The Nii Cleland Interview

FEBRUARY 1, 2018 BY ADMINBLK

Tell us about yourself?

I’m Nii Cleland. I’m 24 and my parents are from Ghana. I studied at Warwick University, worked in banking and now find myself in tech.

We know each other because we both worked for the same US investment bank, but then you left to pursue a Masters in Technology Entrepreneurship What was the thought process behind that decision?

I’m currently on a path that I could never have foreseen. Almost 2 years ago, I left the job I had been wanting from a very young age, pretty clueless of what my next step would be. I had been working on a trading floor for a couple of years, battling a back problem that was getting worse and worse each day. After a while, I decided to prioritise my health, take a break and work out my next steps. Eventually I decided the startup world would suit me best – I now have enough flexibility to look after my health, whilst working on an idea that I am hugely passionate about.

You are the CEO of Spotters, the UK’s first social network for youth football players. Please tell us more about it, how did you come up with the idea, what was the motivation?

Spotters is the social network for youth football players. A mobile app for male & female players of all levels of ability, targeting mainly 9-18 year olds. Our community is united by a deep interest in sharing their own football journey and in following the journeys of other players. On Spotters, players return week-after-week to share their football performances, keep track of their stats, and follow other players like them.

My cousin Darrell and I came up with the idea a bit less than a year ago. We’ve got a young cousin called David, who’s obsessed with football. He’s not the best player in the world, but playing football is a huge part of who he is. We realised that for players like David, there’s currently no platform to effectively share their football journeys and follow those of other players like themselves.

The go-to social platforms for their generation are Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube – all 3 of which are hugely photo & video-centric. We noticed that these platforms cater poorly for the average youth football player looking to share their football journey, as the vast majority of players don’t have someone dedicated to filming them from the sidelines. Due to this, Spotters focuses far less on videos & photos– the core feature of the app allows players to enter their stats and create and share an infographic based on them.

What have been some of the main challenges in launching your business and how did you overcome them?

Building a platform for young people is tricky – mainly, due to them being heavily protected, meaning it’s a lot harder to do market research. To get over this, we’ve partnered with a few parents very closely, as well as some football clubs in the North London area who have been really supportive.

On your journey to launching this business, you went to Silicon Valley (home to world’s most successful tech start-ups) had meetings with footballers, football clubs etc. From those meetings and interactions, what were some of the key things you learnt?

Be incredibly ambitious in trying to reach the people you want to reach. People generally will be a lot more receptive to you reaching out to them than you’d expect. Test a few different styles for cold emails – eventually you’ll find one that gets attention.

Also, when you get in front of important people, make sure they notice and remember you. Try to get their contact details and tell them you’ll update them on your journey. Networking is one of the most underrated keys to making fast progress.

Most young people today and many of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs have never had any enterprise education before starting their business, but you decided to study it. What do you feel have been the main benefits of doing your masters versus just launching your business straight away?

That’s a great question. I’m actually so happy I did my UCL Technology Entrepreneurship course. The aim of the course is to create a startup. I realised very quickly that this was going to be very different to an undergraduate degree – that’s because the value of the course isn’t in the content, but rather in the network around you. UCL has some great lecturers and so many useful connections within the London startup scene. If I hadn’t done the masters, it would have taken me a lot longer to get in front of some of those people. Also, there were a few other really inspirational students on my course.

I also knew that I’d paid ￡12,000 to do the Masters, and the idea of finishing the course with no concrete startup idea really scared me. So, I devoted the first few months of the course to deeply thinking about what I wanted to work on. I ended up coming up with 3 key criteria. Firstly, I had to be passionate about the idea. Secondly, I had to believe that I’d be relatively better than someone else at executing it. Lastly, I had to be convinced that the market I was going after was a big, underserved market.

Do you feel it’s important for the next generation of young, black people to see more individuals from our community like yourself as entrepreneurs as opposed to employees in a corporate organisation and if so, why?

I can’t speak for black culture, in general. But obviously being Ghanaian and growing up around a lot of West Africans, I’d say West African culture is relatively apprehensive towards entrepreneurship. There tends to be a preference for much more “respected” careers e.g. medicine and law. For example, I’d say my parents are fairly progressive for West African parents and even they couldn’t get their heads around my decision to pursue entrepreneurship, when I was already on a career-path that would have led to a comfortable life.

I do have an issue with that line of thinking. Mainly because I feel that parents should be very wary of passing their viewpoints on to their children. Our views are so hugely conditioned by the external environment around us and parents should realise that this environment changes all the time. For example, when my mother first arrived in the UK, it would have made much less sense for her to pursue a career in entrepreneurship. She had just moved from Ghana, which was already a big change in her life – adding the volatility associated with entrepreneurship to an already uncertain life might have been too much to handle. For me, the circumstances were hugely different – I had already got a degree from Warwick, 2-years at a top-tier bank, savings to fall back on and no mortgage to pay. The risks just weren’t the same.

I’m hoping my decision to go after something extraordinary will inspire a load of other young people to do the same. I think people in their 20s worry too much about the risk of them leaving their jobs and working on a business that ends up being unsuccessful. Personally, I don’t think your 20s should be about optimising for success – it should rather be about optimising for learning. And I guarantee you, you’ll learn more doing your own business than working in the corporate world. That said, entrepreneurship isn’t for everyone. Largely because it is extremely difficult and not everyone has the will-power to succeed in it.

Greatness is….

Inspiring others by doing things that the average person is afraid to do.

Words you live by?

Treat others how you yourself would like to be treated. My Christianity is a big part of who I am and I think it’ll help me as a tech CEO. This is because so much of leadership is about empathy and understanding the concerns and feelings of those around you

What advice would you give to anyone who wants to leave their graduate job to pursue entrepreneurship?

Firstly, I’d say that they shouldn’t try to combine a full-time job with working on their idea on the side – this really needs to be a full-time commitment. I’d start by learning more about entrepreneurship. For example, by reading books, listening to podcasts and watching YouTube videos. I recommend a podcast called How I Built This which interviews founders about their stories – there are some great guests on the show, such as the founder of BET and the creator of Power Rangers. Their stories will help you understand just how much hard work goes into entrepreneurship and you’ll be able to judge if it’s for you.

If you then decide you want to go ahead with it, you should get yourself in a position financially to take at least a year out of work to work full-time on your idea. Firstly, this is because it’ll probably take you a while to think of a good idea. My advice for thinking about ideas is to write in a notepad at the end of the day everything that has annoyed you that day. That’s because most startup ideas come from tackling issues that you’re facing yourself (for me this wasn’t the case). Once you’ve started to do that, pay close attention to people around you and see if anyone else mentions any of your frustrations. If you’re hearing the same thing over and over again, this might be a sign that you’ve identified a real pain point. Secondly, you need time because it’s really rare for the first idea you think of to be the one that hits home. You’ll probably come up with a few ideas that you’ll kill once you’ve tested them in the market – coming up with a good idea is really difficult!

Check out the Spotters website and spread the word to youth footballers!

Follow Nii on Instagram: nii_spotters

Follow Spotters on Instagram: spottersfootball

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