@David, can we start petitions for these cases? Get justice for Friday Emeh and get that NoreBase company to pay compensation to Sidebar for intellectual theft...
Hello David. Thanks for another great effort. I enjoy reading your investigative stories and I'm thrilled by the incredible way you apply yourself to get to the bottom of any matter you cover. But not everyone is thrilled. And I'm not talking about the government and people who are the villains in your stories. No, I'm talking about non-involved people like me who read you.
Your journalistic style was the subject of debate in a WhatsApp group of professionals in the communications industry. People were unhappy about the fact that you don't give the villains in your story a chance to state their own side before you publish, you don't make any effort to interview them and hear from them. People expressed the view that you seem to have a made-up mind based on what those you consider victims in your story have said and you arrange the facts and circumstances in such a way that they give credence to the victim's position.
I know you have written before that you're not a conventional journalist. That's fine. Your readers and admirers don't want you to become one in our brown-envelope-infested system. But there are time-honoured traditions of journalism that readers would expect writers - whether they consider themselves conventional journalist or not - who conduct investigations into real issues to respect. For example, hearing from all sides and ensuring that all parties enjoy the right to fair hearing. There is also the tradition of laying the facts bare without your own biases or sensational twist getting into the story, and leaving the audience to come to their own conclusions based on the facts you've presented without embellishments.
I think you need to pay attention to these concerns, so as to keep on your side a lot of the serious minds who still read you. It will be sad to have this class of readers go because they feel your platform is no different from gossip blogs like....
These are two separate stories designed to bias the readers mind. The first one to create a false oppressor/oppressed narrative about “little” competition between startups.
Do you have an vile agenda against Norebase and Iyin. These are startups and decks are public for all to see. Similar startups will go to YC in the same cohort, funded by the same investors.
At some point many ideas will conflate and be outright copied. Execution can’t be copied though, it’s not literature. The work is what you’re paid for, not a fiction(“plagiarized” or not) on PowerPoint.
“Zuckerberg created an account on MySpace to before, while building Facebook”, if he didn’t his product/research team did and vice versa. Lead with that story and let’s see if it gets so much emotions lol.
An investor should tell you if they have conflict of interest or may not tell you when you send them your pitch if they have invested in the same.(they don’t have to).
It’s a marathon of multiple executions, stop the sensationalism and just stick with the facts. If anything sidebrief is supposed to be happy another group validated their idea as viable and worthy of $1m investment.
I would have been so glad if the emotions can turn to funding for sidebrief sha. Like put a gofundme or something at the end for everyone with pitchforks to pitch in for team sidebrief. A healthy competition is good for everyone and the customer wins every time.
That said, work on your ideas and stop bitching about a pitch deck that has been copied.
So disheartening. Wolves in sheepskin. Karma will meet with Y'all one after the other. Can you imagine the effrontery? Bold thieves. Not sure Natwarlal did up to these
What intellectual property? The SideBrief deck that was uploaded says: "Our Solution We have built the Stripe Atlas + Carta for Africa." So I guess by their own assertion, this is not an original Idea.
What is important is execution and implementation. Integrating a service such as this into 54 countries is a huge undertaking. I encourage SideBrief to enter the race, so that we can have two companies to provide this service not just one. In the US, LegalZoom, RocketLawyer, Stripe Atlas, Carta, and others are all working to cover the market. And Africa is 3x the size of the US, and can handle more than one player.
This false notion of competition reflects a zero sum game mentality. The real competition is against non-consumption. Getting more companies to use digital platforms, and getting more governments to adopt digital is the real challenge!
The nature of venture capital is that funds see many instances of the same idea, and they cannot be held hostage by the first company to send them a deck. This is why VCs do not sign NDAs for the most part, because they see thousands of decks each year and reserve the right to invest in the company that has the best chance of success. The only solution is for entrepreneurs to out execute. The idea stage is just a tiny fraction of the life of a startup.
Typical Nigerian ways, dishonest and religious with a touch of fancy English. The leaders of a country are a reflection of its people - dishonest, wicked and religious is exactly how I will describe the average Nigerian. E go reach 500 years before Nigeria go fit advance small
Wow, so this is what you guys do right repackage other people ideas. "An African future" Whose African future really,
Nigerian investors very wicked, its either they tell you you have to invest X amount of money in the startup, or the steal the idea and tell you it wont sell, or don't answer you at all.
But this is wickedness at the highest level, do you know hard it is to have the right idea?
Stop trying to play that Steve Jobs Shit, Go and think and execute your fresh idea not stolen idea.
Wow! This is all shades of bad.... how can? Dude literally took everything, like stole someone else's sweat without a second thought or a care in the world! So short of word to describe how I feel about this, very upsetting to say the very least.
Also want justice for Friday Emeh, and hope a human rights group would take up this case to see that this young man gets what's rightfully his. Thieves in high places all over, and no respect or decency shown to the next human.
If the story about Norebase and Sidebrief is true, then, from a legal standpoint, Norebase has done no legal wrong. At best, it has committed a moral wrong. Why? You can steal a business idea insofar as the idea is not protected by any form of intellectual property: copyright, trademark, patent and industrial design.
Yes, the written form of the idea is copyrighted, but not the idea in it. It can be stolen. We can all write a story about a set of twins one of whom was lost to the civil war, without violating Adichie's right to Half of A Yellow Sun.
This is why you make people sign a thick NDA before sharing business ideas with them. That way, they can neither exploit nor disclose it without you getting involved or getting into legal trouble.
Another legal barrier is that of jurisdiction - assuming there is an IP, it's vested in sidebrief which is prolly a Nigerian business while Norebase, the purported thief, is a UK business.
This is quite typical with Nigerians, we prefer outright theft to collaboration.
I've had friends attend hackathons to be told their idea/product isn't interesting only for the organizers to assemble a team to build same from scratch.
I remembered sending a proposal for building WhatsApp chat banking to 19 Nigerian banks in 2018, as usual none responded but 70% of them built same before the end of the year. Was heart breaking and i was naive, spoke to my mentors mentors and they pointed out that i fumbled, I wasn't lucky enough to have paper trails and acknowledgment copies.
See andelaflutterwaveflutterwave’s closing speech... it just captures all. We got stealing’s to do; you can go about thinking it while we worry ourselves with thieving it.
Most of these people are criminals in suits.. A man killed someone and you are asking the killer to explain why he murdered after seeing lots of evidence that proves the murder.
The problem is that is always difficult to believe or honored some of these articles because most of the people involved are seen as our role models. As for me, I trust nobody because I have almost seen it all.
I worked in a hotel for a good 5+ yrs as an IT Support (which gives me access to our server and confidential email by my boss because I was good in what I do)and I saw many things going on in Nigeria that are hard to believe from public servants, government officials, sponsoring of IP theft, etc. I just have to resign because is just too overwhelming and terrible.
@David, can we start petitions for these cases? Get justice for Friday Emeh and get that NoreBase company to pay compensation to Sidebar for intellectual theft...
Hello David. Thanks for another great effort. I enjoy reading your investigative stories and I'm thrilled by the incredible way you apply yourself to get to the bottom of any matter you cover. But not everyone is thrilled. And I'm not talking about the government and people who are the villains in your stories. No, I'm talking about non-involved people like me who read you.
Your journalistic style was the subject of debate in a WhatsApp group of professionals in the communications industry. People were unhappy about the fact that you don't give the villains in your story a chance to state their own side before you publish, you don't make any effort to interview them and hear from them. People expressed the view that you seem to have a made-up mind based on what those you consider victims in your story have said and you arrange the facts and circumstances in such a way that they give credence to the victim's position.
I know you have written before that you're not a conventional journalist. That's fine. Your readers and admirers don't want you to become one in our brown-envelope-infested system. But there are time-honoured traditions of journalism that readers would expect writers - whether they consider themselves conventional journalist or not - who conduct investigations into real issues to respect. For example, hearing from all sides and ensuring that all parties enjoy the right to fair hearing. There is also the tradition of laying the facts bare without your own biases or sensational twist getting into the story, and leaving the audience to come to their own conclusions based on the facts you've presented without embellishments.
I think you need to pay attention to these concerns, so as to keep on your side a lot of the serious minds who still read you. It will be sad to have this class of readers go because they feel your platform is no different from gossip blogs like....
These are two separate stories designed to bias the readers mind. The first one to create a false oppressor/oppressed narrative about “little” competition between startups.
Do you have an vile agenda against Norebase and Iyin. These are startups and decks are public for all to see. Similar startups will go to YC in the same cohort, funded by the same investors.
At some point many ideas will conflate and be outright copied. Execution can’t be copied though, it’s not literature. The work is what you’re paid for, not a fiction(“plagiarized” or not) on PowerPoint.
“Zuckerberg created an account on MySpace to before, while building Facebook”, if he didn’t his product/research team did and vice versa. Lead with that story and let’s see if it gets so much emotions lol.
An investor should tell you if they have conflict of interest or may not tell you when you send them your pitch if they have invested in the same.(they don’t have to).
It’s a marathon of multiple executions, stop the sensationalism and just stick with the facts. If anything sidebrief is supposed to be happy another group validated their idea as viable and worthy of $1m investment.
I would have been so glad if the emotions can turn to funding for sidebrief sha. Like put a gofundme or something at the end for everyone with pitchforks to pitch in for team sidebrief. A healthy competition is good for everyone and the customer wins every time.
That said, work on your ideas and stop bitching about a pitch deck that has been copied.
May the best team win.
Future Africa indeed.
So disheartening. Wolves in sheepskin. Karma will meet with Y'all one after the other. Can you imagine the effrontery? Bold thieves. Not sure Natwarlal did up to these
What intellectual property? The SideBrief deck that was uploaded says: "Our Solution We have built the Stripe Atlas + Carta for Africa." So I guess by their own assertion, this is not an original Idea.
What is important is execution and implementation. Integrating a service such as this into 54 countries is a huge undertaking. I encourage SideBrief to enter the race, so that we can have two companies to provide this service not just one. In the US, LegalZoom, RocketLawyer, Stripe Atlas, Carta, and others are all working to cover the market. And Africa is 3x the size of the US, and can handle more than one player.
This false notion of competition reflects a zero sum game mentality. The real competition is against non-consumption. Getting more companies to use digital platforms, and getting more governments to adopt digital is the real challenge!
The nature of venture capital is that funds see many instances of the same idea, and they cannot be held hostage by the first company to send them a deck. This is why VCs do not sign NDAs for the most part, because they see thousands of decks each year and reserve the right to invest in the company that has the best chance of success. The only solution is for entrepreneurs to out execute. The idea stage is just a tiny fraction of the life of a startup.
Typical Nigerian ways, dishonest and religious with a touch of fancy English. The leaders of a country are a reflection of its people - dishonest, wicked and religious is exactly how I will describe the average Nigerian. E go reach 500 years before Nigeria go fit advance small
Man, the fact that they were lazy enough to not even change most of the content writing is ridiculous and very bold
Wow, so this is what you guys do right repackage other people ideas. "An African future" Whose African future really,
Nigerian investors very wicked, its either they tell you you have to invest X amount of money in the startup, or the steal the idea and tell you it wont sell, or don't answer you at all.
But this is wickedness at the highest level, do you know hard it is to have the right idea?
Stop trying to play that Steve Jobs Shit, Go and think and execute your fresh idea not stolen idea.
Wow! This is all shades of bad.... how can? Dude literally took everything, like stole someone else's sweat without a second thought or a care in the world! So short of word to describe how I feel about this, very upsetting to say the very least.
Also want justice for Friday Emeh, and hope a human rights group would take up this case to see that this young man gets what's rightfully his. Thieves in high places all over, and no respect or decency shown to the next human.
If the story about Norebase and Sidebrief is true, then, from a legal standpoint, Norebase has done no legal wrong. At best, it has committed a moral wrong. Why? You can steal a business idea insofar as the idea is not protected by any form of intellectual property: copyright, trademark, patent and industrial design.
Yes, the written form of the idea is copyrighted, but not the idea in it. It can be stolen. We can all write a story about a set of twins one of whom was lost to the civil war, without violating Adichie's right to Half of A Yellow Sun.
This is why you make people sign a thick NDA before sharing business ideas with them. That way, they can neither exploit nor disclose it without you getting involved or getting into legal trouble.
Another legal barrier is that of jurisdiction - assuming there is an IP, it's vested in sidebrief which is prolly a Nigerian business while Norebase, the purported thief, is a UK business.
This is quite typical with Nigerians, we prefer outright theft to collaboration.
I've had friends attend hackathons to be told their idea/product isn't interesting only for the organizers to assemble a team to build same from scratch.
I remembered sending a proposal for building WhatsApp chat banking to 19 Nigerian banks in 2018, as usual none responded but 70% of them built same before the end of the year. Was heart breaking and i was naive, spoke to my mentors mentors and they pointed out that i fumbled, I wasn't lucky enough to have paper trails and acknowledgment copies.
They funded a company without original pitch, but a company that Stole from another,
The reason theu refused to call them for defence.
So it's all scam to favour their colleague.
They sent him a copy of the pitch and he dubbed it.
Lord have Mercy, any man that want to steal my sweat will die hanging on a noose
See andelaflutterwaveflutterwave’s closing speech... it just captures all. We got stealing’s to do; you can go about thinking it while we worry ourselves with thieving it.
Most of these people are criminals in suits.. A man killed someone and you are asking the killer to explain why he murdered after seeing lots of evidence that proves the murder.
The problem is that is always difficult to believe or honored some of these articles because most of the people involved are seen as our role models. As for me, I trust nobody because I have almost seen it all.
I worked in a hotel for a good 5+ yrs as an IT Support (which gives me access to our server and confidential email by my boss because I was good in what I do)and I saw many things going on in Nigeria that are hard to believe from public servants, government officials, sponsoring of IP theft, etc. I just have to resign because is just too overwhelming and terrible.
What is so awesome abt this article is all the information that back it up. Very detailed. I sincerely hope Friday umeh gets his Justice
@David should I be worried cause I sent out a mail to Flutterwave and its founders both on LinkedIn and Gmail regarding my Startup.