Yele Bademosi is regarded as one of the foremost innovators in the African blockchain ecosystem. Having built a handful of Web2 and Web3 projects, he is a first-hand witness to the triumphs and travails of blockchain technology on the continent.
In this crypto interview with Technext, Yele talks about his daring decision to drop out of Medical School to pursue a career in Tech, the challenges that came with the FTX crash and what he intends to accomplish with the recently launched Onboard Wallet.
Yele Bademosi got to know about blockchain in 2015 but he did not purchase his first until almost two years later when he bought Bitcoin in 2017:
“I bought Bitcoin when it was around $3,000. That made me so excited about the possibilities of this technology. One of the things that made me understand the potential was when I was in the US, I was out of money and I was able to buy bitcoin on Buycoins and was about to deposit the bitcoin on Wallet Africa, which had a digital card.
I was able to use the digital card to book my Uber and get around. I remember just thinking, like wow there is a new way to move money globally. It was just really exciting.”
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Dropping out of Med School to pursue a career in Tech
While studying for his medical degree at the University of London, Yele Bademosi dropped out and decided to build apps due to his interest in computer technology despite the fact that Medicine was the preferred course of study by his parents.
Almost a decade after that, Yele retrospectively says he would make that decision again if given the chance.
“I have a blog post I wrote about ten years ago and I read it every year. A letter I sent to my mum outlining why I wanted to leave Medicine. Medicine can be a fulfilling career for many people but for me, I knew that I was driving towards maximizing impact and on a personal pursuit of happiness and fulfillment.
I just knew I wanted to pursue things that were sort of meaningful and felt could give me that feeling of achieving my maximum impact. If I was 22 or 23 I would definitely still make that decision. No regrets on that side.”
Yele Bademosi, CEO of Nestcoin on leaving Medicine for tech
Yele Bademosi remarks that his biggest personal successes in building products have come on the African continent.
“I think the big difference between building for the rest of the world and building for Africa is there’s a lot of opportunities that are not yet solved. When you look at any frontier market including Africa, you can’t run out of ideas of what one can potentially do.”
Bouncing back from the FTX crash
Yele Bademosi’s startup, Nestcoin suffered from the November 2022 crash of FTX, the second-largest crypto exchange at the time. After losing all assets in cash and stablecoins to the collapse, Nestcoin had to lay off some of its staff in a period Yele describes as a challenging one.
However, less than a year later, the Web3 firm announced its successful raise of $1.9M last month. The raise is branded as a strategic funding round which will enable the company to strengthen its balance sheet and focus on building Onboard, a digital money app that provides access to financial services.
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Commenting on how he was able to turn the tide around in less than a year and gain investors’ trust despite the uncertainty in the blockchain industry, Yele Bademosi, CEO of Nestcoin says there were a couple of contributing factors.
“One is that when it happened, we were very transparent and open with what had happened. We communicated with our community and our investors moved very quickly to the decisions that we made and we treated people with respect and kindness. And I think that resonated positively with the investor community,” he said
Secondly, Yele Bademosi says Nestcoin has a strong and experienced team that has built a lot of products in the past, with various degrees of success.
“And actually, the silver lining of FTX was us kind of going back to the drawing board to think about the most impactful single thing we can be doing and sort of putting the best people within the Nestcoin ecosystem on one singular focus.”
Yele Bademosi
According to him, the problem Nestcoin is trying to solve is not Africa-specific, which is significant.
“It’s something that affects the whole world. And so a lot of our investors that back us do so because they believe in the team and approach against the opportunity and are still fundamentally long term bullish on the impact this technology can have on the world. Those were the contributing factors for us.”
The Onboard Wallet is a digital money app that gives anyone anywhere access to a USD account.
“What’s unique about it is that it provides an ultimate form of security because only you have access to the funds. You’re not trusting us to keep control of your money. You can send money to anyone anywhere as long as they have a similar digital wallet.”
According to Yele, the product also supports virtual cards which allow users to spend dollars in over 160 countries, anywhere VisaCard is accepted.
“There’s a bunch of other things we would be introducing. But one of our core beliefs as a business is that your geographical location should not determine the quality of financial services you have access to. And this is the base/foundation of that vision.”
Yele Bademosi and Nestcoin are super excited about version 2 of the Onboard Wallet which will be coming up.
“It’s just some really amazing improvements that are coming and we can’t wait to share with the world.”
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