Temi Kolawole is a serial Business entrepreneur with expertise in web and social media. He is the Chief Executive Officer of Antigravity and founder of sturvs.com, a web design and development company abd has helped build some of the most popular websites in Nigeria. He got the vision for Antigravity while in university.
Raising Capital for Temi was not an issue because he did not really need much capital to start. Initial cost needed to start was paid from his pocket, since web design isn’t exactly a capital-intensive business.
Sturvs.com
Sturvs.com is a website that has grown and evolved over the years. It started out small with user submissions, and then evolved into a content aggregator that is now expanding to other African countries. It also has a growing blog network. Sturv was built on persistence, resilience and commitment.
According to Temi, “Sturvs is not yet where we want it to be but it will get there. There was a time Sturvs was shut down and had to be reengineered because the old system it ran on had security issues and was too rigid. Many people laughed at us thinking that was the end but here we are today, still growing strong. I could easily have given up then, like many other Nigerian/African websites, but I persisted”
As regards staying ahead of competitors, Temi has the philosophy of hard work and continued self-development. “I read books by successful tech entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs, Brad Feld etc and keep up with industry news. I’m not exactly the reading type but I use Zite to get the latest on all topics I’m interested in.”
For web-designers who want to build successful sites for their clienteles, Temi advices them to stop being lazy and stop using ready-to-use templates. According to him, “CSS3/HTML is really not that hard, once you get the hang of it. I can definitely tell whether a website is built from a template or not immediately it opens. Every project should be unique.