Chinedu Echeruo at TEDxIkoyi; Crowd Sourced Business-in-a-Box
0“There is no reason why every entrepreneur should have to reinvent the wheel every single time in all the countries in Africa. My idea is to essentially to have one place where a budding entrepreneur can access a template for starting a business, and then customize it to suit their own situation. Essentially a business-in-a-box.”
Our six part feature on the talks given at TEDxIkoyi continues today with Chinedu Echeruo’s ‘Crowd-Sourced Business-in-a-Box’ idea. Harvard-educated entrepreneur and venture capitalist, Chinedu shares his idea about a collaborative solution for small businesses in Africa. Founder of urban transit guide Hopstop.com , he puts his success down to accessing skilled developers online and proposes the creation of a free, crowd-sourced knowledge base for budding entrepreneurs.
Chinedu Echeruo is a partner and head of the Principal Investing group at Constant Capital, a West Africa based investment bank. Prior to joining Constant Capital, he founded and raised nearly $8 million for two U.S based internet companies; Hopstop.com and Tripology.com. Tripology.com was acquired in 2010 by Rand McNally. He was also named Black Enterprise Magazine’s Small Business Innovator of the year and listed in the magazine’s Top 40 under 40.
Before his entrepreneurial career, Echeruo was with AM Investment Partners, a $500 million volatility-driven convertible bond arbitrage hedge fund. Prior to completing his MBA from Harvard Business School, he spent several years in the MA and Leveraged Finance groups of J.P Morgan Chase where he was involved in a broad range of M&A, Financing and Private Equity transactions.
Chinedu believes that his ‘business-in-a-box’ idea should be completely crowd-sourced, and will like to start by welcoming suggestions for a name for the project. If you will like to work with him on this or any part of the project, please email crowdbusinessinabox@gmail.com
