Dear Techy,
I wish to express my sincere gratitude to you for making life a lot easier. To be honest, what you do “makes the world a better place”. Let’s face it, if not for you, I’d probably be on a queue somewhere waiting to dash the bank…oops! my bad, sorry , waiting to credit some person’s account but no, i just did that from my laptop in less than two minutes.
God bless whoever thought of social media platforms, you fill my days with mirth and glee, my dining room can now be used for what it was originally intended for instead of a library of dusty old newspapers from way before I was born. Indeed you guys have been awesome and you keep being awesome but please I would like to make a couple of more requests if you all do not mind.
1. So it’s the information era and we have been told that every business ought to have an online presence. Think about it, there is nothing as sweet as giving out your business card with your email address bearing franklin@yourdomain.com; not yahoo.com or gmail.com. How cool is that? Back to the point, so we ask you to design a company website for us and you start reeling out words like frameworks, plugins, Add–ins and Add-ons, and asking us what hosting platforms we would prefer. Seriously? If we knew all that, then we why do we need you?
2. Life does not and will never revolve around your laptop or smart phone. Once in a while step out of your comfort zone and socialize with the little people. Have lunch with your colleagues in the break-room, find out how your nephew fared in his tests, attend a wedding or a birthday; it won’t affect that awesome idea for an app you’ve had in your head for the past three months.
3. Dear Nigerian startup founders – I’m done with you guys wanting to “disrupt” something; please just go ahead and do so. Enough said.
4. Don’t be shocked if i do not understand what you mean by “incubators” and “accelerators”; last i checked there were four different definitions for incubators and three for accelerators. Besides, i bet you cant explain what phonology means without asking Google.
5. Please make an attempt to learn how to communicate formally – Don’t send a mail containing words like “actually” and “cool” or phrases like “kick-ass team” or “bad-ass app” to your boss or a potential investor. No! No!! No!!!
6. To the diligent developers out there, you all rock! You keep coming up with amazing ideas that see us thanking God for being born in the digital era but remember that often times, your version of a mind-blowing app does not equate to over-night riches or money in your bank accounts. There’s a long road from adoption to engagement.
7. Speaking of investors, when going for an appointment or making a presentation, do make an attempt to ditch your Google or Facebook T-shirt in favour of a pair of well pressed pants and clean dress shirt (it won’t kill you). You may argue with me on this one but hold your horses for just a brief spell. There is such a thing as Person-Perception. Person perception in simple terms deals with how we process information about people, it helps us form impressions about people we meet for the first time and of course the common saying that it takes less than 7 seconds to form a first impression. So if an investor’s first impression of you is a mental picture of you in Kanye West inspired fashion…Oh well
Once again, we remain grateful to you for all your contributions in the past two decades, our children thank you, our children’s children will thank you and we look forward to more exciting innovations from you.
Yours sincerely,
Concerned Citizen.
Image credit:Getty Images
