We spoke to DC about how his passion to start his company made him quit his job and travel to China.
Hey DC, how are you doing today?
I’m alright; it’s just a typical Monday morning with a lot of work, so I’m trying to clear out my tasks.
Nice, well done.
Thanks.
Tell me about yourself.
I’m DC; I like to describe myself as curious because I always want to know new stuff. I’m also the CEO of Dropper, a logistics solution. I’m passionate about solving the logistics problem in Africa; that’s why we started Dropper.
This is great. Speaking of work, what’s the first company you ever started?
Lmaoo. This brings back funny memories. The first business I ever started was a pastry business. At the time, my Dad gave me N1,000,000 to start the business. I used 80% of the money to do branding for the business. Before I realized anything, I only had 20% of the money left to start operations and run the company.
Anyway, I started. I called the company ‘Rich pie’ — I sold meat pie. I didn’t even know how to make meat pie then; I just used to check google and come up with different stuff. Sometimes, the meat pie would be as big as a loaf of bread because I put too much baking powder.
My Dad knew it would die, Lmaoo, so we watched me fail.
This is hilarious! Lmaoo
It’s funny now sha. It wasn’t funny then because I had employed two people, and I felt so horrible that they no longer had jobs when the business failed.
That sucks. What did you do after the business failed?
After the business failed, I got a 9 -5. I worked at Nestle, stayed there for a while, then moved to Dangote. From Dangote, I traveled to China to start a business.
Oh, why did you leave Dangote for China?
I dropped out of school, so all the companies I worked at never took me as a full-time staff; I was always a contract staff. It was the same thing at Dangote. I wasn’t interested in renewing my contract yearly, so I quit. While at Dangote, I was inspired to start a company again. I felt more equipped this time, so I took a stab at it. I picked China because I thought it was the best and cheapest place to start the business I had in mind. After all, it heavily involved manufacturing.
Makes sense. How did China go?
Oh, it was interesting. I was young then, so the person I was working with found it odd that I was so small. Lmao. I also didn’t understand anything about sharing equity, so I ended up owning 10% of my company while my investors got 90%. As time passed, I wasn’t comfortable with this arrangement, so I told my investors I was leaving the company.
Ugh. That’s sad.
Oh, it’s okay. At least, I know better now. I started another business right after that.
Interesting. What was this new business about?
It was a Logistics business. Logistics in China works so well, so I wanted to replicate the same for a place like Nigeria. I started this new company to experiment with how it’ll work before going all in, so I started with 100 people on a WhatsApp group. Things were going smoothly for a short while, but something interesting happened.
Merchants on the WhatsApp group started creating other WhatsApp groups with many other people and fulfilling their group members’ orders on the group I created.
Things got messy because the orders were too much; the person I employed started to mix up parcels. Some people did not get their parcels, and I had to pay for them. The money ran into millions. It was a bad experience, so I shut down the business.
This is a lot. I’m sorry that happened.
Thank you. I’m running Dropper now; I have way more experience with the Logistics business — I know what works and what doesn’t, and I’m super excited about how Dropper will improve Logistics in Africa.