As part of our Slush GIA program, a two-day bootcamp with interactive workshops was hosted at The Heartland Incubation Hub – Owerri, Nigeria. Their mission is to support young people in starting their business and help them create new opportunities in emerging markets with developing infrastructures. We were able to catch up with two people: Nina, workshop host, and Kolapo, the manager of Heartland Incubation Hub.
The workshops, produced in collaboration with the Shortcut, were split up into four sessions, over two fun-filled days. Nina Martin and Tomi Kaukinen were our pro coaches hosting. Nina’s responsibility was coaching the founders about storytelling and service design, while really digging into design and impact modeling. Tomi, on the other hand, focused on business development and investor relations. In particular, he went through different startup aspects: building a team, launching a product and interacting with other startups.
When we asked how the workshops went, Kolapo was happy about how all the sessions were engaging and interactive for startups. Nina was really glad to see that she could deep-dive right into the exercises to apply some design thinking and storytelling methods to each individual project.
In addition, Nina was happily surprised by how some people, who had lost loved ones or had been hurt themselves due to some societal or structural challenges, were extremely positive. Instead of being devastated, they took these experiences as a key motivation to create functioning solutions. In this way, others would not have to go through the same thing. The bootcamp enabled the entrepreneurs to share an intimate space in full support of one another.
Kolapo felt that the two days were memorable and he was happy for the natural friendship that was created with Tomi and Nina. He was especially glad for their openness to share personal stories and use real-life experience to engage the startups.
The bootcamp showed that there are definitely plenty of interesting startups to follow. Among them are Arone and GeroCare both who were in the top three in the local pitching competition held on Aug 31. Others in the group include CrispVision, Vida ICT, De Rehoboth, Phendok Bioenergy, and Aircell.
With the two days over and done with, the bootcampers headed out appreciating the time spent together sparring ideas and going through services, products, and business models. They felt that it was an honor to be at the Heartland Incubation Hub in such good company with promising entrepreneurs and change makers!
Next, Tomi and Nina will travel to Kosovo for another two days of workshops and the local pitching event on Sept 12, and Aape Pohjavirta together with Michihito Mizutani will go to Kigali, Rwanda the following week. To see more and attend Slush GIA events, check out our side-event listing here!
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