Here are six young Nigerian entrepreneurs currently trending in their various fields of endeavour in America.
Emeka Anen
Based in Los Angeles California, Emeka Anen is the CEO of THRONE, (formerly known as InstaSneaks) an online sneaker and streetwear marketplace app. The app provides a simple, safe and mobile-first solution for buying, selling and discovering rare sneakers. The app has awesome images, snappy performance and secure payment options. The app currently has over 350,000 users which make up a vibrant community, actively admiring and bartering on sneakers.
Though it started out as a place for sneakers, it has expanded to include editorial content on lifestyle, technology and music. Anen believes this expansion will drive THRONE from being just a product to an ecosystem.
THRONE has successfully raised venture capital funding from notable investors including DreamIt Ventures, Comcast Ventures, The Atom Factory and more.
THRONE is currently available in the Apple Store and on Google Play.
Jessica Matthews
A dual citizen of Nigeria & the U.S., Jessica Matthews is the founder and CEO of Uncharted Play, Inc, a renewable energy company specializing in motion-based, miniaturized power systems.Uncharted Play seeks to democratise energy access worldwide. Jessica has a degree in Psychology and Economics from Harvard University, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Jessica was invited by President Barack Obama to the White House to represent small companies for the signing of the America Invents Act in 2012, and currently serves as an Ambassador of Entrepreneurship for Nigeria. In 2016, she was selected to ring the NASDAQ opening ceremony bell, representing all Forbes 30 Under 30 alumna.
Her list of accolades include Fortune’s Most Promising Women Entrepreneurs, Forbes 30 under 30 list, Black Enterprise’s Innovator of the Year, and Scientist of the Year by the
Harvard Foundation.
Obinna (Obi) Onungwa
Obinna is the founder of Cue, an app designed to help people find, book, rate and pay top barbers throughout the world. Cue is a curated community of premier barbers in major cities throughout the world. Through the app Barbers can reach new clients, receive payments and solicit client feedback. On the flip side clients can find and favourite barbers, join their queues, pay for haircuts electronically and leave feedback.
Obinna was formerly a Business Development Associate for early stage tech start-up The Daily Muse before setting up Cue. Previously, he worked as a Fellow with the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology in Accra, Ghana. He also worked as a Senior Marketing Associate for LivingSocial, an online coupon company.
Zim Ugochukwu
Zim is the founder of Travel Noire, a digital publishing platform that creates tools and resources for the unconventional traveler. Founded by a Glamour Magazine award-winning entrepreneur, Travel Noire is a necessity in every traveler’s toolkit.
Previously, she cloned a gene as a biologist, ran a national anti-tobacco campaign, helped open a Civil Rights Museum & traveled through 90% of Asia.
With Travel Noire writers living and traveling all over the world, it is the most comprehensive end-to-end resource for unconventional travellers.
Angelica Nwandu
Angelica is the founder of “The Shade Room“. The Shade Room is about celebrity gossip and more.Angelica started The Shade Room, two years ago and it now has an instagram account with over 7.1 million followers.
According to her in a recent interview. “The Shade Room is really the “truth” room where myself and the readers can express our honest opinions on certain topics. However, after we became more and more popular, the readers that we affectionately labeled ‘roommates’, demanded more than just gossip. They wanted a little bit of community news, trending news, etc. They wanted more positivity and substance as well, and we found that it was important to provide more than just gossip, even though that is our primary focus!”
Nwandu started The Shade Room right after she’d quit a dead-end job as an accountant for a motorcycle company that, she told me, had stopped paying her. Now she has a full-time staff of four who work in shifts to publish 24 hours a day.
Makinde Adeagbo
Makinde Adeagbo is a software engineer at Pinterest and the founder of /dev/color. Currently an Engineering Manager, Makinde has worked at nearly every top software engineering firm in Silicon Valley, from Microsoft and Apple to Dropbox and Facebook. Originally born in Nigeria, he was raised in Louisville, Kentucky and has a degree in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
/dev/color brings together engineers from top companies such as Facebook, Uber and Airbnb to provide support for each other and a voice to African Americans in Silicon Valley companies who make up a tiny percentage of technical workers.
