The first personal project I published on the internet was in November 2007, it was (supposed to be) an online aggregator of cool Nigerian content and a virtual hangout space. That was the idea, but the execution sucked!
I once sent someone the link over Yahoo Messenger! and the guy’s response was epic: “LOL, too much free time?”.
He then went on to tell me how much the site was a disaster and things I could do with my time instead.
However, out of the mess, cool things happened….
One day, my bigger sister opened up my site at work and bragged about it to her co-workers and it so happened that their IT partner was around that day and that’s how I got introduced to Engr. Gbenga of Multiline Computers. Till today, he’s a valuable business partner, my boring entertainment site made that happen!
I didn’t shut down riranwo.com, I ran it with passion until it went down in 2011. RiRanWo! got me featured by Loy Okezie’s excellent startupsnigeria.com blog and that review launched me into the public eye of the Nigerian tech ecosystem.
Many programmers 100x better than me are in obscurity, but my wack website which I consistently improved over time shot me into the limelight.
In 2014, Y! Naija shortlisted me as 1 of the 100 most innovative people working in Nigeria’s tech ecosystem. That day when I analysed the list… I realised most of us where people Loy Okezie had featured on his site.
Start that your project, start crappy, let people tell you how lame it is… You can never tell how far it can go if you start and never give up.
P.S.
These days, onecrier.com is where I do the cool stuffs I wanted to use riranwo.com to do.
