What does a platform running 10k users mean

All my life as an entrepreneur, I always wanted to run a product led company. However what mattered to me was helping people. By providence and out of just responding to problem solving instincts, I have been counting numbers for quite sometime. My first seminar was the year I clocked 16. I was leading small campus fellowship at the Obafemi Awolowo University, and also founded a non-profit called “Youths Be Secure Foundation, Africa”. I laugh when I read the name now. The seminar had over 300 people in attendance, and spurred me to understand that I had the skill of putting things, programs, events together. A year later when I eventually got into University, I joined another campus fellowship, and like many others, cut my teeth in public speaking and community mobilization.

I think I carried this all along to start SDRIN, my debut campus group that focused on software development education and research. I was 18. Then eventually when I joined Microsoft at 24, and became the Citizenship manager for what was one of Microsoft’s major markets in Africa, It was still about the numbers, impact reports, empowering non-profits. Microsoft’s job platform AIKI, quickly grew from 460 Users when I joined to 17,000 Users. In all of this, I was playing manager roles, and at best program and campaign management. I was not directing the product roadmap or responsible for key software resources like hosting, cloud consumption or even engineering talent. As soon as I left Microsoft, (even a few months before I finally decided to leave), I started taking software and web development briefs, the first time perhaps that my Computer Science Bachelors would come to play. Then came the demand for engineering talent, and we started Coven Works. With that also came the discovery of the Talent Gaps in Data and AI, a vocation that became one of Nigeria’s leading Data and AI Schools.

These days, seeing Vesti with nearly 10000 active users, shows me the actual rigor of building a platform with many people contributing to growth and success. And beyond campaign management and programing, my team and I seek to understand and appreciate the way user experience affects product development roadmap. What will our product look like when we are 100,000 users, and what would have changed from our original thoughts and ideas when we have 1,000,000 active users. Today we study charts and user activity through feature usage, time spent on pages as well as what in app products are more in-demand than the other. Tomorrow we could be using advanced analytics to determine what users would need next. As we travel the journey, it is intriguing, I must say. And as we journey, I cannot wait to share the story. Cheers to 10,000 Downloads. ✌🏾💥