When Peter Thiel, the billionaire venture capitalist, put  more than $500,000 in Facebook in 2004 making him the very first outside investor in the company, little did he know that his stocks in the company could grow so much that he could sell  20 million of his 26 million shares in Facebook at the time for $400 million in 2012. Peter Thiel has not only invested in Facebook, but has gone ahead to invest in Airbnb, Lyft and Spotify, which are today all profitable ventures.

Peter Thiery is no different human being. Investing in start-ups has got to be one of the most risky things to do; the venture may or may not succeed. Here are a few points, however, on how to invest in startups and make money.

Join Existing Startup Investing Platforms:

• Invest through  existing startup investment platforms such as Nigeria Angel Investors  or Lagos Angel Network for direct investments
• Invest in startups through any investment funds in place

Connect with Acquaintances and Your Networks:

• This may be through personal connections and relationships with entrepreneurs and founders
• Attend investment pitch events

In general, such investments are usually made in person or through an online trusted platform an online platform. You could either subscribe to a number of stocks in the company or have other options such as convertible interests through which you convert your interest to stock at the next major milestone.

How to Cash Out of Investment in Startups

There are so many ways to cash out from startups after such investment:

                                                  
1. Acquisition by more other companies

The startup may be acquired by other companies. When this is the case, you stand a chance of taking away more money, or even less (think Instagram and Facebook)

2.  Initial Public Offering.

The benefit of investing in startups is that the company may go for its Initial Public Offering in the future

3. The company begins paying dividends

4. Investors sell their shares to other investors

Ways To Be More Strategic While Investing In Bonds

While there are so many rules to investing in startup a few general ones deserve mention.

Due Diligence:

Invest Smart, Efficiently & Profitably By:

• Investing in  startups by relying on skilled expert due diligence on the startup
• Take a portfolio approach and invest in a number of deals
• Reserve a portion of capital for follow-on rounds
• Invest in what you understand’
• Invest in startups you may be able to add value

How You Invest is Important

• Take calculated moves to look out for opportunities
• Platforms like Nigeria Angel Investors  or Lagos Angel Network enables investors to build network, plan meetings and attend exclusive events around the country. This platform may also increase your chances towards funding your startups, if any.

Be Strategic and Intelligent While Investing

Diversify:

Diversification is a common strategy today. This is expected given the uncertain nature of startups. We way not likely get another Facebook-like success stories out of the many new start-ups in town.

Peter Thiel Advice:

• Thiel warns that if you are constantly making $250,000 blind bets, you are going to need some pretty big wins just to stay even. He says ‘spray-and-pray’ is likely to produce a whole portfolio of flops. This could be taken care of by focusing on more highly curated startup opportunities with potential for success.

• In the book Zero to One we learned how Andreessen Horowitz invested $250k in Instagram. Two years later it was bought for $1B by Facebook, returning a 312x return, or $78M on that initial $250k. If you had been one of the early investors in Facebook, or Uber, none of your other investments would likely even register on the scale in comparison.

• Diversify, if you can, but make sure you invest wisely. By spraying and praying all over the place, you would surely make one big loss, that may be devastating.

• You can diversify across different sectors such as FinTech, healthcare startups, real estate startups, and something else just to be cushioned against potential industry shakeups. But focus on funding individual companies with promise. By putting your capital and energy into fewer select firms you will make far more positive impact on the success of that venture.

Charles Rapulu Udoh

Charles Rapulu Udoh a Lagos-based Lawyer with special focus on Business Law, Intellectual Property Rights, Entertainment and Technology Law. He is also an award-winning writer. Working for notable organisations so far has exposed him to some of industry best practices in business, finance strategies, law, dispute resolution and data analytics both in Nigeria and across the world.

More money is now available on the interbank segment of the Foreign Exchange Market which has received a boost of $210 million from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) following sales concluded on Tuesday, April 16, 2019.

What this means is that there is now more money on the Foreign Exchange market for investors to access. The Central Bank of Nigeria’s figures obtained shows that authorized dealers in the wholesale segment of the market were offered the sum of $100million, while Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) segment got $55 million. For customers who need foreign exchange for tuition fees, medical payments and Basic Travel Allowance (BTA) and others, the sum of $55 million has been allocated.

The Director, Corporate Communications Department of the Central Bank of Nigeria Mr. Isaac Okorafor believes that efforts of the CBN had helped to reduce exchange rate pressures across all segments of the market. 

The last time any such intervention came from the bank is Friday, April 5, 2019, when it injected the sum of $247.8 million and CNY34.8 million into the Retail Secondary Market Intervention Sales (SMIS) segment.

The current exchange rate for Naira as at Tuesday, April 16, 2019, is N360/$1 in the BDC segment of the market.

Two days ago, I went through my social media feeds and all I could see was Tiger Woods. Before then I didn’t know who he was so I decided to do some digging of my own and was I amazed? Yeah right, I was.

After reading his story, all I could say was his name deserves to break the internet. Just as I did not know him so also do a lot of people, so I will do a brief biography of Tiger Woods first.

Tiger Woods started his professional golf career in the year 1996 and he achieved his first No.1 ranking in June 1997. In 2015, He became the only athlete who made a lot of money in ten years with the sum of $845 million to his name. Amongst the good things he experienced in his career, he met with roadblocks in 2009 ranging from claims of adultery to a divorce, DUI arrest, losing all his endorsements and sustaining injuries which had him passed through four major surgeries.

During the course of his trials, he missed four majors in one year. He also withdrew from the Masters Tournament.  Amidst all these, he won the masters competition after 11 years of been inactive.

 Tiger Woods’ failures and victories are synonymous to the life of an entrepreneur and I can’t stop but see some lessons any smart entrepreneur can glean from this iconic story, and they include:

Own your story

Thrive             

Confidence

Teamwork

Learning

Own Your Story

As an entrepreneur, you need to know that your entrepreneurial journey or story is not dependent on any factor but yourself. The government, the economy or your competitor cannot be held accountable for your story except yourself. As an entrepreneur you have the power to rewrite your story and that can only be done when you identify your story and begin the process of rewriting it to the story of your choice just like Tiger Woods did.

Thrive

You should know that just as there are good days, so also will there be bad days if not worse days. Therefore, as an entrepreneur, you should be prepared to weather the storm even when knocked down just like Tiger Woods did for only then can you bloom.

Always have this at the back of your mind as you move on in this entrepreneurial journey: Every Business Hero you see and admire today has sad and pathetic story to tell. If there’s no tough moment, there will be no heroism.

Every Business Hero you see and admire today has sad and pathetic story to tell. If there’s no tough moment, there will be no heroism.

Confidence

Tiger Woods was confident enough to compete in the tournament notwithstanding the news headlines on Newspapers screaming you can’t do it and the naysayers. Hey, see… If you must emerge strong and super successful in this journey as an entrepreneur, you must learn to be confident and first believe in yourself no matter whatever people around you say. In the words of Donald Trump, the current American President, “Let your guts not your sight guide you”.

“Let your guts not your sight guide you” – Donald Trump

Teamwork

You should always know when to put together a team to achieve a common goal in the most effective and efficient way. Tiger Woods as a world class champion still sort out the help of a coach in achieving a goal (the Masters’ tournament). Team work makes the dream work.  

Learning

The day you stop learning as an entrepreneur that’s the day, everything you represent start dying. The world is a dynamic place, a place characterized by constant change. Tiger Woods understands this principle better.

Tiger Woods’ story has a lot of lessons to be learnt and whatever the lesson might be, an entrepreneur should be ready to put in the work.

Chisom Okeke

Chisom Okeke, popularly known as “Somly” is a graduate of Accounting from the University of Benin, Benin City. She is a phenomenal writer and an “Agripreneur” whose focus is to change the narrative of the agricultural sector by providing timely agricultural information and opportunities available in the agricultural sector. She is also a virtual assistant and the anchor of Somly Writes.

Imagine this scenario: Jane just got her website up for her shoe-selling business. She has put up samples there and has forwarded some newsletters to her family and friends and has included www.janeshoe.com as part of the newsletters, but then two months down the line, she has received just a few clicks and no order. She is worried that her confidence in her products is fast eroding. Now, Jane does not know that it may not be her fault, after all. Jane may have to consider this.

Get Yourself Secure First

If you desire to get your business up on the internet, first off, you need to consider the use of domain names. Domain names, such as www.microsoft.com or www.goal.com, are identification strings that make your internet space unique only to you. Once your domain names are registered, you may face these common issues.

·        Cybersquatting: cybersquatting is when individuals registered domain names with resemblances to your company, with a view to selling this name to you when you realise the need for a web presence. 

·         Parody and sucks.com disputes may arise when an individual runs a website, which though is not the official website of your company, but it is aimed at parodying or rubbishing the company concerned.

·        Reverse domain name hijacking happens where a trading company buys up all the possible domain names that it could ever want, including top-level country domains in countries other than its principal location.

·        Domain name hijacking: Jane’s domain name www.janeshoe.com may simply have been hijacked by a regular folk, who goes on to do what he wants with it.

·        Typosquatting shares resemblances with domain name hijacking, but with the name misspelt, (for instance, www.janeshoes.com) all with the objective of attracting unsuspecting customers to the site.

How Do You Get Over This?

Apart from reporting this to your Internet Service Provider, you may have to take any of these further actions.

1.      Make sure when setting up your online shop that you enter into contracts with either your Internet Service Providers or other the relevant intermediaries, as the courts are bound only by the terms of those contracts. This may form the basis for any request to take down the violating site. Pitman Training Ltd and Anor v. Nominet UK and Another. This is because request for a domain name is usually made through an Internet Service Provider who then makes arrangement with agencies within their respective countries, either with or without the authority of the government concerned (in the case of domain names within countries) or the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICAN), in the case of domain names involving top-level domain names.

2.       If you are aggrieved by the use of domain names by another which is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark or service mark as to be calculated to mislead an unsuspecting person, you can also maintain an action in the tort of passing off, trademark or infringement.

3.      ICAN has also provided a method for resolution of disputes between parties, according to its Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy, which allows an administrative action to settle matters out of courts, or where individuals are not agreed, recourse to court of competent jurisdiction.

4.      Under the Nigerian Advanced Fee Fraud and Other Related Offences Act, any person who uses any false pretense, and with intent to defraud, to obtain, induce the delivery of any property to him could be convicted and punished for up to twenty years in jail.

Charles Rapulu Udoh

Charles Rapulu Udoh a Lagos-based Lawyer with special focus on Business Law, Intellectual Property Rights, Entertainment and Technology Law. He is also an award-winning writer. Working for notable organisations so far has exposed him to some of industry best practices in business, finance strategies, law, dispute resolution and data analytics both in Nigeria and across the world.

More people are using the Internet in Nigeria, the Nigerian Communications Commission has indicated.

Internet users in Nigeria increased marginally to more than 114,752,357 million in February 2019, the NCC said. The NCC made this known on Monday in its Monthly Internet Subscribers Data for February posted on its website. From the overall internet users increased to 114,725,357 in February from 113,875,204 recorded in January showing an increase of 850,153 new subscribers.

MTN and Airtel in The Lead, Others Follow

The data indicated that Airtel and MTN gained more internet subscribers during the month under review, while 9mobile and Globacom were the big losers.

The breakdown showed that more people subscribed to MTN internet with 607,462 new internet users in February, increasing MTN’s  subscription to 46,538,633 as against 45,931,171 in January.

It further showed that Airtel was second, gaining 430,990 new users in the month under review, increasing its subscription to 30,891,518 in February as against 30,460,528 in January.

Globacom Appears The Biggest Loser

Globacom appears to be the biggest loser as it lost 114,268 internet users, decreasing its subscription in February to 27,486,271 from 27,600,539 recorded in January.

The NCC data further showed that 9Mobile also lost 74,031 internet users in February with 9,808,935 as against 9,882,966 recorded in January.

The Table below represents this change.

As more food service companies spring up around cities and inner towns, new research is showing which group of people are going to mean that restaurant owners stayed longer  than expected, even in the midst of abundance of food and food wastage in most developed cities and towns across the world. Research by NPD Group, a US food research organization, which tracks on a daily basis U.S. consumers’ use of restaurants and other foodservice outlets showed that Millennial parents, like generations before them are turning to restaurants for what to feed their families with.  

The research also showed that Millennials overall constituted the most restaurant visits per capita. It seems from the research that they are continuing with a culture from their youth days, and are relatively finding it difficult to adjust to married life.  So, now as parents with very busy lives, they are turning to restaurants for convenience.

The research also shows that the outlets of choice for a family meal are quick service restaurants, not time-wasting ones. Again, the research shows that Millennials with kids made 7.3 billion visits to quick service restaurants in 2018. Their dream time is usually in the evening, when tired and weary with the faces of their hungry kids staring back at them, they turn to foodservice. However, notwithstanding this, lunch and morning meal get their fair share of visits as well.

It Doesn’t Matter Where The Food is Eaten, Though

Millennial families from the research don’t actually care about where the food is eaten. In fact, 46 percent of their foodservice meals are eaten at home, 30 percent eaten at the restaurant, and the remaining percentage spread out among eating in the car, eating at work, at another location, and other places. Technomic research released in July shows that this number is even higher, claiming that nearly 40% of millennials eat meals on the run, versus 31% of Gen Z, 26% of Gen X and 19% of Baby Boomers.

The Research Has Been Consistent With Past Records

A similar 2015 report showed that Millennials are the chosen generation for many marketers because of their sheer number and perceived buying power. For U.S. restaurants and foodservice outlets, Millennials as a group currently represent about 14.5 billion visits and $96 billion in spending, which is 23 percent of total restaurant spend, but the group has cut back in both visits and spending, finds the NPD report. According to a recent report from investment bank UBS, millennials are three times as likely to order delivery than their parents. Ninety percent of millennial parents order takeout at least once a week, according to Technomic’s 2017 Millennial Parents Insights report.

War Over Millennials

The 2015 report showed a pattern: Older Millennials, ages 25 to 34, who are likely to have families, have cut back the most on restaurant visits, making 50 fewer visits per person over the past several years, according to the NPD report.

According to McDonald’s CEO Steve Easterbrook to QSR Magazine  a focus on off-premise channels like delivery and carryout is one way that restaurants can win the intense fight over millennial consumers.

Younger Millennials Are Falling Back To Their Family Food.

Younger Millennials, those who are 18 to 24 years old, made 33 fewer visits per person.  Annual per capita restaurant spend for younger Millennials is $1,240, which is down $146 per person compared to their spending in 2007, and older Millennials’ annual per capita spend is $1,369, down $213 per person.

US Trends Don’t Always Represent Cases Elsewhere

Although, the research represents a good future for foodservice restaurants across the world, it may not represent the case in developing countries, as much of the population are still living below poverty line. Much of those who constitute the Millennials are either unemployed or underemployed.

One thing is certain according to CEO Steve Easterbrook, “…the underlying foundation … is just don’t forget to run the restaurant well. The customers have maybe a 5-minute interaction with you … just make that as comfortable and enjoyable as you can and there’s more chance they’ll come to you than the guy next door.’’

Nigerians desiring to start up a fast food restaurant may, however, apply for loans by clicking here. 

se of their sheer number and perceived buying power. For U.S. restaurants and foodservice outlets, Millennials as a group currently represent about 14.5 billion visits and $96 billion in spending, which is 23 percent of total restaurant spend, but the group has cut back in both visits and spending, finds the NPD report. According to a recent report from investment bank UBS, millennials are three times as likely to order delivery than their parents. Ninety percent of millennial parents order takeout at least once a week, according to Technomic’s 2017 Millennial Parents Insights report.

Charles Rapulu Udoh

Charles Rapulu Udoh a Lagos-based Lawyer with special focus on Business Law, Intellectual Property Rights, Entertainment and Technology Law. He is also an award-winning writer. Working for notable organisations so far has exposed him to some of industry best practices in business, finance strategies, law, dispute resolution and data analytics both in Nigeria and across the world.

Ecobank Transnational Inc. (ETI) is calling on the general public to subscribe to its bonds.

On April 11 2019, it floated a $540m Eurobond Issue to refinance its existing debt obligations and provide additional funds to grow its continental operations.

The Eurobond Issue is for a coupon of 9.75%

The bank calls this move ‘execution’ phase of a five year strategic plan which commenced in 2016. A coupon of 9.75% is one of the highest for recent emerging market issues.  The aim is to reposition the bank’s balance sheet and possibly increase its return on equity (ROE) in FY 2019.

The implication of this move is that ETI will be the first financial institution in Africa to raise a Eurobond at a holding company level, making it a major milestone for private debt Finance in Africa.

The debt would perhaps additionally help to the bank’s profit after tax expectations from $328.6m in 2018 to $358.7m for FY2019

The worries of some are that the coupon rate of the five year unsecured euobond note at 9.75% was steep. However, the bank expects that “as this is a debut Eurobond, this comes with a new-issuer premium and also a holding company structure premium, as ETI is a Holding company and not an operating banking entity”.

Charles Rapulu Udoh

Charles Rapulu Udoh a Lagos-based Lawyer with special focus on Business Law, Intellectual Property Rights, Entertainment and Technology Law. He is also an award-winning writer. Working for notable organisations so far has exposed him to some of industry best practices in business, finance strategies, law, dispute resolution and data analytics both in Nigeria and across the world.