Business growth strategies: lessons from Mark Essien and HotelsNG

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I spent the last few days thinking about @mark’s style of leading hotels.ng which is arguably one of the biggest hotel booking platforms in Africa. Hope the lesson helps someone.

http://spokentwice.com/mark-essien-hotelsng/

The major take away (if you don’t have the time ro read 1,500 post) include how:

  1. It is possible to exploit PR to your advantage and do so on budget.
  2. How to use side project to grow your customer acquisition.
  3. Why you need to become a thought leader and how it grows your business.
  4. Other useful business hacks.

This post is NOT about “HotelsNG vs Your unknown startup” or about bootlicking another dude. I will be happy if the post helps you do things better.

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Why are you guys just giving this guys the hype?. E don too much na. The last time I checked, the definition of success for startups/companies is not by how huge the investment raised. Pls tell us what you mean by how he is rocking Africa with hotels.ng.

P.S. am not hating. I am just concerned by Nigerians thinking huge investments raised means some company or start up has arrived their goal.

Abeg forgive my English also. I know i sweat before i pass English language in my waec. :laughing:

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Your English on this post is B2
Your message is A1.
What’s important is the message.

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Funny part is both @mark and @Jason_Igwe_Njoku didn’t ask for this. They just enjoy hyping these guys.

You guys should free them abeg.

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Yea. You are right. I wasn’t criticising them. I was only saying in essence that they should be left alone to continue to innovate and succeed.

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@fawzan, I noticed you just joined Radar. And this is one of your first posts. (For records, you joined radar like 4 hours before this post went live).

I will advise that instead of winning the 1st to comment award to yourself, it is always better to read a post to see how it benefits you.

Doing such will have helped you to notice that there was no reference to raising money or egoism massage in the post.

If you actually read the post, I will advise that you read again, this time, skip to the conclusion, to read my closing remarks, maybe that will help you understand that I did not write to massage @mark’s ego.

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Nice Post @spokentwice. I wonder why @fawzan is hating.:confused:

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Interesting thing here Is that I have always visited radar in the past, I always read topics, conversation among others. So note that I decided to sign up, because I needed to comment on this topic.

P.S. I did read the article before commenting. Anyways all good.

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@emmanueladegor. I am not hating ooo. I even stated it earlier that I wasn’t. But you should know also na. I like this guys, there concepts and all. But I wasn’t particularly referring to them, it was more of the general startup ecosystem in Nigeria. As it’s baffling that Nigerians just accepts that once a startup raise funds from investors they have reached there goal. They give the start ups that had raised the capital hype. Allow them to continue to innovate and generate revenue continously, then any hype after then would be justified.

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@spokentwice. I am not hating ooo. I even stated it earlier that I wasn’t. But you should know also na. I like this guys, there concepts and all. But I wasn’t particularly referring to them, it was more of the general startup ecosystem in Nigeria. As it’s baffling that Nigerians just accepts that once a startup raise funds from investors they have reached there goal. They give the start ups that had raised the capital hype. Allow them to continue to innovate and generate revenue continously, then any hype after then would be justified.

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First, you could have mentioned both of them in the same comment without having to duplicate your post.

Secondly, this is not because they raised money.
Let’s look at the most “respected” startups in the Nigerian ecosystem.

Iroko TV - There is nothing to be said here. They have not reached their goal. Both @Jason_Igwe_Njoku and the entire ecosystem know this. However, they are doing extremely well and are worthy to be praised.

Hotels.ng - This is not about them raising money. Not at all. They do what they do well, they continue to search for improvement. Also, the community really appreciates the effort @mark puts into developing the ecosystem.

Paystack - They made the one thing that was so complicated look so simple. They ushered in a wave of fintech startups. They have been loved and respected even before they raised money or got into YC. This demonstrates that we do not admire them because they raised money, but they raised money because they possessed the attributes we admire.

TechCabal (Big Cabal) - I seem to remember that they raised money sometime this year (or was is last year) but we do not really remember that. We admire their work. TC, Radar, Daily Digest, e.t.c. This is also not about raising money.

Sharphire - I cannot remember any fund raises from them (may or may not be present) but they have a range of wonderful startups. Piggybank, PushCV, FrontDesk, e.t.c While they are not in a lot of frequent discussions, it is clear that the community loves their work. You can take a look at the numerous compliments towards @somtoifezue

Konga - They kick started the startup system in Nigeria. While they may not be the first, they were the most prominent and drew a lot of attention. At the moment, they usually have some bad press due to fulfilments, customer service e.t.c. However, I believe they still command a lot of respect.

On the other side, there are startups that raise money but are not spoken about or “hyped”
Jumia - With all their cash, I think they have more bad press than good.
Tolet.com.ng - They raised $1.2m this year, but are still not in a lot of conversations. No good press, no bad press.

There was the fintech bank backed by Dangote. I have even forgotten their name
There are many others who are even hard to remember because raising money does not equal respect.

I don’t like when people assume that the respect they are given is because they raised money. This is not true.
These companies take a lot of time to build reputations that cause us to love (or hate) them, and these are just a few examples that show that it has nothing to do with the amount of money raised.

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I totally agree with you. But this also gives us the reason to look at the good examples so other can learn from it.

Do you wonder how a day can not go without people talking about Uber and Google in the tech circle? So why can’t we talk about our own too, especially when they do something impressive.

I totally agree that some of these guys have been idolized just for raising funds, but there is more we can learn from how they run their businesses. I hope someday I will talk and write about yours too?

@StephenAfamO thanks for the points.

I just realised I have written something about each one of them in recent past (their business growth strategies) without having to talk about how much funding they raised.

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I guess you just convinced me. Kudos. Good pointstuff raised.

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