Where were you raised and who influenced your career?

I was raised in Nigeria. My parents - especially my mum - greatly influenced my career. Mum didn't get to finish high school, but she started and grew an eclectic mix of small businesses. Her business filled gaps in the services that were open in her local community and also provided job opportunities and a stream of income for local people. Seeing this needs-driven social entrepreneurship showed me how businesses can be a vehicle of social good. Her willingness to take on new ventures showed me that limitations were opportunities to make the most of a situation. This influenced my career mission to use my skills in design and technology - to create a positive impact in the world.

What led you to study computing and do your masters in Distributed Computing?

I grew up with a computer from the age of eight and learnt how to build my own systems. Being around computers and software sparked my imagination and curiosity. When I had to choose a major for university, Distributed Computing was a no-brainer.

Your career path?

I started off as a software engineer for digital marketing agencies, delivering websites and web apps. I saw plenty of great ideas get implemented and go nowhere, which was a frustrating experience. My career interest became, "How do I consistently craft products/services that customers love, that prompt behavioural change, but are also commercially sustainable?" I decided to try my hand at this with startups in 2012. The first startups I co-founded didn't pan out as expected, however these failures taught me an incredible amount and fuelled my drive to keep trying my hand at transforming ideas into great products and businesses. They also kickstarted the next phase of my career - I started getting requests from people to help them in their journey of turning ideas into effective and sustainable products.

What led you to found Sheda?

Sheda started in 2014 and was a natural progression from all of these experiences and lessons I'd learned. Sheda means "to create", we started as a way to help a broad spectrum of organisations take ideas their ideas and create viable digital products. Our focus has narrowed to the digital health space. We design, develop, and deliver digital health products. Two examples of our work are: The Porn Project - This was a collaboration with the Burnet Research Institute for VicHealth. The task was to develop a digital health app (The Gist) aimed at improving the sexual health literacy of vulnerable and disadvantaged young people (16 years+), giving them the knowledge, attitude, and confidence to negotiate potential exposure to online pornography and understand how it could affect future relationships. The Gist helped create meaningful behavioural change and improve the mental, physical, social, and sexual health outcomes of young people. Secondly, Health Delivered is a cloud-based platform for dieticians that provides streamlined consultations, outputs personalised and easily adjustable nutrition plans that take into consideration the patient's preferred diet using a meal-generation A.I. engine, and allows the dieticians to implement remote dietary management for long-distance clients. We helped Health Delivered build its platform and make it HIPAA compliant.

At what point is Sheda now?

We are doubling down on our focus of creating products and services in the digital health space. We are working on our own startup products that are focused on revolutionising how health practitioners engage, assess, and validate the effectiveness of health interventions and taking on selective clients that match our mission: to use design and technology to improve health outcomes both for people and for our planet.

What will you discuss at Startup Stories?

My personal background, my professional journey so far, the "why" behind what I'm doing, and some of the key lessons that I've learnt from working with a lot of different startup founders.

You have spoken about workforce racism and your decision to use the name your parents gave you - Oyem - instead of 'Mike'. What prompted that?

In professional settings I had initially gone by "Mike", an anglicised version of my full name "Oyemike", so I could get past inherent bias in recruitment. Even then, with an anglicised name, I experienced resistance and situations where I've been passed over for work in favour of those less experienced than me. I've become increasingly uncomfortable diluting a key part of my identity to confirm. I felt that presenting with my name Oyem was authentic to who I am and the work I'm trying to do, so I switched back.

Best advice to entrepreneurs who have hit a wall?

First principles thinking - list all your assumptions and question each one. Look for evidence either for or against why an idea will work, look at alternative perspectives, and question the initial hypothesis. This is the process that I return to whenever I am feeling stuck.

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