INTRODUCTION
Seun is an Ogun state born
Programmer,Webmaster and business man,
he’s the founder and owner of Nigeria and
Africa’s largest online Forum NAIRALAND the
website was the
most visited Nigerian and African Site untill
2015 according to Alexa ranking. Seun is a
very successful online entrepreneur and a very
private person.
EARLY LIFE AND BACKGROUND
Seun Osewa was born and raised in Sango Ota
Ogun State Nigeria. He grew up learning
and knowing the technological part of life.
Seun osewa has been interested in the internet
business since he has known what internet
is and how to use it.
Seun enrolled as a student in the University Of
Ile Ife to study electrical engineering in 1998
but he did not finish. No, he wasn’t rusticated.
Too brilliant to be. Looks like he dropped out
of the school to pursue his programming
dream and here he is today.
CAREER AND LIFE
Seun started his internet career in the year
2003 after going into the web hosting
business.
He had attempted to start a web hosting
business, but after 3 months he could only
boast of one customer, so he ran out of capital
and the business died..after several ideas and
other trials he decided to start a web forum,
because it was the only idea that required no
additional capital. He created 3 forums in
November 2003 (one for higher institution
students, one for IT discussions, and one to
cover the emerging GSM industry; the Mobile
Nigeria Forum at MobileNigeria.com).
The Mobile Nigeria Forum took off, so he
relaunched it in February 2005 with the
assistance of Mr. John Sagai Adams, who
posted a link to the forum on his mailing list
and participated enthusiastically in those early
days. In a month or so, the forum had about
300 members, but the growth potential didn’t
satisfy him.
He decided to start Nairaland when he noticed
two odd things about MobileNigeria:
(1) Despite its narrow focus, it was the only
Nigerian community that gave a voice to
Nigerians at home. Most other Nigerian sites
were owned and dominated by Nigerians in the
US or UK. They covered only issues of interests
to Nigerianst abroad.
(2) The off topic section of the forum,
covering topics outside telecoms, like romance
and jokes, was becoming more vibrant than the
Mobile Nigeria Forum itself, suggesting the
need for a more general-purpose Nigerian
forum. This gave him the confidence to take
forums like Naijaryders and Talknaija head on
by starting a general purpose discussion forum
with a strong bias towards issues of interest to
Nigerians at home. He felt that such a site
could attract enough traffic to make enough
money.
Nairaland got much higher traffic than
expected making his income on Nairaland
much more than expected.
DO YOU KNOW WHY NAIRALAND STARTED HAVING
MODERATORS?
As Nairaland grows seun had problems with
spammers flooding the forum so he started
getting helps from moderators he selected.
Seun got help in updating the forum’s
frontpage and keeping it clean by moderators
like
Mukina2 a female mod who has been working
with seun since 2007 and others.
In 2011 seun was approached by a group of
company who wants to buy nairaland for
1million dollars which is 155million naira but
he rejected the approach, and even nairaland’s
estimated worth by a site ranker for the year
2011 was 512million naira making it the most
expensive nigerian site. Despite all these money
seun whom is expected to be leaving in one
huge mansion in estates like Banana island
lagos only lives in his hometown sango ota
ogun state a very close little city to lagos
state.
Fame power, money we all love and seek to
have. But as someone that knows Seun quite
well -even if not physically yet, and may never
– the guy just doesn’t appear to like the
celebrity status. Some people use money to
buy fame, Seun uses money to run away from
it! There are people that will pay to meet Seun
Osewa in person, but he has refused to show
himself. With the largest African online forum
under his control, more than half a million
people that depend on his online website to
make their day, Seun can easily wield power.
But all those appear not to be his style.
A case in point: when he was listed by the
organizers of The Future Awards in the
controversial “Nigeria’s 100 Best” list, which
presented him with an opportunity to dine
with the celebrities in Aso Rock (what some
people will pay millions to get), it didn’t even
freak the Ota-based geek. Rather, he
sarcastically commented on my Facebook wall
when I raised a criticism of the TFA list that,
“oh, it’s a good list because I saw my name
there”. Oh, he only saw his name there, he
didn’t partake in anything – a free ticket to
visit Aso rock but he never went. Such is
Seun’s abhorrence for fame. We shall conclude
seun looks upto Facebook founder Mark
Zuckerberg as they both have
same attribute of seriousness in their field,
facebbook founder wore just one tie
throughout a whole year to show a sign of
seriousness in making facebook a real big thing
and so seun also used just one profile picture
in all his online accounts including nairaland
for over 2years in which he is till using as at
2014 to show a sign of seriousness in making
nairaland much more huge.
Seun once aspired to be a movie producer but
never was, may be he is going start in future.
Some people do think seun is a (born again
christian) because of some of his gentle gentle
pretense but he is totally not. It looks like he
is a great fan of actress Tonto Dikeh has he get
involved with posts related to her often on
Nairaland.
He is also a great fan of a popular TV series
"GAME OF THRONES."