We techies are familiar with the “Paypal Mafia” whose notable members include Peter Thiel (Founder, Paypal - the don), Elon Musk (Founder X.com & co-founder, SpaceX and Tesla Motors), and Reid Hoffman (Founder, LinkedIn & viral investor) >> Paypal Mafia. Recently, I also came across the term “Twitter Mafia” defining a set of entrepreneur arising from Twitter >> The Rise of the Twitter Mafia. I’m sure there are similar mafias springing up from thousands of start-ups all around the world. And these entrepreneurs go ahead to create amazing companies who are tackling and solving various challenges facing mankind.
The emergence of mafias shows the crucial roles start-ups play in grooming new entrepreneurs by giving them the platform to acquire business experiences, transferable skills and create those crucial professional connections which are later on leveraged when they start new companies.
Recently, while browsing my favorite start-up database site, CrunchBase, I noticed a mafia which has already arisen from Jumia Nigeria. Digging deep by using LinkedIn’s Advanced Search, I realised that there are at least 1452 current or past employees of “Jumia Nigeria” on LinkedIn out of which about 15 are founders or co-founders of companies.
THE JUMIA MAFIA
I went some lengths to listing some of the members of the “Jumia Mafia” and their sectors below:
- Olaoluwa Samuel (Co-founder, Suregifts - ECOMMERCE, Founder, Numbers - SMALL BUSINESS SOLUTIONS ),
- Raphael Afaedor (Co-founder, Supermart.ng - ECOMMERCE),
- Massimiliano Spalazzi (Co-founder, Kaymu Africa - ECOMMERCE),
- Gbolahan Fagbure (Founder, Supermart.ng - ECOMMERCE),
- Olubusayo Longe (Co-founder, Form+ - SMALL BUSINESS SOLUTIONS),
- Onyeka Akumah (Co-founder, Qwikgist.com - BLOG/ NEWS),
- Adeoye Ojo (Co-founder, Suregifts - ECOMMERCE),
- Chioma Ifeanyi-Eze (Co-founder Innabel Logistics - LOGISTICS),
- Tunde Kehinde (Co-founder, Africa Courier Express - ACE - LOGISTICS),
- Hilary Achebe (Co-founder, Achebe Professional Services - SMALL BUSINESS SOLUTIONS)
It’s equally interesting to notice that most of these entrepreneurs are going into areas of Jumia’s core competence: E-commerce and Logistics. This shows that the entrepreneurs had developed interest and acquired some kind of expertise which gave them the motivation to venture out.
I’m quite confident that the coming months and years will see the expansion of the Mafia and will continue to make Nigeria the leading light in African Tech Entrepreneurship. I’m looking forward to seeing them grow their ventures, attract funding (if needed), create jobs, and groom future mafias!
Well done Jumia Nigeria! Bravos Jumia Mafia!
