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| Andela |
Editor’s note: You probably already know that talent accelerator, Andela raised $24 million
in a funding round led by Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan. What you
may not know is that media coverage of the funding sparked a controversy
on Nigerian Tech Twitter about its founding narrative. This morning
though, Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, Andela’s co-founder set the record straight
with a 5-minute read on his Medium page. Here it is, from the horse’s mouth.
Last week was a huge milestone for African startups.
A company jointly founded in
Nigeria and the U.S. is getting a significant investment and attention
from Mark Zuckerberg — one of the most important people in Silicon
Valley. During such a pivotal moment, it is important for me to share
Andela’s history and inspire many other entrepreneurs through my story
of failure, success and collaboration.
In
2013, Ian Carnevale, Nadayar, Brice and I started Fora, a distance
learning platform for African universities. We reached out to Jeremy
Johnson because of the similarities between his company at the time, 2U,
and what we were hoping to build in Africa. We met at his office in NYC
and then stayed in touch. From time to time, I would ask for feedback
and he became my mentor.
In early 2014, it became
clear that Fora wasn’t working as we had hoped. We were unable to raise
the capital we needed and I did not have the political networks to break
through various regulatory barriers we faced. After a long dry spell
chasing elusive investors in Nigeria, we finally raised a small round
from Extreme Startups — now HIGHLINE.VC. (Marcus
Daniels, I love you and I owe you forever). This round was small but it
gave us some months of runway. I had two options — pivot Fora before
the cash ran out or die. Many of you who are entrepreneurs know this
moment too well.
At this crossroad, we reached
out to Jeremy again to ask for his advice. He had just gotten back from
a trip to Nairobi to give a talk for the MasterCard Foundation. He had
been invited out by Christina Sass, now one of Andela’s co-founders, and
while there, he started thinking of how one might scale high-quality
education without charging tuition.
We met up at the Fresh and
Co. on 28th and Park in NYC and I told him Fora wasn’t working. We
kicked around a few rough ideas and he walked me through one which would
eventually become Andela. He promised to personally fund us and join
our board if we were willing to consider it. I told Jeremy to give me 24
hours to think about it and talk to my team.
My team was intrigued and
inspired by the model, though it was risky. Ultimately, Nad (one of my
co-founders at Fora) convinced us that the new model was even more
aligned with our mission to empower young Africans to take back the
continent through education. The next day, we got on Skype and told
Jeremy we were in.
Initially, we figured we
would just try to pivot Fora as planned — we even ran the first
recruitment and bootcamp as Fora. However, we quickly realized that
Andela was actually a totally separate company, so we decided to start
anew and wrap up Fora. Around the same time, Jeremy realized that he
just couldn’t stop thinking about Andela, and told us that if we were
interested, he would leave 2U to co-found the company with us and lead
it day-to-day.
I was very excited to have
Jeremy join full-time as our CEO. First, I knew I could learn a lot from
working with Jeremy. Second, 2U had just gone public and he was (and
still is) easily one of the highest profile entrepreneurs in education.
Raising capital for a crazy, unproven idea like ours would be a bit
easier with him on board. I do not, for a second, regret that decision.
As our remarkable success in such a short time has shown, it was the
right move.
Shortly thereafter, we
convinced Christina Sass, who Jeremy had originally tossed the idea
around with in Nairobi, to join us as well and drop out of her PhD
program at Harvard. (Crazy eh?)
At this point, we decided to
wind down Fora and create a totally separate company, called Andela,
with Jeremy, Christina, and the four co-founders of Fora — Ian, Nadayar,
Brice and I. Brice and Nadayar were essential to launching Andela. In
fact, to begin training the first Andela Fellowship Class, we bought Nad
a one-way ticket to Nigeria with a few days notice. He literally up and
left his life in Canada on a whim to make this possible.
Despite having to shut down
Fora, many of our early investors continued to support us. Some, like
Pule Taukobong and Idris Ayodeji Bello, even re-invested in Andela.
Today, we joke (not really) that Fora’s early investors have first dibs
on investing in my startups for life.
What am I getting at? Andela
is a story of people from all over the world coming together to solve a
problem. This is one of our primary strengths as a company, and in part
why we have attracted investments from great people like Zuckerberg.
There would be no Andela without all of these people — two Nigerians
(myself and Nadayar), two Americans (Christina and Jeremy), one Canadian
(Ian), and one Cameroonian (Brice) — making huge sacrifices to bring it
to life.
Andela started in Lagos,
Nigeria, in Mrs Titi Adeoye’s (shout-out to her!) vacant duplex in 33c
Cameron Road Ikoyi, which she handed us for free for our first two
months thanks to a hook up from Yvonne Johnson — an early Fora Investor.
The early days were really rocky and we have a lot of people to thank
for keeping us alive when it mattered most. I especially need to shout
out Bosun Tijani of Co-creation Hub, who gave us free meeting, office
and interview spaces, Mr. Oyedotun, who gave us his office in Fadeyi to
use, and Mr. Eke, who found us a place to lease for a month on Connal
Road, among other early Andela supporters. It is because of all of you,
and many others, that we are here today.
Many people have asked why
the parent company is based in the U.S. The truth is that while it is
possible to build a global company from Nigeria, it is very very
difficult. While I have faith that this will improve, Nigeria is still a
notoriously difficult place to operate and invest in from a legal point
of view. So, since it has always been more important to us to change
the world than to make a political point, we incorporated Andela in the
U.S.
It is important for my story
to be told to inspire other Nigerian founders who can multiply this
success. As Andela, we can always do a better job of highlighting our
roots in Lagos, clarifying the role of our global hub in the U.S., and
making sure our story is told correctly. I care very deeply about that,
which is also why I am writing this. It is tough to make sure the press,
across multiple countries, tells the entire story from our point of
view in 500 words or 30-second clips.
Two years ago, who could have
thought a crazy twenty-something-year-old Nigerian from a humble middle
class family could co-found a global company from Nigeria funded by THE
Mark Zuckerberg? There had to be a melding of people, cultures, and
circumstance for this to all happen and I am grateful to have built an
amazing team, partnered with supportive investors and worked with
outstanding colleagues who have made Andela what it is today.
So let’s celebrate the history we have made and then focus on what’s important — building the future of this continent.
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