There is a time to invest and a time to cash out. If there is no investment, there will be NOTHING to cash out.
Our noisy neighbours in Silicon Valley like to proudly show off all they have achieved in technology and they like kidding themselves that they are changing the world on a scale and in ways no one else has ever done before (Duh!). But the reality is some what different from that.
The real story is that Silicon Valley is the way it is today because some people planted the seeds for it several years before the first hippie startup emerged. So many Government funded research created the foundations necessary for emergence of all the cool companies we read about today.
I think the Nigerian business and tech ecosystem is in a position whereby it needs more investment than cashing out. We need to start sowing long term seeds that will create the environment necessary to support the organic sprouting of world-changing startups, that is the way to go. No shortcut, get-rich-quick scheme can serve our national interest in the long term.
That is how I see it.
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Watching The World
- Its official: Mark Essien, the Founder of Hotels.ng is now world famous, check out this article about him on CNN.
- I recently gave a short talk to a group of young people about why we need more Entrepreneurs who can create jobs to step up. You can download it over here.