On the 22nd of November the Delegation of German Industry and Commerce in Nigeria (AHK Nigeria) organised a start-up breakfast panel that was sponsored and hosted by Cedar Hive Co-working. In line with AHK’s Nigeria’s commitment to strengthen the Nigerian Start-up ecosystem, the theme of the event was “Building a successful Start-up – Product Design/Testing, organization & investment readiness” and was geared towards start-ups and aspiring founders.

The event contained a panel discussion and a networking session and was attended by more than 40 start-ups. The panel was made up by Afolabi Adetola (Founder of Cedar Hive & Managing Partner at Cedar Advisory Partner), Rotimi Thomas (Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Aspire Power Solutions) and Matthew Mayaki (VP Engineering at RelianceHMO) and was moderated by Barbara Onyejose the Community Manager at Cedar Hive.

The discussion was focused on multiple aspects that are related to all new businesses and are key to building a sustainable business (but easily get neglected in the start-up world), such as product testing, tracking of key performance indicators, required skills of founders, collaborative working, definition of and commitment to success as well as how to become investor ready.

A key observation we made is that many start-ups still define funding as success instead of focusing on the sustainability and the use funds, but that the start-ups are open and willing to learn, which made the event worthwhile and successful for all participants.

The event marked the last event of AHK Nigeria’s digitalization & start-up department for 2019 and we are looking forward to intensifying our efforts in this sector in 2020 with events and programs that will further strengthen the Nigerian start-up ecosystem and foster the exchange between Nigerian, African and German start-ups.