Much Ado About the Media, Live from Lagos

Osarumen Osamuyi: Especially as the ecosystem started to raise a bit more money. With that has then come the "scrutiny." But this is how any media ecosystem evolves.

Justin Norman: In January, 2024, Osarumen Osamuyi and I hosted an event in Lagos on the relationship between the Tech ecosystem and the media. We invited founders.

Tayo Oviosu: I know there's still a tension and we've seen it play out in the last few weeks, I think actually.

Justin Norman: And we invited the media.

Tomiwa Aladekomo: So I think the tension is real. There is some value to it. It's the tension that comes from an evolving ecosystem.

Justin Norman: There were lessons.

Olumuyiwa Olowogboyega: One weird lesson there was you sort of just had to pick your editorial battles.

Justin Norman: There were new perspectives.

Didi Uwemakpan: We never used to speak to the media.

Justin Norman: And most of all there were questions.

Justin Norman: And the question is the extent to which founder perspectives have evolved.

Osarumen Osamuyi: That's a great question to ask some of the founders in the room.

Justin Norman: Back in 2020, we published an episode entitled Much Ado About The Media exploring the relationship between the media and the tech ecosystem. This episode, our live show recorded in Lagos is a follow up to that episode and an opportunity to have an important discussion with two sides that don't always see eye to eye. We were joined in attendance and in conversation with founders like Paga's Tayo Oviosu, media execs like TechCabal's Tomiwa Aladekomo, journalists like TechCrunch 's Tage Kene-Okafor, marketers like Moniepoint's Didi Uwemakpan and many more.

Justin Norman: So Osarumen, you and I produced an episode three and a half years ago now to talk about the state of the tech ecosystem and its relationship with media. And there was a lot of complaints about the role that the media played in tech. There was a lot of fundraising, press releases and maybe not much else. And some questions about the role that the media has in a tech ecosystem and the responsibilities that it has to tell certain stories. And I think you and I both think that a lot has changed since then. And I think we're curious to get perspectives from the room. There's a lot of folks in media here and and founders and with startups as well to get some perspectives on how much actually has changed, if any. But we thought it was a good time with me to be here in Lagos exploring this question of how much has changed. And reflecting on the conversation that you and I had way back in 2020, we had a couple of particular takeaways from that conversation that we had. Do you want to maybe start by talking a little bit about your reflection of what our perspectives were in 2020 and then we can talk a little bit about the evolution between 2020 and today?

Osarumen Osamuyi: Sure. Thank you so much for everyone for coming out today. I really appreciate everyone of you who showed up. The episode in 2020. One of our big takeaways was that everybody wants, I guess, more variety in the media. Everybody was tired of "fundraising press releases" and one of the takeaways from there was that like there's structural forces, there's things like talent for example, where media is often a stepping stone to other things in the ecosystem. So someone like that gets in an entry level role grows as a writer, learns the ecosystem and they often move on to something else. One of the biggest I guess differences I see today is that now there's people who have built their careers in media. So we have multiple journalists in the room today who are still working in media maybe four, five, six years after they first got in. I think that's one of the biggest changes or the most significant one that I've noticed.

Justin Norman: And now I think the breadth and the scope of reporting that we're seeing in the tech ecosystem today is certainly beyond just fundraising press releases. And now people have an issue with that too.

Osarumen Osamuyi: Yes, they do. The media currently the ecosystem has started to hold the ecosystem to account or keep the ecosystem accountable. And naturally when you're the subject of I guess less than positive coverage, that doesn't really feel great every single time. And so that tension is one of the things we want to explore today.

Justin Norman: There's a lot of questions that we also want to talk about inside of this as it relates to the relationship between local media, the TechCabal's, the tech points of the world and Global Media. So we have the TechCrunch 's and the rest of worlds. And I'm wondering if you have perspective that you want to share as it relates to this global local question and the relative value of, for example, a TechCrunch in the ecosystem today compared to 2020 or earlier.

Osarumen Osamuyi: When TechCrunch first started covering tech on the continent, there was a bit of a gold rush because the assumption at the time is that most external investors or foreign investors didn't have any context on what's happening on the continent. And so when a founder reached out to have a conversation about an investment, it was a good idea to be able to google the company's name or Google the founder's name and see a publication that they trusted. It's a bit less clear that that's still the case because now lots of the global firms have Africa specific thesis. They're interested in emerging markets, at least in the past couple years, they became much more interested in emerging markets. Tage is not yet in the room, but it'll be great to get a perspective on who his readership is today, for example, is it an international audience or is it primarily the ecosystem that's consuming TechCrunch, or Africa pieces on TechCrunch?

Justin Norman: Yeah, and I think there's a related question about the relative value of being in a global publication today where there is more investor participation locally and globally as well. So to what extent do you need a TechCrunch to be able to raise a fundraising round? And maybe we'll ask some of the founders in the room who have been in TechCrunch, how many investors have contacted them as a result of being in TechCrunch. I think that that's a good question. The other thing that we reflected on a lot was this question about newsworthiness. And I think there were conversations that happened on Twitter, for example, recently as it related to what is a press release or what is a story to be told versus something that is not necessarily newsworthy and is something that is like branded content or should be paid for. And maybe there was some still lack of clarity around like, what is a story to be told by a publication and what is just a story that is just like strictly a press release that is not necessarily in the public's interest. How do you think about that and the extent to which that has changed over time.

Osarumen Osamuyi: I would zoom out a little bit and say that from my conversations with founders, founders sometimes have like the perception of the media as a like it should be a cheerleader for the ecosystem. And so the things that a local publication would not consider newsworthy, for example, are things that are, I guess overly self-promotional that don't necessarily hold value for the entire ecosystem to know the role of the media is to tell everybody what they should know about to inform decisions on a day-to-day basis, etcetera.

Justin Norman: And I think that there's something that you and I both share a perspective on is the fact that, certainly there has been a development of the media ecosystem from a talent perspective, as you said. And the question is the extent to which founder perspectives have evolved or if they still feel that the media plays a specific role in the ecosystem that it may or may not play. And while there was an expectation that the media evolved and it has for better or for worse. Right? Or the perspectives that the founder had for better, for worse, have the founder perspectives and understanding of the role that the media played evolved with it.

Osarumen Osamuyi: That's a great question to ask some of the founders in the room.

Justin Norman: Should we stop there and start to open up to a bit of a round table conversation?

Osarumen Osamuyi: We're not stopping, but we can ask one of the founders.

Justin Norman: Yeah, we'll not stop but to participate. So we're gonna throw questions out to specific people, but also like we want people to raise their hand and to jump in and to have conversations as well.

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Justin Norman: So I think the first question we actually want to ask about is founder perspectives, right? So there are some founders in the room. Raise your hand if you're a founder.

Justin Norman: Tayo, can we start with you? You're like the, the OG founder of, the Nigerian tech ecosystem. So I would like to ask your perspective if you don't mind. The question that I have for you is, you, I think, have had a perspective on the role that the media has played, and you've talked about it sometimes on Twitter and you've been around quite a long time as well to see the tech ecosystem at large evolve. And I'm curious to get your perspective on the evolution of media and then maybe if you've had any evolving perspective as a founder in your relationship to the media as you've gone on. And you've also raised, from global investors as well, so maybe there's a local versus global media question inside of that.

Tayo Oviosu: Yeah, thank you for hosting this event and for inviting. Look, I think I agree with the perspective that it's changed over the years and I'm really glad to see that we now have a very thriving local media ecosystem within the broader system. So I also agree, I don't think, the first choice of everyone now is like to be on TechCrunch to your point, right? Like, because the investors themselves are also looking across multiple media outlets. I think that's really good. It's been good to see on one hand also the media, the local media focusing around a variety of topics. I was interested in coming to the topic or the conversation also because I know there's still a tension of, and we've seen it play out in the last few weeks, I think actually of how much is investigated and actually, really coming through properly. And I think that's a tension that's healthy to have and I would always sort of be there, or even I think the last one to my, my memory's a bit vague on this stuff. I'm very old.

Justin Norman: There's been a lot of drama too.

Tayo Oviosu: It was like, how do you define a layoff? Right? Or something like, around that, right? Like and and how do you define people let go for performance? I think having a healthy conversation about this stuff is good. I think my perspective is that on that is that I think it's really important to make sure that companies have the ability to respond and they're given the chance to respond. And that's documented and made clear also to the audience that we gave people a chance to respond before we went with this article, etcetera, and we given them sufficient time.

Justin Norman: And have you has that been an issue that you've had to, you've experienced in the past?

Tayo Oviosu: Not me, no. I haven't experienced that specifically. So I think at least not to my memory I've experienced that specifically, maybe I'll leave a possibility out but generally what I've seen more recently actually I've seen where someone's writing an article and says, what do you think about this? Right? About just general space not even about my company and seek my response on it. And that's been and that's good.

Osarumen Osamuyi: I was gonna just build on that. Just reflecting on my time, sort of making media, when I first came into the ecosystem in 2015, there was a lot of a focus on technology products, gadget reviews, four paragraph essays about what a startup does, etcetera. Over time the conversation became a bit more about the businesses themselves, especially as the ecosystem started to raise a bit more money. And I guess with that has then come, I guess the "scrutiny" that there's a bit of a response to right now. But the point I wanna make is that like, this is how any media ecosystem evolves. This is pretty much how if you take the Verge, a global tech publication, it started out writing gadget reviews and now this, the coverage is I guess a bit more like business focused, a bit more political focused on like the power that technology companies, I guess hold the, that build on it.

Tayo Oviosu: And even the Verge has tension right between them and say, the folks are all in podcast. There's a huge tension. So you always have, I feel like you always have this tension somewhere in the midst and it's fine. I think we should just recognize that, that's there.

Justin Norman: Yeah. I know you're looking up because I'm gonna come to you next. Tomiwa you're the CEO of TechCabal, and even in what Tayo just referenced, right, he's talking about some of the tension being with some of the stories that your publication has told. And I know that you're gonna say that you don't oversee editorials. Before...

Justin Norman: Yeah. Well, we can come to... We can come... Yeah, we can come to Mwiyo, but maybe we'll start with you 'cause I know you do have strong opinions about the role that TechCabal in particular plays in the ecosystem and I do think that you do great work and maybe sometimes are treated unfairly, but I wonder as an organization the degree to which you reflect on the perspectives that the founders have and how that just informs from a company building perspective all that you guys do?

Tomiwa Aladekomo: I don't have strong opinions. Everyone knows I'm a wallflower. So I've been at TechCabal six years. I mean TechCabal has been publishing for 11 years and a couple of months, which is wild.

Justin Norman: Congrats.

Tomiwa Aladekomo: Thank you. I mean, it's congrats to TechCabal and also to the ecosystem because it's been 11 years of actually having things to write about. To your first pointers, TechCabal is a booster for the ecosystem.

Tomiwa Aladekomo: For us, we cover the business of technology in Africa, so there must be a business of technology in Africa. Therefore, in order for us to continue paying salaries, it is in our interest that there is a thriving and robust tech industry. I think that the coverage has definitely evolved and I'm proud that as a business and as a publication, we've been able to evolve with it and grown in the depth and the range of what it is that we cover. I tell people when we started, we didn't cover tech in Africa. We covered Yabba. We covered a few people doing some interesting stuff in a small part of Lagos. And now we can cover the entire continent and like get into, actually now we get into continental arguments. Someone from North Africa is unhappy about our coverage. Sometimes it's a government person, not just, it's no longer just founders. Now it's like literally like, oh yeah, fairly recently had a minister.

Justin Norman: We'll make it tough for your visa application.

Tomiwa Aladekomo: Not a Nigerian minister, just by the way. So I think the tension is real and there is some value to it. It's the tension that comes from an evolving ecosystem. I think that there are frequently unhelpful ways of dealing with that tension. One of my favorite founder tactics is when offer the right of response, taking the story to Twitter ahead of responding. So instead of responding, they go and have an entire fit in public. And then that forces the reporter's hands because now their story is out in the public and in a way that makes no sense. And they don't have a response in the story because you haven't actually given them. But sometimes you quote the founder on Twitter said X or Y and doesn't necessarily make for the most reasonable stories. But what's been interesting for me is the evolution of the relationship. And I see two, maybe there's probably more models, but a couple of them that I see is people who are willing to engage, actually at least three, people who are willing to engage on an ongoing and reasonable level where you're able to essentially have a proper working relationship.

Tomiwa Aladekomo: We will call you, we will ask for a quote, we will speak to you when we have a story to publish, when we don't have a story to publish, we will build a relationship. We will... Editor-in-chief or reporter will occasionally have a beer with one of your people or breakfast with one of your people. We will build a relationship. And I think that's where you get the best coverage. You have the purely adversarial, which is yes, we will ask you for a quote and you will pull up all over the timeline. Fine too, that works. I will say the adversarial sort of approach has been really interesting to watch it evolve. So sometimes it's we're dishonest is the line of, or we don't understand like we don't know how to define a layoff. Or you give us a quote for the story and then you come to the timeline and you trash the entire article even though you actually spoke to it.

Tomiwa Aladekomo: So it's been interesting to watch those tactics and I will say if you've done a bad thing or if you've gotten in trouble or whatever it is and somebody writes a story about you, the media is a very, it's a great target. It's not me that did a bad thing. It's those people that wrote the story are actually...

Justin Norman: The media.

Tomiwa Aladekomo: The media. And I mean, I think we have size and we have scale and so we're an obvious whipping boy and we have an enthusiastic and capable team that will write stories that people don't see and stories that they don't. And then I think the third kind of model is kind of the stoned-wall. I think that's interesting. We will put out our own stories. We write our own press releases. We will put them out via our own platforms. We won't comment. We won't fight you in public. We won't speak to anything. Again, pros and cons to this approach. It's worked very well for Apple, control the narrative in its entirety. It doesn't always work. And it does leave serious gaps in understanding for the public. And that can be, I think it can be less than helpful, but it's fine. They're all approaches.

Justin Norman: Is your preference for the sake of the ecosystem for there to be more of a relationship generally?

Tomiwa Aladekomo: Absolutely. Again, we're invested in the health of the ecosystem. And again, sometimes the investment in the health of the ecosystem means pointing out when people are behaving badly or people are behaving stupidly, whatever it is, or companies are. But I also think, and I talked with some people in this room, there is an education function in any industry, in the coverage of any industry. The thing about reporters is you build subject matter expertise over time. That requires deep immersion and doing your own homework and doing your own research, but also frequently just speaking to the people who actually do this day in day out. And without that education function, it's like you're gonna come out on the timeline. You're going to be complaining that these people don't understand what we do, but you're not going to sit down and have a conversation with them to help them understand what they do.

Justin Norman: So there's a role for founders to play...

Tomiwa Aladekomo: To play. If you don't do the education bit, then you can't complain about the coverage. Unless we're gonna hire entirely like people who've worked in technology for 10 years. And the economics of media sadly don't support that. There's not really much of a way to build that expertise beyond sort of doing your own homework, but then speaking very regularly with people who actually do this work.

Justin Norman: Does anyone have a perspective that they want to... Chris, go for it please?

Chris Quintero: So I have a question actually, you brought up this question of the economics. Until we have the economics, it's not going to work, right? And I don't find this question a local versus foreign relationship between founders and reporters like that interesting. I think the more interesting question is like, what is the business model like here in this ecosystem, what is the business model elsewhere? Subscription, like reader funded publications have led to some of the higher quality reporting. Until we get that here, maybe there's a limitation to the types of reporting we can have agreed, disagree, Tomiwa?

Tomiwa Aladekomo: I really didn't want to be the central character in this particular story. [laughter] We, were, Where are you I mean like, yeah, I need to hand this over to other technical people. But I guess if it's a business model question I should answer.

Tomiwa Aladekomo: I think that there are and must be different ways to... metaphorically skin a cat. And I think that, I mean, fundamentally we've not believed in subscriptions as a valuable model in this market. And some of our competitors or people in adjacent spaces have experimented with it. I think business days paywall just came down fairly recently. We've seen a couple of those experiments come to an end. So I think our initial thinking on that was correct in that the depth of the market for subscriptions is not there yet. That then just calls for inventiveness in alternative models. The quality, the scale of our coverage has grown over time. The size of our team has grown over time. I wouldn't say that we're, I mean, it's to borrow found a cliche. It's still very, very much day one, what it is that we're doing.

Tomiwa Aladekomo: But we have been able to find a range of things that you can put together that will allow you to support a robust editorial team. And that's advertising, it's events, it's a consulting business. It's our creative studio. I love working in media because it is an opportunity to work on a problem space where the questions haven't been answered anywhere in the world. Like if we were working in media 30 years ago, everybody knew what you did. You print a newspaper and you have your advertorials and you made money. The last 20 years or so have been complete upheaval on a global basis. And I was on another podcast recently and talking about the fact that five years ago you're following BuzzFeed because BuzzFeed is the model and now BuzzFeed's dead, Vice is dead.

Tomiwa Aladekomo: Like complex, everything that you followed except maybe the New York Times, which is the one model and unfortunately super difficult for anybody else to replicate. So we are all figuring it out at the same time. And I think that subscriptions are, they feel correct intuitively. It's like, yes, let's align where the money is coming from. But there are bad incentives even with subscriptions. You start to write to the audience's, desires and perspectives. And so I think they will have to continue to invent models that work. It does just require kind of endless inventiveness around the commercial aspect of the job as much as around the editorial aspect of building a publication.

Osarumen Osamuyi: I believe we have someone from Stears here. I'd love to get a perspective from Nchedolisa?

Nchedolisa Akuma: Hi.

Osarumen Osamuyi: Hi. So Stears launched it... Or put up a paywall and was primarily serving BT subscriptions. In the past few years, you've evolved to more like a B2B focus. Would you like to comment on Tommy Wealth's response, first of all? And also maybe talk about how that has influenced your editorial.

Nchedolisa Akuma: So your question is around a recent pivot from consumers to businesses, why that decision sort of informs our readership and our audience. And I think the last line he made was that when you, a subscription sort of you start to focus on like the audience that sort of pays for your content. I think for us, the motivation for us was really around a lot of our readership, which tend tended to be businesses, especially global businesses that had very little context on Africa. They required a lot of data and we saw that in addition to providing context, which a lot of publications are doing, data was also a missing ingredient. And quite frankly, I don't know if anyone in the room has had the opportunity to try to gather actual public data in Africa is really, really hard work.

Nchedolisa Akuma: Someone told me this line once where it's like, everybody appreciates a good data back piece, but nobody wants to pay for it. And part of what informed our pivot is if we're gonna do that super high quality data that a lot of the businesses want to make those capital allocation decisions, it's really just gonna cost money. And we just have to bite the bullet and say we're gonna, that's gonna inform sort of like how we're extracting value. And so I don't know if that answers the question.

Osarumen Osamuyi: What are the components that going into a Stears Story, what does it, what makes a Stears Story unique today?

Nchedolisa Akuma: So I can answer this because I personally cover FinTech within Stears. Stears story, a lot of data, but data in itself has bias because data oftentimes is not complete or a lot of times data hasn't been produced and processed and so it in itself has a lot of bias. And so interestingly, using a lot of data doesn't get you away from bias. It introduces just new forms of bias. Another key ingredient, I think one of the things that we're big on is also how do we go to the story versus like the global publications where someone can be writing about Africa and maybe like drinking Nescafe in maybe San Francisco or something. They don't know the people, they don't know the different stakeholders. And so apart from data, a big part of Stears Story is going to the people themselves on the ground. So that's a critical part of it. And also allowing for different perspectives is a big part of what we do, is a big part of the sort of how we write the stories that we write.

Justin Norman: So while we're on the topic of business models, Didi, can I ask you a question? I'm gonna call you out, but we talk a lot about subscriptions 'cause they were in Vogue or whatever, but largely the media model is an advertising driven model and I see Moniepoint, at least in a lot of places today, right? And so maybe there's a question about the role that startups have in supporting the ecosystem, and obviously you are expecting some sort of tangible benefit back to the brand or from a acquisition perspective or whatever it may be. But I'm curious if there's also something to the effect of inside of the ecosystem, you have a role to play in supporting these publications with, again, an an ROI expected, but how do you think about that sort of thing as a marketer of a one of the ecosystem's, biggest companies today?

Didi Uwemekpan: Literally. Okay. Well, Tomiwa mentioned a bit of it. What I always tell journalists at Moniepoint is, Hey, we are operators. Ground ground, the least we could do for you is provide data. And what we've increasingly done with the number of partners we do that with TechCabal a lot, is, hey, if you need to understand this, if you need to speak to anybody, if you need to reach out to this person in the ecosystem, we've connected a lot of them with regulators, or you need to speak to someone in Surnef, you need to speak to someone in CB and they're no responding would help you do that. And that's one role. You mentioned stuff around ROI, we do that not expecting anything because it's better for everybody if the information out there is correct. So I see that as something I can give you without, it doesn't cost me anything. And it doesn't cost anybody anything. It's just, hey, this is data that we can provide. This is data that can be external. We're private companies, so there's only so much we can give about ourselves. But then there's, we have connections. We know we're on ground. If you tell me today what's happening in Enugu, can I tell my agent to find out? I will tell my agent and come back to you. So that's one part where we see that we can support the media and we already do that a lot. Yeah. My name is Didi. I work from Moniepoint. If you ever need information, happy reach out.

Justin Norman: Yeah. And, but I think that the ROI question was also my understanding, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that Moniepoint is also a partner of TechCabal, for example. Like they sponsor the newsletter.

Didi Uwemekpan: Yeah. Work really hard to be able to sponsor.

Justin Norman: Yeah. But supporting the media in that way too so you're paying salaries in some way.

Didi Uwemekpan: Absolutely.

Justin Norman: Yeah.

Didi Uwemekpan: Absolutely. I'm really happy to go to work every day. So that... [laughter]

Justin Norman: Okay.

Didi Uwemekpan: But yes that's something we are also increasingly thinking about where if these people are, the media is important, investors think about a very interesting organization 'cause we used to be away from the, we never used to speak to the media and then we understood that, hey, this is super important. So increasingly we see that it's very important to support, and I know TechCabal is one partner, but we are looking to partner with a lot more as well. Like, how can we help them tell the right stories? How can we sponsor in whatever way? Yeah, absolutely.

Justin Norman: I am aware of a media business that you should talk to.

Didi Uwemekpan: I'm very aware of the media business as well.

Justin Norman: From a storytelling perspective. We also have a number of people who are work for international publications in the room. TechCrunch FT. Rest of world. And so I'm gonna throw out this question to any of you who want to participate. Obviously, some of these business model challenges that we talk about from a local perspective are maybe not your considerations. So I don't know if it means you have a freedom to tell other stories about the ecosystem. Maybe there's a little bit of a different perspective because your audience is global, I suppose. So the stories that you tell maybe sometimes are wider or more horizontal or don't necessarily go into as much depth. But I'd be curious from an editorial perspective to talk about the set of considerations that are maybe separate from this business model talent economics question that a publication like TechCabal or Techpoint would have. So can you talk a little bit about your set of consideration from an editorial perspective to tell the stories that you're telling to TechCrunch 's audience?

Tage Kene-Okafor: So from TCs editorial. Okay. TC TechCrunch editorial perspective. I think you mentioned something about like going horizontal, then vertical. I think the work that local publications like Techpoint talk about TechNest, have done by telling stories that international publications don't do. I think it goes a long way in creating the narratives that we want to push out there to the international audience. Because whether we like it or not, even though they are local publications people outside Africa read these publications a lot. So for TechCrunch it's more like, okay, cover the news. That makes sense from a global perspective in terms of like, okay, TechCrunch is a financial publication. So the financial aspects of this news, right? What are these startups raising? What are the valuations like, or when it comes to layoffs, when it comes to like critical news, for example, if a CEO steps down, what are the implications in terms of the ecosystem, right? So if someone like GB steps down from Florida Wave, what does that mean for the African ecosystem? But yeah, again, I would just like touch on the whole matter of horizontal versus vertical. And for international publications, it's for us, for TC not speak for other publications, it's covering the financial impact of what happens in the startup ecosystem. I don't know if that makes sense, but that's in short.

Osarumen Osamuyi: Thank you. I'd love to get a perspective from Annu, from FT. What are the considerations that you're making, like when you're covering the African tech ecosystem, like for the FTs audience.

Aanu Adeoye: Thank you very much for putting me on the spot.

Osarumen Osamuyi: You're welcome.

Aanu Adeoye: I mean, so basically as someone who I worked for TechCabal for a bit, 2019. 2020. And so most of the action in African Tech is in West Africa. Right? Which means because I'm West Africa correspondent, most of that falls under my patch. And.

Aanu Adeoye: When I want to pitch to an editor in London and say, this thing is happening in Nigeria, the first question they ask is, so how much is involved? Right? And because the FT is not primarily a tech publication, and we have people covering, like, what, Facebook, Google, Apple, TikTok, and all the guys that make, like, billions of dollars, it can be quite difficult to make a case for African tech, right? So some of the country's considerations I have to make is, how can I make this interesting for someone who has never heard of this before? Right? It's a story I think I was talking to someone before, and we wrote a story on, I think there's a tech renewable energy company that was sold to Shell a few months ago, I think, in 2022. And the way it was interesting for an international audience is, what's Shell doing in this industry, right?

Aanu Adeoye: How is Shell, which is traditionally, like, a big polluter in the world, right? I don't think it's controversial to say that, doing, buying a renewable energy company, right? That tie up is very interesting, and so that's one way to cover it, right? The other considerations is this company beyond just Nigeria, right? Because if you can make a case for a much wider trend, right? So there's companies that my predecessor covered the pay stock acquisition, right? Because that was something that is worth at least $200 million was involved in that. So I think for the FT, basically as the name suggests, it's just like, how much money is involved? And if we can't make a case for the money, right?

Aanu Adeoye: Because unfortunately, when you think of African tech, a lot of our companies are still, like, quite small by global standards. So the other way is, what makes this story unique? And why should someone sit in, not only in Lagos or Joburg or Nairobi, why should someone in Hong Kong or in DC or New York or London care about this? And so that's, we have to be creative sometimes. And I think, just lastly, the other one story I can think of was when FTX collapsed, there were Nigerian companies that were impacted. And we did a story from that vantage point of how companies across the world affected by FTX's collapse.

Justin Norman: So I have a quick follow-up question for you, though. I think it's inherent, we know that FT has a global audience, but I'd be curious to know if there's a correlation from a readership perspective with an African story and who reads it. Like, can you see, if you tell a story about a Nigerian startup, that a higher than average percentage of the reader of that given article is from Nigeria? And I'm wondering, this story about global publications, how much of the rest of the world is actually reading these particular stories or if they're just reading the stories that they read that they care about at FT or at TechCrunch as well? Can you see that?

Aanu Adeoye: Proprietary secrets. [laughter] Just like, basically just broadening this out beyond tech stories, right? Most of the people who are FT subscribers are based in the West, right? Which means that for pretty much every story we do, it's people based in the West who are going to read it. Anyway, do you get what I'm saying? There's stories on like the Nigerian elections that you find there's loads of people, like, Nigerians reading it. But I think overall, it's almost always people based in the West who are reading 'cause essentially they're paying for you to give them an idea of what's going on elsewhere in the world. For, like, the average Nigerian, if you wanted to read something about, I don't know, Flutterwave, right? You'd go to TechCabal or you'd go to Techpoint, right? I don't think your first instinct would be, like, well, what's ft.com saying about this, right? You'd probably go to, and the FT is essentially, like, a local publication for loads of people, right? Or for people working in business and finance. So, yeah, it's, like, mostly people based in the West who, like, read stories anyway.

Justin Norman: And then everyone in Africa who reads it just reads it on the archive.ph.

Aanu Adeoye: With subscriptions, through work.

Justin Norman: No, I kid. Everyone, you should be paying for media.

Aanu Adeoye: And people who ask for gift links.

Osarumen Osamuyi: Just a quick follow-up for Aanu. While trying to present, I get the story in a way that the Western audience can relate to. How do you handle the question of, like, potentially oversimplifying the narratives that are there 'cause I remember, I think it was a couple months ago, Bloomberg published something called E “The Mark Zuckerberg of Nigeria”, which anybody who's familiar with both E and Mark Zuckerberg, you can see that that's not maybe, like, the... And like, is there a Facebook of Nigeria that he found. But I can see how there was an editorial decision taken to say, like, to make this interesting and to highlight a founder who's obviously doing, like, great things on the continent. Founder to Unicorns, etc. So how do you think about, like, I guess, balancing those two, resolving that tension?

Aanu Adeoye: Look, I'm not just saying this 'cause I work for the FT, right? But I feel like if you read the FT, you know there's very little simplification in the paper, right? Even people who read us on archive.ph who would agree that it's... I feel like it's one of the most, if not the most, like, in-depth publications. And so as much as you want to make it relevant for a Western audience, you also don't make obvious simplifications, like the example you just gave. And just, like, personally myself, I try to not as an African, as a Nigerian, you try to not oversimplify things. And...

Aanu Adeoye: Africa is allowed complexities. Yeah, I don't think that's a problem I've had to contend with in terms of writing about African tech which is I guess maybe luck or, yeah. But it's not a concern I've had so far.

Osarumen Osamuyi: You're proud.

Justin Norman: Sometimes I don't know that the FT does this, but I think sometimes it's funny when a global publication will talk about a company and they'll say that company is based in Lagos, the biggest city of Nigeria, which is the biggest economy in west... They have to always provide a qualifier to teach people where Lagos is and where Nigeria is and its relation to the rest of Africa. But I don't know, maybe if you do that at FT that's your editors that make you put that in. I don't know.

Aanu Adeoye: The thing with that is you have to do that 'cause you have to place things in a wider geographical space, 'cause if I say Nigeria, there's loads of people who have heard of Nigeria, but probably don't know anything about Nigeria. You're writing for a broad chart. You're not just writing for yourself or for someone else. So I think that's why international... I think everyone does it. If you read Writers or the New York Times or Bloomberg, everyone always has to qualify it. If you read The Economist, sometimes even The Economist will say HSBC a bank and it's like, "Yeah, we know it's a bank," but it's because there's loads of people who are potentially reading this who don't have the context of what x, y, z is. Yeah.

Justin Norman: Maybe it bothers me because I have the context, but no one says like, Facebook is based in San Francisco, which is the biggest tech city in California, which is the biggest... Based in the... The geography's qualified when it's Nigeria, but not anywhere else in the world. I dunno, maybe I'm sensitive to that. [laughter] Tomiwa you wanted to say something?

Tomiwa Aladekomo: Interesting enough. I disagree with you on that context, even with TechCabal, we do have to keep in mind we're writing for a global audience or a Pan-African audience. And I think increasingly within our style guides, it is put things in context. You've got something in Naira, put a dollar thing so at least a global audience can have some kind of context for it. I think the conversation around foreign publications covering the continent is interesting for me. One of Big Cabal, that's TechCabal's parent companies sort of fundamental beliefs and one of the reasons we exist is to tell our stories on the continent. First of all to Africans. Tell African stories for Africans and then the world. And it's really critical that your narratives center you first. It's interesting in something like the conversations around funding where if you build your company to optimize for funding from the West, you're likely to build something that doesn't work.

Tomiwa Aladekomo: If your starting point mentally is, I'm going to go raise x million from Silicon Valley, you're gonna build something that doesn't work in the local context. And so I think that the most successful businesses are those that start with an understanding of the problem and the local context. And I think that in the storytelling that's just as important that we aren't speaking first to a global audience to understand. And it's okay to put enough context clues for a global audience to understand it, but it is critical that the audience that you're speaking to, first of all is the audience who actually engages with this product, engages with these companies. And so I think in that regard, we are doing very different things in the Western continent than the sort of the more foreign publications. I think Anu actually makes critical point. It might seem obvious, but it is critical, which is the majority of subscribers to the FT aren't on the continents.

Tomiwa Aladekomo: The majority of them are in the West. So the FT is writing for a Western audience with a critical word, Western agendas. And that can frequently be a dirty word in media circles, but it is a very real thing that is just always important to have somewhere in the back of your mind is each publication has a perspective or a direction to a certain extent an agenda. I declared ours, which is a healthy and thriving tech industry so that we can continue to pay salaries. It's critical to know, "Well, what are the agendas of the publications?" And that can be in the most abstractive senses. And sometimes depending on the story, it comes through very, very direct.

Justin Norman: And this is perhaps where we talked a little bit earlier about the evolving perspective of founders in their relationship to the media and maybe understanding the difference. I think there's always the conversation about who goes to whom with their fundraising press release? And why? And maybe there's a growth opportunity here is the reason why local media matters maybe more in certain... I mean obviously depending on the PR objectives.

Tomiwa Aladekomo: I think the really obvious thing for the longest time was the majority of capital that backs this ecosystem came from the West. And so you wanna optimize for the publications that are gonna get you in front of those particular investors. I think what's really interesting about the moment that we're in, in terms of the funding drought, in terms of the last sort of 12 to 18 months of a continuing rockiness is it does force people to reappraise where does capital come from? There's more and more funds down the south on the continent with investors living on the continent. There's more and more conversation, mixed sort of realities in terms of how much local capital is available. But all of that kind of forms a reckoning of sorts about who it is that as a founder or a business leader you are performing for as the case may be.

Tomiwa Aladekomo: And if you are then performing for a different audience, or then perhaps you need different media platforms, or you need to tell different stories.

Justin Norman: The extent to which the international media was necessary in the context of how funds were raised years ago versus today, and the degree to which that leads to an evolution in the relationship between local and international.

Tomiwa Aladekomo: I think another really critical element is investors used to be the prime focus of a lot of communication. As the companies have grown bigger and more robust, regulators are a bigger and bigger part of the conversation. Local customers, you wanna avoid a bank run, you wanna avoid some big opera about some thing you did or a boycott or whatever it is. And so I think the communication needs are getting more complicated as the ecosystem gets more mature.

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Nubi Kay: My name is Nubi. I work at Paystack, leading startup programs. I also co-leader, a syndicate called Hoaq, H-O-A-Q. I wanna just get back to the tension that we mentioned there, and perhaps this is an obvious question and I'm really curious, really around accountability. And so who keeps the media in check? I know there's a burden of self-checking, not checking yourself and everything on the standards and everything, but beyond that, I know one way perhaps is media checking each other. So you are right about me, right about you and stuff, but I'm just curious as to like, what could that look like, in this ecosystem that, so we have to start baking those things in a healthy way. I'm really, really curious, like what that might look like or if that's even a thing.

Osarumen Osamuyi: Nubi who's the question director at?

Nubi Kay: Every media person, media. Anybody on the media side, definitely.

Justin Norman: Can we ask? Muiwa maybe because you are overseeing a lot of editorial and I don't know the degree to which you think about being checked, but I think a lot of people want to check you. [laughter] And so yeah, how do you think about that question that Nubi just asked?

Olumuyiwa Olowogboyega: So, Aanu was reminding me of, 2019 when we wrote the story and, we got threatened and there were a lot of threats. A lot of curse words too. And, yeah, but how do we think about it? Especially about accountability and things we write. One of the more interesting things about tech ecosystem is I think there's nothing you write that doesn't get some feedback. Operators, general public, just curious observers. People just tell you, "Oh, this is what this thing sounds like." I'll use a really interesting example, which is for me, I think one weird lesson there was, you just have to pick your editorial battles and know that you can't win everything. So I can't remember this company that shut down. And, we spoke to a lot of people.

Olumuyiwa Olowogboyega: A lot of people. There was a lot that was said, some damning things, some things that we determined did not need to go into the article. And we wrote it. And one of the first feedback we got from people within the ecosystem was, "Oh, this is too soft. You guys should have gone all in." Which is weird. 'Cause sometimes when you even do like, a little harder reporting, you hear, "Yeah, that's a little too critical." So you can't win in that sense. But I do think that if you listen to your audience a lot, there's a lot of in-house accountability that happens. There's a lot of standards that you need to uphold in-house, but the reality is that you're writing to an audience that's also pretty knowledgeable.

Olumuyiwa Olowogboyega: Some of them know a lot of the things you're talking about. Some people can say, "Oh, I don't think this is correct." And when you hear pushback or when you hear feedback, sometimes you have to think about it and say, "Okay, were we right here? Were we wrong here?"

Olumuyiwa Olowogboyega: So yeah, while I think the temptation is to always push back, yeah, it's very tempting to always push back and feel like, "Oh, you've done your assignment, you've done your homework. There's no way we can be wrong here." But in-house, you have to also look at it and say, "Okay, maybe we could improve on this bit or that bit or this bit."

Olumuyiwa Olowogboyega: So in a weird way too, the public really keeps you accountable. The ecosystem and the players, like Didi mentioned, we speak to Didi a lot. We speak to a lot of the ecosystem players a lot. So in some of those conversations, some people will bring up, "Oh, we read this story last week. Here's where we feel like this could be better. Here's where we feel like you could have made a stronger argument." So yeah, I think in one word, the public and your readers really play a very big role in keeping you accountable. 

Justin Norman: Yeah, Didi.

Didi Uwemekpan: I wouldn't say the ecosystem generally should help. Half the time I speak to journalists, it's not related to my company at all. It is, "Hey, you wrote about this. I thought it sounded this way. It could have been better this way." Just random. And I think we can do a better job at that. Just give them a call.

Justin Norman: And you need to speak to your marketing colleagues at the other public companies, and let them know the role that they have to play and the founder colleagues as well, I think. Right? There was a hand raise in the back.

Dapo Awobokun: Hi everyone. My name is Dapo. I'm a startup partner at Paystack. My question is some of this last question that was asked, and so I'm just curious to know how media houses handle situations where they have a negative story about a business that is an like existing advertising partner. How do you navigate that?

Justin Norman: Is that directed at a specific publication? Yeah, that's a question for you.

Olumuyiwa Olowogboyega: I think as always, I think last year taught us thing, it's that when a "story" is negative, I think the biggest thing companies and people hate is to be blindsided. You'd be surprised at how companies they would take it in good faith if they know upfront, "Look, we're gonna publish this. We have this set of questions and we're going to give you sufficient time to respond to these questions. And we're even going to say, you know what? If you want to speak on background, we're not gonna code anything. Help us understand the story better."

Olumuyiwa Olowogboyega: And it's no different from the people who sponsor some of the things we do. It's the same thing. We extend everybody the same courtesy. If anything, I think even in the last year what we've learned is it's not enough to... This is Nigeria.

Olumuyiwa Olowogboyega: Sometimes you send an email, people don't respond. That's not your cue to run off after one day and say, we sent an email, nobody responded. We're gonna look for a phone number. We're gonna call somebody. Firstly, we're gonna hound you until you sit down with us and say, "This is what it is." Like I said, we don't blindside anybody. So we found that when we don't blindside anybody and we talk and talk and talk and talk and talk, we get to a point where the story goes out. They might not be the happiest to the story, but they don't feel like there was malice intended. So I hope that answers.

Justin Norman: It's interesting that the two guys from Paystack are the ones that are asking about all the negative stories, 'cause everyone loves Paystack.

Justin Norman: I think as a closing thought, what I want to say at least is that I think the fact that we're having a more nuanced conversation now is really indicative of the evolution of the ecosystem generally. And like, I haven't been around as long as, certainly you have, but a lot has changed, right? And the fact that there's an opportunity to reflect on the relationship in this way and that, we're very far beyond the fundraise press release sort of thing is really like a good moment to reflect and to notice that a lot is happening, the ecosystem is much more dynamic, there's more robust local investors, there's a lot more global participation as well, and I think all of that is a great thing.

Osarumen Osamuyi: Exactly.

Justin Norman: Okay, then let's leave it there. Thank you so much, guys, for coming, we really appreciate it.

Osarumen Osamuyi: Thank you so much guys.

[applause]

Justin Norman: After the event Osarumen and I reflected on our discussion with the ecosystem in this retrospective conversation.

Justin Norman: It feels pretty clear to me that the solution to these so-called problems is just better and more engagement with each other, right? So the founders say, oh, you didn't give me a fair chance, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then the media says, like, well, we want you to participate right? And you have an opportunity to, like, shape narrative by having conversations with the media. And then on the other side, the media will say, the founders are unfairly critical of us, blah, blah, blah. And it's like well, I don't know how much empathy there is. There is a tendency to share a lot of negative stories, and you can understand the sentiment 'cause being a founder is very hard. And so maybe it actually goes back to in the first episode that we did years ago, it was just this idea of what is the nature of the relationship between, like, individual reporters and founders. But it feels more clear to me than ever before that just what you need is more engagement. And maybe that starts from founders respecting the media a little bit more, that might be the entry point, I'm not sure or maybe it also starts from the media individual reporters maybe having a little bit more empathy for founders and timelines.

Osarumen Osamuyi: Better engagement is definitely needed. More empathy is needed on both sides. But I don't actually think the problem will ever get solved, I don't think there's ever going to be a point where founders and the media have a significantly improved relationship. Because I think it's about the fundamental difference or conflict of incentives between both the founders and the media. So it's like from the founder's perspective, the media doesn't understand their business and it's not trying to and it's trying to paint negative stories. If you ask a journalist, they'll say they are trying to get information out that the ecosystem finds it newsworthy. And why are they trying to do that? Because they have a business to do, they have salaries to pay.

Osarumen Osamuyi: And so if we take the conversation that happened I think it was at the beginning of the year, where the ecosystem had a long, thoughtful conversation about what the definition of a layoff is. In those kinds of conversations, obviously, as a founder who bears the responsibility for building this company, for bringing something to exist that didn't before, when something goes wrong and there's some negative coverage or negative conversation about it, you tend to feel misunderstood and you tend to feel like you're being piled on. From the media's perspective, they often go through their own constraints. Again, the media business model is broken, as we've been saying for five or something years, for example. In that environment, I just don't know that there's ever going to be a point where everybody says, "Okay, it's okay for you to publish negative stories about me." Everybody wants great, thoughtful coverage about the ecosystem until you try to cover, like, the thing that they're actually working on, that's my perspective.

Justin Norman: And I guess maybe framing it as the problem needs to be solved is the wrong way to frame it, because this bickering exists in every ecosystem.

Osarumen Osamuyi: Every single ecosystem. But to your point, it's like, again, because of this fundamental tension that exists, I don't think there's going to be a point that founders are okay with negative media coverage, it's just something you're like, that's part of the job in the same way fundraising is tough, in the same way some investors may not understand your business, I will see maybe sometimes not very well advised things about it, it's just like part of the job and you just have to keep it moving. If you're going to go and raise $10 million to try and build out the company, then you should expect that as part of that process, someone is going to ask questions that you may not be a big fan of, but you have to deal with it, it's part of the job.

Justin Norman: Yeah, that's where I just think engaging with it is better than ignoring it. I actually think my pitch to founders is you actually have an opportunity to shape narrative through participation, right? Because stories are going to be told regardless, you want to be involved in the stories that are told. But seriously, you can you can help shape narrative through participation, that is the solution in my eyes.

Osarumen Osamuyi: If you view the media as just broadly speaking, as a bad faith actor that is not necessarily here to help and is here to, again, write a series of negative stories 'cause it drives "clicks" then I can see why some founders would be like, yeah it is better to just go direct and just know about the engaging.

Justin Norman: But they're wrong if they think that they're wrong.

Osarumen Osamuyi: I don't agree with it, but I'll say I understand the sentiment.

Justin Norman: You understand the sentiment that the media is a bad faith actor?

Osarumen Osamuyi: Again, I understand how they arrived at that perspective, I don't agree that.

Justin Norman: But it's wrong? But they are wrong?

Osarumen Osamuyi: Yeah, it's wrong, yeah it's wrong.

Justin Norman: Yeah, I think that they're wrong. And that's where I'm saying have a distinct appreciation for founder sentiments as it relates to the media, it would suck to have negative stories written about you when you're trying hard to build a business, which is really hard, especially in a market like Nigeria. The media is actually in more or less the same boat, it's hard to build a media business in this ecosystem, right? I think to some extent that is what Tomiwo was trying to explain, there is a symbiotic relationship. Like we were just talking before about sponsors, a trade publication benefits from a robust tech ecosystem right?

Osarumen Osamuyi: Ecosystem, exactly.

Justin Norman: And so what incentive do they have to be bad faith? Like this idea about driving clicks, right? How do you monetize clicks? You monetize clicks through advertisers, who are the advertisers? It's the ecosystem.

Osarumen Osamuyi: Its the same company, exactly.

Justin Norman: Yeah, maybe there's something interesting obviously about the stories that are written or about the companies that are the partners 'cause there's not that many. But in any case, it's like, I am sensitive and empathetic to the founders, but I also want to convey our experiences are proof of that, that building a media business anywhere in the world, but especially here, is really hard. And it's also... It kind of feels like founders think it's like, "Oh, it's media, it's so easy, look, I tweet, I have 50,000 followers, it's so easy." Okay, I don't see anyone building one, go build one.

Osarumen Osamuyi: I'd say, on the media side, some of it's it is probably a credibility question because of the statement you just made. Again, there's "Not as many stories about the companies that do buy advertising." Media entrepreneurs or rather media operators probably feel some pressure or rather other journalists probably feel some pressure to be a bit tough because they want to establish credibility that they're not necessarily just like, "Pay for play." I suspect that's one of the things that's going on here where it's like we're going to be journalistic, we're going to tell the stories that exist regardless of who is paying us, I guess, for coverage, sorry. Regardless of who's paying us for exposure. And the point is, when you had journalists focus on just doing their journalism and separately, you had a business team that was selling ads, I guess this is probably a relic from that time, but right now on the internet where you do have to think about like, How is this thing actually going to get monetized, who's actually going to gonna pay for it more directly? I think that those pressures are much more resilient.

Justin Norman: Maybe we should put this episode behind a paywall.

Osarumen Osamuyi: I'll appreciate the two to three paying subscribers for it.

Justin Norman: That's the point, if not an advertising-based model that to some extent is incentivized to increase reach than then it's a subscription model, how many of these guys are going to pay?

Osarumen Osamuyi: It comes back to what I was saying earlier about the size and the stage of the ecosystem. It's like if the New York Times can build a fantastic subscription business, 'cause the ecosystem is just that large, it's just that there are that many people who are willing to pay for this coverage. But I'd estimate maybe thousands, tens of thousands of people who work in the tech ecosystem in Africa as a whole, some small percentage of those people are going to gonna be decision makers who want to pay for this kind of coverage, I don't know that you can sustain a newsroom based on that, where priors are going to gonna have to wade through these waters until we get to a much more mature stage. But again, as we said in the conversation, things have gotten better from five years, was it five years ago when we recorded the first episode?

Justin Norman: Yes, 2019.

Osarumen Osamuyi: The ecosystem is bigger, the media companies covering the ecosystem are bigger. The reporting is more thoughtful, you don't see as many complaints about fundraising, press releases these days as you used to see, now being it's about the coverage being one dimensional, so maybe the optimistic case here is that as the ecosystem grows, as many more companies come in, as many more companies get funded, if that happens, then the media has more resources to create more that people feel satisfied about, in theory.

Justin Norman: That's true. I guess people complained about fundraising and press releases and they said, "Where's the journalism?" And now they're getting the journalism and they're complaining about that too.

Osarumen Osamuyi: Exactly.

Justin Norman: I agree with you that things have gotten better and have evolved in the past five years and I think to some extent correlated to the growth of whatever Topline venture dollars raised, for example. But it kind of feels like we're still talking about the same things, maybe you and I are having the same conversation.

Osarumen Osamuyi: We're having the same conversation 'cause we're really deep in the weeds on this. But I tell you, the other thing is I wouldn't actually peg it to VC funding, I'd peg it to like the sides of the companies in general. So if we take in Nigeria TeamApt, which is what Moniepoint used to be called, definitely do not have as much mindshare as it does today, and there's many more people in Nigeria today that care about what, say, Moniepoint is up to or Paystack is up to, 'cause they actually use these products on a day-to-day basis. Whereas, five, six, seven years ago that wasn't as true, the ecosystem was a lot smaller, a lot less prominent, fewer people cared, frankly.

Justin Norman: So the correlation is to techs and becoming more mainstream in society as opposed to being this niche thing.

Osarumen Osamuyi: Exactly, and maybe instead of the tech ecosystem paying for subscriptions, it's more like people who work at banks, who work at manufacturing companies, who want to understand what's going to gonna be the impact of technology on my industry?" Who want wanted to read that coverage, maybe that's how it plays out. But again, back to what we were saying earlier, I don't know that the contentious relationship between the builders and the Chroniclers is ever really going to be fundamentally resolved, I think. That's the same thing we're going to gonna have to live with.

Justin Norman: Anyway in conclusion, use media as a tool.

Osarumen Osamuyi: In conclusion, sponsor The Flip and The Subtext, thank you very much.

Justin Norman: Yeah, you're bad at media, so just pay us to do it for you.