Firm to partner EU, US on access to fund for startups

Intense, a digital marketing agency has said plans are underway to partner with European Union and United States to train technology startups on how to access fund.

Founder, Leye Makanjuola, revealed this in Lagos at the maiden edition of Intense Social Engineering, a gathering of tech startups to socialize and network.

However, he urged startups to leverage on strength of networking as part of efforts to grow their business solutions.

According to him technology serves as an opportunity for Nigeria to grow her economy beyond boundaries due to dynamism of the global space.

Makanjuola who also doubles as the Chief Marketing Officer, said: “What we are trying to do is to help the tech community especially the founders to save time by learning from each other from more experienced people that has already achieved success. It’s not by just working; sometimes it’s by meeting the right person.

We have collected a lot of insights from the startups finding out what their challenges are. Based on those challenges, we would start to create other programmes that would solve those problems.”

Speaking on access to funds, he said: “We are already setting up partnerships in the EU and US on bodies that can train people on how to raise funding, how to manage your company, how take proper account, and how to attract the right talents.

Going forward, we see this programme having churned out at least a 100 global tech companies like Uber, Amazon, among others. We believe that tech is the opportunity that Nigeria has to improve the economy because it has no boundaries. You can be in Nigeria and have clients all over the world.”

In his remarks, Founder, Advancio Interactive, Olufisayo Oludare, stressed on the need for tech startups to evaluate their skills, improve to attract customer’s interest.

Oludare said startups must build network of friends who are useful to their preferred solutions.

Also Co-Founder, Formplus, Busayo Longe, harped on the need for startups to change the narrative of doing business in the country keeping it straight and simple.