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In the country where I grew up, entrepreneurship
wasn't highly praised.
As for myself, I was always wondering
why this was such a crime.
My brain is a little unusual.
I was born in Nigeria.
But I actually grew up in a country that
doesn't exist anymore, the Soviet Union.
The society that I grew up in was very much
against entrepreneurship.
Everybody was supposed to have a job.
And get your fixed salary, without even a possibility
for an increase in salary, based on performance.
And people who are more entrepreneurial,
they were actually more looked down on.
They were ascribed different names,
that weren't always very flattering.
I wasn't somebody who liked to follow
the rules, most of the time.
But I think it is very typical of children.
And I was lucky to have my parents, who constantly were
trying to set up some kind of business.
Sending products from the Soviet Union
to Nigeria, that they could sell there at a profit margin.
And then, doing also other interesting things.
And that was unusual, during the process.
But it became more common as the Soviet Union
started to collapse.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
So there was never really an "ah-ha" moment for myself,
where I decided, oh, I want to be an entrepreneur.
It's more like, I've always wanted
to do interesting things.
And I always wanted to do things that are impactful,
and change lives.
And also wanted to work with interesting people.
And at different points of my life,
those objectives meant different things.
Sometimes, it meant going to school.
Sometimes it meant changing a job.
And this particular moment in time, it just
meant becoming a co-founder, with a very talented group
of people, trying to work on a product that has the potential
to change people's lives.
I'm one of the founders of Tenacity Health.
We are a group of three people, that
came together while I still at school, at MIT.
And, we are really passionate about health,
and specifically prevention.
I think being an entrepreneur means a lot of challenges,
but it's also extremely exciting.
Because every day you're making decisions that impact,
either the development of a new product,
that has never existed.
Or new relationships between people.
And maybe, in the distant future,
it's going to change somebody's life.
To know that you are actually directly responsible for this,
is pretty powerful.
Having lived in such difficult conditions
when I was growing up, I'm not afraid of hardship.
And I think that's kind of more important than the fact
that I was suppressed, and that I tried to rebel.
I'm used to hardships, and I'm not afraid of them.
And being an entrepreneur actually exposes you
to a high level of risk.
And I am a kind of person that is more comfortable with risk.
And you'll find, probably, that entrepreneurs are risk takers.
And also, they know how to manage risks well.
So, they're not just blindly jumping into a risky situation.
They accept risk, but they also know
how to ensure that the rest of their life is more stable.
So that they can continue doing what they do.
That's something that excites me,
and I try to get up early every day,
to basically catch that moment.
To get all my emails done before 9 o'clock.