Every founder we’ve covered at Techiesnode has a good product story buried somewhere in their pitch deck. Few of them know how to tell it.
That gap between building something real and being able to communicate why it matters is one of the most underestimated barriers facing founders across Nigeria’s innovation ecosystem. It shows up in pitch decks that read like feature lists. In About pages that describe what a company does but never why it exists. In press outreach that goes nowhere because the story isn’t there to find.
We’re building something to close that gap.
The Techiesnode Storytelling Masterclass the flagship initiative of our newly established training arm, launching in partnership with innovation hubs across Ibadan.
What it is
A hands-on masterclass designed to give founders and hub teams a practical, repeatable framework for telling their company’s story, to investors, to customers, and to media. Not a one-off writing exercise. Not a lecture. A working session that ends with something concrete: a rewritten pitch, a sharper About page, a pitch line a journalist would actually respond to.
Participants will work through the difference between a founder’s personal story and their company’s story, how to structure a pitch around tension and resolution instead of chronology, how to use a single data point to anchor a narrative, and what actually makes an editor say yes to a pitch, informed by the same editorial lens that shapes our #BuiltForAfrica coverage.
Why now
We’ve spent the past year telling founder stories across Techiesnode, profiling startups, covering ecosystem shifts, and building #BuiltForAfrica into a voice that takes African tech seriously without the hype. Along the way, one pattern has been impossible to ignore: the founders with the clearest stories are consistently the ones who get funded, get covered, and get remembered.
This masterclass is our attempt to make that skill accessible, not accidental.
Who it’s for
Early-stage founders and hub program or communications teams looking to sharpen how they communicate their work — whether that’s for an investor pitch, a demo day, or simply getting noticed by the press.
What’s next
We’re piloting the first session with one Ibadan innovation hub before expanding to others across the city. Participants who stand out may be featured on Techiesnode, and strong founder stories will have a direct path into our monthly startup pitch meetup.
If you run a hub in Ibadan and want to bring this to your founder community, or you’re a founder who wants in on the first cohort, reach out, details and dates are coming soon.
Building great things is only half the work. Telling the world about them is the other half. We’re here to help with that.
