In the middle of a discussion, Eric Annan takes out his smartphone and, after a few taps on the screen, checks the profit margin of his Crunchbase company—KuBitX. His feet shiver as it dawned on him that he’s got no penny for even a candy. The bright lights suddenly dwindled as the clouds turned dark. His heart, beating so fast, narrowly survived the blockage he felt in his coronary arteries.
Eric’s cryptocurrency trading platform spread out across 17 countries and 3 continents, which had raised over a million dollars from external sources, had just crashed!
A myriad of problems could be to blame, but the core issue was the talent factor. This is why Eric has resolved to ensure that Aya and millions of other African businesses don’t face this same challenge.
Ayagigs: The Journey
KuBitX’s harrowing experience was the driving force behind the creation of Aya. After seeing the struggles that early-stage startup founders, including himself, face when trying to find the right talent to help them build scalable startups, Eric and his team decided to do something about it.
“Aya, which means Resilience and Resourcefulness, is a summary of how far we’ve come and what is possible ahead.
“It’s a platform that is focused on matching businesses with the right talents, but we also go a step further than other platforms by also focusing on the holistic well-being of both businesses and talents,” Eric says.
For talents, Aya provides training, education, and mentoring to enable them to have PACE (problem-solving, adaptiveness, creativity, and empathy) which is the bedrock of a great mindset, skillset, and toolset to work in any environment and deliver.
At the end of the day, businesses want what’s best for their time and money. They don’t want to waste it on something that won’t give them what they need in return.
“That’s why we make sure that we don’t take their time for granted when it comes to hiring talent. We know that finding the right person for the job can be difficult and time-consuming, so we deliver zero reimbursements or replacements. We want to make sure that businesses are happy with the talent they receive from us,” Eric adds.
According to Eric, Aya wants to unlock 10 million African talents to have the right mindset, skillset, and toolset to work remotely and earn a decent income.
“We are building for the likes of Upwork to deploy resources into Africa so we can drive creativity and innovation in the talent supply and demand ecosystem. Ultimately, create a broad-based workforce across the entire continent for our teaming young people.”
Meet Eric Annan, CEO and Co-founder of Ayagigs
Eric Annan, a fine Ghanaian breed, has proven to be resilient, innovative, and futuristic. His love for tech, Blockchain, and Africa is just worth commenting on. No doubt, he stands out as one of the successful entrepreneurs making huge strides in the Web3 space.
A walk in Eric’s Web3 and startup journey
Eric was never the privileged child who had everything set up for him. Fifth-born of his mother, his journey to success was a tussle. His early notes did not follow the Jack and Jill rhythm; he only saw the four walls of a classroom at the age of 9.
Quite a ridicule it was, especially when he was told that if he fought anyone at school, he would be expelled. Little did they know that the punches Eric’s fists aimed at were not meant for faces but for life itself.
It was this determination that made him graduate from junior to senior high school with distinction. Seeing education as a means of escaping poverty, he worked hard and saved money for four years after high school. He then enrolled in a private university.
In college, his charisma and core values of authenticity, honesty, and truthfulness made him very popular, and he became a political figure, leading student fronts and forming the very first political union on campus, among other things.
Relentless, despite obstacles
Eric never gave up on his dreams. Despite the betrayals from trusted friends, ridicules, and challenges on his path, he always maintained a positive outlook and a growth mindset.
Emotions at the bottom, in July 2015, Eric left Ghana for Nigeria, and it was there that he was introduced to blockchain and cryptocurrency a year later in 2016.
Smart and tech-savvy, he quickly became an educated investor and started teaching others about cryptocurrency. Since 2015, Eric has been mentoring and inspiring people all over the world. He has equally helped over 25 people across three continents and 25 countries achieve their goals.
Making great strides
In 2017, Eric founded one of the first Bitcoin OTC platforms, Digitalkudi.com. In 2018, he met two other gentlemen who were also interested in crypto and helped them get started in the industry. He helped inspire them to see the potential for growth in cryptocurrency in Africa and co-founded KuBitX with a team that was spread out across 17 countries, and 3 continents.
Soon after, they became the first in Africa to partner with Interswitch and the first to tokenize the Ghana Cedi and Naira on the Stellar Protocols.
However, the company failed to scale due to several factors, one of which included the people they were working with. As such, Eric and his team resolved to solve this peculiar problem faced by many startups by creating Ayagigs, so that millions of other African businesses don’t face this same challenge.
What is Ayagigs?
Ayagigs is a curated marketplace for businesses to access vetted Web3 African talent. In Africa, Ayagigs is positioning itself as a platform that matches businesses with vetted professionals. In August 2021, the company pivoted and started laying the foundation for its curated talent marketplace.
The team at Ayagigs understands that getting access to the right talent at the right time could be the difference between success and failure.
Aya’s key focus is building trust with these early-stage founders to solve their talent gaps while they focus on building their businesses. For one thing, it’s difficult to properly identify a problem, proffer a viable solution, and drive traction with your target market.
“Many founders we have spoken with via our problem discovery process and manual matching system do not have any background in talent gap identification or talent sourcing.”
Most of them just rely on friends and family to get them the talent they need.
“We have a talent pool that embodies our core values of Mutual Trust and Respect, Excellence, and Collaboration. We are in the business of connecting people who want to execute with companies that provide the right environment for them,” – Pishikeni Tukura, Aya Co-founder.
Realizing Aya’s strides in the Web3 space, ChainNews recently named the startup among the “22 Most Innovative Blockchain Companies and Startups” in 2022. Aya is also among the few African startups to receive a grant from Coinbase Giving.
Bridging the Gap
Confusion surrounds talent hunting in the Web3 space from offering crypto derivative products to making high profits. Quite a good number of investors still find it hard to build scalable Web3 businesses due to a lack of reliable talents. Aya aims to build a trusted platform that bridges the gap between businesses and vetted African talent.
In April 2022, Aya launched the first version of its product and has already onboarded about 500 freelancers from Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, and Ethiopia. They are building a platform that accommodates Africans from any geographical location on the continent.
With an eye for global businesses that are solving global problems, Ayagigs plans to build a multi-language, community-first talent marketplace for everyone with a digitally transferable skill, cutting across all disciplines from Technology to Consulting and Marketing.
How to Navigate the Ayagigs Platform
Employers can schedule a Talent requirement gathering session with Aya’s in-house Talent scouts to better understand their talent gap (especially for founders with no technical or recruiting experience).
This helps the business optimize its search on the platform coupled with Aya’s recommendation engine.
“We aim to help businesses reduce sourcing time by 50%,” Pishikeni Tukura adds.
Eric Annan believes Ayagigs has a serviceable available market of $1.29 billion and a serviceable obtainable market of $200 million.
Interested freelancers or businesses can sign up for the public beta by visiting https://beta.ayagigs.com.
