1. I am one of the 30+ males around these twitter streets that you people yab . I am also the founder of a tech company with more than 200 staff stationed across Nigeria. In my 15yr entrepreneurship journey I have always trusted myself to pull “me” out of troubled waters.

2. But “me” has grown from Edmund and co-founder to Edmund and 3 developers to a full, multi-departmental company with business across Nigeria.

3. I suffer the same anxiety about my future & the future of my company like most founders do. Now more especially I’m anxious about the folks who work with me who have staked the success of their careers on the vision of our company. A vision that I am responsible for crafting.

4. If there is something anyone can say about me is that I am adept at pulling “me” out of crisis. At the peak of the 2008 recession we won a Bill Gates grant for global health and that helped us secure funding for my biotech company at the time.

5. After returning to Nigeria spending years barely getting by I secured Angel funding and a subsequent contract to process electricity bills. My developers at the time (one still works with me) had not earned a salary in five months prior to that.

6. My living room was our office. And since I couldn’t code I was tasked with cooking rice and stew for us to eat whilst my guys churned out the code. Basically, I have always trusted in my ability to bounce back- both well and in the nick of time.

7. However, this time around we are fighting an invisible enemy and the ship is too big for me alone to captain. I started out this crisis trying to micro-manage my way through it. My anxiety was peaking and at the same time nothing I was doing was going to stop this pandemic

8. Normally my anxiety spurs me to action. I start to see things clearer and the steps I need to take become more vivid to me. But not this time. I was actually getting scared like the rug was being pulled from under me.

9. One morning I woke up and I was about to start micromanaging- then it hit me like a voice in my head- “A true test is not in you micromanaging your way out of this situation, but it’s in trusting these folks you have been working with to manage you out of this situation”.

10. Immediately I pulled back. I started to ask questions of my co-leaders. I decided that for once I wasn’t going to lead with empathy or gut instinct but rather with data. What is the data telling me? What are my co-leaders telling me. Immediately I felt peace of mind.

11. The hardest decision I have ever had to make in my life isn’t shutting down a non-performing company like I have done a few times; but rather letting go of high performing & dedicated staff because that’s what the data told me to do.

12. Worse still, Letting go of them in the middle of a crisis because the data said it was that or a dead company. Doing that and still trusting that those left behind will continue to be motivated to sail the company through this storm.

13. Also hoping those that we had to let go believed me when I said that should we survive this period that ours doors remain open to them to walk right back in.

14. To all my fellow entrepreneurs and founders making tough decisions and staying motivated through this- I want to remind you to believe in yourself and more especially believe in your team. Believe the data, Cut cost, Stay lean and hoard cash. Come out of this alive.... Please