before we went for registration, something struck me, was I making a mistake having these two men as directors as opposed to just me? I made changes and introduced my very good friend who had already been working with me on several projects, this single move saved Nugitech, you can always take a back seat to review everything over and over, think through and get things right before you make a commit.

If I had not introduced a second director from my side; needing approvals from the other two who were never available could have killed the company from the onset. I couldn’t have made decisions all by myself as a single director. They both provided roughly around 850,000 naira (3000 USD using the exchange rate of 280 as at the time) within the first few months, communication was bad, I had to drive sometimes to other side of Calabar just to have briefings and do updates, chats were rarely replied or picked up.

When I made that decision to involve them, it was more about experience and access, they’ll bring in their long years of experience in banking, oil and gas, and we’ll be able to access Jobs that seemed really difficult to at the time. At this point, I realized I was alone with my other director, we had made our first major mistake by involving people who had no interest in growing a technology company. Did we have the time to mull over our predicament? no we did not, I had to dip into my savings to run the company.

2016

We had set out to build a company that provided solutions to other organizations, government, schools, NGOs and other private institutions. At least we thought we had gained a lot of experiences from working with other technology firms and had provided and managed technology for over 350k plus users before we ventured into our journey.

The same period ushered in a new government in Cross River state and we got excited to showcase our skills and help build our state. The governor listened to us, got interested and granted us access to begin implementation of our solution to aid with revenue collections and management. It was an absolute surprise to us; three months into business and we had just been granted a contract to help build revolutionary systems to help the state. We completed www.crossriverpay.com just in time and the governor again approved a test period.

As if that was not enough, the governor again asked me to work with huawei to help transform the state into a smart city, at least Calabar into a well connected city with services across major sectors. With this development; I had to travel to china with a delegation to understudy huawei and some of the solutions that could be readily deployed and used most especially in healthcare. The journey for me was a validation of what I wanted to achieve in technology. Technology is people oriented and whatever we put out there must create impact in the lives of people.

Doing business with government is different from doing business with private companies and other organizations

For the type of business we were trying to build, we had to spend every month to keep up with the jobs that had been approved, we had to hire people to work, and pay them to deliver on timelines. All that funding came from my private savings. But at the time, I thought it was okay to spend up since money was going to come in from our supposedly secured state contract. I had money in the bank and had market fit product for revenue and education . We would continue to ship products and meet timelines and things would work out. At least those were my thoughts, did I have a team that shared those ideologies? May be just a few persons. Doing business with government is different from doing business with private companies and other organizations, the former can fail you at anytime and you don’t even need to think about it.

One thing I learnt in those six years regrettably was that the number one problem for startups in Nigeria at least is committed staff that key into a vision.

One thing I learnt in those six years regrettably was that the number one problem for startups in Nigeria at least is committed staff that key into a vision or at least deliver their task on time and help companies grow. By the end of May when I returned from china, we had well over 15 staff and kept meeting up salaries from backup funds in my savings. We had started trial period for our revenue management and things were looking good for us.

I was unaware of any internal issues at the time, I could have been poisoned and I won’t even know where it came from, I shared the same space with the business, staff accessed my kitchen, used my sitting room for work. Except I was away from the house, I shared same space with staff 24 hours a day, some spent the night in the spare room, some slept in the sitting room. Thinking through all of it now and I realized I had some very amazing people around me. Starting from home minimized our risk and reduced our operational cost. You may want to start out from home and grow out gradually, doing this was strategic at the time and may not be applicable to other types of businesses.

In the midst of those amazing people were some people who hated me; I won’t be going into details of what went wrong, but one of my staff and team members became greedy, got some others infiltrated and attempted to steal the government contract from us. We all ended up loosing everything, I will give a full account of everything that went on in my book set to be released by next year.

The governor was disappointed in us as we could not manage our issues, this is the same thing I see always on twitter, young people fighting each other while Africa looms in poverty, pain and lack of education for children. It was October and our contract was cut off prematurely by the government, in periods of adversity, keeping calm and calculative is key, this is what I did. I remember our meeting to ask our staff to leave, it was painful, we had no funds to burn; the best decision was letting them go and this was my most painful experience to date.

The months ahead were tough, we could not feed, our rent was now 2m a year!

The months ahead were tough, we could not feed, our rent was now 2m a year, I had just moved my wife and I upstairs to occupy a vacant house just to give us some privacy away from the staff, all this happened before our contract was terminated, everything in my head was what happens if we did not make money the next year? How could we pay bills of 2m on rent, we had activated a link of 4m a year with Airtel and paid upfront commitments, how do we sustain internet annually when we could hardly feed in November and December. All these had been activated because I thought we had a good business pipeline setup, that experience opened my eyes to the business ecosystem in Nigeria.

I had sold my toyota camry in September to cover running cost of the company, I couldn’t afford 50k to make up a repair operation that was scheduled

To make everything even more complicated, my wife and I had earlier started an IVF cycle that became another failure in November, causing terrible complications to my wife. I had sold my toyota camry in September to cover running cost of the company, I couldn’t afford 50k to make up a repair operation that was scheduled, just not long ago in May of the same year, I was giving funds to people who needed to complete their contracts, I had commissioners on payroll getting money when they demanded it.

Sitting beside my wife in my friends house in Port Harcourt, watching his mum take care of my wife was the most humbling experience ever for me, at night I sat up crying, watching her take every breath. I was tired, confused but I knew one thing; I wasn't going to quit.

I was so ashamed of my life that I sent my wife to be with a friend and her sisters in Lagos, I needed some time alone in that mode to figure out my next steps. What you do after failure is important, the choices you make will lift you or drown you forever. Around January of the same year, I had made a new friend who will later save me from the mess I had found myself, a lady I have come to respect so much for the impact she created in my life.

What you do after failure is important, the choices you make will lift you or drown you forever!

I had enough time to think through my next move, the options were limited and the time wasn’t there at all, I needed to bounce back and get my life going again. I visited my new found friend and explained everything, she had been following up with a keen interest, I was also very happy to update her especially when we made progress. I wanted her onboard to help us and before I left that day, I made a request for a 1m naira loan in which I promised paying back in 30 days.

The loan was granted and funds came in, with no time to think, I started thinking of short term wins alone, we could not afford long term. My co-director was also on my side, his father came to our aid with another 1m naira, a few other friends stood up to help us get back up; some committed to working free at the time and I remain humbled and grateful to these few individuals who lifted us from the claws of rock bottom.

In December, another friend had a project and wanted to pitch me against another guy I had heard about but never met until he put both of us in the same room facing each other. The new guy and I made some money off the business, refused to fight ourselves and became best of friends to date, helping each other to achieve life goals. We made some more money very late in December and I was able to return the 1m to my friend, it is always important not to burn a trust that is building up, returning that money was the world to me at that moment because again I asked for her help and this time, it was not finances. She came into the business; with her experiences, we had sealed some new businesses by the wake of 2017.

2017

By 6th of February in 2017, we had signed our first major deal, a deal I will say was worth 50m naira a year, before that year ended, we had the second business that was worth around 13m annually. With such businesses in place, we had salaries covered, we had rents covered and life was coming back gradually.

One significant event from 2017 was meeting up with some friends from Lagos and initiating solutions and changes for key ministries and departments and even several states and lgas. Even though I wasn’t happy that it was all work and no pay, I learnt something about the revenue systems from the federal government and states governments ministries we had interacted with, sometimes you may not make money but you can learn something that helps you make money another time, we saw the issues and created solutions to fit or at least resolve those issues.

By the end of 2017, we had deployed solutions to hospitals in the west, deployed solutions to a major ministry in partnership with companies owned by my friends and also a major fintech. Even though we were just a flight away, it was hard to know what was really going on. Our solutions generated transaction volumes we had never seen in our careers and yet we got 0 in value to us. This became a problem and I knew it had to be fixed.

2019

2019 came so quickly, I have skipped 2018 because it was pretty much about sustaining what we had achieved and more of people using our team and not paying for the work we did. I got fed up, we should average 100m naira a year in revenue and even more for our efforts, we did an average of 49m in 2017, 54m in 2018 and probably around 98m in 2019.

This was not enough because we did work we never got paid for, our burn rate had increased and we needed more revenue at least to cover our cost of operations and give us profits.

In June of 2019, I got up one morning and told my wife Calabar was done for us, if we needed to grow, then calabar was never the ideal setup for us.

In June of 2019, I got up one morning and told my wife Calabar was done for us, if we needed to grow, then calabar was never the ideal setup for us. We left calabar unplanned with a one way ticket to Lagos, we lived in a hotel for 30 days, we looked for a house that we could use for all our businesses and still live close or at least with the business. At the same time, we started seeking investments and looking for new opportunities.

We found a house on Lekki Phase 1, had 6 flats and enough space in the BQ, it went for 18m a year, we had a 50m in savings to help us settle in Lagos, with help from family and some few friends, this became possible. I had an ambitious plan to relocate the entire team to Lagos and it worked. I felt very emotional the day the entire team joined us in Lagos but that was another very terrible mistake.

Thinking back to 2019, I realized I put my life on the line for my staff, some of whom were friends but no way should I lift a community as big as 20 people and house them in Lagos, that is a mistake I wont ever repeat.

In Lagos I had met another very good friend, someone whom I respect so much. He wanted to invest 10m for a 25% stake in the company, after spending 54m on the move and settling in, we needed money to sustain operations across the jobs we had. This wasn’t easy, I wouldn't say I regret those actions, but doing it was terrible decision making on my part.

When I started business, I told myself that I won’t border about how I dressed until the business was fine, so I dressed terribly sometimes and that affected perception, business perception is key to growth, I never knew that until I met my senior friend in Lagos. We went back and forth with the 10m investments, it was as if my entire existence depended on that 10m that was to come from him.

He might have joked about me taking his 10m to buy trousers for myself; that statement got to me and I was pained.

On one of my visits to my senior friend, He might have joked about me taking his 10m to buy trousers for myself; that statement got to me and I was pained. 25% of my company for 10m was already a bad business for us, if I wanted to squander money, Nugitech had made enough for me to squander. I was passion driven to create something out of nothing. After that statement, I moved on, I knew I wore some very nasty trousers but I wasn't going to change them until success had been achieved for my company.

The deal was done when my senior friend called again to make his brother part of the deal on a 35% for 10m. You have to be careful what you can accept in your business, if you stay in it and build, you will find a way to make money. If a business does not have clients or market ready solutions, that is when you can make such an offer, we had more than 5 market ready solutions on several models; B2C, B2G and B2B. We had revenue and that gave me confidence to walk away from the deal, sometimes its better to take the short term pain of not having funds to run the business the way you want than sell the soul of your business.

With the deal surely out of the way, I had to find a way to fix up things, this is where another very old friend of mine came in. I had disappointed her before; just before I left to study in London, she had given me some money to buy a laptop for her, that money secured my visa interview and covered cost during that time. Weeks before I would decide on a move to Lagos, I just decided to call her up and settle things, even though I had paid back some part previously, I knew I still owed her, not just money, but an apology.

After exhausting all options, I had to call this friend of mine, knowing that she worked in a microfinance bank, I needed her help, whatever way she could help. She was able to provide me help from her bank and that saved us. For every loan we have accessed to help us, we have always paid back.

the mosquitoes in Lagos have evolved, their sizes so scary!

While struggling to settle in Lagos, my health issues complicated, living with sickle cell anemia was tough already, coming to Lagos complicated everything, the mosquitoes in Lagos have evolved, seems they have adapted to every form of insecticide out there, and their size is another scary part, between June and December alone, I had been to the sick bed 8 times, diagnosed of tuberculosis and had started treatment. I feared for my life, I spent the whole of December thinking only about everything, do I just give up? go back and get my health sorted? I had to answer these questions while fixing up daily problems between staff that lived within company premise, meeting up business partners, attend to existing clients. This was surely the toughest part of my life.

I barely finished answering those questions before the global pandemic destroyed every single progress we had achieved. With the lock down taking effect in March of 2020, all our clients were down, it meant zero revenue. We had backup funds, not sufficient enough to pay salaries but just enough to see that our staff were given something every month for food. It was another very tough period for us, and at that point, I truly wished I had not taken the action to bring everyone to Lagos.

2020

I have a believe that the more you can stay in business; gives you a chance to be successful at it. With all the mistakes I had made, it was important for us to hang in there. I went in and out of the hospital through out 2020, I truly almost gave up on everything I stood for. The actions and inaction's of people made me question what was right and wrong. We ran out of funds by May, with just 2 months to go for our rent of 18m to be renewed, I was confused but calm. Having zero revenue was catastrophic, we were just a disaster waiting to happen.

A B2B deal went through late in July and the company paid on the last day of July just in time to settle up rents and all outstanding salaries. I held my heart in my hands. It was terribly scary and when I think through as always, I don’t blame anyone who exited during those times.

By September of 2020, we had paid off a great deal of salaries and stabled our operations. Getting to that stage where I could think was critically important for us. The model to bring everyone to Lagos had worked, the risk had paid off eventually in securing some very massive B2B contracts and now we needed to make use of the window to fix that error. We started making plans to return our development hub to Calabar. A mistake can sometimes lead to success, but you cannot continue in that mistake, managing our development hub in Lagos was not sustainable.

I battled all of this fighting for my life on one hand, some weeks were spent in hospital, some days had no joy at all, I just wanted to live at some point. I fought so hard preventing myself from getting covid, but in November, a trip to Abuja and Calabar exposed me to the virus. Coming back to Lagos and breaking the news to my wife with other terrible news on the side, we lost our twins to a miscarriage.

At some point in between, I think I gave up, fighting covid with a condition was difficult, my doctors were scared for my life. I beat covid after four days, even though it was still traceable in test results, my body felt better.

2021

We arrived Dubai on the 24th of December 2020, some of my staff had come together to plan a get away for my wife and I, we had survived a lot and had never done any travels or holiday, not even after we had gotten married in 2014, our lives had been about building up a business right from day one. The get away was for a month, a whole month, I had never been away from the business for more than two weeks.

In Dubai, time alone with my wife allowed me to reflect on everything we had been through. I started reading shoe dog by Phil Night, I kept on postponing reading that book, I rather give priority to smaller books that I could consume on short business trips. I had a month to finish up shoe dog. Reading about Nike and the difficulties they had within their first ten years, I could connect myself to that experience. Nike first 10 years were worst if what I read was true. I completed the book and drew up our strategies for the year. For the first time in my life there was an absolute calmness about everything. I knew what I wanted to do.

I planned everything we’ll do in the new year, I was already considering vacating the position of COO, I think I did CEO, COO and CTO at some point in 2016–2018. I had given up the CTO role completely to my bosom friend who had really grown in tech and by this time had contributed immensely to our growth, I needed to border less about employees and how we ran our operations. If I get this right, I should have enough time to create new business opportunities and push the company to her glory days.

Our COO resumed in February, by 6th of February, we clinched a deal we had been working on, this was bigger than revenue outcomes of four previous years put together, both short term and long term value to the company. We improved our communication channels internally, we made everyone accountable, I could see people who never got serious about something actually coming to review meetings and delivering results.

The feeling that I wasn't so involved with technology implementation anymore and I got less involved with staff and what they did was surreal. If this wasn’t the growth I yearned for, then what was it? Having people understand what you want and they can get it done is surreal. We never had it this good in our previous years.

By the end of May, we had relocated our development center back to Calabar, provided every tool that had been a problem for our staff, improved salaries, hired a cook to provide meals for staff and students of our tech hub in calabar, we also created a good pipeline for innovation to thrive. A less tensed work environment that had people committed to delivering little task on a daily and weekly basis was my ideal setup and this is what we achieved.

We continued closing a lot of partnerships in 2021, opening new business channels and setting up a structure to become a group. We diversified into media, and soon our agricultural arm Nugi Farms will be kicking off.

The best gift of 2021 was the birth of my two sons, Adrian and Augustine, it ushered in a new chapter in my life. Feeling satisfied with what I was able to do so far and what we are doing and want to become in the future. We did not only win for ourselves, our outreach programs for education started and we impacted over 1,100 kids in Ogun and Cross River state. It is my desire to impact over 1m children globally in education and this is my next chapter.

Results trashes years of failure, you can fail 1000 times and one success can turn all of that around. For me, I want to create as much value to everyone around me and impact Africa the way that I can, building Nugi was just that starting point.

I’m looking now to the next chapter, this chapter is now closed for me and the next phase of my work begins soon. Stay tunned, stay with me because my next chapter could impact you or someone around you.

There’s nothing wrong with trying to build a very big company, it is all valid dreaming, but you need to work hard and smart to achieve those goals, you need to stay calm in failure, brace up to accept tough changes, be ready to move, be open, listen, accept what you cannot control, hold on to what you can and build your own Apple.

If you are interested in following my personal updates, please visit my personal website here Ugi Augustine Ugi.

If you want to follow up with Nugi technologies, do business with us or become a staff or intern, visit Nugi Technologies Here