Today is also the day, I completed the book “Co-opetition” written by Adam and Barry; two professors from Harvard Business School and Yale School of Management respectively. My strategy professor from business school recommended this book. To be completely honest, I suck at business strategy, firstly because I have little or no experience in it , secondly I didn’t pay attention in class because i was on a recruiting journey for my summer internship that spring(kids stay in school).

So, I promised myself to not just read but to study this book to compensate.

Co-opetition challenged my perception of the incentives in running a business. Prior to now, I viewed the game as simply doing every and anything to optimize profits so that you are the winner among your competitors. I wrongly defined a business strategy as a way of engineering a win-lose situation for yourself vs your competitors. The book, however, laid the foundational thought that win-win scenario is possible, and should be prioritized.

I love that the book is structured in two parts. Part 1, introduced the game of business like you would explain chess to a novice. It introduced the basic concepts; the rules, perceptions, scope and how they fit together. It simply explained how businesses can be complementors if they make a market together, and simultaneously competitors if they divide up the market. Part 2 centered around the PARTS of a strategy. PARTS is an acronym for players, added values, rules, tactics and scopes. Each chapter focuses on how you can play around with the PARTS of a business to change the outcomes of a business. The authors used business cases to make their points. Even though there were mostly old business cases, I think they were enough for me to get the gist. One of those cases is how Coke and Pepsi paid a new player(Holland) to stay in the Aspartame market that was previously dominated by NutraSweet - obviously, this allowed them to negotiate lower prices from NutraSweet.

As with any reasonable book, it ended with the right way to think about business strategy by asking the right PARTS questions. Overall, I feel better about capitalism :)

I have argued about the meaning of life maybe twenty times. It is the crux of most of my (un)healthy debates with the people I am close to. But I had never actually been asked to answer it for myself. I had always been answering for everyone else.

After thinking for about 30 seconds, I found the first memories that came up in my mind really strange. What came up was my mother’s face during prize-giving ceremonies at the end of every school term. Every year I tried to be the best in my class because of the way her face would change when they called my name. It justified, in some private and probably unjustifiable way, all the hardship she had absorbed so that I could be in that auditorium at all. What came up was the year college got expensive and food at home got thin, and I quietly slid into the role of breadwinner. Eighty percent of my scholarships and side hustles went to making sure my family ate. My younger sister wanted to be a nurse. I now sponsor her at a private university that costs fifty times what my own college did and is, by every measure I can think of, twenty times better. What came up was my wife, and the small daily transactions of a marriage where two people keep choosing to make each other lighter in this world with a lot of heavy burdens.

For a long time I would have rushed past this to make a bigger claim. I would have said: we are here to serve each other. We are here to play our part in furthering the existence of our species. I have said versions of that in arguments for years. But that is not what actually surfaced for me on the bench. What surfaced was not humanity. It was my mother. It was my sister. It was my wife.

So let me be honest here: I do not believe in exceptionalism. I do not think my life means more than yours. But I also no longer believe the meaning of my life is service to humanity in some grand, distributed sense. I am not built for that scale. I have never lived the larger version, and I am not sure I ever will. What I have lived is a small, specific circle of people I have been entrusted with, and I have loved them. And I have loved them in the language I understand, which is service. Maybe one day my circle widens. Maybe a wider love is something you grow into, and I am earlier on the road than I think.

The missionaries gave me the Book of Mormon when we parted. I told them I would read it, and I will. I do not know yet what I believe about their god. But I think I left that bench with a smaller answer than the one I walked in with, and a truer one. The meaning of my life is the few people that I love wholeheartedly.

But what if I told you there's another kind of particle, a sort of cousin to the electron, that could revolutionize how we see the world around us, and even beyond? This particle is called a muon, and while you might not have heard of it, it has the potential to give us incredible new ways to see things we couldn't before, leading to much better imaging technologies, both here on Earth and in the vast expanse of space.

How do we currently see inside things?

Doctors use X-rays to see broken bones, and airport security uses them to scan our luggage. X-rays work because they can pass through soft tissues but are blocked by denser materials like bone or metal. But what if we wanted to see deeper, or through much thicker materials, or even understand the composition of celestial bodies? That's where muons come in, and my own interest in this fascinating particle was sparked by the innovative work of a company called Outer Rim Explorations (ORE).

This ability to penetrate deeply into materials makes muons incredibly useful for imaging. And this is precisely what intrigued me about ORE, a company I've been following closely and even consulted with for my MBA program's Deep Tech class. You can learn more about their exciting vision at their website.

ORE is looking to leverage the power of muons for a truly ambitious goal: to better understand the mineral composition of our world and even other celestial bodies. They are developing technology to use naturally occurring muons to detect valuable mineral deposits in terrestrial land. Imagine being able to non-invasively map underground mineral resources, leading to more efficient and environmentally conscious mining practices.

But their vision doesn't stop there. As their name suggests, they have their sights set on space. They believe that muon detection can be a game-changer in understanding the composition of asteroids, moons, and even planets. By analyzing the way muons interact with these distant objects, we could gain unprecedented insights into their formation, history, and potential resources. This could be crucial for future space exploration and resource utilization.

This application of muon technology for mineral detection perfectly illustrates its potential. Just as scientists use muons to study the interiors of massive volcanoes and understand their internal structure, ORE aims to use them to "see" the hidden mineral wealth beneath our feet and across the cosmos. The same principle of muons being absorbed differently by different materials allows us to create a kind of mineral map that was previously impossible.

While still in its development stages, the work of companies like Outer Rim Explorations, as detailed on their website highlights the transformative potential of muon imaging. From potentially revolutionizing mining practices on Earth to unlocking the secrets of mineral composition in space, muons offer a unique window into the unseen. The age of muon vision is just beginning, and it's exciting to think about the new discoveries and technologies that will emerge from this fascinating field.

These systems, while small-scale, were financially viable because of direct, reciprocal accountability. When my money was your money, the risk of default was mitigated by reputation and social consequence. You were less likely to default on a loan from a friend who sits beside you at church than from an anonymous corporation miles away.

The current centralized financial system (TradFi) fundamentally shifted this accountability. It scaled finance globally, but did so by replacing personal trust with enforced trust, which really is not trust.

We are forced to place blind faith in massive, complex intermediaries including banks, rating agencies, and governmental bodies—whose processes are hidden behind proprietary algorithms and regulatory jargon.. The failures of 2008 demonstrated the cost of this opacity.

Into this void comes Decentralized Finance (DeFi), promising a "trust-less" alternative. But I still call cap!

Quite alright, DeFi substitutes trust in human institutions with trust in code and cryptographic verification. It removes the human intermediary, replacing it with transparent, immutable smart contracts. This is a powerful technical innovation that restores transparency and verifiable execution.

However, this a not solution to the crisis of accountability. Our problem isn't just about contract enforcement; it's about the relationship between capital and consequence.

DeFi, in its current anonymous form, further atomizes the individual. By eliminating identity and community, it ironically removes the reputation collateral that made my mother's co-operative financially stable. It offers technical fidelity but no social context. It is an efficient machine for risk transfer, but one that accelerates the trend of disconnecting financial actions from human, moral, and social consequences.

What we truly need is not merely trust in mathematics, but a way to re-embed financial accountability into our systems, whether through community-focused platforms or regulation that enforces actual personal liability for institutional failure. In short, shaming people should be a real consequence.

Just maybe, by restoring consequence to finance, we can begin to rebuild genuine, productive trust and we stop throwing bombs at each other for the slightest reasons. Catch your subs.

Not to bore you with the details, but there is an interesting phenomenon that happens in the nucleus of a special nuclide—Uranium-235—called fission. When a neutron bombards this particular nuclide, it splits and produces more neutrons that then bombard another U-235 nuclide, and so on. This is called a chain reaction, and it’s the best thing a nuclear engineer could ever wish for.

But here’s the unexpected point: for this chain reaction to occur, the neutrons must bombard the nuclide at a thermal energy lower than the energy at which they were released. In layman's terms, the neutrons need to be slowed down before a fission reaction occurs.

The process is called moderation, and when I read about it, I realized it was the perfect l metaphor for my everyday life.

For years, I’ve worked fast, constantly thinking I needed maximum agency to get things done, often breaking things in the process. But what if, like the fissionable neutron, the real way to create a powerful, sustained reaction is to slow down?

I'm starting to approach my work and life with intentionality. I spend time with the thing, falling in love not just with the idea of the outcome, but with the entire process. Trust me, adopting this slower pace is infinitely more enjoyable and ultimately more rewarding than simply chasing "productivity." It turns out, sometimes you need to slow down to unleash your real power.

Investing is simply the movement of money from lenders (people who have cash and have no pressing need for it at the moment) to borrowers (people who need cash and don’t have it) to gain benefits for their opportunity cost. These benefits can come in the form of interest, dividends, or any other return on investments. This is a relatively simple definition, and there are so many nuances to consider when it comes to investing. But don’t worry, with a little research and guidance, anyone can become a successful investor!

Unlike public investments that invest in securities (read equity and debt) that are made available to the public, private investments span across venture capital, private equity, venture debt, etc, that are riskier and often involve relatively few participants, especially on the buy-side.

We will be using venture capital to explain private investments for this article, venture capital is a form of financing that investors give to startups that they believe possess the potential to grow quickly and for a long time. In simple terms, they are giving money to startups in exchange for ownership, or interest, depending on the agreement.

The fund model

Venture capital(read private investments) is typically done through a fund, but first, let’s break the private investment ideology down. The goal for an investor is for its investment to reach the asset being invested in as quickly as possible, one way to do this is through angel investment i.e. investing directly in the startup.

The limitation of angel investing includes:

1. Risk management: what if the startup fails?

2. Scale issues: The asset owner(founder)has to keep a record of all investors, the amount invested, the contract, etc, same with the investor if they invest in multiple assets

Introducing the fund model

The fund model is the method deployed for most venture capital investments, a fund manager(in most cases a VC firm) sets up a fund, which is basically an entity with the sole aim of receiving capital from investors and investing that capital in assets (startups), the fund is supposed to return the proceeds back to investors. To read more about venture capital fund

Fund Classification:

Private investment funds can be classified into:

1. Multi-asset funds: Can invest in multiple assets by design, most traditional VC funds are like this.

2. Single-asset funds: Can only invest in one asset by design, this is mostly known as a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPVs).

Benefits of a Fund

Utilizing the fund model offers several advantages for private investments:

1. Scale: Funds can attract multiple investors, thereby increasing the scale of participation in private investments.

2. Diversification: Multi-asset funds allow investors to diversify their investments across various ventures, spreading the risk.

3. Simplified Interactions: Founders of assets only need to engage with the fund manager, streamlining the investment process, and reporting to investors.

Challenges

Despite the fund model’s existence, limited African funds are investing in African assets, and the participation of African investors remains relatively low. Several challenges contribute to this situation:

High barrier to entry for fund managers:

Becoming a fund manager in the private investment industry entails overcoming numerous challenges, which can be daunting and seemingly insurmountable. The process of setting up funds involves extensive legal document preparation, signing, and intricate compliance processes. Additionally, establishing the necessary banking infrastructure and meeting regulatory requirements can be time-consuming and overwhelming. These factors, combined with the laborious task of onboarding and inviting Limited Partners (LPs) to join the fund, intensify the complexity of the endeavor.

Money movement

Especially in Africa, where there is no unifying currency, it is hard to price the amount needed to invest, the amount to value assets, and so on. Currently, this is being done in USD as the de-facto unifying currency but there lies another problem, how do investors that hold cash in other currencies like UGX, NGN, and Ksh all invest in USD?

Illiquidity

Private assets are so illiquid, and this is a turn-off for African investors where cash is still king and there is no simple way for Africans to borrow against their holdings in illiquid assets (this is another opportunity)

The Probable Solutions

How do we intend to solve these problems through products?

Problem A: High barrier to entry for fund managers

An AngelList for Africa might solve this, especially tailored to Africa, that will attempt to solve the big challenges of setting up a fund legally and compliantly, admin operations and taxes included. Fund managers need to create an account, and show where their interest lies, and this product will spin up the right structure to facilitate the investment, with the right documents to sign, and the fund manager can start raising into this structure.

Problem B: Money movement

Money movement is the greatest problem from an African perspective, especially in Nigeria where there is a lot of forex restriction for USD. An attempt is to use crypto rails instead of bank rails, and funding is done directly in USDC instead of the usual USD. AngelList currently allows its investors to fulfill their commitments in USDC through a platform called Anchorage. Anchorage ensures compliance.

Problem C: Illiquidity

One word: Tokenization! Tokenization of an investor’s investments so that there is already an exchange of money and investments before the important filings and transactions are successful with the incorporated structures.

Products Helping

As a conclusion, products that are helping to demystify alternative investments in Africa will be recognized:

1. AngelList: By allowing Africans to set up funds, SPVs even if they are hella expensive.

2. Getequity: Crowdraising money from retail investors into startups and making it liquid, even if the legalities behind it are not 100% secure.

3. Daba-Finance: Setting up SPVs and syndicating them to a network of private investors, even if the investors don’t have a plethora of options.

I am the Lead Product Manager- Itana (the ideal online jurisdiction for internet-based companies out of Africa). My work has transcended from building products from 0 → 1 with a team of highly talented software engineers and designers to dealing with policymakers, lawyers, and politicians to develop the operational guidelines for the first virtual free zone in Nigeria(and Africa)-and going ahead to build it.

Free Zones in Nigeria

Free zones are designated areas in a country declared by the government as a region where economic activities are free of the usual corporate and economic compliance set out in regular jurisdictions. Nigeria has about 50+ free zones in its area of land, which is about 923,768 square meters. Every free zone is created primarily to boost the export of a particular industry. There is a free zone for oil and gas (Dangote free zone), a free zone for textiles (Kano free trade zone), and a free zone for FMCG export(Lagos Free zone). All free zones in Nigeria are regulated by the Nigerian Export Processing Zone Authority (NEPZA).

Origin of Itana?

Africa is the emerging technology hub giant of the world, with the largest youthful population.

More specifically, the digital economy in Nigeria is growing exponentially. As of January 2023, the internet penetration rate in Nigeria stood at 55.4% of the total population from 27.7% five years ago. Nigeria is also beaming with technical talents (which I am part of), building great software and technology businesses for the continent and the rest of the world.

All these growths are happening on the continent; however, the government policies to sustain this are not updated as the government is playing catch-up to the exponential growth of technology in the country.

Instead of complaining, the founders of Itana decided to set up a free zone for the digital economy to create a blank canvas for the policies and infrastructure that can sustain this growth and 10x it so that it becomes a trillion-dollar economy that will create prosperity for all. Thus, the good people of Itana are working with the government to develop the first free zone for the digital economy called — Itana Virtual Free Zone.

Why Virtual?

Free zones need an area of land to be declared as one. Technology businesses do not need land to operate, thus the term “virtual.” One of Itana’s most significant challenges is communicating to the public that a free zone can exist without a piece of land.

Itana - Africa's first Free Zone for the Digital Economy
Itana is building Africa's first Free Zone to unlock and scale the digital economy of the continent through…itana.africa

Itana’s Strategy

Itana is looking to invite service-based companies, both at home and abroad building for the world, to consider setting up an entity as a free zone enterprise in Itana. For this to happen, Itana is working on four goals at the moment:

1. Establishing the zone in collaboration with the government(the NEPZA precisely) and other private entities

2. DiFZiN, advocacy led by Itana, is working with the Federal government and other government agencies to formulate policies and regulations for businesses registered in a digital-free zone.

3. Facilitating the onboarding of businesses into the zone and providing them with the necessary resources for business activities (such as banking, hiring, and taxes). We aim to accomplish this through an application, and this is where most of my team’s involvement is.

4. Digitalizing NEPZA (Nigeria Export Processing Zones Authority) through an independent dev shop to enable zones(digital or not) to programmatically carry out the process described above (registering and managing free zones and its enterprises)

Nothing Itana is doing is entirely novel; free zones exist, but the present operations are tailored to manufacturing companies rather than service companies. However, the truth is that it is becoming increasingly cheaper for Nigeria to export more services than goods. Thus, the benefits for traditional free zone enterprises should also be available to service companies. Itana’s vision is to be the first free zone to prove this and create an ecosystem of technology/services companies to be stakeholders in this jurisdiction.

Some History…

The way I describe product management is the art and science of discovering, delivering, and distributing products. Now, let’s try to explain what product discovery, product delivery, and product distribution mean.

WTF is a Product

In essence, a product is any item that offers value to its recipient. Given our global economy, which operates on a value-exchange principle, a product can be defined as an item or service that offers value in return for another form of value, typically monetary. This value can manifest in numerous ways, be it an emotion, a problem resolution, facilitation of a task, or acting as a catalyst.

While products can take on tangible forms such as machines, smartphones, or even uniquely personal items like dildos, this discussion emphasizes software products. Why? Because, in the balance of effort versus impact, software stands out. It requires comparatively minimal effort but has the potential for widespread and significant impact.

Software products are simply lines of code that offer value to customers so that they can pay the makers of the software. Now, let’s look at what product discovery is and why we should care about it.

Product Discovery

Product discovery is the field of understanding what product to build so that a laid down goal is achieved. Let’s backtrack a bit and talk about the software makers, these people want to make money by offering value, so they have goals to achieve to continue making software. Case in point, Spotify needed to achieve a goal of acquiring x amount of users so that they could expand to Africa and enable us to stream Afro-beats for free.

Discovery answers the questions of what should we be building to achieve our goals consistently. The solution must be feasible, usable, viable, and valuable.

The discovery process helps us understand what exactly we must build to achieve the goal; it starts from understanding who to focus on, what problems to solve and not solve for, and some other hard decisions to get to the point where every stakeholder is clear on what exactly to build, it is compulsory, however, to note that what must be built is feasible and usable as well.

Product Delivery

Product delivery ensures that the solution proposed to solve a problem is built right, built with the core values and principles of the team, and has some soul in it.

Delivery is the process of building and launching the output that will deliver the outcome obtained from the discovery process.

It involves creating project deliverables and timelines and testing to ensure that the product actually solves the identified customer’s problem. This is where the methodology for the software development lifecycle comes in: the Agile or waterfall, the sprints, JIRA tickets, motivating teammates, and all of that. All of these are means to the output: the solution. This solution is a means to the outcome mentioned earlier in the discovery process.

Product Distribution

This concept was made popular by the famous Airbnb CEO’s talk, mentioning that product management has evolved in the company and product managers need to understand how products will be marketed to the intending customers and the function should answer the questions:

1. How do they hear about the product?

2. How do we get them to try the products?

3. How do we get them to pay for the product?

Depending on the product, it could be a sales or a marketing role, it is also important to make sure that the product is being measured and analysed to inform the management process.

Sales or marketing depends on the business. The aim is to get the product to the user for validation

Conclusion

Product management is any activity that ensures a product team is building the right thing and building it right. It is a never-ending cycle of discovering what to build, building it, selling it, and measuring the impact of the build to inform the next discovery…and the cycle goes on and on.

To explain the opportunity, let us assess it from the perspective of a popular e-commerce retailer,Nordstrom; when Nordstrom buys a t-shirt from Bangladesh, they will pay import duties(~ 30% of the original value of the shirt) to the U.S customs, now, when a Nigerian customer orders the same shirt from Nordstrom.com for example, the duty drawback program allows Nordstrom to file for a refund for the import duty that was originally paid. 

Considering the potential savings, you would think that every importer/exporter should be actively filing duty drawback, however, as of 2022 over $5 Billion2 remains unclaimed. I have two hypotheses for why this is the case; first is, the money doesn’t make a difference for businesses, that is obviously invalid, because entrepreneurs(especially Americans) never leave money on the table. Second, the perceived cost of filing for a refund is greater than the refund itself - this is a plausible reason. The keyword here is perceived because truth be told, claiming a duty drawback is not an easy task, in fact, dealing with the U.S customs for anything is not easy.The CEO of Flexport, Ryan Petersen, in an interview3 mentioned that a mistake as simple as classifying4 an item wrongly could take months to fix. 

Now back to the duty drawback regulation, it has some interesting clauses that can make filing for a claim daunting, moreover, CBP regards duty drawback as a privilege not a right5. I have categorized these costs into three buckets:

1. Filing Cost: The US customs receive duty drawback claims through an electronic portal, and depending on the technology-saviness of the claimant, there exists an extra cost needed to facilitate these submissions electronically. Duty drawbacks are time-bound,  they can only be filed for export(destroy) transactions that occurred within 5 years, also the time between import and export must be within 3 years, meaning that the claimants also incur an extra cost to hire analysts that will ensure that the claims are filed within the time frame.

2. Relationship Cost: The exporter has the right to claim the import duty refund, but there is a disconnect because, most times, the importer is usually not the exporter. So there has to be mutual agreements between these parties. Now, imagine you are Amazon, that buys from thousands of importers before exporting to customers in 180+ countries, that is too many relationships to maintain, and that comes with a very expensive cost. 

3. Evidence Cost: To file a successful duty drawback claim, the claimants must also prove without doubt that the goods are eligible for duty drawback with documentary evidence, that date back 5 years, sometimes longer. The documents include proof of importation and exportation, which, depending on the transaction, could be in electronic format or physical copy. There is another cost then of storing, fetching and preparing these pieces of evidence.

When these three costs are summed together, they may(or may not)be greater than the expected duty refund. As humans that make decisions based on perception, it is possible that the importer/exporter would forfeit the opportunity and not file for the duty drawback claims.  

However, it is 2025 and we live in the world of AI agents, where difficult workflows can become autonomous, and can be implemented from start to finish. In fact there is a startup focused on helping its customers to file duty drawbacks; Pax AI. Pax files duty drawback with its software that turns trade data into refund claims for stakeholders in the international supply chain. The software can transform different data structures, be it in relational databases, in document formats or even as printed documents into refund claims that are then submitted to the U.S Customs and Border Patrol(CBP) for refund claims. They are part of the famous Y-combinator accelerator program.

These are my favorite types of AI companies, building for a disintegrated but niche workflow that translates into millions of dollars in opportunities for all of the stakeholders involved in the value chain. Pax is founded by Penny Chen and Christopher Lee. They are hiring engineers, you should reach out to them.

Going forward, my recommendations are that the younger generations should take charge of the country.

From my perspective, there are two options we can take as a country:

1. Renegotiate the country.

2. Divide up geo-politically/regionally.

If we pick option one, we agree to remain “One-Nigeria” but the hard question to ask is: what does that mean? Do we want a complete meritocratic one Nigeria where the people that are qualified lead us or we continue to pander around with the useless system called federal character? Completely utilitarian that we enact policies that maximizes the economic pie only? Or we are still going to allow the imported religious values of our colonizers dictate our constitution? I don’t know the right answer but we must agree on what our principles are, the do’s, don’t and most importantly our non-negotiables.

Perhaps, that sounds too difficult, our second option is to divide. Let’s be frank, there’s nothing wrong having a small country with 5/6 states. The Soviet Union divided, there’s nothing stopping us too if we care about it. The proponents of this option might say that we’re different people and as such people with similar values should come together as a country, and I agree. I’m Yoruba and my culture shares little/no intrinsic attributes with the Ibo , Hausa or any other major tribe, our language syntax is different, food is different and slightly different values. The opposition might say that’s not true, our strength lies in our size, but no, our size just means more aid from the international community that will never trickle down to the poor masses, I must say that our size is only an advantage for our oppressors, it is a disadvantage to the masses.

I say all this as someone that has accepted that I will never see my country great even if I live more than 99 years.