Full transcript: Tomi Davies on London Real
0:32 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. I also host London Real, which is a similar but longer trial log format. And we feature people like writers, politicians, drug smugglers, cage fighters, you know, the normal types of people. My co-host today is Mr. Bryce Keene, who is the founder and director of Albion Drive, and is also a member and co-founder of The Three Beards.
0:54 And if you don’t know who The Three Beards are, you need to get out of your house and come down to the silicone drink about every Friday, somewhere in the shortage area. I’ll be there. Bryce is there along with Joe and Michael. And you can get to meet a bunch of people who are very strange. They enjoy their jobs.
1:14 And they’re excited about their work. And it’s just so nice to be around a group of people that are just, you know, positive things to say. A lot of people go down to the pub and complain about their jobs. And these people are thinking about new things. So it’s a great thing.
1:25 The beards also bring us Don’t Pitch Me Bro, which is a monthly event. I need to go to the next one. Yep, it’s coming up. Okay, cool. And then quarterly, the digital sizzle, come down, hang out, and definitely we’re going to go straight to the drink about from here.
1:36 Yes. So that’s our plan. And our guest today is Mr. Tommy Davies. He is the CEO of Technovision, which runs TVC Labs, which is a technology business incubation company based in, wait for it, Lagos, Nigeria.
1:50 It just got interesting. He’s previously held technology positions in a variety of FTSE 100 companies, like Ernst & Young, Marks & Spencer, Sapient. You’re also one of the leaders of the Nigerian involvement in the One Laptop Per Child initiative, created by your friend at my alma mater, MIT, Professor Nicholas Negroponte. And your father was involved in the Nigerian independence movement of 1960. Is that true?
2:17 That is correct. You’ve done a lot of them. I bet he could tell some stories. Tommy, welcome to Silicone Real. Thank you very much.
2:26 It’s a real pleasure having you here. Bryce sent me an email this week, and he’s like, dude, I got the guy. And so I was wondering, Bryce, if you could tell me how you met him. Absolutely. Well, I’ve got a very good friend and an all-contact technology journalist named Monty Mumford, who I must get in on this show.
2:44 He lives down in Brighton. He has lived all over the world, has covered a lot of technology in Africa, emerging markets. He lived in India for a while. And I’ve learned that when Monty sends me an email, often on a Thursday afternoon, and says, hey, Bryce, I’m in London, come down for a drink, I cancel all my plans. Because I’ve learned from experience that whenever Monty invites you for a beer, he puts the most amazing group of people around the table.
3:06 So there I was last, it was actually Tuesday, completely. Again, and no one ever knows anyone. I like different people. And I met Tommy, and Monty said, you’ve got to talk to Tommy. He is just phenomenal.
3:16 With the start-up scene in Nigeria, he’s just driving that forward. And so I got to chatting over a few drinks, and I just thought, wow. Now, this is a slightly different story to our previous efforts, and I actually think it’s really exciting. I think it’s always good to get a bit of outside perspective. So I was really excited to have Tommy here to tell us a little bit about how he went from Marx and Spencer board to start-up incubation and angel investment in Lagos and everything in between, and also obviously the back and forth and the comparisons between Lagos and London and all those sorts of things.
3:47 Yeah, I first have to ask you a question, because I’ve never been to Lagos. And I’ve heard tremendous, wonderful stories. I’ve heard crazy, scary stories. And I’ve been to Northern Africa, I’ve been to South Africa, I’ve been to Botswana. But I think Nigeria has its own type of scene going on there.
4:04 And I was wondering, for someone who’s never been to Lagos, how would you describe the city, the excitement, the buzz, and the people? Okay. First thing is it’s Lagos. Lagos, okay. Lagos, which is where the name Lagos came from, is actually in Portugal.
4:23 And Lagos was a colony of the Portuguese in the early centuries, even this is pre-slavery, when the discovery of the world was going on. The Portuguese sort of landed in Lagos, and they called it Lago de Curamo, which is how we got the name Lagos. Lagos is a slice of London, interlaced with a little bit of New York, and then put in a dash of Paris, add Mumbai, Shanghai, and Dubai. And then you’re probably starting to approximate what we’ve got in Lagos.
5:04 16 million people and growing, okay, buzzing about with the biggest entrepreneurial frenzy, you can imagine. That’s how I’d describe Lagos. Okay. You miss it? Not at the moment only because I haven’t been out for too long.
5:26 But you get out for more than two weeks, and then you miss the paranoid, the schizophrenic frenzy that is with you on a daily basis. Yes, you miss that. Wow. And what, I mean, TVC Labs, you’re busy incubating things there. For someone who has no idea what’s going on in the Africa technology scene, can you just walk us through what’s been going on the last year, five years, where you’re at in relation to the rest of the world?
5:54 Okay, well, a couple of things. In fact, I had to, there was somebody earlier on today, I had to share with why I believed the African experience was unique to the European and why Africa is going to start to drive innovation in a totally different way. And it’s this, if you look at mobile telephony, okay, and mobility, it’s an incremental technology environment to the West. Why? Because before mobiles came along, we had landlines, and after landlines, we then had the land-based internet or desktop internet.
6:30 And it’s post these two technological innovations that mobility is crept in, okay? Africa hasn’t had any of that. You never had the landlines, right? No. You know, teledensity was near zero.
6:44 Internet penetration on desktop even till today is near zero. I mean, you can pretty much ignore those numbers. But all of a sudden, enter stage right mobile telephones, feature phones that can do the internet smartphones, and everything has gone through the roof. Nigeria alone has over 100 million handsets, okay? That’s larger than the population of the UK.
7:09 I mean, I think it was 113 last count. So you sort of start to get an idea that you can’t have that much technology in the devices in the hands of creative people, and nothing happened. It’s just a question of time before certain interesting things start to happen. Interesting, interesting. And what are some of the companies you’re incubating right now, or even in general, what kind of industries are they pushing more?
7:38 Is it mobile-based commerce? What is it? Well, quite a number. It’s broad spread. I’ll bring it to life with one of the ones we’re sort of just about to do an exit.
7:54 About three and a half years ago, excuse me, a young Ghanaian PhD student out of the States came up with a brilliant idea. And what was it? Sixty to seventy percent of the drugs in emerging markets are fake. Here, we’re lucky, you go into boots and you buy headache peels. That’s what you’ll get, headache peels, and they make the headache go away.
8:18 In Nigeria, in other African countries, you’re just taking your chances. Eight out of ten times, or six out of ten times, you’re going to get a fake drug. So he came up with a smart idea, says, here, dear Mr. Manufacturer, why don’t we do this? We’ve got an increasing number of mobile phones.
8:37 Why don’t we put the power of fake recognition into the hands of the punters, into the hands of the consumers? How do you do that? Well, it’s very simple. Unlike here, where everything is postpaid, which is you get a bill at the end of the month saying, you know, dear Mr. Bryce, guess what?
8:58 You used 30 pounds last month. Can a T-Mobile please have the money for, you know, those bills? What happens is everybody pays ahead. So we call it pay as you go. So on the streets of Lagos, and in fact across Nigeria, we sell scratch cards.
9:13 So you’re in the traffic, somebody knocks on your door, you want to buy a scratch card, and that’s how you get your airtime. Okay. Let’s use those to defeat the fakers. So on each of the drugs, on anti-malarials now, supported by the government, when the drug comes, there’s a scratch card. So you scratch it, you send a free SMS, and it tells you if the drug is fake or genuine.
9:37 If it’s fake, you call the authorities, and they know who to get. And if it’s genuine, you got relief, you can take the drugs. Okay. Is that alphanumeric that you type in? No, it’s purely numeric.
9:49 Just numeric, okay. Just numeric, 12 digits going to 14 now. Okay, strong encryption, you know, all the way through. Wow, that’s pretty interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
10:00 That’s what I mean by, that’s purely mobile technology, addressing a local need. Okay. And that’s what I mean by innovation, coming out of Africa, okay, to address specific issues that, you know, you’ll see globally. What’s happening with that? It’s giving us insights.
10:18 And, you know, we’re using big data insights now to understand how people use drugs, drug lifecycle, okay, et cetera, you know, those kind of things. So there’s ancillary benefits to be had from those kind of things. So that’s one example. Okay. Now you talked about other ways where they’re actually going to end up leading the industry in certain ways.
10:38 I guess because they were handicapped in the past and now they’re not. I mean, in general, is there a specific type of tech where you think Nigeria is going to lead the way as opposed to the Silicon Valley or the UK or Europe or even Asia? Well, somebody put it this way, says, I find it quite curious that in Africa, poor people run, okay, to find food. And in the West, the rich people run to get rid of the food they’ve eaten. So if you look at it from that dimension, which is these are people that have never had.
11:15 So whatever the little they get, they’re looking to make it, you know, last as long as possible. Let me bring it to life. The third most prolific filmmaking industry in the world today is called Nollywood. That is the Nigerian film industry. I’ve seen some of these.
11:36 Exactly. Really? Interesting. These movies are made budgets of $10,000, $12,000, $15,000. They’re knocking out 10, 15 of them a day in some places.
11:50 All right? But guess what? There are something like Last Count Now, I think they have about six TV channels, terrestrial TV channels, paid for TV, in Africa that are dedicated to these movies. Sky has one in the UK. Oh, okay. I didn’t know that.
12:05 Yeah, that’s all they do. It’s interesting. Okay, so it’s called Africa Magic. And that kind of innovation would not have happened if mobility didn’t come into the digital sphere. It started happening when we started having, guess what?
12:22 Video cameras on mobile phones. That was how they used to shoot. Oh, wow. So it’s that creative element that I’m talking about. Similarly, you look at the music scene.
12:35 All of a sudden, these guys, because now they can have studios like this, at ridiculous prices that were unimaginable 10, 15 years ago. Even five years ago in some instances, they are starting to use them to effect. So imagine a situation where people like, and I’m not unique, there are quite a number of us are starting to say, hmm, we’ve done that in movies. We’ve done that in music. Wouldn’t it be interesting if we could do that with software?
13:07 And hmm, we’re not going to write for PC platforms. We’re actually going to write for mobile. And when you realize augmented reality, location-based systems, and all kinds of new technologies are coming in that we can take advantage of, you start to get the kind of ideas I’m talking about. Okay. Does Nigeria have the type of school programs in order to support this?
13:32 Well, the population is, what, over 100 million people? 160 million. 160 million. It’s hard to conceive how many people that is. But do they have the universities?
13:42 Do they have the schools? Because that seems like a big barrier, obviously. That’s a double-edged sword. The answer is yes, and the answer is no. Yes, there are schools.
13:55 And they are cranking out quite a number of graduates. Are the schools too international on global standards? Unfortunately not. So what we are finding is those of us that are creating organizations are having to do quite a fair bit of remedial. But hope springs eternal, and there is a lot of reform that is going into the education system.
14:19 But having said that, Ghana, okay, our neighbors down the street have an education system, in my opinion, as good as anywhere else. So the education issue is one you need to Nigeria, and it was born out of volumes. You know, we just believe in Nigeria that every Nigerian is entitled and has a right to free education, and that’s the challenge. Okay, but Ghana has done it, so that’s a good sign. Okay, well, this is called silicone real, so this is the time when we get real.
14:49 I ask a question, Bryce asks a question. About anything that can be about business models or whatever. But my question is this, and maybe other people are thinking this, maybe they’re not. When I hear Nigeria, the first thing that comes to mind is, I don’t know, chaos, unstable governments, bribery. Can I make money there?
15:05 Can I make sure my corporate structure stays in place for an exit strategy? You probably know the ropes. Me as a Western investor, I’m like, I don’t even know what to do here. You could argue the same thing happens in Moscow. You could argue the same thing happens in Shanghai as well, to a certain extent.
15:20 But you must get asked that question. What do you say if I want to go do business there? I mean, do you say it’s doable? Do you have to be careful? What do you say?
15:30 Well, I say it’s like everything else. If you are going into the jungle, you must go with protection and recognize that the environment you’re going into is as it is. Nigeria’s reputation, unfortunately, is not without cause. But having said that, there are quite literally hundreds, if not thousands of businesses that are doing good business, that are doing stable business, that are doing profitable business in Nigeria and across Africa. It’s a question of having the right partners, understanding the regulations, and standing your ground on rights.
16:14 So if you can put those ingredients in place, with good corporate governance, there isn’t any reason. You can’t make money in Nigeria just like anywhere else. Nestle has been in Nigeria forever. Unilever have been in Nigeria for a long time. Diageo, Guinness, are expanding in Nigeria.
16:36 And that, I go to the FMCG because we all know about the oil. Nigeria’s rich in oil, so Shell, Chevron, all the oil companies are there. But they’re not the only ones in Nigeria. Porsche just opened a shop. Well, they can’t ignore that population in Nigeria.
16:55 So KFC is in Nigeria. So these are businesses that aren’t, they’re not corrupt businesses. They’re straightforward, ethical businesses that are doing business in Nigeria. Okay, fair enough. Your turn.
17:12 My devil’s advocate question. Or any question. Okay, I’ve got a couple. So, my devil’s advocate question is, so we, when we read about sort of Africa and emerging markets here in the Western world, particularly when it comes to start-up technology, thanks to three German brothers, we’re reading a lot more about markets in Africa. My question is…
17:35 Who are these brothers? We’ll talk about that. My question is, this trend at the moment that we’re reading about, about say European start-ups rushing to scale in emerging markets in particular Africa and to an extent South America, does that help the African start-up ecosystem or is it exploiting the local ecosystem? Help or hindrance? Well, I want to know.
18:00 I think it’s six of one, half a dozen of the other. The reason being this, it depends on who’s doing it. The German brothers, which you speak, Rocket Internet, to be specific, their model is actually to put the money behind Africans. So, they tend to lead with the European lead and then they find some local. So, from a capacity development standpoint, that’s a positive thing.
18:30 But at the end of the day, the money still goes out. So, that’s a negative thing. The money is not staying to develop the country. You’re developing the people. So, hopefully some value is being residual from that standpoint.
18:45 I have a challenge with the whole euphoria currently about investing in Africa. And that is this. We talked about the education system earlier. And we’ve got a trend. There are two trends I have noticed that I’m very, very critical about.
19:02 The first is we have an increasingly youthful population across the continent. The average age of a Nigerian citizen, I think, is sub 20 currently. So, you look at that. That means you’ve got attention deficit. People aren’t going to be as patient as they used to be.
19:22 So, that’s sort of the consequence of a youthful population. The fuel on top of that is the other thing we talked about, which is the education system that is no longer fit for purpose, in my opinion, because the education systems we run were colonial education systems that were designed for countries that were going to support a colonial infrastructure. They were not designed for introspective analysis and development of the country itself. And that’s the challenge.
19:55 If you put those two together, what we’re getting, yes, there’s growth in Africa. That growth is population growth. But that is not a value creation growth. It’s a consumption growth. And that’s the real issue from where I sit.
20:12 So, unless we go in and start to find a way to turn that around where the citizens we’re cranking out learn how to create value based on the local ecosystem, the danger is we’re creating consumers. And what happens when consumers can no longer afford what they’re consuming? You get the kind of revolutions that we just hope never happens. Right. I mean, same thing could happen in China.
20:39 There’s always that potential for the rich coastal areas to kind of inflame the poorer regional areas. They have to balance it. Interesting. You said you had a couple other questions. Yeah, I was kind of curious about…
20:52 I wanted to ask a little bit about… Because obviously you were born here in the UK, which I think we skipped over. And then a little bit about your career. So, I know you had some interesting experiences with Marx and Spencer at one point and then on to Ernst & Young. And then how you got into angel investing and trying to pull that scene together.
21:09 Ooh, it’s been a long, long road. I actually went to high school in Nigeria, you know. And I went to college in the U.S. Excuse me. Then I went back, did a stint in Nigeria, oil and gas.
21:23 And then lost my dad and then came home here in the UK and that’s how I ended up at M&S. And at M&S, started with store systems, actually. Started designing in-store systems for M&S because what we had then had become outdated. And the first multitasking OS kernel came out. That was OS2. I’m dating myself now, aren’t I?
21:53 Is this mid-90s? Early 90s. Early 90s, yes. Okay. Okay, this was often, you know, the genesis of NT kind of thing.
22:03 So, I designed a system that went into the M&S stores and that’s when I caught the eyes of one of the CD people and said, oh, yeah, you’re good. So, I ended up as head of IT research for Marx & Spencer for quite a number of years, which is where the internet came. You know, upon us, because I belonged to, through the research role, quite a number of sort of futurist groups, which is how I met Nicholas Negroponte, for example, Alan Kay, Larry Ellison, you know, quite a number of sort of the IT visionaries who were doing all kinds of weird and wonderful stuff.
22:41 So, it was like, hey, we got to do the internet. And the board was like, you got to be kidding. This is a fat, it’ll go away. This is 97 you were saying? Yeah.
22:50 Okay. You know, so I’m looking at these guys, I mean, and I finished my presentation. It was only the deputy chairman at that time that got it. You know, everybody else brought on was like, okay, look, Mr. IT research, we like when you’re talking about the other things, 3D body scanning, which we were doing at that time to understand average sizes, okay, which is very, very important when you’re manufacturing clothes.
23:16 That is fantastic, you know, using fractals for pattern recognition on video. That’s great for in-store video. We can tell all these people who are shoplifting, it makes it easier for us. Those kind of, why don’t you work on those neat little things you keep telling us about this internet thing? You leave the retailing to us, you know, it’s never going to fly.
23:38 Why would anybody want to go onto a television, okay, and click something to buy, you know, they can’t touch it, they can’t feel it, you know, people buy clothes, they can touch and feel, they want to touch the fabric. I still remember this, they’re very, and I, you know, my temperature was kept going. I’m saying, can’t these guys see this? You know, I mean, I remember telling you. It’s almost a classic innovator’s dilemma example where you would expect an organization that’s been, what, a hundred and some years in retail to just resist anything about that, and you’d need someone else like an alpado to come along and say, no, push the business forward.
24:14 But that was the weird thing was my boss at that time, an amazing guy, he’s still my friend now, you know, this guy had a PhD in nuclear physics out of Oxford. He got it, you know, and he was the one that actually engineered for me to be put in front of the board to make this presentation because it was like, do we invest in more stores? Do we invest in a paper catalog, or do we invest in this electronic storefront that this guy is pushing? Well, they went for the paper catalog.
24:41 Okay, understood. And as Bryce asked, fast forward now to what you’re doing now. What are you doing now with Angel Investing and your incubators? Okay. Actually, what had happened was, through the work I was telling you with Sproxil, which is the Ghanaian investment, the young man, I was talking about the pharmaceutical.
25:05 Oh, right, Sproxil, okay. We started looking at technology business acceleration critically. And what we found was, for you to have a sustainable accelerator, you’ve got to have deal flow coming in. So we took a step back and looked at the incubators, and there are quite a number of them, some very, very good incubators. In Lagos?
25:26 Across West Africa, you’ve got Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology in Accra, Ghana. You’ve got the CC Hub in Lagos. You’ve got the Inspire in Abuja, and then you’ve got the Tinapa Knowledge City out in Cross River, to name just a few off the top of mine, that are doing technology business incubators. Oh, sorry, I forgot an idea. Okay, which is the Federal Government in Nigeria’s $15 million incubator.
25:54 But what I found was that we weren’t getting enough people because the nature of incubators should be there should be more people knocking on the door than are inside the incubator. You have to be able to reject some ideas, but that wasn’t happening. It was like people could just walk in. So I started investigating, and we found that it was very simple. There just isn’t any angel funding to be had anywhere.
26:23 And that’s the biggest bugbear of all of these entrepreneurs, is we can’t find anybody to give us $10,000 to bring an idea to life. If you’re looking for half a million, $2 million, $3 million, yeah, you’ve got the private equity companies and others, but the small money that these kids need to start. So that’s where the idea of the Lagos Angel Network came from. And what we do is we have quarterly pitches, and as an angel, you have an obligation. Minimum is $6,000 per annum.
26:58 They have to invest in one or more of the entities we put in front of you. And now we’ve got Angel Fair, Africa Angel Fair coming up in South Africa. So slowly everybody’s starting to recognize that this is an area that needs to be addressed. So how many angels have you got now, and how did you find them and go about sort of bringing them together? Oh, we’ve got 15 and counting.
27:21 And of course, it started with friends of mine, you know, who are like minds. It’s just like, hey, look, I’m thinking about this. Would you be interested? All right, tell me more about it. And he was like, yep, okay, sign me up.
27:33 Is any of your money Western money, or is it all funds that come from inside the country, and do you want that to change? For the Angel Network currently, it is. It’s purely internal funding. For the incubators, there’s a lot of Western money, Sainsbury Trust or Media Group, you know, Google Foundation. All of them have put money into Africa and continue to do so.
27:55 But at the seed level, it’s still very, very much. Do you hear Africa a lot, like when you, you know, you’re heavily involved in the technology startup scene. I mean, is that something on people’s radar, like you said, with South America, and is it a buzzword some days, or is it a real phenomenon other days? Yeah, I mean, more and more so. There’s a lot more coverage coming in about emerging technology and startups in Africa.
28:17 Obviously, as Tommy said, a lot of it is mobile, and it’s handset-based mobile, not smartphone apps like we think, but often a lot of innovation in text messaging, micro-payments. I see a lot of things like that. The interesting thing about it, which is why I asked my sort of devil’s advocate question, is sometimes, I know, by Monty, who introduced us, has written quite a lot about Africa, and he writes quite, he goes there quite a bit, and he writes about people there.
28:41 But you get a bit of a 50-50 mix, which is you get, 50% is kind of interesting companies and emerging uses of technology. And you do have to, you can find it turning up in some very heavyweight publications, the Economist, New York Times, I can do things like that. The other 50% is about the race to get the majority of that market while it’s still young and emerging, which usually comes from companies in Europe, less so the US. Many European companies tend to look at emerging markets much quicker than the US, whereas the US tends to focus, in the beginning, I find a lot on the domestic market because it’s so active.
29:19 So, yeah, I mean, I tend to find, I’m quite curious to see how it goes, and the reason my question was, I often wonder whether, you know, is success and growth, you have to look a bit deeper and you have to ask yourself, is it that company has a lot of African users or is that company setting up and growing the cluster in Africa, supporting the African ecosystem, you know, training more developers, putting that resource to good use, or is the story you’re reading actually about somebody who just got to Africa faster and had a service and actually, as Tommy said, the money’s going straight back out again and they’re not giving back, and that’s the part that I’m always quite interested in, which is, you know, creating and growing more developers and more talented people at home, because that’s how you build clusters, how you build ecosystems.
30:01 You’ve got to start with some heroes and then those heroes give back and then they keep reinvesting in training and resources and things, so. Tommy, let me ask you a question that we ask usually on Silicon Real. Let’s say that tomorrow you sold your labs, you signed a non-compete agreement for the next two years and you have to stay in London, and we’re going to give you 20 million pounds of funding. What would you go do? Something completely unrelated to what you’re doing?
30:24 You obviously live in London. You’re probably familiar with the technology scene. What do you see that excites you, or what do you think you would get involved in? Whoa. I’m a space fan, so I’ve been following Virgin Galactic for a number of years, and I was one of the first people to register for the trip and all that, so I believe space tourism is something that’s going to happen.
30:54 It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when and how that will happen and what the fallout of that is going to be, so I’d probably be looking in that direction and trying to understand the kind of things that would be associated, because if you look, as an example, what’s happened to African safaris, or if you look at what’s happened to Caribbean cruises, you start to get a sense of the art of the possible with space tourism. When’s the first scheduled Virgin flight? Do you know?
31:31 It keeps moving. It keeps moving due to a whole host of different reasons. A few years out. Question is, would you really want to be on the first flight? Well, Branson said he’s going to be on the first flight, and that’s why they keep moving it, is to be 100% sure he does come back.
31:49 You’d want to be, wouldn’t you really? You’re on the first flight. Currently, I think 2015 is what they’re… I’d love to do it, but I think it’s like everything. You want to wait and see.
32:00 You want to wait on that one, I think. I mean, BAE, the original Four British Airways, they had some major problems with their planes in the 60s. People forgot about that. Isn’t Elon Musk working on something similar as well? Is he?
32:11 I don’t know. Is he doing rockets? Elon Musk? I think Elon Musk is doing. On a slightly different note, what companies right now in London excite you?
32:19 What companies are you like? We’ve got to keep an eye on what those guys are doing and what those guys are doing. They kind of inspire you, even if you don’t have companies in your incubator that are like them. I haven’t been tracking. I’ve not been tracking the London scene as aggressively as I used to, simply because, especially in the last 18 months, I’ve sort of been hands-on, you know, really knee-deep in trying to make sure that we build this ecosystem across West Africa.
32:52 But there are companies that I’m aware of, okay, that are playing in the augmented reality meets location-based systems. Okay, and where those are starting to look at health and alternative education, I see a lot of potential there. I see a lot of mileage, especially on the health side because you’ve got an increasingly aging population, so people are becoming health-conscious. So the more, you know, you can imagine a situation where you’re walking into a store and everything on the shelf, you know, I’m not saying you’re going to get the Google glasses immediately, but just as you look at it, it can give you the information you need to make a decision on whether to buy or not.
33:41 That’s coming, and the kind of people, the organizations, the startups that get to deliver those kind of services are going to make a packet. Interesting. Interesting that you picked that out. One of them is a very silicone real question. It’s another one I might throw you, but if you could pick up the phone and make a call to the 20-year-old Tommy Davies and give him a bit of advice, and he can’t be buy Apple stock or, you know, that’s one of my guests said, actually.
34:07 I was like, all right. And to give him a bit of advice, and it can’t just be, you know, keep doing what you’re doing, what would it be? What would it be? It would be get out of employment, okay, and bet it all on yourself, you know. You’ve got enough ideas there, you know, just forget employment.
34:30 Go feel fast. Do you think some people are scared to fail big like that when you run your own business, and it’s an easier, safer option sometimes to be employed by a Marks & Spencer or something? Yeah, exactly. You know, especially if you’re doing cool stuff like I was, you know, you get enamored by what other people are doing, not taking cognizance that you probably could be doing even better yourself. Right, and you put it all on the line, you bet on yourself, and when you win, you win big.
35:04 That’s good advice. Never heard that one before. And what’s the best advice you’ve ever been given? The best advice I’ve ever been given, go study in America. The fundamental difference between U.S. education and European education is pragmatism.
35:27 The American education empowers you as an individual to believe you can solve problems. So it’s not theoretical, it’s hands-on. So you’re always looking at it and saying, how do I do this, or how do I solve this? Western European education is more about the aesthetic or theoretical values of the system, you know. So there’s an empowerment, you know, that came from that education, in my opinion.
36:01 So, because I so wanted to go to Cambridge, you know, but it was like, no, no, no, no, you don’t want to do that. I’m sure it shaped who you are today in a big way. Yes, very, very much. I’m always telling my stepdaughter, I said, you’re going to the States for school. It’s a completely different mindset, a mind frame, you get out of this country.
36:20 There’s a can-do attitude you get. Yeah, that’s probably true. We get that in the new countries. Yeah, and now the last part of this advice question, which is really relevant for you, what would you say to that 20-year-old Nigerian that’s listening to us right now on iTunes or something, and they’re like, I want to be a part of this technology wave. I want to be like Tommy one day.
36:41 I want to be at the top of my technology game. What advice do you give to them? What’s a single thing that they should do with their lives now to get there? Own a vision that solves a problem and stick with it. Own a vision that solves a problem.
37:02 Africa is bereft with problems, all kinds of societal problems, all kinds of environmental problems. If we don’t solve them, okay, nobody else will. It’s in the best interest of Londoners to solve London’s problems. So if you’re sat in Lagos, or you’re sat in Accra, or you’re sat in Monrovia, and there is a societal problem, find a solution, become the best at providing that solution. And you’d be amazed at the rewards that follow that.
37:37 Wow, it’s funny. Michael, John Collison from Stripe was sitting there a couple weeks ago, and I think his venture cap fund, they have a motto, and it was make things people want. It was that simple. Make things people want. And then if you do that, then the value will come back to you later.
37:55 That’s correct. That is absolutely correct. And you’re right, other people aren’t going to fix Nigeria’s problems. It’s just not in their interest. It’s a really interesting perspective.
38:04 Wise stuff. We’ve got a few minutes left. Am I missing anything that rounds out the picture? Yeah, so what’s next, Tommy? What’s the big dream?
38:14 What’s the next big thing? Who are you taking to Nigeria? Hopefully us, but who else? I’d love to go with you. Well, you’re going to be very welcome, because one of the things, we’re very, very early stages, but we’re starting to put full capital to it, is what we’re calling Geeks to Africa.
38:34 And the whole idea is actually to get those from the tech scene in the West to come and experience the tech scene in Africa. So we’re going to do West Africa, do East Africa, and do South Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa. Like Davies McLuhan’s Geeks on a Plane. Are you going to get Davies? We should issue the invitation to Davies on this show.
38:54 So Davies McLuhan. Hey, you know, round up the guys. That would make a great reality show, too. Yeah, because he’s done Geeks on a Plane through Europe and Eastern Europe. Oh, really?
39:03 But never, I don’t think they’ve done Africa. Okay, so Davies, if you’re listening, hey, let’s do it. You know, Africa awaits. There you go. Issue the challenge.
39:11 I’m still looking around. Davies McLuhan Geeks on a Plane to Africa. Right. So that’s one. And the second, which is also close to my heart, is we still don’t have the structured programmers I would like to see, you know.
39:26 My background, my life has been software programming. Yes, there are a lot of kids learning to code, but not world-class code. So I’m working with some people to try and put a proper code academy, you know, software institute on ground, where people can actually do real cool stuff that, you know, can scale globally and is to international standards. That’s the advice we’ve received so much here from Benjamin Southworth, from you. You always said to that 20-year-old listening, learn how to code.
40:03 And even John Collison said it as well. He said learn how to code because that way you can always mock something up. You can start designing your product. You can develop your company. And even if you’re not the best in the world, he said at least you can understand, you can take part in the conversation, if you understand even just some of the language.
40:18 This is it. Exactly. Fantastic. Thank you. And you’re in London now, but most of your business is in Nigeria.
40:25 Do you stay here because you like it here, or is it because you can get more done here? I stay here because it keeps me sane.
40:38 Living in Nigeria is living on the edge, okay. And every once in a while you sort of need to sort of take the time out. Even when I was living in London, I did the same thing. I’d just pick up a boat in Southampton and, you know, sail off. So you need that downtime, and I’ll use London for that, plus the fact that my wife and kids are here.
40:57 Yeah. Do you go back often actually, out of curiosity? Sure. Do you go back often, or are you often back and forth? I tend to do it in bits and bobs.
41:07 Roughly I spend two to three weeks here, and then, you know, I’m in Nigeria for maybe a month or two months, and then I’m back here for, you know, depending on the intensity of the projects I’m involved in. Sure. Yeah. You know, the whole reason we did this show is because I think people want to really hear the stories of the people behind the businesses, and because I think people invest in people more than they do in ideas or in businesses. And I was just, as a final question, to ask you, what do you look for in the people that you employ, that you give money to as an angel investor?
41:37 Is there any kind of a consistent trait that comes up? Well, the first is emotional intelligence, okay? But that assumes quite a number of things. A, you have a vision you can hold. B, you have the ability to execute.
41:57 And C, you can understand when things aren’t working. So you can learn from failures. Those are qualities I tend to rate very, very highly. And we tend never to invest in individuals anyway. We invest in teams.
42:14 So I’m always looking for who’s got the vision and the sales and marketing, who’s got the commercial, and then who’s the execution. And invariably, there are three individuals, or sometimes you’ll find that one guy is sort of ambidextrous and that covers two of those areas. And there’s a team of two, but never the single individual. Good stuff, man. Which, is there a particular start-up at the moment, Nigeria, you’re excited about?
42:43 Or we should all check out. It’s worth having a look at. Ooh, there’s a list. I like what Pledge 51 is doing. There are games.
42:54 I like what Sia is doing out of Accra. They’re a feature phone messenger. Those are sort of two that are close to heart at the moment. There’s a young man I’m talking to now, and he wants to build his own phone. And I don’t know if he’s mad or if he’s a visionary.
43:25 My jury’s still out on him. So Silas, if you watch this, you know who you are. That’s awesome. That’s a great one. Well, that pretty much wraps us up.
43:33 How do people get ahold of you, Tommy? What’s the best way? Twitter? Website? Twitter, I’m Tommy D.
43:38 Okay. Okay. And D-E-E, right? T-O-M-I-D-W-E. Okay.
43:43 Yeah. And yeah, Twitter’s probably the best one, but I’m on LinkedIn, I’m on Facebook. Google will tell you anything you need to know about me. Fantastic. Some wise words, some really good perspectives there.
43:57 It’s nice to see. And now it’s on my radar, too, what’s going on. And I really would love to go to Legos. Okay. And I imagine you’d want to roll with Tommy.
44:05 Yeah, I’d roll with Tommy D. I’m already in my mind cooking up some sort of something to go do a trip to Legos and see what’s going on. That’s awesome. Geeks of Africa. Geeks of Africa.
44:17 I like that one. We’re on. That’s good. Well, this is our fourth episode of Silicone Reel. If you’re listening to us on iTunes, please subscribe.
44:22 If you want to see all of our faces, come to the YouTube channel, London Real, for now. And we’re on Twitter, we’re on Facebook. This show is about the people listening. It’s about you guys in the community. So if you have people you want to see on the show, you let us know.
44:35 If you’ve got some pictures of the Silicone Roundabout I can use in the beginning, let us know. And come up to us on a drinkabout and give me some constructive criticism. I love hearing it. I got my first request today if you’re coming to drink about tonight. Oh, really?
44:47 Yeah. Somebody wants to talk to you already. Oh, man. Here we go. I’ll have to watch out.
44:52 Thanks so much. You can follow Bryce Kean at Bryce underscore Kean on Twitter. That’s K-E-A-N-E and Bryce for the Y. Okay, cool. And at three underscore Beards as well.
45:00 We’re going to the Silicone drink about now. It’s every Friday night, usually somewhere in the shortage area. We were rocking Badu last Friday. What an amazing place. Felt like we walked out of London right into some San Francisco like startup.
45:11 It was like crazy. Big time, yeah. Vodka, Jell-O shots. They had Shisha pipes. People were smoking gourmet hamburgers.
45:18 And they were hiring. They were like, hey, everyone talk to us. Yeah, really nice people. It was great hospitality. So come along.
45:24 Even if you’re not in the tech scene, you’re going to have a great time. Yep. Thank you, gentlemen, so much. Thanks for coming. Thank you.
45:30 It’s about the people. All right. Thank you, Tommy. Sure. Thank you.
45:38 All right. Take care.
