Adeyemi Johnson is a visionary business leader with a wealth of experience in C-suite roles across the technology sector. He has successfully built and led high-performing teams globally, excelling in areas such as product development, marketing, finance, and operations. His leadership at HotelsNG as Chief Operating Officer and Reliance Health as Vice President contributed to significant growth.
In this interview, Yemi Johnson shares his passion for tech-driven industries and reveals the secrets behind his dynamic and successful career as a business leader.
What drives your passion for leading tech ventures?
I like the idea of creating economic opportunity, and the internet supercharges the ability to create economic opportunity for many people. This is why I love building technology businesses.
Your latest tech startup, Hyper allows game developers to distribute and monetize their games with zero cost. What’s your long-term vision for this business?
My vision for Hyper is to be one of the most preferred distribution channels that game developers consider when building their games. There’s a lot of innovation in gaming content. Developers need help with distribution and monetization. There will continue to be an increase in gaming content and Hyper needs to be a platform that helps developers make money from their sweat and effort.
Building a company from the ground up and scaling it to new heights often requires a unique leadership approach. What’s your leadership style, and how do you inspire your teams to reach their goals?
Leadership style changes as the phase of your company changes. Right now, we are a small team of 16 people with 11 engineers and I strive to be one of the biggest contributors on the team as I work on tasks across product, design, growth, data analysis, operations, and customer support. I let everyone see me doing the things we need to do to build a big company so that they know what it takes. I am also big on our culture of working with speed, taking initiative, and producing excellent work. I believe that everyone who is productive and produces outcomes takes more initiative than the regular person. Not all initiatives will work out, but you learn from those that failed. Plus the more initiatives you take the greater the likelihood of success.
You’ve successfully led gaming, health-tech, and beauty ventures. How do you approach the challenges of building tech solutions across diverse sectors?
I think all successful people in any endeavour have a technique(s) that they use to be successful at the work they do that way they are never starting from zero. For me, I have built the ability to build & design software products, analyse user behaviour, figure out digital distribution channels for any product, and generally love business problems. So whenever I am in a new environment I can reply on my toolbox of techniques to succeed.
What key operational strategies can a young leader imbibe in building and scaling businesses like you have?
Assuming you have the ability and capacity to do great work, the second thing you need is to think with mental frameworks. Frameworks are important tools that help you analyze a situation and know how to handle it. For instance, when you see a math problem, you determine if you need to solve it with a quadratic equation, or calculus. The same thing applies to mental frameworks. There are tons of frameworks out there. Elon Musk made the First Principles thinking framework popular and Jeff Bezos made the Regret minimization framework popular.
With your extensive experience in fundraising—what advice would you give to entrepreneurs looking to secure venture capital?
The person on the other side is looking for a deal and you are trying to sell them a deal. You have to ask yourself why anyone should buy the deal you are offering. If you won’t buy the deal, why should someone else? It’s not really about the idea. It’s about the deal. The deal is that this business will become a much bigger business in the future. There are many signals the person on the other side is looking for (knowingly or unknowingly). You need to ensure you are emitting those signals.
Having navigated international expansion at Hotels.ng, what are some of the key considerations for scaling businesses across different regions and cultures?
There are many things to look out for, but in my experience expansion is an expensive undertaking, however, it does not have to be. Many businesses started scrappy in the early days and did not need all the activities they were doing now that they were expanding. So I would say try and make your expansion look like the early days of your business if you can. You’re not doing this because you don’t have money, you are doing this so that you can be smarter about your expansion. For instance: you do not need employees or a physical presence in a country you are trying to expand to. Be smart about getting new customers in that market and if things are going well, you can start investing in a physical presence.
Looking ahead, what’s your vision for your next entrepreneurial venture? What challenges or industries excite you, and where do you see the most potential for innovation and disruption?
Biomedical sciences. I genuinely believe that humans will not need to die from old age. Beyond death, many human conditions can be haled if we have a better understanding of how to engineer our body and we are learning how to do this every year.
Finally, as someone who has influenced various industries through both technology and leadership, how do you want your legacy to be remembered within the tech ecosystem?
He climbed the mountains in front of him, he sent the ladder down for others to climb, and he created economic opportunities for many.
