Opeyemi Awoyemi

Opeyemi Awoyemi

Technology Entrepreneur • Venture Investor • Corporate Development Executive • Product Innovation Leader • Product Led Growth • Technology Partnerships • AI GTM • Non Exec Board of Directors • US Citizen
Austin, US.

About

Technology Entrepreneur • Venture Investor • Corporate Development Executive • Product Innovation Leader • Product Led Growth • Technology Partnerships • AI GTM • Non Exec Board of Directors • US Citizen

Work

Fast Forward Venture Studio and Fund
|

Managing Partner

Summary

Fast Forward is a venture studio and early-stage fund focused on technology-enabled companies led by exceptional African entrepreneurs in Future of Work, Commerce, Fintech, Education and Healthcare.

Highlights

Invested and co-built 11 companies in Fintech, Edtech, Future of Work, Commerce and marketplaces resulting in combined ~$7m AUM in 3 years (3.9x TVPI).

Responsible for fund strategy, deal flow sourcing, and served on the investment committee

Spearheaded product-led growth, go-to-market strategies, and provided mentorship to CEOs and PMs of firms in portfolio.

Whogohost Inc
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Founder and Chairman

Summary

Whogohost is a web hosting and domain registrar primarily operating in Nigeria, Kenya, and Ghana.

Highlights

Founded the company out of a college dorm room at age 20 and was the only employee for the first 4 years, handling product development, technical support, server administration, and accounting.

Implemented succession plan with employee No. 3 becoming CEO, new CEO since has grown the business 20x to ARR of >$1.7m and 50k+ customers.

Exited to search fund in 2023.

Moneymie
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CEO/Co-Founder

Summary

Moneymie was a digital bank/super app for immigrants.

Highlights

Supervised product design and engineering team in creating a financial services app (web/mobile) from scratch, successfully processing 15,000+ transactions monthly.

Hired COO, Head of Compliance and facilitated money transmitter licenses in Canada and 3 US States.

Developed alliances with global banks, banking-as-a-Service Platforms and fintech pioneers like Plaid, Stripe, Sila and Evolve Bank.

Indeed Inc.
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Senior Product Manager

Summary

Indeed is the world's largest job site with over 100m users and $3B+ in annual revenues.

Highlights

Responsible for driving product strategy for jobseeker growth for new verticals and stealth projects (shelf space strategics, gigs and remote work).

Executed numerous A/B tests and growth experiments, leading to a 700% surge in key metrics on a project and a 2000% increase on a new customer acquisition channel for a $100 million unit.

Led an agile team of 6 to develop, deploy, grow, and optimize Work From Anywhere site and mobile apps within just two months during pandemic-driven urgency; achieving a top 10 spot in jobs category in Appstore and Playstore.

Indeed Inc.
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Technical Product Manager, Jobseeker APIs and Segments

Highlights

Led a team of technical fellows to build out Indeed's first job data REST API Gateway. Was personally responsible for championing internal customer development through ideation sessions, internal newsletters, VP alignments while working towards a 6 months deadline.

Championed technical vision, strategy, and roadmap for all Jobseeker APIs.

Orchestrated strategic talks with key partners like Microsoft, Simplyhired, Goodwill, Glassdoor. This API powers all of Glassdoor and Simplyhired job data today.

Spearheaded API development for Indeed's internal, partner, and developer ecosystem use.

Ringier One Africa Media
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President, Jobs Platform

Summary

Ringier One Africa Media (ROAM) is the biggest player in classifieds marketplaces in Africa, with the leading job portals in Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, Tanzania, and Ghana in its portfolio.

Highlights

Owned commercial and product performance responsibility for all the job sites. Direct reports were 5 country managers and 3 Product Managers with an overall team size of 120+ people across 7 countries.

Utilizing user feedback, led the product and engineering teams to launch a 5-day candidate shortlisting service across all the businesses using Al which boosted job listing revenue by 60%.

Coordinated strategy to launch the Top 100 Best Companies to Work For report in 5 countries.

Led technical and business partnerships for the group with telcos (MTN, Airtel), government (Nigeria, Kenya), and global institutions such as Facebook, Google Jobs, Aspiring Minds, Barclays, etc.; directly resulting in free press/earned media and $1m+ in partnership-driven revenues.

Jobberman.com
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Cofounder and GM (Technology, Product & Marketing)

Summary

Leading SaaS job search and career portal in Sub-Saharan Africa outside South Africa. Built design, engineering, marketing, and product functions from scratch from myself to 22 people.

Highlights

Led the transition from growth to monetization phase. Responsible for repricing Jobberman's premium user packages, which resulted in ARR of $1.2m an increase of 300% from $400k in 2013.

Led product, design, and engineering teams to build HR tools: resume parsing, ATS, job matching, and relevance scoring, mobile apps, widgets, and open APIs.

Built and executed an integrated growth hacking strategy covering on-site, PR, digital marketing, and high-level product partnerships. Grew user base from 200k to 1.2m (600% increase) within the period.

Was active in evangelizing the company and featured the company on leading international media such as Forbes, CNN, Bloomberg, Fast Company, Financial Times, BBC, CNBC.

Activated product partnership with the largest telecommunications company in Nigeria (70m+ subs) and numerous jobs-in-print partnerships, which resulted in $3m worth of free marketing and $290k direct revenues.

Successfully secured Seed and Series A funding (~$5m) from Tiger Global, and exited to Ringier One Africa Media.

Education

Wharton Business School, University of Pennsylvania, PA

MBA

Exec. MBA

Reforge Academy

Advanced Growth Strategy

FINRA

Series 65 - Uniform Investment Advisor Law Exam

Coursera (SDA Bocconi, Italy)

Private Equity and Venture Capital

Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA

CIO Academy

Wharton Business School, University of Pennsylvania, PA

Innovation & Growth (Exec. Ed)

Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria

B.Sc.

Computer Science

Grade: 4.1 out of 5.0 GPA

Awards

Referenced by Mark Zuckerberg as a young African IT Innovator.
Referenced by the US Under Secretary for Economic Growth, Energy and the Environment as a world changer in employment.
Forbes 30 Under 30 Entrepreneurs in Africa 2013
Future Africa Awards

Best Enterprise IT Support Professional 2013

US Green Card achieved based on EB1 - Alien of Extraordinary Ability Status in 2019
MIT Legatum Foundry Fellow 2021

A distinguished fellowship for accomplished entrepreneurs who have previously scaled businesses across Africa

Osun State Merit Award

Awarded By

Osun State

State's Highest Award for citizens in the private sector who have distinguished themselves in their field.

Skills

TECHNICAL SKILLS

Prompt Engineering, Al Prototyping, Graphics and UI Design (Figma, Photoshop, Wireframing), Web Development (html, Wordpress, CSS, Javascript), API Mocking and Documentation, Analytics (Excel, Tableau et al), CRMs (Folk, Hubspot), Marketing (Email, Content, Ads), Project Management (Agile).

Projects

ECOSYSTEM CONTRIBUTIONS, SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS, AND RELATED ACTIVITIES

Summary

Innovator In Residence at the Legatum Centre @ MIT, providing office hours and business advisory to Full-time MIT MBA Students/Legatum Fellows. Angel Investor in over 50 startups (3x DPI, 16x MOIC) across fintech, crypto, e-commerce, HR, SaaS, healthcare, marketplaces, proptech, and SaaS. Portfolio includes Clearbit (sold to Hubspot), Laskie (sold to Twitter), Pesa and Bumpa and 15+ YC and Techstars startups. Guest faculty at numerous universities, including Ivy League schools.

Interests

HOBBIES

Tennis, Dance, Karaoke, Volunteering, Counseling, Founder Office Hours.