Preston Timeyin Ideh is Co-founder and CEO of Stears, an Intelligence startup providing data and insights on local (and global) affairs for enterprises and individuals. Stears' mission is to become the world's most trusted source of African data, insight and data collection tools for businesses and financial and policy professionals. Before founding Stears, Preston worked as a corporate lawyer for several years and co-founded LSE Africa Summit, an annual conference highlighting African business developments.
In this interview, Preston shares his journey, from Secondary school in Loyola Jesuit College, Abuja, to building a Startup that has raised a seed investment of $600,000 and has been selected for Google’s Black Founders Fund cohort II.
Watch the Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAqG8QfK5Z8&t
Video Timestamps
0:00 Introduction
1:10 - Preston's Background, Secondary School
6:48 - Attending LSE
9:55 - The Conception of Stears
15:55 - Working in Corporate Law
17:30 - Coming back to Nigeria
22:40 - Going to Nigerian Law School
24:32 - The Nigerian Elections
26:39 - Building an Election Site to showcase Election Data
27:35 - Crowdsourcing Data Project
29:11 - Success of the Election Site (2 Million Users, CNN Article, etc.)
32:48 - What Stears does
34:32 - Raising Money for Stears
38:09 - Stear's Audience
41:11 - What Preston is most Proud of
44:46 - On Learning
46:56 - The Speed and Velocity of Early Stage Startups
47:56 - Anything He would do Differently
49:32 - Predictions for where we're headed Economically
53:47 - One Takeaway