Lai Labode is a business logic expert with a very extensive knowledge of the African emerging markets. He is a mobile finance expert and a serial innovator who has pioneered and developed many winning business models especially across multiple industries in the field of mobile finance.

He founded and was the CEO of Salt & Einstein MTS – Africa’s first Mobile Financial Services Aggregator – up until 2016 when he resigned from the company.

Lai Labode is currently the Managing Director, Mobile Gaming Limited – a consortium of Five Nigerian Companies and a government sports fund raising outfit poised to create a new gaming culture across Africa with its new All Chanel Model (ACM) .

In this interview with The Spark  (a youth empowerment platform), he talks about his entrepreneurship journey, challenges he’s faced so far in the business world, projects he’s working on and The Spark he’d be giving off to encourage the Rookie of the month in his/her own pursuit of success.

Lai Labode whose entrepreneurship journey started back when he was an undergraduate in the University of Abuja says one of the key things that will challenge an entrepreneur is ‘’understanding what it really takes to start a business.’’

Since I started doing a lot of tech and I have done for many years. One of the key things that’ll really challenge you is understanding what it really takes to start a business and take it to the end and of course we are always looking for talent, finding the right fit can be very challenging. A lot of times you need to find people and train them to actually make things happen for yourself, you really need to know what you looking for and be ready to make an investment on those who work for you.

The Harvard Business school alumnus has offered to empower The Spark’s Rookie of the month with business mentorship, free consultancy and cash grant.

I will say three things. One, we are able to offer (we are doing that right now) some mentorship, some free consultancy and a little bit cash I’ll prefer not to disclose the amount.

CLICK HERE TO ENTER THE ROOKIE CONTEST AND BE EMPOWERED

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