BLACK #MAVERICKS::: NAIRALAND'S FOUNDER (SEUN OSEWA) RANKED ONE OF AFRICA'S BEST ENTREPRENEURS, FORBES AFRICA.

Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook just jokingly as a tool to share pictures and poke fun at chics by some students on Harvard campus but is now a multi-billion dollars enterprise. With a networth estimated to be $19 billion. He became a billionaire at 23 years. Around 80% of search is from Google; Youtube, Yahoo mail just always pop up in our everyday living; Nairaland…yeah for Nigerians recurringly turns up anytime you search for anything Nigerian.

Nairaland is Nigeria’s biggest indigenous website and only Facebook, Yahoo, Google and blogspot are more viewed than it. It is gets more visits than Twitter and Wikipedia in Nigeria. Ranked as the seventh most visited website in Nigeria and among the top 1000 most viewed sites in the world. Nairaland records more than one million views everyday.

Behind this hugely successful online site is this #BlackBrain Seun Osewa. Seun Osewa was recognized By Forbes Africa as one of Under 30 Africa's Best Young Entrepreneurs, 2013.

Meet Seun Osewa::::

Seun was born some 32 years ago. He is an indigene of Ogun state (this state has more firsts than any other state in Nigeria: Abiola, Obasanjo, Awolowo, Soyinka).

Nigeria’s Bill Gates? Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard to pursue their interests (Facebook and Microsoft), Seun also enrolled as a student of Obafemi Awolowo University to study electrical engineering in 1998, but he did not finish. No, he wasn’t rusticated. Too brilliant to be. But an account has it he left to do the “Bill Gates” thing.

HIS STORY::::

Small boy just playing on the internet in 2003…no, he actually started with all seriousness.

” All my business projects before Nairaland were failures, except the one that became Nairaland. My web hosting business failed after just 3 months because I ran out of money, while I couldn’t execute many other projects I researched due to shyness and lack of capital. My blogs and the mobile phone forum that preceded Nairaland were successful but not profitable. However, it was on that foundation that Nairaland was built.”

About 2 years earlier (2003) Seun had attempted to start a web hosting business, but after 3 months he could only boast of one customer, so ran out of capital and the business died. He thought it would probably have succeeded if he had managed his capital more wisely or raised more money as he got many hosting requests that he couldn’t satisfy later that year.

After that first failure, Seun was encouraged to get certifications and a regular job, but couldn’t go back to that kind of path after tasting creative freedom, so he kept researching business ideas and presenting them to friends and family, but no capital was forthcoming to carry any of them out. He later picked up ‘PYTHON’ to implement an SMS website.

Eventually, Seun decided to start a web forum, because it was the only idea that required no additional capital. Since he already had Internet access and a $15 per month VPS graciously paid for by a family friend. He created 3 forums in November 2003 (one for higher institution students, one for IT discussions, and one to cover the emerging GSM industry; the Mobile Nigeria Forum at MobileNigeria.com).

The Mobile Nigeria Forum took off, so relaunched it in February 2005 with the assistance of Mr. John Sagai Adams, who posted a link to the forum on his mailing list and participated enthusiastically in those early days. Other mobile enthusiasts like Mr. Yomi Adegboye pitched in to make the site a success. In a month or so, the forum had about 300 members, but the growth potential didn’t satisfy me.

Seun decided to start Nairaland when he noticed two odd things about MobileNigeria:

• Despite its narrow focus, it was the only Nigerian community that gave a voice to Nigerians at    home. Most other Nigerian sites were owned and dominated by Nigerians in the US or UK. They covered only issues of interests to Nigerians abroad.
• The off topic section of the forum, covering topics outside telecoms, like romance and jokes, was becoming more vibrant than the Mobile Nigeria Forum itself, suggesting the need for a more general-purpose Nigerian forum.

This gave Seun the confidence to take forums like Naijaryders and Talknaija head on by starting a general purpose discussion forum with a strong bias towards issues of interest to Nigerians at home.

He felt that such a site could attract enough traffic to make enough money from Google adverts. And that’s why he started the Nairaland Forum.” (CP-AFRICA.COM)