#FoundersConnect: Ijeoma Akwiwu, Lawyer, Developer, and Co-founder of Pivo, a Digital Bank

Ijeoma Akwiwu is the Chief Operations Officer and CO-Founder of Pivo, a digital bank for trade in Africa. Before Pivo, she studied law at Lagos State University, then worked for several years as a firm lawyer, before getting into corporate practice as an In-house lawyer at Gilmor Engineering. After a few years of practice, she developed an interest in software development after a project that involved providing software for a legal project. This led her to attend the University of Glasgow to get a Master's degree in software development.

In this episode of Founders Connect, we learn more about Ijeoma, her journey, and what she's building at Pivo.

Watch here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jR7BoZPe9KY&ab_channel=PeaceItimi

Video Timestamps

0:00 - Introduction

1:05 - Ijeoma shares her background

2:28 - Education, Deciding to study Law

4:07 - Practicing Law, Workplace Politics

7:09 - Transitioning to Corporate Law Practice

9:24 - Why Software Development?

14:14 - Getting a Masters in Software Development

17:47 - Pivo, Meeting Cofounder Nkiru, the Idea behind Pivo

24:19 - Challenges running Pivo

26:31 - Key Milestones

30:19 - the YC Story

34:50 - How they are finding their customers/users.

37:36 - Tackling the technical side of things

38:38 - Biggest Lessons

39:50 - What she's looking forward to for Pivo

42:43 - Lessons from Ijeoma's Journey