Empowering Tech Talent: Accelerating the Growth of Africa’s Tech and Developer Communities with Sunkanmi Ola

[00:00:00] You're listening to the Unlocking Africa podcast. Welcome to the Unlocking Africa podcast where we find amazing people who are doing amazing things to unlock Africa's economic potential. Today we have Sunkanmi Ola, who is co-founder and CEO at Propel, a platform which has built one of the largest ecosystems

[00:01:16] of tech developer communities in Africa. Welcome, welcome, welcome to the podcast Sunkanmi, how are you? I'm very fine, thank you so much. It's a pleasure to have you on the podcast. Where

[00:01:28] are you at the moment? Oh right now I'm in the beautiful city of Lagos. Oh fantastic. As we get into the conversation, I was hoping you could introduce yourself and tell us a bit more about

[00:01:40] Sunkanmi. Okay Sunkanmi is a simple guy I guess but that's what I believe. I've always been an entrepreneur. I finished from university in 2012. I was born and raised in Nigeria and up until my university level, I spent it all here in Lagos. I started my first company

[00:01:58] called Syracuse Africa which is a digital creative agency. I stepped away from that and left it in the hands of an amazing team that runs the management and growth of the company till today

[00:02:08] and set out on my journey with all my learnings to build out Propel. Propel has been the next phase of my evolution as a person and I know this almost makes it sound like there is not

[00:02:20] much to me outside of work but I was always fully dedicated to my purpose anyway. But yes, started building up Propel a few years ago, set up the team sometime between 2019 and 2020 but mentally Propel had been in my head for a while already and already tested out iterations,

[00:02:40] did a lot of observation, a lot of research, a lot of talking about the weight of the idea in my head as well and pulled in my co-founders somewhere around 2019, 2020. We set up first

[00:02:53] of all in Portugal and then we moved it to Berlin which is where we wanted to be anyway so we raised our first funding from Berlin. We went through an accelerator called APX which is an axial springer

[00:03:05] and Porsche and we started growing from there and the rest has brought us to where we are today. You mentioned that Propel was something that was always in your mind so what was the inspiration behind Propel? Yeah, I'll say this started from the period while building out my

[00:03:25] first company and being an agency, a fully bootstrapped agency we caught a good wind at multiple points while growing the company and this good wind came in terms of you know landing major clients hitting major milestones and what all these things did was scale the team very quickly

[00:03:45] and we faced this at so many points but I realized we, I wouldn't say we had it easy but it seemed quite straightforward and the reason for this is I'm not a developer,

[00:03:57] I'm not a technical person, I'm a strategy person but I've always been in the midst of technical people you know all my friends, classmates from school most of them ended up as software developers or product developers in some way or the other and it was always easy to

[00:04:12] you know build out a technical team even if it was just on a project basis or on demand by simply making a couple of phone calls. Now what I realized was you know your network

[00:04:21] determines how well you can build when it comes to a team but at the same time I sort of noticed that a lot of people did not have this access because if you don't know good people

[00:04:32] cannot make referrals to other good people and when it comes to building a company or building a business the quality of your people, the quality of your team is a huge determinant in

[00:04:40] how far you go so I decided I would like this little privilege I've been able to be exposed to in this tiny little way in running my own tiny company to be something that every business

[00:04:52] both within and outside of Africa to be able to access so the initial idea started out like a marketplace find good people put them in a place where they are easily accessible and then one

[00:05:04] thing would lead to another naturally when you're designing a model because you start looking at the reasons why this does not happen naturally yet right and the first thing I stumbled upon was

[00:05:13] you know the quality assurance you don't want your dollars to be at risk if you're going through a platform and this was in the earliest, earliest stages Propeller had not even been

[00:05:21] set up as a company and this was just iterating with different ideas to see how it would work out and what then happened was you know one thing led to another we decided to build like a

[00:05:31] quality control algorithm that helped reduce the emphasis on price of labor to the quality of labor and by doing this we unconsciously built a platform that tied the cost of labor to the

[00:05:45] cost of supply on the African continent right because we had to build a pricing system into play and naturally what we started seeing was more demand from outside Africa because we tapped into the price arbitrage model while 100% vouching for quality and then we realized

[00:06:00] that this was something that could become a company and I decided to pull it out set it up as a startup and take it down the venture funding route. You hit on a key point there that your

[00:06:12] network is your net worth and a lot of people did not have access to a wide audience so what initial research did you take out to understand there was a need for a platform like this?

[00:06:26] Yeah it's very vast the research cuts across the overall availability and volume right because I would say between 2010 and 2020 there was such a huge explosion on the number of people going into tech so trying to understand the dynamics behind this trying to understand what

[00:06:44] was driving this trying to see what was sustainable in this took me across many angles of research there was the parts where one even needed to understand the population metrics where is this

[00:06:55] going whereas it been in the past 10 years I will be in the next 50 years and when you conduct research like that you compare it against the global average and this is what made us really see very quickly that there is a huge opportunity on the African continent massive

[00:07:10] opportunity when it comes to human resources because population wise and demographics wise we're heading in the opposite direction from most of the developed world most of Europe most of North America where the population trends are directly affecting the volume of

[00:07:28] the workforce in a negative way so that is just one part and you know understanding how much does it cost if you want to build ABCD what does it really take and how does this

[00:07:37] compare on you know to global standards and also understanding the you know the volume of quality available if we're talking about a population of XXX you know million people what volume of them are good enough to work in this manner in that manner what is the

[00:07:53] career progression timeline how quickly are people developing who are the players on ground that are involved in nurturing talent introducing them into the workforce so it's spanned across a very wide scope you know it's not something I say very often but I think you know propel

[00:08:08] existed in my head solid four years before even becoming a startup in that sense and but this was a very interesting period because like like I always say this I say more frequently

[00:08:19] at the privilege of time understanding the space and it was in this period also decided to you know venture outward because at this point it was clear what was going to be built was a

[00:08:29] sort of a global company right from inception so I took my executive MBA at a global school called Halt International Business School and my home campus was London but I kept on doing rotations across multiple continents so Dubai the United Arab Emirates North America so across New York

[00:08:46] San Francisco and even all the way to Shanghai and this was just me trying to understand how the global economy worked from the lens of human resources and access to talent so a lot of

[00:08:55] research fantastic it's clear that you have an understanding of the market you're trying to access but it could be said that talent acquisition and pipeline building is not a new concept so could you explain what you're doing differently that sets you apart from your competitors

[00:09:15] yeah so that's a that's a good question I did mention the original idea or the manifestation of this idea was a talent marketplace it was the simplest thing that one could think of back

[00:09:24] then and talent marketplaces were a bit commonplace building this out we were able to you know call ourselves a startup and we built out a platform and naturally we started trying to drive the exposure

[00:09:37] of African talent straight into the global workforce this has a lot of moving parts as you might imagine where we talk into small businesses where we try to bring on freelance as well we're

[00:09:49] looking at you know full-time hires the scope even in that regard was very broad but the advantage we had going through the accelerator in 2020 was we started really shaping out exactly what the model

[00:10:02] of the company would be based on what the market said as well so by trying to sell we started you know closing a few customers across different levels and understanding the needs of companies

[00:10:14] and very quickly we realized first of all that also this was just before covid so you can imagine that covid changed the trajectory and the dynamics of how you know we were growing so what we started

[00:10:27] noticing was we were closing you know business with a lot more corporates than we had imagined or that we had assumed and now this could be looking like you know looking backwards in the hindsight

[00:10:41] this could be tied to many reasons a lot of big companies if you are a big enough company but you're not a google amazon or microsoft or you know a blue chip company as it's called you have a lot of

[00:10:52] huge talent needs huge appetite with a lot of sustainable growth plans but you don't have the splash around resources so you still need to be very cost efficient so these companies fall into

[00:11:02] a sort of gray zone where they are deprived of access to a steady stream of talent and what we started realizing is that we were becoming a talent pipeline partner now these are not companies

[00:11:11] or businesses that need a marketplace what they need is a talent pipeline partner that could help them fuel their pipelines to keep them growing in a sustainable way these are also companies that are very used to internationalization and globalization and even though it wasn't easy at first and

[00:11:27] covid really made things you know a bit easier for us these are companies that are also open to the idea of building global workforces so at some point we scrapped the marketplace

[00:11:37] because the product and the business we head in in two different directions one was a marketplace for gigs freelancers and the rest while the other was a placement partner to the actual customers who are paying so we did something very interesting in 2021 where we reworked our

[00:11:53] entire model and let the business leave what the product become meaning the product will be able to facilitate scale what the business was doing and this is a very important thing

[00:12:04] that a lot of startups also struggle with where the key model is not really supported by the product so your product ends up being a nice to have not a need to have so we scrapped it it was a

[00:12:14] bold decision and a gamble but thankfully it's worked around the same period where this was happening we also realized something unique on the supply side because we have been thinking a lot about scale we do not train we only identify people and move them into the pipeline

[00:12:28] after multiple assessments and verifications and what a view and we realized if we wanted to scale we needed to be able to tap into a flowing river not try to create the river by ourselves and this flowing river ended up being communities so tech talent communities are

[00:12:42] something that are very unique to emerging market ecosystems where people tend to band together because it is the way to break into the new field or to break into a new path

[00:12:53] you're coming out of school or you're coming out of you're coming into you know a working age and you want to determine what part of tech you're going to you want to be a maybe a product

[00:13:03] developer you want to be a p.m. you want to be a qa you want to be a software engineer usually you need someone to bounce these ideas off someone to talk to or sometimes a group

[00:13:15] of people and this is where communities come into play as you would know in Africa we are very communal even in the way society is run right everybody comes together bands together you know we're involved and this this cascades into every aspect of life including the professional side

[00:13:30] so that was a very key insight we have realized if we want to be able to find people better we could talk to communities so we started working with communities talk to our first community

[00:13:40] sometime in late 2021 and you know tested our hypothesis took a job from the global market one of our early customers back then and gave it to the community and said can you find someone in

[00:13:50] your community that could fill this role and the community leader said of course took it went back came back to us in like let's say 24 hours came back with a lot of amazing people

[00:14:02] and it dawned on us communities can find people way better than we ever can and communities are so vital to the ecosystem but they've been entirely overlooked so we decided we were going to

[00:14:12] build for communities to be able to gain access to supply and use this to fill the global workforce and then of course naturally things start to come into each other started thinking about needs of communities what do communities need where do they struggle communities are great at

[00:14:28] nurturing they are great at building people up bringing people together and all of that what they struggle with the last mile access to work being one of those things so I would say this is where the pieces of what we have today started to come together and everything

[00:14:41] started to lock in and you know from there the the general story became something that most people know today went on to raise other funding rounds we've gone now to over 200 communities

[00:14:53] in across most of Africa and still growing very fast and this has given us you know a huge skill on supply side to be able to feed the global workforce in a good way and this is our

[00:15:02] differentiator. Fantastic so you highlighted the importance of tech talent communities in providing opportunities so what impact has the platform had in connecting African tech talent with companies on the continent and globally? Well impacts can be measured in many ways right

[00:15:24] and I'm sure this is something you would also probably want to ask but I think we try to focus on the on the key metrics so we have I'll say we have a few players in our value

[00:15:33] chain we have the talent themselves we have the communities that this talent belong to we have the companies globally that's everywhere that need these people so the way we measure impact would be per player for the talent we give them access to work and we're trying out

[00:15:47] some new things with access to finance as well so this is very direct value you know something you cannot necessarily do by yourself I love giving this example the first person we have a place for Porsche is in Kampala Uganda I haven't even been to Kampala myself

[00:16:03] right and what we like saying is this person is obviously good enough to work for Porsche he's been there for almost two years now he's paid a very hefty sum uh uh he's paid some more than

[00:16:15] almost everybody in our company as well yes oh it gives you a big dilemma should I be working in Propell or should I be in Propell talent pool but it's a beautiful mission anyway

[00:16:26] but this is this is the way we like to look at it if this person has been working for Porsche in Stuttgart for this long it means this person is of value to the company now will this person

[00:16:35] who is obviously skilled have sat down in Kampala and he's working remotely and apply to to Porsche Institute Guard to say he wants to work for them on his own maybe maybe not but it is

[00:16:46] quite unlikely because again you need to know that you can do these things right for you to even attempt to do them that's one number two even if this person did so would he have

[00:16:58] been able to break through the natural biases which are usually encoded into systems he might have been filtered out because in the first place it's not a natural thing what we're trying to do is to

[00:17:08] disrupt the way companies can access talent right and on the third um angle will Porsche themselves have said we need somebody with this particular skills skillset in this way and will they have

[00:17:20] gone to Kampala instead no so it's very obvious the way you know opportunities have been created here across every player in the chain but the key thing here is the third player which is very

[00:17:31] important the communities now when the communities now are able to generate value from people they already have access to so someone from your community who the community has impacted into either by training or developing or by not sure and true you know building a sense of you know

[00:17:48] belonging in some way or by access to more learning or you know just a general exposure the community should be able to gain something from this and one thing we've built into our model

[00:17:58] is what we call a positive feedback loop where the community is able to now generate financial revenue from people getting placed into roles or people getting engagements on projects with companies and this revenue goes back into the community as an entity so the community

[00:18:15] now all of a sudden has more resources to do what they already love to do and what they've already been doing rather than the community having to you know just wait for and you know

[00:18:25] have one event a year and you know go around asking for sponsors and the rest so we're trying to help come the communities become more commercial because they play such a vital role so once

[00:18:35] with this explanation you can think about it across the entire value chain it's a win-win-win you know talent get access to opportunity are able to gain you know access to a better life

[00:18:45] with better financial inclusion and have a seat at the global stage where they could also influence the development of technology for everybody the communities are able to harness the value they already create and they already naturally create in that in that sense because this is something

[00:19:00] they already exist to do the communities are usually passion projects but imagine being able to gain value from what is your passion and thirdly on the global stage there's still a huge

[00:19:10] talent shortage like companies every day still struggle so much so we do a very good job in trying to make companies across board understand that your problem can easily be solved by tapping into this direct talent pipeline that takes you into the veins of the ecosystem directly

[00:19:26] and they win as well because they are able to grow more comfortably scale and you know this value created across board that sounds great so how many people would you say you've supported to access these type of opportunities so far this year alone we should be somewhere

[00:19:45] around 300 people right now fantastic so what's the mission or the aim for 2024 a lot of lofty goals you know I can call it that way so right now we're still growing obviously we've hit some good milestones but we'll like to you know scale them exponentially as well there's

[00:20:06] still a huge bit of work to be done even on the african continent where we are reaching out to more communities on boarding communities and you know in the process of this you know there's a

[00:20:16] platform where these communities now exists so we call it the infrastructure distribution layer the distribution layer for communities we are building the infrastructure in that sense where communities are sort of the manufacturers and we are sort of the distributors

[00:20:28] that's there's a middle pipeline to connect into this global workforce which we've also been able to crack and we want to get more and more communities on board we have you know very good targets that we've discussed internally and of course because this is still a two-sided

[00:20:44] demand as supply model it means if you're bringing more communities in you need to be able to extend enough opportunities to keep everybody warm so we are talking to more and more companies every

[00:20:54] day exposing people to the beauty of the potential on the african continent and we've had them you know a bit of success so far Mercedes Porsche Stepstone which is the third largest job board in the world after LinkedIn and indeed Siemens Farfetch and a

[00:21:10] host of other startups as well so we don't only work with the big companies because everybody needs talent we will we are also expanding that network as well so there's a lot of work to be

[00:21:18] done on both sides internally the team is growing so yeah it's a lot a lot of big things ahead for us next year look forward to seeing it we've discussed the value that you provide

[00:21:32] and the impact so if we take a few steps back can you give us a brief overview of the services that you currently provide to your community and members oh yeah so it's simple um access to work um and

[00:21:46] access to finance simply and it's in two basic ways we want communities to be able to provide access to work for their members but at the same time also be able to provide access to finance

[00:21:56] to keep their people developing and growing and we have um you know unique ways in which we've worked this out even on a technical level we focus on those two key pillars right now

[00:22:07] not only because that is what we want to do and that's what we're good at doing but that is also what is needed so critically and beautiful thing is we feel like we have built this startup

[00:22:17] along with the really amazing communities in our ecosystem they tell us exactly what is needed they are the first to try out our product and our platform they can essentially say you know

[00:22:27] this feature you've built in here doesn't solve the need we have so we have like you know very direct feedback in that sense so the two things we offer in terms of access to work and access to finance

[00:22:36] are two very critical things that we've been made to understand that communities need to keep growing and it's important that we are able to address it in a way where we are not

[00:22:44] replacing communities but rather facilitating the work they already do so we are more like a silent player in this sense just building underneath and having people tap into our infrastructure to be able to access the global workforce and also become sort of neo banks to their members

[00:23:00] because there is a lot of data on people in the open talent economy that is easier for us to make sense of when it comes to determining credit eligibility and the rest and we found ourselves

[00:23:14] in a very good position to really attack this problem and really open up this segment of the market as well fantastic so you've detailed that your services are centered around access to work and access to finance so keeping on the theme of finance you recently managed to successfully

[00:23:31] raise 2.5 million dollars in seed funding yeah what has this enabled you to do um yeah so our funding round earlier this year was very specific to us driving growth we are a tech

[00:23:46] startup at the end of the day there is a lot to be built we have a lot of users and a lot of customers to build out for and following the same venture model this is the point where

[00:23:57] you know we drive deep in really building out capacity so it's all is what is all being about building our capacity on the sales side being able to give ourselves the exposure we need you know to potential businesses customers companies and make them see the huge and

[00:24:12] beautiful potential on the African continent and also you know discovering communities reaching out to them onboarding them and building a platform that can thoroughly meet their needs in this sense while in the midst of all of this building out a company where people love to work where people

[00:24:30] are excited for the mission these things require money so we talked to some investors um majorly European investors and we're able to really show them the dream and the potential of what we want

[00:24:41] to build um and i'll say we we very fortunately got a lot of beautiful interest from people who are deeply you know in support of this mission and see why it needs to be done you mentioned

[00:24:56] driving growth and building capacity is this about expanding your offering in terms of market expansion or solidifying your position in the markets that you're already operating in um i would say it's a bit of both it's a bit of both i'll be lining by said it is 100% about

[00:25:16] driving deep and not driving wide yes but it's also just about driving wide so um it's always about the ratio and these objectives change per time as i as i assume they would with you know

[00:25:26] most startups or companies of course for the places we already are in we need to solidify our position at the end of the day we're still in the market there will always be competition

[00:25:35] and when you think about broadly the value we bring forward is then it's simply just means that is how broad our competition is right or for for every um for every body that is brought on

[00:25:50] board there has to be deep value created for them who at the same time growth is also key because um you know you need to be able to build a moat and in some cases one of the many

[00:26:02] ways to build a moat is also in your skill especially when you're dealing with market dynamics on the demand and supply side so um it's a bit of both um we are expanding um you know very

[00:26:13] rapidly we've covered a lot of ground this year we want to do the same and even better next year but at the same time we're also you know building deeper to ensure we have a very strong hand

[00:26:23] on you know this beautiful thing that we've brought to the world going back to your point in terms of building capacity with the services that you provide have there been any challenges in navigating the complexities of multi-country operations of course 100 yes yes

[00:26:44] what have those challenges been so first of all um if i take it internally propel is a team of almost 35 people but we're spread across nine countries and we are spread across this

[00:26:57] you know broad scope because we need to be you know because we have some sort of operations across different regions in this sense we have an ecosystem team that is focused on you know finding

[00:27:08] on board and managing and working with communities uh we have the talent team that you know are more client facing and deal with the individuals when they come into the pool and need to connect

[00:27:19] to access to work um we we have the product team which you know needs a very very deep connection in this sense so when you think of it across board you realize you're building something

[00:27:31] that needs a unique framework to operate i think every company is different in this sense you think about things like building culture internally even though your team is literally from everywhere and spread across everywhere you think about the different ways to build a remote distributed

[00:27:48] team now we build in you know colocation spots or can anybody simply just come from anywhere how do you manage you know the workflow work delivery how do you manage the intensity of

[00:27:58] work and all those things so all of those are internal but then there's also the other part of learning how to sell with different people from different places to different kinds of

[00:28:08] companies we are a bit better at it now but at some point it was almost like we were building an education course for potential customers yes to even make them understand that it is even possible in the first place to work with people from this region that they

[00:28:22] know not too much about in this sense and and and even with the communities we work with as well you know it takes a lot of learning especially on our part understanding our customers and building

[00:28:32] according to what they need and being able to also understand the things that are possible now and the things that are not possible now we have a million and one ideas that we'd love to

[00:28:40] implement but again things need to grow according to pace so i think um i think every startup and every company has or deals with the same challenges um in this sense um they would always

[00:28:52] be unique things that you have to figure out on the fly right there are the standard general things of you know how to race fight how to raise funding how to hire people how to find people

[00:29:04] and all of that but it will always be the more nuanced um challenges that every company or every startup would face and would have to navigate and i think we are no different

[00:29:12] in that sense you mentioned that your team is spread across nine countries which is a great achievement and partnerships are key to working successfully in a range of countries and offering the diverse range of services that you do what strategies have been effective for you in terms

[00:29:32] of creating partnerships for global success as you might imagine propel is a platform that is built on the strengths of networks so across different parts of the chain we have different kinds of partnerships every community in our ecosystem is a partner right so they are

[00:29:51] our customers but they are also partners because they handle their parts of the system and we do our parts to make things easier for them right so it goes both ways every community onboarded is a customer onboarded but that's also a partnership

[00:30:06] discussion and these things are handled individually that is one um even when you talk about the operational things there are places where you need partnerships to make this work especially when you consider the kind of unique model unique operational model we're building um and and

[00:30:20] also when it comes to the actual delivery chain of what we bring forward to companies there are many aspects that require partnerships to make our model work because no single startup is an island in that case it could be in terms of being able to cover

[00:30:37] remittances to different talents in different countries or even the communities themselves as there is this is a very financial relationship um it could be in terms of managing things around relocation for some particular people who are moving into different companies and it could

[00:30:54] be in terms of just facilitating the embedded finance layer that we are building out as well where we already have some partnerships in place um I think partnerships are maybe to us more than

[00:31:06] most very critical in every single stage of what we've designed and built out here so I don't think there's anything more particular than we just had to learn how to do it and that's what we do

[00:31:20] I would say a good thing a very key thing is hiring people that are also expert in their domain which is a place we've um I would say we've gotten right so far and we have some experts on the team

[00:31:30] who handle these partnership business development conversations alongside myself if we move from looking externally at partnerships and look internally at the platform and technology what have been the challenges that you've encountered building the infrastructure for this

[00:31:51] platform in terms of challenges in that regard I would say um some things take time and usually things take a longer time it's more likely for things to take a longer time than a shorter time that's um that's a major challenge especially on the product development side

[00:32:09] and this requires learning how to build a system of patience while ensuring that pace is maintained um I say this because compared to where we are today what we had in mind was significantly different and one key thing is being able to adapt to external feedback

[00:32:31] and being able to very quickly understand where what you might have built is not taking you in the direction you need to go and being able to backtrack reconstruct and start afresh in

[00:32:41] the right direction so that's been a major challenge again I don't think um this is a challenge that is particularly unique to propel I think almost every tech startup building out something interesting

[00:32:52] and innovative will face this especially where you don't have um you know a very obvious model to build after right so a lot of the things that we're building and a lot of the ways we

[00:33:02] are building are things that we haven't even experienced before so we work with a lot of feedback and um deep details on the supply side which are the communities and their representatives to know what we need to build and this means more often than not you need a

[00:33:17] couple of iterations to get it right in this case balancing all of that with the pace and expectations of the stakeholders including even the investors is is a challenge but um I think

[00:33:29] the further along you go the more you get a hang of it and how this all thing works and you learn to just manage these processes better so internally in terms of you know building

[00:33:39] and now all of that works is one thing and even in terms of you know just managing the team in terms of just managing the team is there's also a learning curve because you need to know

[00:33:48] how to make some things work with particular constraints you know remote work is the thing that's here to stay but at the same time it's a system that has not 100% settled in what it

[00:34:00] would be we are not yet in the future of work we are progressing very rapidly into the future of work so along the way there will be so many learnings um and every learning comes in form of a

[00:34:09] challenge in that case and how you respond to it the term is how far you go you mentioned that things take time to build and patience is required we also know that the tech industry

[00:34:22] is constantly evolving so how do you stay ahead of trends and adapt to meet the changing needs of tech professionals and companies two things keep your eyes open and keep your ears open

[00:34:36] listen to your users an advantage any company building tech product will have is if you have a direct line of communication or direct line of feedback to your users you get to learn things

[00:34:48] quicker and in advance than what the market will tell you and many times it's always costlier if you wait for the market to you know really correct you so um I would say that's that's a very core

[00:35:00] principle and not even only on the supply side understanding what and this is this this would also apply to every business in the two-sided space knowing what the global workforce is saying

[00:35:11] and what demands are there and being able to match this to the supply is a very key then it helps you not be left in the dust and it also helps you to stand out when you're moving forward

[00:35:22] in terms of building out the business because you know exactly what you're saying and you have your sources to back it up but to counter this in a little way it's also very important to have

[00:35:32] a very clear vision and not be a leaf in the wind there's a reason why the vision is very concrete there's a reason why the mission is very clear and it's always good to have that

[00:35:41] as an anchor and this is a way we even practice the mindset internally for the team there is always you know open discussion right many times I serve as more of the anchor and you know other people

[00:35:54] come up with new things and we always try to find a balance in between so we don't veer too far off but at the same time we don't become still in our approach and in our thinking so this

[00:36:05] internal dynamic which is open to everyone on the team regardless of your level or your experience is something that we practice a lot you mentioned having a clear vision and listening to your users keeping on the theme of trends are there any trends in Africa's tech talent space

[00:36:23] that you're currently seeing and excited about of course there always will be and the thing about the African tech talent space is it's in the faster evolutionary process than than the rest of the world but a very interesting trend is you know we also seen that

[00:36:42] communities spring up in response to the global trends right so AI web 3 are the more recent trends to have gone through a lot of explosion in the past let's say three four years right well two

[00:37:00] three years and what you naturally realize if you have keen eye on the market is you start to have more of these communities spring forward because communities are driven by interests right community is a usually close group of people which aligned interests so once something that

[00:37:17] wants something that is interesting becomes more prominent you see more communities congregating around these ideas and being able to quickly tap into you know the the formation the foundation of those communities helps you stay ahead and in our case even outside on the global landscape where

[00:37:37] we play it's been quite interesting to see how quickly the ecosystem reacts to new technologies and new frameworks but also seeing how the intrinsic growth of communities spins off more communities as well I'll say this has been the more interesting part of what I've seen

[00:37:54] this year where we've realized that we are not only trying to gain market share but we are actually creating new market value if a community grows big enough people in that community is just the

[00:38:05] same way it works as startups right the number of alumni from you know the biggest most successful startups that want to create new things is like splinter cell you know ideology and this thing

[00:38:16] also works on the community side as well so there's a lot of potential for growth in this regard it's just one of the many interesting trends we see there are also many interesting

[00:38:25] trends in terms of how companies are now adapting and coming around to settle into this reality of what the future workforce can be and the understanding of the open talent economy particularly in emerging markets like Africa so a lot of new trends in that regard some of them

[00:38:40] were holding close to our chests because this is still a competitive landscape Fantastic so if we go from current trends and look at the future where do you see Africa's tech talent space say in five years time particularly in relation to what you're doing

[00:38:57] in building online communities it's going to the very top the Africa's tech talent ecosystem is going to the very top a lot of facts support this if we're looking at even just simple population stats it's a converse relationship with the global workforce you know most European

[00:39:15] companies now are seeing not only shrinking work pools but shrinking populations overall declining population growth rates and declining population rates in some cases so all of these are only point to one thing but apart from just the quantity the quality and the rate of growth

[00:39:30] of the quality is so so promising it's so promising and it's you know creates a lot of excitement for where things would be I think there's a report study that came out this year

[00:39:41] that shows that in how many decades you know 25 percent of the world's entire workforce would be in Africa that's an amazing stat right so we we feel we feel excited to be players in this

[00:39:55] space in something that has so much potential down the line if we're able to play our part in helping organize, curate the ecosystem it makes it more accessible to the global workforce it makes it more accessible easier to navigate from companies and from economies that would naturally be

[00:40:12] active to diving into something new or what they do not know that I see that as the role we are playing right we're trying to curate this ecosystem the risk is to people that need

[00:40:22] access to it and this would only contribute to the growth and the trend so I feel a lot of players in this space are critical to the mission of what Africa can deliver and I actually just feel

[00:40:36] very privileged to be one of those players in Propel right now and everybody on the team feels the exact same way. I know you've just slightly touched on this but I was hoping we could take

[00:40:49] closer look what role or how do you see Propel's role evolving in the tech landscape in the next five years. Yeah well I mean it's no secret on what we're already trying to do a lot changes in five

[00:41:05] years and particularly when you're a tech startup because you have to always be nimble as a tech startup but we see ourselves you know being a very key player connecting the world into this

[00:41:17] ecosystem. The ecosystem is going to grow no matter what happens it is already growing at a rapid pace so it needs an outlet as well we want to be one of those outlets right we want to be a primary outlet

[00:41:29] that companies can think we want to tap into you know the power of this continent we want to leverage this ecosystem add value to it in a sustainable way and also be able to gain

[00:41:43] value from it we want Africa to be more connected to the global workforce. My co-founder like saying that you know if technology is going to work for everyone it has to be built by everyone

[00:41:53] and you know Africa needs a seat at the global table as well so in five years I would really love for our vision to be actualized you know to a considerable extent if not fully

[00:42:08] and you know as of now we intend to stay on this mission path there will or there could be you know some changes in the actual model right which is very normal because as a company you

[00:42:21] need to keep on adapting as well but I think the vision and the mission will remain we are trying to be that point of connection that portal into this amazing tech ecosystem and we want

[00:42:32] communities to remain at the center of this drive. Quote of the week. As people we often have quotes mantras african proverbs or affirmations that keep us going when times are challenging

[00:42:44] or when times are good do you have one that you can share with us today? That's interesting I don't consider myself you know the wisest person with all the quotes but I think this is more

[00:42:57] of a principle that I have as an individual so this is not even Sukkomi, CEO or co-founder, propeller whatever. Personally for me I feel excellence is not an option and whatever is

[00:43:10] worth doing at all is worth doing well. I think it's my mom that hammered this into my head you know a long time ago so if you're going to bother doing anything at all understand

[00:43:22] that perfection is not attainable but get as close to it as humanly possible meaning if you've done something ask yourself is this the best possible version of this thing I could do right now?

[00:43:33] It's a tricky thing in that sense because you stand the risk of falling into this cycle of always building and never shipping right but there is that sweet spot where you know in terms

[00:43:46] of being committed to outputes but also committed to quality there is a point where you know what it is so it's something that is my standard in my personal life if I would bother doing something

[00:44:00] at all I would do it properly right and it's something that I've also taken into my professional life as well and it's what I also try to imbibe into you know my amazing teammates that work with

[00:44:10] Fantastic it's one that I agree with thank you for sharing that so we've come to the end of today's conversation and I was wondering if you have any closing remarks and final call to action

[00:44:22] for people who are interested in the work that you're doing? Yes yes definitely I'm always reachable always available you can find me on LinkedIn my name is thankfully a bit unique so

[00:44:35] there's not too many of me it's Tsunkwami Ola with two ends just for just by the way I'm always open to discussion or you can reach out to you know the team we're very very easy to find if you're a

[00:44:50] community and you would like to you know join this mission and come into the ecosystem you can simply visit propel.community and if you're a company looking to leverage the value and power of this ecosystem you can you know reach out to me directly as well I'm always

[00:45:04] happy to have conversations. So thank you for joining me today Tsunkwami I've enjoyed discussing propel's journey in addressing the last mile challenges faced by tech communities in Africa and also looking forward to seeing the positive impact you'll have on the careers

[00:45:22] and the growth of the tech talent community across the continent. Okay speak soon. Okay bye bye Thank you to everyone who has listened and stayed tuned to the podcast if you've enjoyed this episode

[00:45:37] please subscribe share or tell a friend about it you can also rate review us in apple podcast or wherever you download your podcast thank you and see you next week for the Unlocking Africa podcast