Happy New Week. Wishing you all a highly successful and productive week ahead.
I found this article by Biglabalaba blog to be rather interesting. I think you all may too. Do you agree with the views raised by this blogger? Also visit www.spark.ng to learn more about the company.
Cheers,
Uduak
Who Really Funded Spark.ng
Initial Spark
When Jason and Bastian announced that they had launched a tech fund, I beg your pardon, a company building company, I asked myself and those that know me, a simple question. Where did the funds come from? My initial suspicion was that they had moved funds from Iroko Partners. I knew they were paper millionaires but definitely did not think they had such liquidity. Jason and Bastian would again raise funds from individual investors in Singapore, London and Africa (Their words not mine). This for me was highly suspicious, why would someone who had raised funds from Tiger Global need to go cap in hand to Singapore, London and Africa? And where the hell in Africa did they go? Don’t they know Africa is not a country let alone a city? If you were doing well and had another great idea then your investors would almost certainly back you. No?The answer to my suspicion was simple, Tiger Global were not buying Jason’s bullshit any more than I was and refused to release tranche two/three of their funding to Iroko Partners, Jason and Bastian were given a timeline to deliver and decided to hedge their bets with Spark by diverting funds from Iroko Partners to Spark via salaries.
Jason and Bastian had only one plan, pump money into Alaba and watch more money roll in, this was a mistake, I stated earlier that the math didn’t add up. They were funding the wrong people.
The straw that felled this Iroko
The Iroking palaver was the wind that blew the hen’s ass open, it exposed the belly of Iroko or should I say the ass of this Iroko. It showed that Jason knew little about how to exploit his market and was all about the hype.If you listen to or read Jason’s hype you would think Iroko was the next best thing, well it isn’t. When you go through Iroko’s balance sheet you realise there is hardly any cheddar for a mouse let alone enough to buy a house in Lekki. Michael Ugwu has confirmed this.
This Iroko will die, long live a new Iroko
IrokoTV’s days are numbered under Jason and Bastian, and this is a great shame. They had the potential to create a beast and instead of doing this Jason chose to brag about the beast yet to be created.What will happen in the next 6 to 9 months is that Jason and Bastian will be asked to save Iroko or walk, if they do make it work then great, if they don’t then expect a blog from Mr Incorrigible telling you about the millions he made from selling and how he is on to the next big thing. . . ”
Full story on BigLabaLaba Blog.