At the August edition of Techpoint Pitch Friday, Ayobamigbe Teriba spoke on how founders can prepare their startups for VC investment. This month, we followed it up with a session on getting the first 100 customers for your startup, and it was an insightful session.
Breaking away from tradition, we started by 4 pm to have as much time as needed. Seun Abimbola, the co-founder and CEO of Nigerian rental platform, Rentit, took the session.
His first tip for getting the first set of customers for your startup was to hold off on building an app but test out the business's value hypothesis. Following that, founders can determine who their customers are and why they buy the products they buy.
After his session, we dove into the pitches, with three founders sharing their startups with the audience.
Segun Thomas was the first person up, pitching OfficeAjo, a platform that digitises an old tradition of workers saving together.
The next startup to pitch was MyHostel, a startup helping Nigerian students rent hostels. Anyone familiar with the public university system knows the difficulty of getting student accommodation.
With universities providing accommodation for only a handful of students, many students have to seek housing outside the school, and MyHostel is helping with that. Rounding up the evening was another proptech startup, Cuddle. Buying properties requires huge sums of money, which is unattainable for many Nigerians. Enter Cuddle with its fractionalised real estate offering, enabling users to own property for as low as ₦20,000.
