My only claim to geekry was a sparse knowledge of Python.

The only thing that was in my favour was a willingness to learn.

I did and got paid. Heavily……

#Rinse&Repeat

Pystar – February 2013

Disclaimer: I was bored, alone at home and this nairaland.com post inspired the hack.

After reading the nairaland post, I actually started thinking if it was possible to actually design an API that programmers could use to extend the capabilities of nairaland.com like logging in, creating new topics, consuming nairaland data and other common functions programmatically. I fired up my text editor and started trying to reverse engineer the basic nairaland functions I wanted.  The awesome PYTHON Requests library came in very useful and after some few minutes my API could login, logout, create a new topic on any board, edit user profile (i.e. change email and password).

I guess my posts to nairaland during my build process of the API was suspicious due to the fast rate it was coming in and the random boards I was posting to as I was promptly banned from the site.

REASONS WHY NAIRALAND IS ANTI-API

1. PAGEVIEWS, PAGEVIEWS and PAGEVIEWS: Since nairaland started selling self serve adverts, one of the selling points it uses to woo advertisers is the number of pageviews/visitors or eyeballs it has. I think the reason why the nairaland overlords are anti-API is because they feel once users start consuming nairaland without actually visiting the site, pageviews would drop and also advertising revenue (Which is a rather myopic view).

2. SPAM: Nairaland.com currently has 1,005,971 users. Although this is a debatable figure as it is known that most users have more than 1 user account on the site. Most do it to advertise goods and services, create topics etc. Some people with ulterior motives once they get a live working API might start to automate posting, trolling and most likely drown the site in spammy topics etc.

3. Nairaland is resistant to change: It took nairaland almost 7 years of existence to move from simple machine forums to a home grown solution done in Python (cherrypy and MySQL) to be exact. The UI of the site might hurt sensitive eyes and this wont change any time soon.  If the most basic basic things wont change for the better, why would the nairaland overlords embrace an API?

The above reasons are just speculations on my part.

Update: I have since been unbanned by nairaland, but since I am no longer bored and idle, the API might not be receiving any developer love from me any time soon as I am working on more interesting stuff. In case you are interested, you can check it out here: https://github.com/aitoehigie/unofficial-nairalandAPI (pls note: use at your own risk of being banned too).

Latest Update: I posted a link to this post on the programming board of nairaland to see if I could get some takers on the API but before I could blink an eyelid, I was immediately banned again from the site and the link was instantly deleted by the mods,which goes to prove my above theories to be 100% correct.

Pystar

[1] If you are a “creative”, you are going to find school extremely boring and restrictive. It would hurt more if you are an “outlier”, GOTO[5].
[2] Unless you plan on becoming a “professional”, examples of which include a doctor, an engineer, an academic, etc. it really makes no sense
going to school to waste 5 or more years to earn the rights to own a piece of parchment”. But who really wants to go to school to become a “boring old fart”? When the end game is to make money?
GOTO [4]
[3] You would be forced to cram and swot a lot of courses that have no relevance in the real world[iii]. GOTO[6]. Imagine being forced to
learn Fortran programming, and picture you using Fortran in the real world after graduation. That sucks ass right? BIGTIME!
[4] Self learning/development is the best. SECRET: for you to really LEARN something,
it has to have emotional impact (better +VE) on you, that way, you only learn what’s useful at a particular point in time and would likely never forget it.[i].
[5] An outlier here means “someone who can’t fit in because he just wont fit in and most likely wont even care to fit in because he is different”. An outlier is different, everything about him is, he wont fit into
the academic environment, probably wont even care about fitting in hence would be termed odd by his peers and socially ostracised [ii].
That way he probably will not be able to learn anything taught in school because he would come to hate school and his colleagues. GOTO[4].
[6] Its worse if you are in a Nigerian school. I wasn’t a comp science major, but I took some programming courses, hence my frequent reference to GOTO and Fortran. To say
that the educational curriculum in Nigeria needs a revamp is like overstating the obvious fact that the sun will rise tomorrow, baring the rapture occurring or the Malayan end of the world prophesy coming to pass.
Nigerian schools suck big time, understaffed with ill trained (corrupt and sometimes sex crazed) tutors, decayed learning facilities, outdated curriculum etc.[iii]
[7] If you plan on attaining any measure of financial independence, wealth or affluence, don’t look at school to show you the way. School trains you to follow the rules,
regurgitate all you are taught whether you understand it or not, not to think outside the box, be failure/risk averse[v] etc. And these are all of the things you need to do
in order to make it in the real world which school doesn’t prepare you for.
Was my going to school a waste of time? The answer I will keep to my chest. Would I have missed anything if I had not gone to school? the answer is a resounding wall of Jericho pulling down NO [iv].

NOTES
Whenever I mention school, I actually mean a higher institution, e.g. University, Polytechnic etc.
[i] I learn more flying blind and picking up stuff (I code for a partial living) than learning how to do stuff from a book, why? the mystique and wonder of discovery (that warm fuzzy feeling) is lost when I have my hand held all the way.
[ii] There is no intellectual product that wasn’t birthed in the cold damp corners of solitude, The feeling of being socially ostracised is one that any creative should sew into a cloak and wear with pride because out of it can spring forth greatness.
Most times you really need to be alone to spark and fan on the embers of genius to produce the white hot flames of greatness.(beginning to sound like some motivational speaker urrghhh!!).
[iii] I sometimes wake up in a cold sweat after having a nightmare about flunking Nuclear Physics (PHY 501). Although I didn’t, I am still scared shit less by the very thought. My brain has been 99.9% wiped clean of everything I learnt in the university, why? most of what I “learnt” wasn’t useful to me outside those 4 walls, in my opinion, if you
had a solid Montessori primary and secondary education, anything more, GOTO[1]&[2] would be a bloody waste of time.
[iv] I was a geek in school, so go figure.
[v] If you don’t fail, you wont succeed. If you don’t loose, you wont win. How many of lecturers or the old farts I warned against becoming in [2] have any measure of
affluence or wealth by just doing all that they were taught in school? ***And silence covers the earth*** In the tech sector, examples abound of successful people
who were anti [7], why? because that’s what it takes to succeed in the real world. Mostly.

Unless you are building a deep Comp.Sci based start up like Google, you probably don’t need to focus so much on your code but invest heavily on marketing. Most problems here in a 3rd world country like Nigeria that can become viable start ups actually don’t require deep science but heavy marketing and legwork to enlighten people and also give them a reason to actually use your product. [3]

Most good programmers I happen to know are introverted to a certain degree and prefer coding than actually going out and meeting people, so how do you then market your product if you don’t go out? Social media doesn’t count.

Doing a quick and dirty survey of the most “up in your face” start ups here in Nigeria will actually tell you that they are started by non coding techies (if I can safely call them that)[4]. These guys are “noise makers” and thats why their start ups do well. These guys can’t code and probably are not interested in learning how to code because coding is a long tedious and lonely task (unless you are pair programming) and the emotional make up of these “noise makers” wont just allow them to do this successfully.

I have discovered that even if you write the best code with the most bleeding edge frameworks and languages and do absolutely no marketing or “noise making”, no one will beat a path to your doorstop begging for the rare privilege to use your app.

After thinking alot about this “phenomenon”, I can actually say that I agree absolutely with MrBankole when he penned http://techloy.com/2012/07/10/im-ceo-bitch/ . How does some techie who probably has a name for his laptop [5] succeed in marketing his start up? The most successful route I can figure out is getting a “noise maker” as a co founder. That way you get the best of  both worlds.[6]

Notes

[1] Probably the reason why I have never been to any tech meetup (apart the 1st ever barcamp held in lagos “09″) and most probably wont in the nearest future is because of my hectic factory day job schedule and organizers of such meetups refusing to fix events on weekends.

[2] The phrase “Noise maker” as is used in this blog post is actually used in a positive context. A noise maker is someone who is a natural extrovert, a born marketer, with little or no technical chops, i.e. someone in the mould of Steve Jobs.

[3] Imagine a start up with a Seun Osewa and Jason Njoku combo? yeah I can, in my dreams.

[4] Bloovue, dealdey, IrokoTv, Jobberman, wakanow all have non coding founders. (Correct me if I am wrong)

[5] I am guilty as charged.

[6] Don’t do this alone, collaborate, collaborate. Get someone who can pick your slack and is strong where you are weak.

Steve Wozniak (awesome technical chops) + Steve Jobs (most prolific tech marketer ever) == Apple(World domination)

These are the kind of messages that @Gidi_Traffic gets these days. And why do people actually tweet this kind of stuff to @Gidi_traffic ? at my last count, @Gidi_Traffic has 26,558 followers on Twitter. And most people who tweet this stuff actually are trying to leverage on the network effects and influence that @Gidi_traffic wields, i.e. even if @Gidi_Traffic doesnt know the answer to the questions asked, once its retweeted by @Gidi_Traffic, one of his followers would actually know the answer.

@Gidi_Traffic can become the Siri of Nigeria by doing the following:

1. Retweeting “so-called” unrelated traffic tweets, which would be seen by all his followers and most likely get a correct response.

2. Tweeting those questions asked to people most likely to answer them correctly e.g. crime related tweets to the twitter handle of the Nigerian police, i.e. if they really use Twitter.

3. Biz model: going off Twitter and building a standalone site with Twitter API and allowing people tweet at it and have businesses pay  to have access to those tweets and provide answers/solutions to those tweets. For example, I am hungry and feel like eating pizza, I tweet at @Gidi_Traffic “I feel like having a pizza”, someone who is in charge of the social media handle of Debonairs see’s that tweet, responds to me and I order the pizza from Debonairs. @Gidi_Traffic gets his commission, Debonairs gets a sale and I am no longer hungry and everyone lives happily ever after.

P.S: Anyone can actually become a human-powered Nigerian Siri, not just @Gidi_traffic, the only snag is that you must have loads and loads of followers, i.e. you should be an influencer on Twitter.

1. Starting a startup is HARD, very HARD: Not everyone has the opportunity to have a friend who has $160k to invest in his untested idea. A startup started in more advanced climes is most likely to fail, talk less of a place like Nigeria where nothing works. There is no place in my post where I claimed that “starting a music startup is a stupid idea” or “that you should not start a startup in Nigeria”, you only inferred it. This brings me to what is known as the “Law of Effection”  which states that “the more lives you affect in an entity you control, in scale and/or magnitude, the richer you would become”. In tech speak, the more people your startup provides a service to, the more likely you are to succeed. This is not the time to develop “me-too” or “I too can do it” website or application unless you have some safety net somewhere. Whenever you have a startup idea, which you feel has the likely hood of succeeding, ask yourself, “would the average person use my application?”. When I say average, I am talking about the market woman, the jobless youth, the stay at home mum, the middle class white-collar banker etc. If the answer to that question is yes, then take the plunge and run like hell with that idea.[2]

2. Clone Wars: I still stand with my dislike for clones, you know why? There are a million problems here in Nigeria that require bankable, innovative and profitable tech  solutions. So why in the name of anything you call holy should you clone? unless its a remix of something with a unique twist, see this [3]. Mention was made of Dealdey and how profitable is it, I might not be privy to their financial statements but I would really doubt that assertion (I stand to be corrected), you know why? I am yet to meet anyone who has consummated a transaction on Dealdey, that’s to tell you that it is not yet something the average person uses.  See my first point.

3. VC’s in Nigeria? as in really? Venture capital firms in Nigeria? If that is true, then that is awesome news. I just hope Angels are not now being mistaken for VC firms.

NOTES

1. I wonder why some people would allow their emotions to becloud their sense of reasoning.  My “random thoughts” are now being misconstrued as personal attacks at some imaginary startup founders? #AWESOME. Telling startup founders to ignore me actually sounds like a very personal attack to me, these are my opinions not the 10 commandments cast in stone from Mount Sinai. As you said, it is very easy to identify problems and since talk is cheap, lets see what “solution” I come out with.

2. Dangote group has a market capitalization of #2.28trillion as against the whole banking industry that has a capitalization of #1.8trillion. why? The group produces what the average Nigerian buys and finds useful. salt, sugar, cement, juice, etc. But not everyone has a bank account or would have the use for it.

3. I definitely won’t advice any would be startup founder to develop a 1-for-1 clone of Facebook, Twitter or even Nairaland for that matter. Anyone who does that just raised the odds of him failing to sky high levels.

Postscript: The original title to my blog post was “Live in Nigeria? (***Insert your 3rd world country here***). This is why your startup will fail”. If you marry the title to the body of my post, you would see that the attacks were unwarranted. The editors felt their title was better than mine I guess. Enough said.

You live in Nigeria or any 3rd world country?, are a techie and thinking of starting a web startup? here are some reasons why your startup is doomed to fail.

1. Your startup is a solution to a “WANT” and not a “NEED”. If you can remember your basic economics, you should know what “WANTS” and “NEEDS” are. Quickly, I would define a “NEED” as something you have to have, something you can’t do without e.g. food, clothing and shelter, while a “WANT” is something you would like to have. It is not absolutely necessary, but it would be a good thing to have. A good example is music.

When developing your startup idea, ask yourself, “is what I am creating a solution to a NEED or a WANT?”  According to the Nigerian Bureau of statistics 60.9% of Nigerians in 2010 were living in “absolute poverty” i.e. less than $1 per day. Do you think that taking a hiatus to create a music startup to enable these people living in abject poverty listen to music amounts to a good use of your time? or “skills”?

2. Your startup is a clone of some popular 1st world website or application [1]. Why would you clone when there are a myriad of problems you could develop solutions for? If you are developing a clone, ask yourself this question “why would anyone use this (***insert the name of your clone***) instead of the main thing (***insert the name of the website you cloned***)?” .

3. Your startup will require loads and loads of traffic i.e. pageviews with gullible people who would be ready to click on Google ads before it can generate income. In Nigeria, there are no VC’s, no Angels, no startup accelerators, no Government support programs, no infrastructure, regular electricity supply is a pipe dream, Internet access is patchy and expensive, in short, “NO NOTHING”. So it kind of beats me why anyone would base his startup’s business model on the benevolence of Google? In between the time your startup comes online to the time it can generate enough traffic to keep the lights on and the servers humming, how would you survive? Do you have some gold bars stashed under your mattress somewhere? If not, why don’t you just develop a product where you can start charging from the very first day? [2]

4. Reading too much of Techcrunch et al. These tech blogs are written by elitist white techies who live in silicon valley where the difference between over there and here is like light and day. Any advice you can glean from those sites just isn’t applicable here in Nigeria. [3]

NOTES

[1] The current fad in Nigeria is creating clones of Groupon.com. It once used to be Twitter clones, bulk sms and then Facebook clones. Why coders still do this kind of beats me. Instead of cloning, why don’t you build on these sites and take advantage of things like Facebook’s “Social Graph” etc and develop innovative solutions? Developing another DROPBOX wont meet the need of the average Nigerian, he has no need for it, and if he does why wont he go for the original? patriotism? please!

[2] Despite the fact that 60.9% of Nigerians live under $1 per day and there are 90 million mobile subscribers in the country with at least 1 mobile phone, these phones have to be loaded with “call credit” by these people because communication has become a NEED and not a WANT. So despite the grinding poverty in the country, the major Telco’s still declare mind boggling profits every year, with Nigeria now having the largest mobile phone market in Africa with 60% penetration. So in order to be successful, develop a solution to a NEED and not a WANT.

[3] Sarah Lacy, a former columnist for Techcrunch, when she came to Nigeria in 2011 advised techies not to read Techcrunch et al. Its of no use, the stories of billion dollar valuations for 6 month old companies that do nothing but count your number of Twitter followers will actually screw with your head. That can never happen here, this is Nigeria, be creative, be innovative, think local but act global.

(The Nigerian version)

Have you been thinking about starting an Internet company? here are some reasons why I think you should take the plunge.

1. You just graduated from university or are about to and you are scared about getting a job which you know doesn’t even exist [1].
2. Nigeria is a “virgin tech forest” where technology can be used to disrupt almost all facets of society. Almost any idea you develop  can  and will disrupt society for “good”, as there are real problems that technology can be used to solve [2] which Western tech companies haven’t solved and don’t even have any interest in solving. In Nigeria, viable ideas are everywhere, the streets are paved with “idea gold”, pick one up run with it and make impact.

Notes

[1]  Actually, you don’t even need to have a degree to start a startup, as most coders I know are self-taught. The unemployment rate in Nigeria stands at 23.9%  out of a total of over 167 million people. Why waste your time looking for a job which is virtually (no pun intended) nonexistent, when you could create one for your self and others, make impact on your society which you definitely can’t do as a “cubicle slave” and if you are lucky, become rich and retire young?

[2]  PayPal has blacklisted Nigeria, why can’t we develop our home-grown version? Also, why do I have to go through semi illiterate middle men called “agents” before I can get a place to rent?  (present solutions in this space suck big time).

[3] This is the subject of a blog post for another day.

Congratulations on your much deserved win @Startup weekend Lagos. While you bask in the glow of your win, let me hit you with some questions before you get a tan.

1. Data: your app is basically useless without the data of artisans. So how do you intend getting the data of artisans seeded into your app? And please don’t tell me artisans would do the profile creation themselves (I can see you have a form for that) you know why? Most of the artisans who are your target demographic are either illiterate and/or wont be interested in creating a profile on your app without them really seeing what value that adds to them i.e. monetary. And if you want normal users to create and rate profiles of artisans they have used, what would motivate them to do so? Whats in it for them to go through the whole process?[1]

2. Business Model: Although your app is quite innovative at least in our local web space, but I cant for the life of me deduce how you intend making money from this app unless you want to go down the very well beaten path of Google adsense? [2] Provided you can generate enough traffic to cover hosting cost and other sundry costs with that, then I wish you guys luck.

P.S: I would be monitoring your progress over time.  Congrats again sir.

Notes

[1] A very thought-provoking tweebate was the cause of this blog post and the major thing that was debated was how artisans details would be created on findjimoh.com and who would do the creation. Leaving that power to either the artisans or people who use the artisans would be a major fail, because you would be giving them the power to determine how fast your app would grow and how useful it would be to other users. At least in the beginning, do the seeding yourselves.

[2] Regarding your business model, a little bird just whispered into my ear that you intend making money whenever any artisan is recommended. I really don’t know how that would work. But a simple way I feel you can make money is by having a short code that anyone could text a requirement and have the top ranking artisan that matches that query sent back in response.

For their business model, they charge a 1% transaction fee, which is pretty low, but my only grouse is their one-off integration fee of #50,000. To the developers who might be able to afford it, it’s not expensive but to other who might not, its extremely prohibitive. for me, i would advise that the fee be scraped[1] for the following reasons:

1. Barrier of entry: This one-off fee would probably be the number one and major reason why most developers or interested parties wont sign up for their service.  For a new company with no track record, they should make adoption of their service as painless as possible and scraping the sign up fee is one way to do it.

2.Economy of scale: they should focus on getting as many adopters as possible. if they drop the one-off fee and increased their per-transaction fee to 2% or simply dropping the per-transaction model entirely and adopting an overall transaction fee of 2.75% similar to Square’s model, it would still make economic sense because the more adopters they have, the more transactions they would process and they more revenue they would be able to generate via transaction fees.

Right now, I am very excited about eyowo’s  service and would be keenly watching how it goes with them.

Notes

[1] Most starts ups here in Nigeria are probably generating little or no revenue talk less of even being ramen-profitable. So every single penny counts to them. So the very idea of splashing such an amount on integrating a payment gateway might not seem such a wise one. But if it was free??? then adoption rate would shoot through the roof.

Disclaimer: I am in no way involved with eyowo.com.