Farouk Ibrahim, a product engineer, as soon as went from hostel to hostel on the University of Ibadan, in Oyo State, southwestern Nigeria, making an attempt to promote his software program.
This software program, Peernet, let lecturers share learning supplies with college students over a personal community. Ibrahim charged ₦100 ($0.074) after 20 free tries, however no one paid; moderately, college students referred to as him to unlock the app.
He couldn’t perceive it.
“Why won’t you just give me ₦100?” he remembers considering. The expertise stayed with him. “Building a product is less than half the work. Getting people to care about what you’ve built is arguably the bigger challenge,” he says.
That lesson has formed his work with startups, together with OpenInsured, an AI firm constructing an actual property information platform. In 2026, he says his work contributed to its $8 million elevate, regardless of writing fewer than 100 strains of code that yr.
“I used to hate selling. I used to hate asking people for money,” he says. “Now, selling is something I see as very important. It is the ability to make people care about what you build.”
Paper toys
Before software program, Ibrahim says he made toys. Growing up in Ibadan, he repaired damaged toys or made paper replacements, typically promoting them to schoolmates for ₦5 ($0.0037). His paper laptop computer was his hottest invention, that includes a stick-fighting recreation managed by pulling threads hooked up to broomsticks.
“It became very popular then, and it made me famous, actually,” he says.
He additionally loved drawing and imagined changing into an architect, a lot that his father purchased cardboards for him to recreate buildings they noticed throughout highway journeys. But that ambition modified when his mom purchased a Dell desktop for a distant course.
At the time, Ibrahim was about 10 years previous and initially forbidden from touching the pc. But when his mom completed the course, he lastly had entry to it.
“It was the best gift I ever had, although it wasn’t directly gifted to me,” he says. “Or rather, it was the best thing I ever stole, if I should put it that way. And that was when I stopped drawing.”
He first used the pc to play video games, however Wolfenstein, a modifiable first-person shooter, caught his consideration after a buddy shared recreation DVDs.
“I tried to learn how to modify the game,” he says. “That was actually when I started getting interested in coding and making things happen on the computer.”
His mother and father thought of him too younger for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), a nationwide examination for college kids searching for college admission, so he took Cambridge A-levels, the place he met different college students eager about computer systems.
“I wasn’t the only one who knew about computers,” he recollects.
He learnt about 12 programming languages, together with C++, Java and C#, and constructed an working system and kernel to perceive how they labored.
After lacking college admission on his first try, he spent one other yr at residence learning laptop science supplies. He ultimately gained admission to the University of Ibadan via direct entry, skipping his first yr.
From promoting software program to learning the worth of his expertise
By his closing yr, Ibrahim had a number of software program merchandise on-line, together with Peernet, which he modified and listed on platforms reminiscent of CodeCanyon and Envato.
“I made my first dollar online,” he says. “When people were buying the products, I thought that maybe it was just numbers going up. And then when the money dropped into my account, that’s when I knew that, oh God, I’m the next billionaire.”
Another product was RapidBazz, a Postgres-based platform with performance comparable to Firebase. Ibrahim says it attracted about 10 purchases. One purchaser, a UK-based man named John, wished to flip it right into a startup.
“I took it off the platform and worked with him to develop it properly,” Ibrahim says. But they may not proceed after he misplaced contact with John, whom he believes had suffered a significant loss.
After graduating from the college in 2019, Ibrahim wished to build merchandise moderately than take a standard job.
“I wasn’t looking for a job; I just wanted one of my software products to blow up really,” he says.
Unfortunately, none took off as he hoped, and the COVID-19 pandemic made his funds tougher.
“When the coronavirus came in, it dawned on me that I need to be sustainable for myself,” he says.
As he ready for the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) in 2021, his father contacted a household buddy who co-owned ICMA Professional Services, an audit and consulting agency with authorities shoppers, together with Delta State. Posted to the state, Ibrahim secured a placement at its workplace in Asaba, the state’s capital.
ICMA used Excel to reconcile authorities income funds and determine the departments they belonged to. Ibrahim then constructed an utility that used textual content processing and patterns in earlier transaction descriptions to classify new funds, leaving accountants to confirm the outcomes moderately than kind transactions manually.
By the tip of his service yr, the corporate wished to retain him. Its supply included an house and a month-to-month wage of ₦200,000 ($148.7) up from the ₦30,000 ($22.31) he had initially acquired. Ibrahim, then 23, declined.
“I got an offer letter from them, but I wanted to do real tech stuff, not what they wanted me to do,” he says. “That experience made me realise the value of my skills and the importance of solving problems wherever I find myself. When you can connect what you know how to do to a problem that needs solving, people begin to see the value you bring as a professional.”
Learning to build with a group
After declining the supply, Ibrahim returned to Ibadan in 2022 as a full-time worker at Crop2Cash, an agritech firm the place he had accomplished his industrial coaching in 2018.
Crop2Cash was constructing a monetary platform to assist smallholder farmers doc their actions and use the information to entry grants and loans. Ibrahim constructed backend analytics to course of the info and a concentrating on engine that ranked farmers by yield.
At Crop2Cash, he joined a bigger group of venture managers and DevOps engineers, after years of working largely alone.
“I learned collaboration because I had already been working alone all this while,” he says. “Before, everything was always done by me, because I liked the solo journey. But then collaboration changed everything. The things that come out of collaboration are usually very massive.”
He additionally started to respect the relationships that got here with teamwork. “That’s actually when I knew that there was the human side to this technical thing we do,” he says, describing it as his first profession household. He was there for lower than a yr.
When OpenAI’s ChatGPT launched in 2022, Ibrahim mentioned he adopted its growth intently and started constructing initiatives that included AI. The expertise quickly took a lot of his consideration.
Finding his means into AI
Ibrahim had examine machine learning, however ChatGPT’s 2022 launch modified how he thought of constructing software program.
He started publishing AI prototypes on his web site, fibdev.com. In 2023, one caught the eye of a UK cybersecurity firm searching for a system to practice monetary establishments’ employees to recognise social engineering makes an attempt.
It wished to transfer past chatbots and simulate telephone calls with financial institution staff. Ibrahim due to this fact constructed an illustration connecting a conversational AI agent to a telephone line, prompting the corporate to strategy him.
“It was really exciting for me because this was my first global recognition since I met John,” he says. “This was 2023, and I am getting to speak with someone abroad again who wants me to come work with him.”
The firm initially provided him $500 a month. Ibrahim requested for double, although he nervous the request may cost him the chance. It ultimately provided between $600 and $800, with the opportunity of a elevate if his work went properly. He accepted and joined Bilic UK as an AI engineer in October 2023.
At Bilic, he labored on the social engineering simulation platform, which was piloted with monetary establishments. He later turned interim Chief Technology Officer whereas the corporate’s chief expertise officer (CTO) was away, an expertise that taught him to suppose past engineering and contemplate product choices.
Convinced he may build an organization of his personal, Ibrahim left Bilic in March 2024 to discovered Mock0.com, a platform that helped e-commerce companies build product suggestion techniques and AI-powered search with out growing their very own fashions.
He utilized to Y Combinator however was unsuccessful. Without the funding wanted to maintain the enterprise, Mock0 ultimately ran out of cash.
“I absolutely loved the idea. I was so convinced we would get into YC because, at the time, I hadn’t seen anyone else doing quite what we were doing,” he says.
After Mock0 folded, Ibrahim continued publishing AI prototypes. Founders started approaching him for assist, and he began consulting for $50 to $200 an hour. The work introduced him into contact with extra founders.
Building for AI and actual property
One consulting connection led Ibrahim to Jide Ogunjobi, former Chief Technology Officer of the mobility startup, Moove, who was constructing an organization within the United States referred to as Context Data and on the lookout for an AI engineer.
Ibrahim says Jide contacted him after somebody shared his profile in a gaggle. He initially joined as a consulting AI engineer. After three months, Jide requested him to come on full-tim, and Ibrahim joined Context Data in September 2024.
Context Data was constructing infrastructure that made firm information obtainable to generative AI techniques and brokers. Ibrahim labored throughout information and brokers, growing strategies to assist fashions perceive that info.
“My job was to make the model understand the data, so I did some context engineering, then invented some new techniques that people really loved.”
He left Context Data in October 2025.
By January 2026, a suggestion from Julia Kingsley, a former colleague and mentor, had led him to one other function. Zach Schofel, OpenInsured’s founder, was constructing an AI platform to analyse actual property information and introduced Ibrahim on to develop its minimal viable product (MVP) for potential buyers.
Ibrahim negotiated fairness and wage will increase tied to milestones. Schofel made an exception by hiring him remotely, he says, though the corporate wished its complete group in New York.
“I needed to prove him and Julia right,” he says.
It turned his hardest venture. With solely two engineers on the group, Ibrahim labored 13 to 15 hours a day to organise and interpret troublesome actual property information.
“I would say it is my hardest project so far because the real estate data is so rough and so messed up and you have to get an AI system to understand it,” he says.
Four months after Ibrahim joined, he says OpenInsured raised a $5 million seed spherical. About six weeks later, it raised one other $3 million.
For Ibrahim, the importance went past the funding. “It was not about the money. It was the fact that I worked on something that birthed that kind of money that really made the whole thing really cool,” he says.
After the funding, Ibrahim was anticipated to relocate to New York, however makes an attempt to safe a US visa had been unsuccessful due to the visa ban on Nigerians. Given his function and the sensitivity of the work, he says persevering with remotely was not possible. His contract resulted in August 2026.
“We parted on good terms. I sold my equity and the company also showered me with gifts,” he says. “I encountered some of the most humbling problems in my entire career that made me question my ability. But I am grateful to have worked with people who challenged me and pushed my standards higher.”
Building past code
Building AI merchandise was difficult, however working throughout time zones meant 12- 13-hour days. His supply letter described a “6-day work week grind culture”, which he initially thought of his robust swimsuit.
“I actually suffered some headaches that even paralysed some parts of me whenever I had them. The headaches were really terrible, and I would say it was quite scary,” he says.
Still, the troublesome issues stored him engaged. “I love the challenge. AI has some of the most exciting problems we have ever seen. I enjoy working on these problems and how much better they make me as a builder,” he says.
He is now extra acutely aware of the need to defend his well being and now not desires the lengthy engineering hours.
He now helps startups and organisations build with AI whereas growing a platform to determine and upskill “10x plus one engineers”: people who can do greater than immediate AI instruments and switch founders’ concepts into merchandise clients care about.
“Coding is no longer the reason why a company will hire you because anyone can use Claude and ChatGPT to code,” he says. “They are looking for someone they can give their idea to and tell what to build, and he would build something that customers would care about.”
Ibrahim in the end desires to turn out to be a founder himself, though he has but to decide on an concept. For now, he is targeted on serving to different founders build whereas determining what he desires to create subsequent.
