INNOVATORS VS COVID 19

Innovating Our Way to Innovation

Published

3 years ago

02/24/2021

Kokou Adzo

We talked to Fola Adejumo of IDNI about building a better society where knowledge can be created and distributed efficiently to solve complex problems and he had the following to say about it.

First of all, how are you and your family doing in these COVID-19 times?

Fola Adejumo: More progress has been made this year than the last. We’ve had a great year in terms of achieving what we wanted. I can say the same for my blood relatives, friends, and colleagues. They’re all my family.

Tell us about you, your career, how you joined IDNI.

Fola Adejumo: My background is in startups. I have been hustling since a young teenager in various businesses that I launched from the bedroom and had my successes when I realized that self-learning was the key to my future. I created a startup that sent me on my true path to achieving my dreams.

I had always been interested in tech and previously co-founded a tech company during the first Bitcoin boom, a few years prior to hearing about Agoras and IDNI. When I first purchased Agoras tokens in 2015, I told the IDNI’s founder (Ohad Asor) that I would one day join IDNI when I had finished all I could learn in my previous company.

In 2019, I left my company for the biggest and most useful project that I could work on, Tau and Agoras, and told Ohad that I would work for free to be part of the team until I officially joined in August 2019. Essentially, I kept to my word.

How does IDNI innovate?

Fola Adejumo: Our product is called Agoras. It is a marketplace economy where formalized knowledge can be traded in a digital contract form for cryptocurrency, Agoras tokens, and much more. It will run on our unique p2p blockchain called Tau-chain, which is entirely governed by its users. Our software gives users control of software in a way that has never been done before.

We have been in development for 5 years, and we are soon to release:

a) TML 1.0, a logical solver that serves as a foundation for the features to come thereafter.

b) AgorasLive (beta) – a video knowledge-sharing platform.

How the coronavirus pandemic affects your business, and how are you coping?

Fola Adejumo: Initially, it wasn’t so much of an effect on our business because we’re a distributed development team, but it affected our ability to get things done. Law firms were closed or working from home. The people we needed to speak to just weren’t in the office, even though we were ready to get moving. We couldn’t fly and see the people we wanted. Eventually, the world caught on to the fact that distributed teams are doable, and we handled what we needed.

Did you have to make difficult choices, and what are the lessons learned?

Fola Adejumo: I can’t say we had many difficult choices. However, I have always worked, and I believe businesses should be prepared to have this kind of flexibility as much as possible. I did learn

How do you deal with stress and anxiety? How do you project yourself and IDNI in the future?

Fola Adejumo: Firstly, I think when I have something useful to say. Then, I focus on how I’m going to put that across in the most effective way. Beyond that, I force myself to speak. I know if I don’t do it often, that muscle will shrivel up, and I’ll be worse off in the long run. Constantly forcing myself is how I do it. Now I’m used to the feeling.

Who are your competitors? And how do you plan to stay in the game?

Fola Adejumo: With Agoras, we have no competitors. Though, we plan on licensing certain parts of our software, which have a much broader scope and covers several industries.