OgaVenue raises $45k from Spark and Hotels.ng

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Well CEO @mark, once again I want to thank you for taking the time to reply to my curiosity/questions. I appreciate your patience. I understand better now. Ideas is one thing but the business as well as the execution itself are different things entirely. Plus it’s something you might need/want so whether they blow or don’t blow you can always buy or acquihire them. You are sort of, not exactly, but basically doing what Google does by thinking ahead and playing the game of chess while everybody else is playing checkers. Plus relationships is very important when doing business/investing. Thanks again for your time.

@mauri & @Okaychukwu As far as the name Oga goes, it might just be me, but I love startup names that have a max of 3 syllables. If I can pronounce your startup name in 2 syllables then I really like that because it is easier to remember and easier for me to come back for more service. If OgaVenue could do and just become Oga like how RapGenius became just Genius, it would really be nice. I think the domain name is on sale as of now. From there the conglomerate could be Oga while they have different businesses like OgaVenue or OgaHotel or OgaCab and so on and so forth.

@mauri & @Freshboi_Ekundayo, for some reason I see both of you as two different sides of the same coin. I might be wrong in that assumption but I think both of you are right. I think providing the numbers of customers/downloads will give a clearer picture of what’s going on within the business (although businesses/companies/startups don’t have to do that), but announcing a fund/investment/raise does good things for business/company/startups’ image as well. Still let’s not forget that no matter how long we talk about it, they are the ones getting and using the money. Not us.

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Well…Jolly good for him, i think you should have addressed this to the person who has had issues with the announcement, i dont.

But i would sha like to know the numbers though, MoM, QoQ, YoY, User adoption and bottlenecks, seeing as he’s an approachable guy, who knows :slight_smile:

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There’s HotelOga. :slight_smile:

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The motive for funding OgaVenue could mostly be the synergy or alignment between the two businesses. Even though the other start ups you pitched may look so good technically. OgaVenue seems to be readily conditioned to the Nigerian social scene. I see it gaining a lot of visits with minimal marketing.

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Wow, @mauri …I think you need to take things a little easy. Calm down, make your points, and don’t resort to ad hominem. It’s just Radar, you know?

PS Not saying you’re wrong or right, just that you need to be a bit more… Tactful

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They wanna see the industry celebrate raising capital more than we celebrate profitability.

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I always ask for the numbers, because that’s what it should be about.

It would make so much more sense if I read an article about the funding and it had a paragraph like, Oga Venue just raised a round of seed funding bla bla… In the last two years, the company has listed x million event centres and processed x no of bookings. They have also built strategic partnerships with… and more insightful data on the company.

I know people will say they are not obliged to share any data or info, so I just let it go

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I am a big fan of the startup business, primarily because I have interest in investing in a few businesses. I have also followed startup stories for quite a long time and I barely see or hear about companies that get funded without any evidence that shows insights into why it got funded. However, most companies (or founders) I know that got funded have some sort of domain expertise within the field of Tech, so even if their startups isn’t profitable yet, an investor would gladly put their money down.

I understand this isn’t my business to discuss but since conversation is ongoing, I might as well share my thoughts. To be frank, just like everyone, I was quite perplexed when I heard OgaVenue got funded without any numbers. At least, when Mark got funded by Spark, he said something along the line…hotels.ng generated about $250k thereabout. That alone can be used as the basis of data analysis. Actually, I don’t think this announcement should be the bone of contention. It should be considered a good thing when a company gets funded, at least, it has created a mix vibe within the community. However, having read the story line…I’ve few comments for Andrew (and I hope he gets to see this):

  1. “I currently send our monthly metrics to a few investors and I would need your permission…” – Andrew, this isn’t right. Are you trying to build a business for investors? Well, it is a little bit too late now but for future reference your vision and mission should lead you. Some KPI’s are better kept secret. A better approach could have been a bi-annual report or perhaps a sponsored post through Tech Blogs.

  2. “I received the email from Andrew 9th July. I met him 13th July. We had a deal negotiated 14th July. “

In 6 days, you negotiated (and perhaps agree to sign?) an agreement worth $45k for X number of percentage share in a crazy profitable company? I don’t know what percentage you gave up but I hope you know how these stuffs really work? I believe you are very smart and I sincerely hope that you haven’t given your life away? I don’t mean to belittle your ability, you are a very young man and you need to be informed: Entrepreneurship is also a full time position that might take a chunk of the good time. Your share within the company can become so small that you will start questioning if the business is worth your effort. Creating a venue booking platform isn’t rocket science. There is no proprietary, license or USP for this type of business. In addition, I hope you understand that the demand for Event Venues is perfectly elastic. I don’t think first movers advantage will pay off much so while expanding…B’aware of the wolfs.

  1. “He was crazy profitable”

Seriously? I had to go on the website and I did a few calculations for potential revenue. Venue with the highest price available for rent was about ~ N1, 000,000. A 5% booking charge should be about 50K. Conservatively, two bookings at least every week, four weekends per month…400K. Other venues (800K, 400K, 200K, 80K venues) can easily generate 10 to 20 bookings a month with an average revenue of about 20K each. Not bad, about 1M a month maybe more (excluding the cost of operation and management of course) is actually crazy for a new startup.

My question is, if you send these numbers to a number of investors on a monthly basis, why didn’t they call you up? In addition, why didn’t you see the business opportunity with hotels.ng the other way round? You have an edge because you book a venue for a large number of audiences. What stops you from creating a low key secondary monetization for hotel bookings and referrals for guests of the event instead of going directly to your potential competitor?

In summary, I don’t mean to challenge your competencies, my points emphasized on the need for good advisor (lawyer, mentor…), better business philosophy and ultimately a strategic business developer. I believe you have these stuffs…?

Ultimately, I wish you the best.

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Congrats to Andrew and the OgaVenue team. I have asked myself the point of the investment then came to the conclusion that it makes an incredible and strategic sense to combine HotelsNG, OgaVenue, ToLetNG. … and drinksNG in an ecosystem. The target market in most cases are complementary and a smart investor noticed that.

Talking about the numbers which we are not privy to see nor entitled to, I am confident that the potential to 10X the numbers by leveraging the existing network that Spark/HotelsNG have is worth the investment.

(To drive home the point of our non-entitlement to other people’s data, can someone ask @lordbanks and @seyitaylor what their size of LAN’s investment is and also BigCabal’s quarterly growth ? I don’t expect to get these numbers on a platter of gold, neither should you; just saying the truth.