Thread by @unicodeveloper, Tons of business & personal challenges in this pandemic year. But, I'm [...]

Tons of business & personal challenges in this pandemic year. But, I'm thankful for Eden:

- Zero layoffs
- Stayed online
- Head count > 40 (60% women, 40% men)
- Pulse check revealed:
- 100% are happy
- 96% have a friend at work
- 96% will recommend people to work here

Nad, Silm & I were discussing and I made a joke.. "I hope people are not lying oh

"..But with all the crazy things that happened this year, we reiterated amongst ourselves that Eden will be 100% in building a great culture.

2020 threw many curve balls at us..In fact at the..

.beginning of the year when people were still celebrating, we lost an employee @the_ozmic

I just hired Michael in December because I was drowning in engineering work. He joined & tweeted in December https://twitter.com/the_ozmic/status/1201188684290297857

I also tweeted in excitement https://twitter.com/unicodeveloper/status/1201230906960367622?s=20

https://twitter.com/the_ozmic/status/1201188684290297857

But he died (due to the crazy Nigerian health infrastructure problems). I was sad for many days & months. We tried to comfort the family. May his soul RIP.

Not too long, an employee lost her father. Another sad moment again. So many things kept running through my mind...

I kept thinking of the families of these individuals. We also had to ensure others in the company could function while mourning.

Then boom, Corona came in full blown agbada attire. Omoh,wetin be this. We had to change the structure of operations to literally keep Eden running.

Lockdown everywhere. Nigerian govt started with their own too. Hats off to @funmioyatogun & @gbengaosowe. We started delivering to customers personally. My Jalopy became super useful.

Nad was stuck abroad. One month of stay turned to several months because flights were halted

We'd have calls week on week, and you could see the sadness in Nad's face. He was tired of staying abroad. He desperately wanted to be on ground like Silm and I. But Covid19 said No!

@ouredenlife as a service seems straightforward. Find high quality service businesses & plug..

..them to customers on a subscription basis. On theory, this makes sense & very simple.

In practical, a lot of Nigerian services (just as you see here on Twitter) just want to make money. Great & quality customer service is where crude oil is; bottom barrel!

And we don't want that for Eden. In fact, Eden exists because we want to 10x the quality of service & living on the continent.

So, instead of relying on bad services from food providers, we set out to build ours. Lol, imagine waking up & building your own kitchen. Omoooooh!

As we were doing this, internal tools at Eden became critical. Still the only engineer. I set out to hire again. Everyday I'll see applications & feel terrible about replacing Michael. In fact, I delayed on this because even though he was not with us, it felt weird to replace him

Btw, @ismailomodara was to join sometime in Feb. But he was to support. Thankfully he finally joined. I didn't expect much but Ismail literally shattered my expectations. We rebuilt existing systems.

Later got Janet & @Eshaa_O to join me. Two fantastic engineers doing well.

We got a kitchen team and they did good work for a while. However, as a startup, you have to be great at identifying people that can start, folks that can come in the middle & folks that can scale

Replaced the entire team with a new one. Chef,Sous, commis,CDPs & stewards. Omoh

Now, we even have a Food Producer (Product Manager for food). Damn!

Processes are looking better, customers are getting their food earlier. Logistics is still crazy though. We still have a lot of work to do but things are getting clearer & better by the day.

Btw getting good industrial kitchens in Lagos is headache. Wahala that tormented us for months. As always, we found a way around it. If you know of any great ones, feel free to reach out to @nadayar

Laundry & Cleaning are getting a mad facelift in 2021. We just need to execute

As the blood of Jesus is the competition for Insurance folks here

, so is Iya Alamala & house maids competition for Eden

, but that's very okay.

Building is a software biz is hard. Building a software + hardware + people biz is on another scale. But we die here

We've lost some customers (especially Food customers) because food is very nuanced, but we're getting them back in 2021. You're reading this, I'm coming back for you. Yes, you! Learned:

- Investing in quality service is important
- Customer retention is incredibly importanter

- Finding & investing in good people is importantest

Shoutout to every member of the @ouredenlife team (Humaans) including those that left during the year. Y'all give me energy, thrill & purpose every single day

We have the plan for 2021 & are ready to execute efficiently

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