At Start-up Nigeria on Saturday 19th Of August 2017 – 1of 2

I attended the Start-up Nigeria event in Lagos the previous Saturday and found it was very exciting, informative and educative on the Tech scene in Nigeria as I had expected to. I got an invite from the Office of ICT Innovations and Entrepreneurship – OIIE a government initiative under the National Information and Technology Development Agency – NITDA. I was excited about it and determined to go for the first time since I found out about the event in 2016.

The event is a tech-driven start-up community building event to bridge the gaps between Start-ups, Investors, Mentors, Buyers and other players in the Nigerian ICT ecosystem hosted by the Acting Coordinator for OIIE, Dr. Aminah Sambo-Magaji. The program consists of two sessions, the first of which is the pitching session by start-ups and then a round-table discussions with key players in the ICT ecosystem. The topics of discussion were:

1. How to attract investors.

2. Digital Marketing

3. ICT Law

4. ICT Hub operations

5. Start-up initiatives

6. Start-up GITEX Experience.

The opening speech was delivered by the DG of NITDA, Dr. Isa Pantami, where he noted that the Country need to move away from Resources based economy to knowledge based Economy, with ICT being 12.6% of the GDP, it is currently second to Oil and will soon take over. This is good news to every one in ICT, with the right support and resources of course, the ICT sector in Nigeria will grow and develop fully to International Standard. I was particularly interested in the ICT Law because I have been searching for information about the Nigerian take on ICT Law commonly practiced internationally. Br Amarachi’s talk on this was educative. A bit about the points I took from her talk.

1. She advise that right from the onset of a Business idea, Entrepreneurs must protect their ideas before discussing it with anyone, even with a Lawyer. She advised using Non-Disclosure Agreement which is protected by Law. I was pleasantly surprised by the way she emphasised this even saying to sign Non-Disclosure Agreement with a Lawyer. I thought with a Lawyer you are always safe since they are the ones that help in the Legal front, they know the Law and one should not be afraid they will breach the law. I suppose taking precaution is the best protection.

2. She went on to discuss shares and partnership in Business. She advised that an Entrepreneur should not own less that 51% of their Business in any Partnership or Investment agreement. She empahsised that the majority share must be owned by Owner

3. She advised registering a Ltd Company instead of an Enterprise because in Enterprises, the Liability is always on the Business Owner. But with a Ltd Company the Liability is on the Company as a separate entity from the Owner.

4. She further suggested registering a separate Company for a Business owner who needs full investment but does not wish to part with their Business. The new Company will be a separate Business that is funded by the Investor and if that Business dies, then the Owner still have their original Business.

5. Most importantly she gave the percentage share of the company that can go to an Investor in a standard investment agreement. She said an Investor should only have from 20-25 share and maybe 30% for a hands-on Investor. I was searching high and low for this information in the past but I wasn’t 100% sure about the information because different sources tend to quote different percentage shares giving many complicated reasons why.

6. Though she did not mention specifically, she advised to be conversant with the Nigeria ICT Law. Through my research I found the Nigeria Cyber-Crime Law 2015. A very comprehensive law that covers everything ICT and online Security. I will be researching more on this.