After completing her national youth service in 2015, Tamara Posibi started Tapp Waste Management, a business designed to convert waste to energy in 2016, but it never really took off.
Undeterred, she started a second and then a third business. That third business is Irtus Business, an advisory firm that works with startups and SMEs to refine and build their businesses. In under seven years, it has worked with businesses across four continents.
In addition to running Irtus Business, Posibi is the Community Director at Unicorn Founders with the goal of nurturing the next generation of unicorns in Africa. In this conversation with Techpoint Africa, she shares parts of her journey into entrepreneurship, the value of staying close to the customer, and some lessons from her journey.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You studied international relations. How did you go from that to running a business?
I grew up in a typical middle-class family in Lagos. I was the firstborn, and my dad had this library. For some reason, he just never really let us watch a lot of TV growing up. So we just had that library, and I would read leadership books; I would read business books.
I think by the time I was 12, 13, I'd read almost all the leadership books on the market. But one thing I always was curious about was that I just never saw African companies in those books, and it sparked a desire in me to change something.
That led me to my first company after my NYSC in 2016. It was a waste to energy company. I'd seen an opportunity in trying to convert waste into energy. Those are two major problems that we still have in Africa or Nigeria, really where there's a lot of waste and we're having energy issues.
So I'm like, "Okay, why don't you just convert this waste and create energy out of it?" The market showed me shege, and it also sparked another lesson, which is that sometimes there's a gap in the market for a reason.
Sometimes, you would have to learn the hard way, but to make things easier for you, go and inquire from people who have tried it. It just saves you a lot of time.
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You started a second business shortly after. How did that go?
I was really trying to be persistent, so I started another agriculture company in 2016. It did not work out either. I was like, "You know what? I think I've tried. Entrepreneurship is not just for me."
I dusted my CV and went to get a job. But you know, because I was always very entrepreneurial, people would reach out to me asking for help structuring their businesses. I had a lot of people coming with these requests.
After I got my first five clients, I was like, "You know, let me structure something." And that business I decided to structure is now this advisory that is serving clients on four continents. So I'm very grateful.
What are some of the common mistakes you've seen entrepreneurs make when they're starting out?
Sometimes people are trying to launch out too big. You see the young entrepreneur hustling to get their logo, their websites, everything done before they've even gotten their first customer.
Change that. Get your first customer, get your second customer, get market validation first, then you can start putting all these other things in place.
I mean, you've not gotten your first customer, but you're renting a huge office in Lagos. Why? These things are very important as you go along, but let's get the basics right first.
Why do you think leadership roles shouldn't be given out too early?
Assigning leadership roles too early means that you're not able to see the full capacity of the person because now there's an entire role guiding how the person operates. So get off that pressure first.
See how that person works first; see if they're the right fit for your company or for what you're looking to build, then you can start assigning leadership roles. A lot of ego can also come into play that would also affect you in the long run.
Get people together and let them work. Then you now say, this is the best capacity this person can work in and assign leadership roles. From my personal experience, that's way better than assigning way too early, especially when you are in very early stages.
You've launched two products this year. What were some things that you saw internally that made you decide that you needed to launch new products?
The two products that we actually launched this year have been several years in the making.
I think it was 2021 or 2022 that I told a member of the team that we had to disrupt ourselves before tech disrupted us. We're offering services to clients, and it's largely not tech-based.
With things like AI, you can easily be disrupted out of the market. So we sat down, looked at market trends, and I'm like, "Okay, how can we use these tools to improve what we currently do and how we currently serve our clients?"
That was the thought process behind working on those two products. Some of our services are things like business plans and proposals, so we have a site with templates where you can actually purchase those and tweak them to your own taste.
We also have another tool that's an AI pitch deck generator. So you impute your idea, and at the end of the entire process, you have a pitch deck. We've literally disrupted ourselves and the service that we offer, and we're happy about it because we're thinking about the future.
How important is regular customer interaction for an entrepreneur?
Very important. You are in business to provide solutions to your market, and you need to interact with that market to know what they actually need.
There's also an extreme side of that where you are listening to every single piece of feedback and you are changing and adjusting your products based on that. Before you know it, you're far from where you started.
There are so many opportunities that come from interacting with customers. You see your products in a new light, the service you're offering in a new light. You can even see new things that you can offer in the future.
How do you ensure that you're in touch with your customers' problems as your business scales?
When you begin to reach that level of growth and expansion, it's also assumed that you're making sure your team is growing as well.
Growing a team is not just adding people but also investing in these people who are taking a chance on you by working for you.
That means that they should be, in some way, an extension of your hands so that they're also able to listen to customer feedback themselves and bring it to the table because, at that stage of expansion, you cannot reach every single person, but you should still have a team that you have built that can also take that feedback.
How do you create a culture where every employee is comfortable with bringing up ideas?
Understand that these people that are working with you are working with you to bring your products and services to the market, and so you have to create that culture where ideas are important.
I think that's another thing that the startup world really needs to hear. Understand that these people are there to work with you. Especially if you're an early-stage startup, they've taken a chance on you, on your idea, on your business.
They could be working somewhere else, but some have taken a chance on you, so listen to them and create a culture where ideas are important. Make them feel like a part of it, and you'll find that those ideas will naturally come.
Do you have a framework that helps you with delegation?
Let me just say something really simple that maybe could help. Have a system that consistently invests in the training of your staff and pull them in early into what you're doing. Let them see that entire process with you.
If they've seen you do it a couple of times, give them a chance. Be ready that it may not be the most perfect, but over time, they can get it. At the back of your mind, know that you are investing in training your staff so they are able to take on more and build capacity.
I can tell you something. Putting structure in your business early would help you a lot. It might seem very expensive in the first few years, but I promise you that in the later years, you will reap the rewards of it.
You do a lot of work with startups that are fundraising. What are some of the challenges you've seen founders face during that process?
A lot of founders are not very clear about what they do and what they offer to the market. So sit down and gain clarity on that first. Another mistake I see a lot is looking to fundraise when you have not really taken a chance on yourself.
So you see people come and say, I have an idea. I need funding. Okay. How far have you gone with this idea? If you have not gone that far with the idea, why should we be taking a chance on you at this stage?
A third mistake is sometimes you are fundraising too early. Sometimes, you should really be out there getting customers and getting proper market validation before putting yourself forward to fundraise. People want to see traction, no matter how small it is.
How do you choose what startups to work with?
Number one. I look at the founding team. So I really look at the founder first. Do you actually know what you're building? What's your vision?
Some people are setting up startups just to raise funds. It's something that people don't talk about a lot, but it's happening.
I also look at the character. These are attributes that you can't really see. If I have to take a chance on this person, do they have the right character?
Last thing is capacity. Capacity matters because sometimes business can be tough. Can you weather those storms?
How can entrepreneurs with revolutionary ideas balance the urgency to launch with the risk of being too early?
One interesting thing I must tell you about entrepreneurship is that sometimes you just really have to take the risk. Sometimes, we as consultants can say things, and sometimes, you may just need to discard what we said and go for what you want to do with the conviction that you have.
I won't say don't be a first mover, but as much as possible, avoid it because you'd have to spend a lot on customer education. Being a pioneer of anything is hard. So you find out that the next mover is often the one benefiting because someone else has laid that groundwork.
Not every young entrepreneur has the resources and even the strength to start doing all of that. If you want to be the first mover, be prepared to play the long-term game. Like I said, conviction. You can go ahead knowing that it could fail, but you tried your best.
