Afrigather If content material really is king, then Oluwaseun Adegoke Oyeniyi desires to grow to be the kingmaker and is constructing a platform, Hankara, to make this a actuality.
Because the variety of tech startups will increase globally, it’s turning into obvious that technical skills aren’t the one ones in aggressive demand. Entrepreneurs, particularly content material entrepreneurs and writers who can assist established firms and startups inform their tales in a method their viewers understands, particularly in Europe and North America, are additionally a lot wanted available in the market. In truth, a Technavio 2020 report projected that the content material advertising and marketing trade could be price over $400 billion in 2021, and would develop one other $269 billion by 2024, bringing its complete price to over $600 billion in that yr.
However because the demand for good content material writers will increase, the availability invariably decreases. The issue for American firms empirically is: Their wonderful native content material writers are both too costly or unavailable, leaving them with the choice of delegating content material duties to engineers or UX designers or look outdoors of their areas for excellent and inexpensive writers. In keeping with Oyeniyi, most content material on nearly all of American software-as-a-service (SaaS) firms are written by engineers or designers whose content material expertise are primitive. That is the issue Oyeniyi found way back to 2018, which led him in 2022 to stop his job as editor-in-chief of TechCabal to work on its resolution full-time.
“There’s an enormous demand for excellent content material writers in Europe and America, and now we have numerous good writers out right here,” Oyeniyi advised me over a name. “So, we’re matching these two sides collectively.”
In keeping with Oyeniyi, the enterprise mannequin is straightforward: He’s constructing one thing like Andela, however for content material. His voice received livelier when he likened his startup to the expertise unicorn. Andela was fairly pivotal in Oyeniyi’s 10-year media profession. In June 2015, about seven months after the unicorn was launched in Nigeria, Oyeniyi wrote one of the vital in-depth stories about the startup up to now. The piece would go on to be certainly one of many individuals’s favorite bylines from him. In that story, Oyeniyi narrated how he spent virtually per week going round Lagos, Nigeria with Andela’s founders, familiarising himself with their itinerary and selecting up their tales and that of the younger folks they’d got down to assist create thriving careers in tech.
Oyeniyi believes that non-technical skills like content material writers will be onboarded for coaching or for outright outsourcing to firms in want of their providers, and {that a} sustainable enterprise will be constructed round this. The content material advertising and marketing outsourcing market dimension is $103 billion and expected to grow by 15.1% year-on-year. Presently, content material advertising and marketing alternatives are being outsourced from the US and Europe to China, India, Pakistan, and so on, nations the place English isn’t even the primary language. Nigeria and plenty of components of Africa stand an excellent likelihood of dominating this house and carving out jobs to mitigate the alarming unemployment rates they’re at present experiencing. Significant Gigs, a tech-enabled market connecting expert African designers with worldwide firms searching for high-quality digital design, raised $6 million in March. This hints on the huge alternative out there within the gig sector, as a complete.
He launched Hankara in June this yr, and a month after, introduced a expertise acceleration programme the place undergraduates and recent graduates could be educated in enterprise writing for 4 months. It is a trick borrowed straight from the Andela playbook: prepare, outsource, and handle.
“We curate, vet, and prepare gifted content material entrepreneurs. Presently, now we have in our community over 1,100 skills. We plan to develop to different African nations by the tip of the yr. Our mission is to attach 200,000 Africans to the worldwide digital financial system and assist 10X their earnings,” Oyeniyisaid, simply earlier than excusing himself to take a shopper name.
It was a wet Monday afternoon in Lagos the day we spoke, so the climate was just a little bit chilled. Oyeniyi’s voice cracked at first, as a result of unhealthy community connection. His voice is acquainted to me, although we labored collectively for almost six months and he’s been gone from TechCabal for 9, his affect within the newsroom stays potent. TechCabal’s reporters proceed to reference Oyeniyi’s calculative contribution to conversations, eagerness to study and check out new issues, and fixed demand for authentic human-angle tales. Beneath his management, the new TechCabal got here into existence, and he employed a few of the finest editorial skills within the firm at present.
Content material Advertising Market by Goal, Platform, Finish-user, and Geography – Forecast and Evaluation 2022-2026
Oyeniyi prides himself as a flexible downside solver. From diving blindly and headfirst into running a blog after college to treatment unemployment to constructing a failed social media platform and two failed publications, to constructing a wealthy profession in tech and enterprise journalism with YNaija, Ventures Africa, after which TechCabal, Oyeniyi is aware of what failure and success seem like. And he’s reaching for fulfillment whereas making ready for its antithesis.
As if hedging his bets, Oyeniyi now runs two companies. Moreover Hankara which he actively runs himself, there’s additionally TechPR, a public relations firm that helps African tech startups inform their tales proper and attain extra audiences, run by an appointed CEO. In keeping with Oyeniyi, these two startups, although they predominantly serve totally different markets, had been birthed with a single mission: to assist startups scale by way of storytelling. TechPR counts the worldwide accelerator Techstars as certainly one of its purchasers, whereas Hankara has Canadian, American, and French firms as purchasers, together with Magic Fund, a enterprise capital fund backed by a lot of startup founders.
Hankara makes cash from the commissions it will get on each expertise match. With out revealing their numbers, Oyeniyi claims the enterprise is already raking in “first rate income” and desires to push additional sooner with a pre-seed elevate. The corporate additionally plans to open a US gross sales workplace, as a result of a lot of the companies it serves are primarily based there.
Oyeniyi believes that Hankara is making a win-win marketplace for all stakeholders. The corporate at present boasts of greater than 600 content material writers at present going by way of screening, and greater than 5 worldwide firms. He’s optimistic that the quantity will triple by the tip of the yr, in any case, the enterprise is just 4 months previous.
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