Probably every Nigerian has found themselves on Nairaland at one point in their lives. After all, Nairaland Nigeria forum is a useful source of information and a place to talk to like-minded people. Keep reading to find out how Nairaland Nigeria came to be and how much Seun Osewa is worth.
Early years
Oluwaseun Osewa was born on July 17, 1982 in Sango Ota, Ogun State. From early years, he has been interested in technology, and his interest has not waned ever since. In 1998, Seun gained admission into University of Ile Ife, where he studied electrical engineering, but that path was not meant to be, so he dropped out not long after.
Instead of studying to become an engineer, Osewa decided to go into programming. The man himself never talked about the specifics of how he was introduced to the world of Internet business, but it must have been around the turn of the millennium, as at 2002, he had already building plans to have a business on the web. In 2003, Osewa’s fascinating journey finally began.
Career and Nairaland
In 2003, Seun started his career with a web hosting business. However, three months had passed, and he only had one client. Realising that it was not a very profitable business for him, Osewa abandoned the web hosting idea and tried to find something more suitable.
Some of his friends and family encouraged him to continue his education and get a degree, but Seun’s mind was set on building his own business, so he resumed his search of a fitting business idea. For almost two years, not much had come out of it, but Osewa persevered. He even started learning Python in order to implement an idea of a website that could be used to send text messages.
At the same time, he decided to venture into forum making. Between 2003 and 2005, Seun created three forums. One of them was for students of higher educational institutions, the second one was for IT discussions, and the third one, Mobile Nigeria, was meant to cover the GSM industry that was emerging in Nigeria.
Out of his three creations, the latter took off. Seeing the success of Mobile Nigeria, Osewa decided to relaunch it in 2005. With the help from John Sagai Adams, Yomi Adegboye and several other mobile enthusiasts, the forum quickly reached the benchmark of 300 users.
But that was not enough for Osewa.
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He began to notice that people were using his forum not just for talking about mobile phones. It seemed that the off-topic section of Mobile Nigeria was slowly becoming bigger than the forum itself, so it got Seun thinking. He also noticed that many Nigerian sites were mostly oriented towards Nigerians living abroad, which was why he decided to give people what they needed.
In March 2005, Seun Osewa launched his most successful forum to date, Nairaland. However, at the time of its conception, he could not even imagine it would get this big this fast. People started registering and posting on the forum by the hundreds, or even thousands. By the beginning of 2018, Nairaland had almost 2 million registered users.
But before he got to where he is today, Osewa had to deal with a lot of things. Some of them were good, some of them were bad. For instance, in 2011, he was approached by a company that wanted to buy his forum for a $1 million, which signified just how big he was getting. In 2013, his name was featured in the list of 30 under 30 by Forbes, naming him as one of the most prominent African entrepreneurs.
Seun also had to fight the many spammers and trolls, as well as lose AdSense revenue because of the raunchy topics discussed on the site. In 2014, the forum even suffered from a malicious hacker attack, which disabled the site for several days and deleted all the data.
Nevertheless, Osewa was able to overcome all the hurdles in his way. The website was mostly recovered, ads from Google were replaced by direct ads, and through it all, Nairaland has remained one of the most popular and visited sites in Nigeria.
After his website reached such immense popularity, Seun decided to step away from the limelight. These days, he rarely gives interviews or uses social media, so it is hard to say what he is doing, or what is on his mind. He most likely enjoys his quiet (and probably rather wealthy) life far away from prying eyes.
Seun Osewa net worth
Now, when it comes to Seun’s net worth, things get a little complicated. For years, people have been speculating how much he earned thanks to Nairaland, but nobody had any definitive numbers. The man himself has dodged the question about his income many times.
Back in 2016, People’s Gist and several other websites reported that Osewa’s net worth was $8,737,200. Similarly, TakeMeToNaija claimed that his net worth was $9,076,842. Since then, nobody, including Seun himself, has come forward with accurate numbers regarding his net worth. That said, Nairaland is still among the top 10 most visited websites in Nigeria.
Regardless of how much he is worth, Seun has proven that as long as you have an idea and you work tirelessly to achieve it, you can do anything. We hope that you are inspired by his story.
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Source: Naija.ng