A Day Of Brainstorming, Eating Pizza And GoKarting With Impact Investors
Ease is a greater treat to progress than hardship.
There are 3 billion people in the world that don’t have access to banking or financial services. Over the next couple of months we will be building solutions specifically tailored for the unbanked and underserved.
Its the second month with my Accion Venture Lab buddies and our overarching mission is to build innovative solutions that will increase access to, reduce the cost of, or improve the quality of financial services for the poor of the world and businesses that need capital to thrive.
It has been an immersive learning process for me and I usually feel like a fraud amongst the team. These guys are smart guys in diverse sectors Banking, Insurance, Telecoms, Design. The amount of knowledge I leave each session with drastically improves my outlook on technology and financial services.
We met for the third time last week Jan 27th in Lagos.
I got to interact on a personal level with Impact Investors. The managing director Accion venture lab Vikas Raj, Ashley Lewis and Efayomi Carr from Quona Capital, joined us for our third ideation session.
Vikas asked about the work we are doing at meter.ng and why I was doing this alongside?
I never had a chance to learn technology and innovation in a classroom; everything I know was from a book or a medium post. Most importantly the lessons I am learning first hand from setting up my first company, meter.ng. Accion is accelerating my knowledge and I am seeing the innovation centric approach to building products.
The energy in the room was so electric and I felt really good. In no time the white board was filled with ideas and brain dumps. We mapped all our interviews and research to patterns. They revealed pain points that we would not see on the surface.
The concept of jobs has exposed areas for innovation even in the simplest of ideas. How can we convince the low-income earners to save for the future and pay insurance?
Understanding and changing the mindset of a group of people is no easy task.
This is why I joined Accion Venture Lab. We are taking on new values, becoming informed risk takers, human driven, curious and always open to new ideas. We strive for excellence and always support each other.
After hours of brain dumping, sharing packs of pizza and coffee, more brain dumping, we decided to take a break.
We went go carting at the GET arena.
It’s been a drag on me having to be in Lagos twice a month but the mentorship and deep networks we are receiving is like fuel for my veins. Building a business is hard; it’s meant to be really hard.
Its 4am right now and I have to be in Lagos for our 4th session by 9am.
If it’s not hard then it’s not worth it. Ease is a greater threat to success than hardship.
