#50 (Part 2) Building an on-demand platform for African content, Jason Njoku, Co-founder and CEO at IrokoTV

Building The Future Podcast

Jason Njoku is the co-founder at IrokoTv, a web platform that provides paid-for Nigerian films on-demand. It is one of Africa’s first mainstream online movie streaming websites, giving instant access to over 5,000 Nollywood film titles. Jason is who you can refer to as a serial entrepreneur. With several failed businesses under his belt, he went ahead to create what is largely regarded as the “Netflix of Africa” Jason founded IrokoTv alongside his friend and then flatmate, Bastian Gotter. See Bastian’s interview on IrokoTv here. This episode is the first of 2-part conversation I had with Jason at his office in Lagos, as part of the mini-series on African video on demand platform. In this episode you’ll learn: When IrokoTv started out, they had no competition. How did they cope with the sudden influx of players in their market? How they had to innovate faster than competitors to maintain their lead in the market What is the importance of winning for small companies? What does winning mean for small companies and why should they focus on it during the initial stages? IrokoTv has raised $40million so far, and yet they have been losing money constanly. According to Jason, Angel investors who invested $80k got bought out for $2.4million. How was this possible? How to raise money from four different investors Why Netflix coming to Nigeria has no impact on their revenue About Jason’s dream to IPO IrokoTv In 2015, they had to let some staff go. Find out why and what they had to do to fix the problem Jason thinks IrokoTv would have died in 2015 if certain action had not been taken. What is it? Why he thinks the FinTech space in Africa is overheated The future of tech ecosystem in Nigeria People in early stage companies have a massive valuation disconnect from reality. And more