blog3 min read

Designing a community driven design company The senpai collective

The journey of building a startup has been very interesting and very hard, especially being a community based startup in Nigeria...

SENPAI is a creative technology company that is focusing on building an ecosystem of creative people who are using technology to create beautiful and meaningful digital experiences for both people and businesses. From designers to photographers, storytellers and digital artists…

SENPAI

The journey of building a startup has been very interesting and very hard, especially being a community based startup. Most people in Nigeria dont fully get the concept of a community-driven digital agency and there a only a handful of agencies, but none focused on creative minds which is why senpai exists. I moved to the Lagos tech community January 2017 and was very unimpressed with the fact that

  1. All the communities established where primarily developer orientated. This fact makes a lot of people feel they need to be nerds to be in tech ( no offence to all the nerds out there )
  2. There was little or no give-back into the community by established startups and hubs alike. ( find out why I left cchub )
  3. There was an utter lack of creativity in the technology ecosystem.
  4. The community seems very confused and a lot of pointless arguments have been raised about “the tech cluster being in Yaba or beyond Yaba” (wouldn’t go into that right now )

So why are we passionate about community building? and why should you care?

Everyone seeks a sense of belonging, approval and a place where they can be themselves,interact with like minds and experience collaborative growth. — SENPAI

Group (1)Create peopls creating

THE SENPAI COLLECTIVE

We dream of a world where creative people are the dominant minds not just in entertainment, arts, or culture, but also in tech.

Where there is a highly collaborative environment and we are helping each other create a sustainable future.

Where the value of a creative mind can fully be expressed in innovative ways using tech a tool to enable that.

The senpai collective was created to inspire the future of creativity and tech.

THE GOAL

We created the senpai collective on Tuesday 22nd august 2017, and so far we have 574 registered members of the collective and have experienced a steady growth of 4–5 new members daily. This is good but we seek to increase that exponentially by using the blog to building a platform for all creatives. our goal is

2000+ founders, artists, nerds, influencer’s, youths, passionate beings, visionaries, risk takers, bold minds, creative people, collectives by the end of the year 2019.

This by no means would be easy but we are certain that there are a lot of creative people that would benefit from this move and so far the startups we have reached out to have been very supportive and we hope to create an environment that would be beneficial to all people that are involved. We plan on being really aggressive about this move and we are using this medium to call for help from any creative person that is reading this and would love to help us achieve this goal and would also love to the be part of the collective, we need all the help we can get.

WHAT DO WE HOPE TO ACHIEVE ? WE HOPE TO ACHIEVE A COLLABORATIVE CREATIVE COMMUNITY THAT SHARES THESE VALUES.

  1. COLLABORATION
  2. PASSION FOR CREATIVITY
  3. COMMUNITY BUILDING/DEVELOPMENT
  4. INNOVATION
  5. SUSTAINABILITY

The collective would be a place that would offer a very specific audience of creative youths that are interested or are using technology in innovative ways.

What does this mean in the long run?

  1. An audience to consume your content if you are producing content that fits the demo.
  2. An audience to find possible co-founders, mentors and teammate for your startup, idea or side project.
  3. A place that would create employment opportunities for its members.
  4. An innovative community to discuss and share ideas with.
  5. A place where useful knowledge and resources would be shared amongst its members.
  6. A vibrant community that would push you to achieve your best.

This is our goal and if you would like to assist us in crushing this goal do send an email to : hello@thinksenpai.com let’s make this happen.

The Senpai list

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We are building the digital infrastructure Africa needs, and publishing the whole thing as it happens. Field notes from inside the work, research, case studies, and the decisions that turned out wrong. Roughly weekly.

No pitch, and one click to leave.

SENPAI is a social impact design and technology company in Nigeria. We publish what we learn from the work, including the parts that did not go to plan.

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