Paul Onwuanibe on Building a $150M Empire: The Secret Most African Founders Will Never Know!

Paglalarawan

Send money with Sendwave from the US, UK and Canada to Nigeria, Kenya, and Ghana. Fast and easy. Use the code FoundersConnect when you make your first transfer from the US, UK, or Canada to Nigeria or Kenya — and you'll get $10 or £10 on that transfer when you send a minimum of $10 or £10: https://try.sendwave.com/kjap/nenwbcpd He received a 7-day eviction notice while on a cruise. What followed was the demolition of over $30 million in assets, $10 million in lost revenue, and the livelihoods of 3,000 people all gone. But this is not a story about loss. It is a story about what happens when someone who has already rebuilt once decides to do it again. Paul Onwuanibe grew up in London dreaming of becoming a dustbin driver. His father had different ideas and shipped him off to boarding school in Nigeria at age 10. That decision set off a chain of events that would take Paul through four master's degrees, a job at a scrappy startup called Regus where he visited 167 countries in six years, and eventually to founding Landmark, one of Africa's most ambitious live, work, and play destinations. He built Landmark's serviced office business from scratch across 14 African cities. Then he sold it to his former boss, Mark Dixon, for over $20 million. He took those proceeds and looked out at a piece of marshland in Lagos and decided to build a city within a city. Then came September 11. Then came the eviction notice. Then came the demolition. And then came the decision to keep going. This conversation covers what it really takes to build across Africa, why entrepreneurship is an extreme sport, what 40 years of street-level business principles actually look like, and how to turn empathy into equity when everything around you falls apart. If you are building something or thinking about starting, this one is for you 00:00 - Intro 02:30 - Early childhood 21:16 - Academic Background 30:52 - Meeting Mark Dixon 41:20 - Founding Landmark and Pivot to Africa 44:03 - Selling to Mark Dixon 50:30 - Developing Landmark Lagos 01:04: