Hey Fan-mily!
How have you been? We hope you have been thriving despite the difficult economic climate, the past 2022 second quarter felt like a déjà vu especially the recent trends on the Nigerian exchange rate crisis and the impact it has had on tech startups /companies. Like our tradition, we will be updating you on what we have been up to.
Before we begin, we would like to ask you a few questions, do you think we are a conventional tech company or a startup? Let us know what you think by writing to us at hello@jdlab.ng. Secondly, have you also been getting updates from our founder and CEO regarding our Founder Institute’s journey? “The Founder Institute – FI is the world’s most proven network to turn ideas into fundable startups, and startups into global businesses. Since 2009, FI’s structured accelerator programs have helped over 6,000 entrepreneurs raise over $1.75BN in funding.” hmmm, sounds nice right? well, we are excited to tell you that our founder – Abdulkadir Suleiman Lapai graduated from this program recently, we will be giving you more updates as we proceed with our life journey with FI and we are hoping to also raise funds for the next phase of JD Lab’s pivoted product – JSP and this process has been difficult so if you are an investor or a venture capitalist willing to invest in a startup, do reach out to us.
Have you also noticed? We have a new social media team at the Lab. A content creator, a community engagement manager and a visual designer. If you have any suggestions on areas we need to improve, please let us know, we will appreciate your feedback on this too.
For entrepreneurs and business owners in Minna, Abuja and other parts of the country, how have you been coping with the epileptic power supply? For us at the Lab, we recently just had power restored after four months of darkness, we have been operating alternative energy supply, generators, and considering the price of fuel and diesel – let’s not even think of the price of diesel, operating costs have really been so high, but hey you know to build a great company challenges encountered must be seen as steps to success so we move.
Product Based Updates
- For our Academy we had a number of exciting activities starting from the April courses where we had enrollees in UI/UX, Frontend and Backend development, the Masterclass in Excel webinar also took place on May 11th via zoom, this webinar was anchored by Mr. Afeez Babatunde, a data analysis expert with practical experience in the use of Microsoft Excel. Our SIWES students also completed their 3 months onsite classes, this rounded off with a project exhibition by the students, five of these students were selected for our in-house internship program for one month. We are glad to inform you that we are also partnering with National Youth Service Corp (NYSC) to participate in an introductory training for Corp members at the NYSC camp at Paiko, Niger State, we hope that this activity generates interest in the Corp members to journey into the tech ecosystem. On this note, we would like to inform you that the application for our July courses is ongoing, kindly visit our page on www.academy.jdlab.ng to register. This year, we will be having summer classes for secondary /primary school students during the third term holiday. If you are a parent, teacher or guardian with kids in basic schools who are interested in learning a new tech skill, please click this link https://tinyurl.com/Summerkids2022 fill out the form. We hope to see you enrol your young ones; it is never too early to start.
- On the part of our programs and partnership, we held a few programs during Q2 starting with an Instagram live event with four amazing women in tech: Baha Catherine Maigida from Women Tech makers Minna, Khadija Ladan from She Code Africa, Onyekachi Nwakobi from Abocoders and Zalihat Muhammed Abdulazeez from Turing in celebration of the International Day of Girls in ICT whose theme was inclusion and accessibility. During the session, the discussants gave insights into the realities of young women in ICT and how opportunities can be provided for better inclusion of girls. For creativity and Innovation Day 2022, we shone a light on some creatives and innovators in various industries. We hope that this encourages members of our community about the endless possibilities in different sectors. We also had Entrepreneurs Hangout with industry leaders in the Startup ecosystem in Northern Nigeria on June 4th 2022, the discussion surrounded opportunities, challenges and the progress relating to startups in Northern Nigeria today, it was an opportunity to network and learn from participants. In the same quarter, we had a strategic visit to the Office for Nigerian Digital Innovation – ONDI a subsidiary of the National Information Technology Development Agency – NITDA and finally closed the quarter strongly with a short training by a startup coach Farida Yahya on “How to build a personal brand”. We have many more exciting programs and prospective partnerships lined up for Q3, follow our social media pages @jdlabng to stay updated.
- On the part of our educational technology systems, something exciting is happening. Yes, we are rebranding. The Founder Institute process and the feedback from the problem validation process have resulted in some decisions on the direction we are taking with our school portal system solution. First, we will be renaming our solution – you can guess that- T * * * * * E, and we will also be making this solution available for Basic schools, this also includes amazing perks for schools that would be on-boarded onto the solution. So, in the coming weeks, look out for more details. For the new JSP we are building for tertiary institutions, developments are still ongoing, we have added some new developers to the team, Said Abdulsalam for backend development and Abdulkadir Adamu for frontend development, join us to welcome the newest members #peopleOfTheLab. Hopefully, by the end of this month, the development will be at 80% completion.
- We will be ending this section on a sad note, last quarter we informed our followers of how excited we were to officially launch Labspace in May and how we have been positioning to provide a supportive platform for freelancers, remote workers, entrepreneurs and workspace with unlimited internet and electricity for startups, well this hasn’t gone well, we had setbacks majorly due to funding challenges. Nonetheless, we are working round the clock to ensure we get back on track as soon as possible and from time to time we will update you on how things go on this.
Thank you, as usual, we look forward to your feedback on our mail hello@jdlab.ng or on social media. Our social media handles remain JD LAB on Facebook and LinkedIn, and @jdlabng on Twitter and Instagram. Please send us messages, like and comment on our posts, we always like hearing from you.
See you next time.
Love,
From People of the Lab.
