#FoundersConnect: How Preston Ideh is building Africa's Largest Intelligence Startup, Stears.

Preston Timeyin Ideh is Co-founder and CEO of Stears, an Intelligence startup providing data and insights on local (and global) affairs for enterprises and individuals. Stears' mission is to become the world's most trusted source of African data, insight and data collection tools for businesses and financial and policy professionals. Before founding Stears, Preston worked as a corporate lawyer for several years and co-founded LSE Africa Summit, an annual conference highlighting African business developments.

In this interview, Preston shares his journey, from Secondary school in Loyola Jesuit College, Abuja, to building a Startup that has raised a seed investment of $600,000 and has been selected for Google’s Black Founders Fund cohort II.

Watch the Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAqG8QfK5Z8&t

Video Timestamps

0:00 Introduction

1:10 - Preston's Background, Secondary School

6:48 - Attending LSE

9:55 - The Conception of Stears

15:55 - Working in Corporate Law

17:30 - Coming back to Nigeria

22:40 - Going to Nigerian Law School

24:32 - The Nigerian Elections

26:39 - Building an Election Site to showcase Election Data

27:35 - Crowdsourcing Data Project

29:11 - Success of the Election Site (2 Million Users, CNN Article, etc.)

32:48 - What Stears does

34:32 - Raising Money for Stears

38:09 - Stear's Audience

41:11 - What Preston is most Proud of

44:46 - On Learning

46:56 - The Speed and Velocity of Early Stage Startups

47:56 - Anything He would do Differently

49:32 - Predictions for where we're headed Economically

53:47 - One Takeaway