Lagos startup Week, an annual week-long celebration of entrepreneurs, investors, professionals, and creatives in the city of Lagos held its fourth edition last week across various venues in the city.
The event, organised by Prime Startups, is reshaping the entrepreneurial culture in Lagos, and by extension, Nigeria. Through a hard emphasis on innovation as a watchword for entrepreneurs.
Since the first edition held in 2015, Lagos Startup Week has played an annual host to thousands of entrepreneurs who take out time to be part of the week’s celebration. Having been at the forefront of driving the much-needed talk and push for innovation in the city of Lagos, the week has invited speakers from various destinations outside Nigeria to share insights.
Focusing on over 10 tracks, and hosting over 30 sessions, this year’s Lagos Startup Week dished out the best and highest form of quality contents to its attendees. The week which started with a kickoff ceremony on Monday 24th September, held various other sessions spanning areas like startup finance, growth hacking, fintech, retail, business and more.
The event kicked off on Monday, September 24, 2018, where seasoned entrepreneurs like Onyeka Akumah (CEO/Founder, Farmcrowdy), Vivian Nwakah (founder, Medsaf), Simon Aderinola(country director, Africa’s Talking) and Chinedu Azodoh (co-founder/CTO, Max) were hosted on a panel session moderated by Business Insider Sub-Saharan Africa.
The panel focused on building a business “from zero to $1 Million” at the kickoff ceremony.
Olumide Olayinka, Managing Partner Prime startups, who is the Co-organiser of the event says: “The week has over time proven to be of immense value to attendees, partners and sponsors. We curate and invite the best entrepreneurs, professionals and innovators to carve out a map forward for the city of Lagos. One which is detailed enough to move this city from point A to B”
“What we have successfully done with the Lagos Startup Week is encourage a new crop of innovators. This is bound to have a ripple effect on the city and we can’t wait to begin seeing these changes. Our collaboration with strategic sponsors like Infinix Nigeria made this even much easier. I think Lagos Startup Week comes off as a model that should be replicated across the various African ecosystems”
Other days of the week saw several masterclasses, panels and fireside chats from industry leaders, each catering and sharing insights with their target audience about respective industries. Tosin Olaseinde (founder, Money Africa), Abass Idaresit (CEO, WildFusion), Ezra Olubi (co-founder, Paystack), Adia Sowho (Mines.io), Aniedi Udo (program manager, Google) to name a few, played crucial roles during the week.
A free portfolio review for photographers in collaboration with The Now Collectives turned out to be a major highlight of the week. The review, sponsored by Infinix Nigeria rewarded the winner with an Infinix device. At Lagos Startup Week, it is held to heart that innovation is not limited and transcends every possible sector.
The week officially ended with several panels – Fintech, Retail and investment – and an official Closing Ceremony.
International developer’s conference DevJam + Node.js held on Saturday 29th, which signalled the end of this edition of the Lagos Startup Week.