Here’s Everything That Went Down at the Second Edition of Skillbase by Piggyvest.

The second edition of SkillBase held successfully on the 7th of March at ZoneTech Park, Gbagada, Lagos. In case you’re unfamiliar, at SkillBase we bring together experienced entrepreneurs and experts not only from the Piggyvest team, but from various leading organizations, to share their practical and actionable knowledge, to inspire, educate and motivate SMEs.

We are very aware of how challenging it is to start and run a business, talk more of a successful one, and knowing that small businesses are the lifeblood of economies, it is very important to us to have more thriving small business owners in the country. Our mission with SkillBase is to support 1 million small business owners within a period of 5 years.

This edition of SkillBase was themed How to access funding for your business, curated and helmed by Terry Kanu, Head, Partnerships — Piggyvest.

Our first facilitator was Dayo Koleowo (Partner, Microtraction), who held an engaging session on “What Investors look out for before investing”. As a partner at Mictrotraction, a leading African Venture Capital firm, he was able to provide attendees with practical, insightful knowledge during this session.

We also ran the pilot of PitchFest, a cash grant initiative by Piggyvest for small business owners, at the event. After Dayo’s session, 5 businesses got a chance to give a 2-minute pitch on why they deserve to win the 1st place prize of 500,000 Naira cash grant.

Odun Eweniyi (COO, Piggyvest), had a session titled “Let’s talk about fundraising”. She pointed out that if you are sure that entrepreneurship is the way to go for you, you have to be mentally and physically ready to put everything into it to make it work.

After her session, the 2nd batch of entrepreneurs came up to pitch and that rounded up the pitching for the day.

Piggyvest CEO, Somto Ifezue, gave an inspirational closing statement. He emphasized the need to be customer-centric and how to meet your customers on their journey.

Piggyvest judges had a short sit-down with each of the entrepreneurs that pitched to get a better understanding of their business in order to make a final decision.

The judges made their decision and the top three entrepreneurs were chosen.

Terry Kanu came up to give the suspenseful announcement; and the winners were announced as follows: In 3rd place, winning 200,000 Naira, Ibukunoluwa Martins (FitandPro);

In 2nd place, winning 300,000 Naira, Nnaai Makogi (ElPablo Shawarma),

and the winner of 500,000 Naira was Ada Obi (Matte Apothecary).

Attendees didn’t just learn though, we had tea, cookies, hor d’oeuvres and drinks strategically placed between sessions. We also played some trivia and gave away cool Piggyvest merchandise.

All-in all, we had an inspirational 2nd edition of SkillBase and we were very impressed with all the business owners that came up to pitch. The next edition of SkillBase and PitchFest will be announced soon so watch our social media handles for updates.