To the rest of the world, Jason Njoku is known for taking Nollywood to a global audience. In Nigerian startup circles however, he’s also known as the arrogant son of a gun who struck it rich and won’t let the rest of us “hear word”.
If Jason is affected by any of this, he certainly gives no appearance of it. In fact, he actually seems to revel in the heady mix of awe and envy his success inspires. You can accuse him of many things, but you’ll never dock him for humblebragging.
Look beyond the apparent belligerence, the tough-talking, “I-don’t-give-an-f” veneer, however, and you’ll find an incredibly astute entrepreneur whose views on life, tech entrepreneurship and the general Naija hustle are well worth a listen.
Or a read, if that’s more your thing. And as it turns out, Jason’s been writing a lot lately. His Tumblr, which he started writing late last year, is chock full of inspiring insights into the charmed life of a young African jet-setting new media mogul. Like the wheels he recently bought for his wife. Very inspiring. Of course for every mundane and familial musing on the blog, there’s a dozen instructive and practical thoughts to be found there, never fear.
I asked Jason why he’s gotten so talkative all of a sudden. What’s the story?
“No story”, he said. “Knowledge sharing within the ecosystem is important”.
And I agree with him, all the while admiring his blog’s sidebar, generously adorned as it is with links to the international press fawning he’s received. Of course blogging, when shrewdly done, can be employed to considerable positive PR and personal branding effect. But to Jason’s credit, the information value of what he puts out somehow manages to make it not come off as boosterism. I’ve got to admit that I kinda like this talkative Jason.
Over time, I’ve come to appreciate that the entrepreneurs and professionals who work within the ecosystem are not only far better qualified to expound on salient issues, they are often far better writers than us bloggers and self-proclaimed tech pundits. I’m talking about people like Victor Asemota, OoTheNigerian, Seyi Taylor, Editi Effiong, Gbenga Sesan, Emeka Okoye, and many more. Sadly, they can’t or don’t blog nearly often enough — save for Victor, whose prolific writing prowess I’d kill for. Even when they do, the half life of their thoughts are painfully short. At best, they’ll bounce around for a bit within the echo chamber of their personal Twitter networks, before dying quietly.
If somehow we could bring all their interactions together in one place — make it more of a conversation than several disparate and ultimately inconsequential monologues — we could all learn a lot.
In the meantime, I hope Jason can sustain the tempo. Simple as it might seem, his blogging is doing a lot more for the ecosystem than he knows.
