Iyoaye's Public Notes

On my way to church this morning, I started thinking about worth, value, ego and pride. These are all commonly used words that are all related.  For most people, their sense of value and pride is in their work, children, career and wealth. This is very apparent in the things we optimize for and how we go about them. Whilst this is great, I’ve recently realised that we seem to be focused on the wrong things.  Work, wealth, children, career and other things life can offer are benefits but they cannot define our sense of worth because of how ephemeral they are. Just yesterday, a friend was telling about a company that went down to zero from $4B valuation. That’s just one example, there a other cases we’ve seen.  So what’s my prescription here? The simple answer is God. God is simply the answer.  The scriptures records different stories, instructions and sermons that communicate the love of God. In my interpretation, I see that the love of God exemplifies his value and w...

I wrote this note to myself the morning I turned 30 and it was born out of my reflection of my journey so far and a peek into the future – how I planned to spend the rest of my life. I wrote this in a journal and pretty much left it there until a few days ago when it popped on my mind again and I wanted to share it.  Here it goes:  There are many things to be grateful for! It's been a year of lessons, struggles, wins, and clarity. I am now focused on the next phase—technically, the  action  phase of my life. For context, I believe life has three stages: Preparation, Action, and Rest. While we don't have control over if and how soon we experience a phase, neither can we control how we get out of a phase — time and chance happen to us all, it is quite safe and easier to think about these phases as equal amounts of time such that you spend 1/3 of your life in each phase or about 50-70% of your life in preparation and action phase combined. (I might write more about this...

Oh! Happy New Year! I can't promise to write more often this year but I will be kind enough to share my thoughts in their rawest form and I hope I can get your thoughts on them. Today is not the day to talk about the year but I have been on a retreat and it's been refreshing how God has been dealing with me - ( not in the Nigerian parent sense haha).  It's been a perfect time and I'm loving the experience. The last time I felt this way was in 2019-2020; those months were the best part of my life.  Today, I saw a video of Richard Garnett talking about Eternal treasures . A few minutes into the video God was saying "Yes! That is for you" considering he had schooled me a few days from Isaiah 44 with specific instructions on how to use my resources given a metaphor of the cedar wood -- burning for heat (Protection/Health) , burn to bake bread (Sustenance) , and burning to roast meat (Enjoyment) .  After watching the video, I started praying and Paul's sermon ...

Last night, I was watching a video of Pastor Driscoll reacting to the trailer of the new Netflix movie “Will and Harper”. While watching his reaction, a thought popped into my mind and it’s something I have heard/read different variations of it  — this idea that we all have our truths and we need to be true to ourselves.  I find this very conflicting every time I hear it… and I question how much should we care about people’s self-serving “truths” even when they are not in any way helping us to become better as a society.  I don’t have answers here but I am very worried we driving our society toward a place where people will do things because they feel like their defense will be “their truths”. As with every society, if the “good” side is unlucky enough to not be popular, we will have a situation where evil will reign and we will not be able to do anything about it.  What are your thoughts on people’s truth? Have you had situations where someone’s truth conflicted wit...

So a few days ago, a lady had innocently posted for the relationship X’s audience about her initial indifference about her husband and how she didn’t think he was attractive enough at the time. (Honestly I didn’t take too much time to read because, you know — it’s too much and a very chaotic street on X).  Whilst her post was innocently targeted at her audience, she indirectly triggered emotions and trauma deeply buried in the a lot of people who were her husband’s junior in secondary school. For context, I was also his junior and I can relate to a lot of these comments/stories. It was so bad that after I graduated, my dad said “none of his kids will ever step on a unity school” again and he made sure of that.  We all agree that bullying in schools is not an uncommon practice in schools; this doesn’t make it right neither have we founded a structure to eliminate this terrible act that influences and shapes kids through their formative years into young adults. The stories from ...

    I wish dedicated more time to learning chess beyond the rudiments of movement, which I learned from the free version of Chess Pro on my first desktop computer. On the other hand, I spent some time playing draughts, aka checkers, with my friends after exams in secondary school. Seun (who we popularly called Àgbè) was the best player in school and would beat us in rounds. Haha 😂. One of those afternoons, it felt like I was going to win, I had 2 kings and a 2 other tiles while he had 3 tiles and a king. For a moment, I excitedly boasted about winning and reveled in the idea of winning him for the first time.  Guess what? I lost 😡.  One of the many lessons I learned from playing draughts was the willingness to concede a tile or even my king (in some cases) so that I can ultimately win the game. This lesson stuck and today, it’s one that I use in my dealings with people especially when meeting new people.  For someone with some level of social anxiety, connec...

My dad enjoyed watching movies that narrated wars and would always rent/buy VHS tapes and CDs for us to watch at home. I remember watching, sometimes in April, Escape of Sobibor and black hawk down among others with him.  But as a 10-year-old, these movies were merely entertainment, and I didn’t understand the consequences of the scenes I was thrilled by — real people shooting and are being shot at. This changed yesterday when I was watching Black Hawk Down again nearly 20 years ago — thanks to Netflix’s recommendation.  This movie only captured a single raid out of many others and during the raid, over 1000 Somalis died and 19 American soldiers lost their lives.  Streets littered with dead and severely injured people because of a war that could have been avoided.  In the moment, I wondered what walking on that street would feel like, how the hundreds of thousand lives killed in the genocide are remembered, what impact the experience left on the survivors and most im...

Some time around noon yesterday, an old friend called me to discuss venture funding, entrepreneurship and migration options. This was quite timely considering I’m currently fundraising and dealing with certain realities, I’m have a number of first hand stories to share.  During this chat, he asked a question which stood out — “What’s the ideal relationship between an investor and a company/founder?”   My answer was simply “showing up”. Both parties need to acknowledge that there is a lot of figuring out and the journey to a happy ending requires everyone to show up.  I further likened the relationship to a defendant & advocate relationship in a legal context, where the following is expected by default:  There is a need for total trust in honesty. Regardless of the situation, the goal is set to win and/or de-risk the downsides. Both parties need to be present and on time for court hearings (if applicable). Sometimes, there are losses, but that’s not the end...

July 1, 2023 Today, I realized that the commonality of our realities as individuals can be an indicator of our growth, quality of friendships, and a way to check if we need to change our primary circle. You should have other founders in your primary circle if you're a founder. A non-founder friend, however great, doesn’t and can’t share the realities with you. You can’t blame them; they just can’t be the best for you. Sometimes, our friends are not bad people for not helping; they just don’t know how to help, and (we hate to admit it), they are too ashamed to admit it