As part of our activities to contribute to the growth of the startup ecosystem in Nigeria, Cranium One in association with Ingressive hosted the COO of Y Combinator - Qasar Younis as part of our fireside chat series.
Qasar is a Partner and Chief Operations Officer (COO) of Y Combinator – labelled the ‘world’s most powerful startup incubator’. Silicon Valley’s Y Combinator strives to foster tech startups in their early developmental stages.
During the fireside chat, Qasar discussed topics ranging from the commonalities amongst successful tech startups to the future of Nigeria’s technology ecosystem and where entrepreneurs should focus their energy.
Here are some of the key point we took away from the discussion.
- Only work with people you actually want to be around and can see yourself spending time with. This includes investors
- Start small but start what matters
- The commonality amongst most of the successful tech startups is that they have an amazing product to market fit. They provide a product that is so needed that the market adopts it quickly.
- Get your hands dirty early on and learn the ‘hard skills’
- His advice to his 25-year-old would be to work for a high growth startup
- A lot of founders didn’t know what they had when they
- The timing of your product in the market is crucial. If the timing isn’t right you have no business
- Focus on local problems rather than foreign ones and build your business around that. Nigeria is blessed with a massive population teeming with problems that need to be fixed. Focus on them.
- The more you can delay fundraising when starting out the better. Don’t reduce your equity on the cap table too early on. It’s expensive
- Getting your first 5 users is harder than getting the first 10, but the most crucial
- Who you expose yourself to in your career is a major key to success. Surround yourself with smart, successful, talented people you can work with
- The best founders are very empathetic.
- Build something people really want and need
- Silicon valley took 70 + years to get to where it was so don’t expect instant success in your local ecosystem.
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As part of our activities to contribute to the growth of the startup ecosystem in Nigeria, Cranium One in association with Ingressive hosted the COO of Y Combinator - Qasar Younis as part of our fireside chat series.
Qasar is a Partner and Chief Operations Officer (COO) of Y Combinator – labelled the ‘world’s most powerful startup incubator’. Silicon Valley’s Y Combinator strives to foster tech startups in their early developmental stages.
During the fireside chat, Qasar discussed topics ranging from the commonalities amongst successful tech startups to the future of Nigeria’s technology ecosystem and where entrepreneurs should focus their energy.
Here are some of the key point we took away from the discussion.
