Doing Life With… is a BellaNaija Features series that showcases how people live, work, travel, care for their families and… everything in between. We are documenting the lives of all people and ensuring everyone is well-represented at BN.
Did you miss last week’s conversation with Fisayo Fosudo? You can catch up here.
This week, we’re doing life with Ted Oladele, the ex-Vice President of Design at Flutterwave and co-founder, Mira. Enjoy the conversation.
Hello Ted. How do you do?
I’m good. I’m doing fine. Nigeria is interesting right now, so we are just staying alive.
Give us a peep into your background, your childhood especially and the aspect of your childhood that influenced who you are today
My childhood was interesting because it was a lot of things. I grew up in Ikorodu but I was born in Ketu. We moved to Ikorodu when I was 7. I was living there till I was 18 or thereabout when I left home. My parents are pastors so I was a church boy and a lot of my life was going to school, getting home, going to church and back home. I liked playing football too. In church, I played the drums too. And I think that’s what my childhood is all about.
But when you come from Ikorodu, it’s a place you want to “escape”. Now, it doesn’t mean it’s a terrible place, it’s just very secluded from the real Lagos and you can really get blinded from seeing what life outside can be. So I left home for school, YabaTech, and never looked back. I got a job while in school and that’s it. I’d say what has really informed my life now is being aware that you’re in a very small fraction of the entire ecosystem. It’s like a state or country and there’s always life and experiences to be had outside of it.
Tell us about your journey into tech
After secondary school, I didn’t get into a university immediately. So I had like a break year and I spent it helping my mum in her shop. But like every other child, I was online a lot – Facebook, 2go and others. And for some reason, I became fascinated about how these things worked, particularly Facebook. I always wanted to become an engineer or a doctor like other children but somehow I just got fascinated about how the social media platforms were built. So I learnt that it was like engineering or HTML and stuff and I started learning from my mum’s Nokia phone. I saved up a little to buy a small laptop. I told my mum about it and she paid the rest of the money. The laptop wasn’t powerful but it was enough to learn the basics and that drove me to apply for computer science at YabaTech. Before YabaTech, I was already way ahead with writing codes, so school was boring to me because they were teaching the basics. I was lucky to get a job with HotelsNG and that’s pretty much my escape outside Ikorodu and into tech.
What about Flutterwave?
I spent a couple of months with HotelsNG and then I got another job at Delivery Science which was my first tech job, really. HotelsNG was a tech job, don’t get me wrong, but DS is a pure technology company. I met a lot of cool people at Delivery Science. I met my wife there. Met Ope, Ezra and a bunch of people who now run Paystack. From there, I worked for a foreign non-profit for a while before joining Flutterwave as a front-end engineer. Then I transitioned into a designer and eventually, Vice President of Design.
Whew! Everything seems pretty easy and direct
Haha, trust me, it’s easier to narrate. You have no idea. That’s just a very short form of the journey.
We’re proud of you, Ted
Thank you.
So the majority of your work at Flutterwave now involves managing a team of diverse people. How has this influenced your pattern of relating with people outside of work and in your day-to-day activities?
Here’s the funny thing, most of my friends outside of work are also my colleagues. So the lines are really blurred. I barely have friends who aren’t my colleagues, so it makes it easier. We are talking about work, and we switch to talking about life and back to work again. And that’s good because it helps do good work. We understand each other’s personal life and what we’re each going through. It makes me realise that work friends are important. People say your colleagues are not your friends and I think it’s a bloody lie. Your colleagues can become a very important part of your life even outside where you’re currently working.
Friendship goals
You can say.
Tell us about Mira
Mira is a restaurant management system and it’s one of the very few local companies offering this. Most people use international products because they think it’s the norm or not enough people provide high-quality software in this space. But what exactly is a restaurant management system? In summary: a restaurant system is that you walk into a restaurant and you tell the waiter your order. The waiter goes somewhere to keep a record of the order and sends the order to the kitchen. Now, Mira is that system but with a step further. Mira directly allows customers to place the order themselves. So you’re sort of skipping the waiter without skipping the waiter (Mira). And you do this by scanning a QR code. You scan it, see the menu, select what you want, and then place the order. That order goes straight to the kitchen and when you’re done, on that same link, you can also make the payment, get the bill and walk out.
Oh, that’s cool. So Mira gives you the ability to control your restaurant experience
Yes, something like that.
Is there an experience that influenced you to build Mira?
Oh, yes. I was on a date with my partner in London and we walked into this restaurant where the only interaction we had with the waiter was when they brought the food. And that was it. It was so brilliant and efficient. It made a lot of sense. My partner and I looked at each other and we were like yes, this can be done in Nigeria and we should do it.
What challenges did you encounter while building Mira and how did you overcome them?
We are still encountering challenges o. It’s still a new company, just under a year. I’d say the biggest challenge is convincing restaurants that we’re finally a local company that can offer them world-class software. A lot of restaurants have been burnt with a couple of local software, so I can’t really blame them. What we’re trying to do now is convince them with our backgrounds that, “Hey look, I lead design at Flutterwave and my partner has done the same in an operational capacity at Paystack, so we know what we’re doing.”
What has been the most rewarding aspect of your career journey so far?
I’ve met a lot of cool and good people. Like I said, I met most of my friends at work. But also being very instrumental in building one of Africa’s biggest tech companies ever has been truly rewarding. That’s going to be in history forever. Flutterwave is kind of the biggest fintech right now, valuation-wise and I was pretty there from the beginning. And not just there, I led a lot of initiatives that led us to that benchmark. It’s really rewarding that it can be done from Nigeria, that I don’t have to go join an existing company but instead build a giant company here in Nigeria.
That’s some flex right there
I tell you.
What does success mean to you?
I think it’s reaching a point in my career where I feel like, “Oh wow, I really did this without sacrificing my personal happiness.” I’m very happily married. I married the love of my life. Being able to experience that alongside professional success, that’s success.
What’s that unconventional thought you have about the world?
I believe the world is designed and we are all just playing our parts in it. Somebody somewhere designed every single thing. Just like Ted is going to end up at Flutterwave and do this. Ted will get married to Seyike. You will interview me at this point. Everything is already planned. It doesn’t have to be Jesus or God or religious. It’s just designed. Also, karma is just something we made to make ourselves feel good. Terrible people will get away with things. Good people will not always be rewarded for their good deeds. Life is not linear, it’s mostly grey.
What’s a typical day in your life?
It depends on the part of the world that I’m in. If I’m in Lagos, I tend to wake up early. I brush, coffee and then get to work. It’s pretty much work. I try to hang out with my friends during the week too or play video games. I don’t do that a lot anymore. I make a very conscious effort to spend time with my wife at night and even randomly during the day. If I’m in London, I wake up really late because London, or the UK generally, is relaxing. And the rest of the day is pretty much the same as Lagos.
There’s a boy downtown somewhere, hoping to become Ted someday, what advice do you have for him?
Stay in your lane. Define your personal values and stick to them early. Evolve them as life changes but believe in your journey. I believe everybody has a journey to success and also a journey to failure. Just believe in yours, stick to them and you’ll end up fantastic. If you want to become a doctor, just know that’s not set in stone, it can change but what you want is to be successful in life. Try and define early on what that success looks like, then break it down into smaller forms of success and celebrate each of them. You might never attain that peak success you’re looking for but you’d have attained a lot of successes in between and that’s amazing too.
What little things or hobbies do you do to spark joy or feel alive?
Playing video games, hanging out with my wife, taking walks or travelling around the world with my wife. Catching up with friends because they are like family to me.
Thank you for being on Doing Life With…, Ted
Thank you for having me.
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Many thanks to Ted Oladele for having this conversation with us and answering all our questions – and swiftly too, we must add.
Do you love this content, have any feedback for us or want to be a BellaNaija Features contributor? We’d love to read from you. Shoot us an email: [email protected]. Join us on Saturday for the next episode!
