“Working with my entrepreneurs, I tried to focus on personally building them and personally preparing them for the struggles of entrepreneurship, the realistic struggles. A lot of people speak about individual successes, but they don’t speak about the team,” says Neku Atawodi-Edun, the country director for Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (Mest) Africa in Nigeria. Atawodi-Edun knows a thing or two about teamwork, having played polo professionally – the first woman of colour to do so – and set up her own business. And, since June 2016, she has led the team at Mest Nigeria and overseen the work of its international entrepreneurs.
Mest is a 10-year-old foundation started by Meltwater, a company that develops and markets data analytics software. Atawodi-Edun says of Mest: “What we do is predicated on our belief that talent is everywhere, but opportunity is not. And so by giving talent the right opportunities we can truly unlock some great potential.”
Mest Africa scours the continent for the most inspiring entrepreneurs and offers them a one-year, fully sponsored training programme. The entrepreneurs who join are trained in skills such as how to code, how to build a business model and how to build a financial model. At the end of the year they pitch their business to a panel of international venture capitalists and Mest. If Mest sees potential in the idea, it will invest and take equity in the business.
“The idea is to help these companies become pan-African and, of course, global,” says Atawodi-Edun, who has her own ample experience of international business to impart. She was named one of Africa’s most promising entrepreneurs in Forbes Africa’s 30 under 30 for 2016, she is a global shaper for the World Economic Forum (the global shapers community is a network working to address local, regional and global challenges) and has represented Nigeria at the WEF in Davos.
Her training began at Regent’s University London, where she studied for an MA Management with a pathway in International Business between 2009 and 2010, having gained a degree in equine sports science.
Since then, Atawodi-Edun’s ventures have ranged from Bamboo Green Concepts, a boutique hotel in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, and Malaik, which was an equity crowdfunding platform that offered African entrepreneurs help with raising finance. However, the latter faced a stumbling block when certain types of crowdfunding were banned in Nigeria. But Atawodi-Edun was quick to find another means of assisting budding business leaders, and soon took on the role at Mest.
She says: “I had been playing polo professionally for quite a number of years and I knew that, coming back to Nigeria, I wanted to do something that wasn’t all about me, but about giving back and making an impact on the community.” And so, in 2016, she came to the helm of Mest, and has been working with nascent business founders ever since.
Mest Africa now accepts entrepreneurs from eight different African countries, while its management team includes people from at least 11 global cultures. And so the international grounding Atawodi-Edun received at Regent’s has proven beneficial, both in terms of working and studying with people from all over the world and the training in cultural differences she received. “I didn’t realise how much my course at Regent’s would help me in my day-to-day life now,” she adds.
As captain of the polo team at Regent’s, Atawodi-Edun also developed a network of friends who still keep in touch. “We actually meet up very regularly and we’ve all been able to invite each other to our different countries to experience polo.”
The rigour of her polo career – she played professionally in 14 countries – has helped Atawodi-Edun in business. She says: “[There are] very similar characteristics that are needed for success as an entrepreneur and a sportsperson, such as perseverance, and being able to fall and constantly get back up.”
Teamwork, and not just between those on the field, is also vital for a successful result in polo, and Atawodi-Edun sees this translating to entrepreneurship. “With polo, for example, we are so dependent on our grooms, we’re dependent on the groundsman, on the stickmaker. Those different elements all come together to make a successful day out at polo.” In tech entrepreneurship, there are equivalent, vital, behind-the-scenes roles to consider, such as UX designers and engineers. Atawodi-Edun says: “Understanding those different elements and how they harmonise to make up your company is extremely important.”
What advice would Atawodi-Edun, an outspoken advocate for female entrepreneurship, give a woman seeking a career in international business? “Be confident. Men are very quick to jump in at many opportunities and women take our time. We doubt ourselves, we wonder if we’re good enough and we need to have [as] much gung-ho confidence to just dive in and try new things.”
Speaking of taking up opportunities, what’s in Atawodi-Edun’s plans for the next few years? “My immediate ambition is to impact people more on the bottom of the pyramid, if you like. Technology inclusion, financial inclusion, electricity inclusion. How can we use technology to leapfrog more infrastructure challenges?” she asks. “My larger aims are to make more of an impact on the numbers of people whose lives are changed through the work that Mest does while actively working with various organisations to start to scale around Nigeria.”
Looking back, Atawodi-Edun says her proudest achievement so far is her one-year-old son. “I want [him] to grow up and be proud of me and to see the change I’ve been able to make. I want him to say: ‘When I was born this was how things were, but my mother was very involved in making this change.’”
