After 3 startup shutdowns, this founder built Africa’s biggest Web3 incubation programme
Eric Annan bought bitcoin at $354, but after losing all his crypto earnings to failed businesses, the lessons he learned led him to build Aya HQ, one of Africa's biggest Web3 incubation programmes.
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Eric Annan bought Bitcoin when it was $350. He made a lot of money from his early foray into cryptocurrencies. However, unlike most people who become professional traders and learn how to profit from crypto, Annan was more interested in the technology.<br />
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His fascination with blockchain—the technology that powers cryptocurrencies—is the reason he founded Aya HQ, which is arguably Africa’s largest Web3 incubation programme.<br />
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Behind Aya’s success are many of Annan’s failures, which have informed the philosophy behind the programme: the biggest barrier African founders face is not funding but psychology. To Annan, blockchain is a leveller—a technology that gives Africans access.<br />
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Annan discovers crypto <br />
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Unlike most people, Annan did not get into crypto through an MMM scam or anything similar. Instead, his entrepreneurial endeavours led him to technology. Between 2013 and 2014, he resigned from his job at Huawei in Ghana to become an entrepreneur, starting with a business in Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).<br />
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To increase his chances of success, he moved to Nigeria on a friend’s advice. “The day after we landed in Abuja, we had a paying customer. I was excited and glad I followed his advice.”<br />
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However, what seemed like a promising business ran into problems following regulations on dollar transactions in 2015. “The business collapsed because we were not able to send money to a company in Singapore to activate an account in Nigeria.”<br />
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Trying to get by after the collapse of his first business, Annan encountered cryptocurrency in 2016. “It began an evolution in my journey,” he recalls. Cryptocurrency became the turning point in his entrepreneurial career. Fascinated by it, he decided to learn more about the technology beyond speculation.<br />
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What he describes as an extensive study led to the creation of Digital Coding, one of the earliest crypto exchanges or over-the-counter (OTC) platforms in Nigeria. It existed alongside Nairaex, another early player in the sp...
