MYBETARIDE 2021 EXPERIENCE AS A STARTUP
Around 7 years ago, I began a learning curve practice around entrepreneurship and what it takes to be an entrepreneur, visiting all prominent entrepreneurship events in Abuja, Lagos, and Ibadan regularly. Not long after that, in 2017, I founded “Eatnownow,” — a tech-enabled startup that assists anybody in their state or city in obtaining their desired cuisine from any restaurant of their choice.
However, amidst bootstrapping, I and my team got featured on Techpoint for what we’re trying to build along the line, but couldn’t effectively manage the company since I was just a part 2 student running a startup in another city and couldn’t get someone to help manage the cause.
However, I decided to trade it for a new company, Mybetaride, and get it to a point of a venture-backed root by running it with due diligence and proven strategies/principles to build a great company and lessons learned from past startup failure.
The first stop on making this happen eventually made it happen because we are trying to solve the issues faced in travel transportation within the country while we eventually got accepted into Scalar Angels, and I am glad we took the cause and were accepted into the cohort.
In this post, I want to talk about our experience in the Scalar Angels cohort ’21 batch that is still underway as I write this.
How we got into Scalar Angels
Well, at first, I will say Scalar Angels is like the “Harvard of startups accelerator.” We knew what to do but were pushed to do it more efficiently while connecting us to big and successful guys in the startup industry wasn’t left behind.
Everything changed for our company after we joined Scalar Angels. While I offer a wealth of technical and business skills to the new enterprise we’re attempting to launch, the fact that I’ve never gone through a supervised accelerator means I don’t have the necessary network to acquire funding or go through the process of establishing a successful firm. Many of my friends told me that I shouldn’t have too many roadblocks in building my next venture because of my previous experience building one that generated some traction and revenue, my impact on over 3,000 young entrepreneurs in partnership with the UN (Hult Business School), and my MBA proved certifications. But the worry of missing out on deals and not being connected to the right people at the right time is the only thing that has had me thinking! As a result, my co-founders and I began pooling all of our resources to apply to accelerators.
Furthermore, while we keep applying to the likes of Y-combinators, we got accepted to Founders Institute but upended it due to some logistic reasons, and many more. Then, I found Scalar Angels and we as well put in for this with all possible best from me and alongside my co-founders, and we finally got selected into the remote cohort.
Presumptions about Scalar Angels and our present experience with them.
I got the application link from a founders group I am part of and having passed through the interview processes, video calls, audio calls, live chats, we got an acceptance email from them saying we’re welcome on board!
I forwarded it immediately to my co-founders and my team at large since I knew this is a way to as well reignite their passion for what we’re building. Everyone was happy and we began the journey with them. Well, we had some concerns in the fully remote batch, but in the end, the remote setup turned out to be a positive thing in many unexpected ways. Even in the first few weeks of the program, it was evident that we’re on a journey to building a solid business.
The Scalar Angels Structure
As weeks go on, the team keeps getting bigger, and going remote has only accelerated this trend while the structure of the cohort facilitates scaling up. The batch accepted into the cohort got divided into sections with mentors falling in from week one.
Stages of Scalar Angels Program
The program had a different approach than we’d imagined. It’s fully focused on building great products and attaining product-market fit and using all of these gatherings to bang funding. Also, we had a lot of talks on product development, product-market fit, customer development, business model canvas, pitching, sales, and marketing.
There were also weekly check-in sessions every Thursday to ensure milestones are reached weekly for consistent effort in all aspects. Saturdays are for mentors, successful founders’ conversations with us, and class engagements for program continuation.
It’s a lot of work for us as we were mandated to use tools that could enhance a better building and help us better track progress.
Why I found the program helpful!
Apart from getting help from successful founders, mentors, valuable resources shared, I could see it’s needed for us to go through the cohort. We learnt details about startup development, and we had lots of intro calls from VCs, etc.
Apart from the tractions we’ve made so far from our prelaunch (over 5,000 users, over 2000 active users in 9 months), we’re recognized by Hustle Fund and View Sonic (In partnership with Acceleration for all) as the top 100 promising startups in the coming year. A great feat for us as we wrap up with 2021 and carefully look in-depth into 2022.
Advice from the partners!
For every check-in session and Saturday class, partners from the cohort give pieces of advice and suggestions to our continuous building. These are inspiring pieces of advice that are second to none. Though we didn’t agree with a few of those pieces of advice, and they’re open to our responses to them and thus made it all worthwhile as we both saw the better side of the effect.
Shout Out to our Mentors
However, it will be very unfair not to give a shout-out to some of our mentors like Emeka Ehinze (Managing partner at Scalar Angels), the visionary Mark Kleyner, Wamnu Muigai from Andaa Capital, Olumide from Bfree Africa, George Adowei from Klynox, and Enemali Oguche from Imsi 3D for their unwavering support from the conceptual design to aftermath support for the whole 16 weeks.
OUR 2022 STRATEGIC BUILDING PLANS
With the growing complaints and activities in the TranportTECH industry, we continually remind our wonderful community to always do some research before making any decisions as per their travels. With this in mind, we would like to inform our community of Mybetaride’s development and progress at all times.
Before doing that, we’d like our current users acquired during our prelaunch and prospective ones to know that we can relate to how stressful it could be catching up with opportunities when transportation depends on this — one must have a solution for this! We’ll keep adjusting based on constructive input or feedback until there is a perfect match for solving problems pertaining to travel transportation scaling from Nigeria (a country with over 8 million daily interstate and city travelers and over 210 million people living here)...
We’ll start receiving applications for our “Mybetaride Agents” as this is part of our Q1 expansion plans. This is so because our full launch would be in Q1 of 2022. You can always check us out on social media or regularly visit mybetaride.com to stay up-to-date with the latest news!
MARKET GAP
The TransportTECH systems we currently have are so familiar with what they do and the current system that it is difficult to imagine how outdated these activities really are. The TransportTECH systems need a seamless system that goes beyond what today’s standard practices and just vehicle owners can do.
TransportTECH is a perfect application for seamless technology. There are still important challenges to face and decisions to make, going forward in the use of TransportTECH. Mybetaride’s exploration into TransportTECH has shown it has enormous potential which could revolutionize the global transport system. At this point in time, there are many new implementations being developed with full promise ahead of us!
VALUE PROPOSITION
Mybetaride is operating a TransportTECH leveraging technology to solve real transportation problems facing the TransportTECH systems. We own no vehicles yet, we can let you access verified vehicles worthy enough for highway travels and safeguarded with just our seamless technology.
While laying the groundwork for the creation of a proactively transforming decentralized TransportationTECH system, we also want to offer you an opportunity to be involved in Africa’s evolving one-to-many transport ecosystem stemming out of it.
GO-TO-MARKET APPROACH
We are in active discussions with multiple potential investors. We’re also speaking with customers to help them better understand our product and services while continuing communication with other firms.”.
ROADMAP
Innovation is a key component for driving the conversation of global adoption and use cases to the real world. Mybetaride’s RoadMap, seen below, reflects this priority on innovation:
PARTNERSHIPS & DEVELOPMENT
We are all aware that partnerships are crucial to the success of business ventures. We focus on acquiring knowledge and expertise, increasing our competitive advantage and credibility while growing our products and user base.
Just like we have always stated, product development is a priority for us, thus we have started the development of API technologies for Real travel performance checks and request a scheduled ride. A technical report will be made available to you soon about this progress in the form of an update from us because it’s very important that you know what kind of contribution each developer might make when it comes to developing with our company community members later down the line., which is why your input matters so much!
MARKETING
For every project to succeed, it is imperative that marketing should be included in its plan. The number of travelers has increased in the market and these individuals need to see the importance of enjoying long-distance travel. The most successful businesses will evolve their design and marketing strategies to meet global standards.
APPLICATION UPDATES AND NEW VERSION RELEASE
There are a number of reasons why a company or professional services firm might consider releasing new application versions. Most of them stem from having to reposition themselves in the marketplace or industry they’re found in. We understand that we have to be competitive over our competitors within the TransportTECH industry so that we can develop ourselves as disruptors, not disrupted.
We’ve decided that it’s time for us always keep up with releasing updated versions of our applications and tactics- this is meant to increase traffic, generate more leads, improve project appeal while making things easier for users through adding functionality that improves their experience.
LOYALTY PROGRAMS
We want to be able to show our customers we’re on their side and provide them with continuous solutions. This is why we would run customer loyalty programs, as a way of ensuring that they know how much we care about their experience and the community-building process continues. We will do this by engaging travelers in building lifelong solutions within the TransportTECH ecosystem while at the same time consistently building up our own base of members.
It’s important to remember that Mybetaride is not just some meme project. It is looking forward to revolutionizing the global transport system with its exceptional services.
We were successful in transporting over 5,000 passengers during our pre-launch period. And so we don’t have any doubt that we’ll be moving like the speed of light in this coming year!
It’s exciting to see the ideas we have come alive as a full-fledged company. We already have some considerable measure of success, some successes on their ways, and all creating synergies within the Mybetaride ecosystem. This won’t happen without our awesome users from prelaunch! We are always grateful for your support and look forward to building the most innovative community in this industry.
If you’ve followed the above thus far, you can tell that most of the things talked about are easily accessible via the cohort leverages. Finally, building a startup could seem hard but getting things done quickly is the greatest deal when building while Scalar Angels community is the one out there to start a great company with.
Finally, I hope this post gives you a good sense of our Scalar Angels experience and sheds more light on how things work remotely. I’ll be happy to answer any questions here!
We are very excited about what 2022 has in store!!! This is just the beginning!!!! Stay Connected!!!!!!!!