NextGenHub- The Story
2025 April 1st
See all posts
Never for a minute in my entire life entertained the idea of me being a
teacher at any point in my life. Teacher, growing up, was the career you
resort to when all hell breaks loose on you. Say you’d be a teacher in
class and you’d get laughed at so hard. Yet, some decades later, here I am
not only being a tutor but also leading other tutors to globalize their
impact. This is a quick story of how I decided to start working on
NextGenHub, how I am finding purpose in ways I never thought about before.
And what it took for me to get here.
Late 2021, 22 and 23. Those are some rough years right there. I walked
away from my full time job a year or two before to thread my own path.
Why? I didn’t know then. I just didn’t have any meaning. I was just doing
what I was being told to do. Looking back, and with the understanding I
have about myself now. I think I decided on that simply because it didn’t
fit my way of work. As I have grown, I have discovered that I have sort of
a fixed cognitive budget every day and translate to the entire year. It
runs out as I spend on things to think about. And so, I get to spend it on
urgent, important and high priority things every day. Now, in my day job,
I was spending this budget on mini-tasks. And the amount of tasks to be
done every day was almost unpredictable in a definite manner. Anyways,
that is a story for another day.
After some time of unemployment, I decided to explore entrepreneurship.
How hard could it be? I thought. My previous job was in the blockchain
(now web 3) space so it was quite obvious to me that the next venture
would have to be crypto–related because that is the industry I know inside
out. Although I didn’t know what specifically it would be yet. Still
exploring after some weeks, I remember, I jumped on a quick gig. That
required that I pay a colleague in Nigeria. I will share the details in a
post later (maybe), but long-story short, I ended up starting a fintech
company that enables cross-border payment between African countries by
utilizing stablecoins. Great idea, great opportunity. Less funding,
Suboptimal team execution, zero to no team conviction. It failed. The team
lost interest and most of them went on further academic pursuits.
First actual start up failure. I took some time to reflect on what went
wrong. At that moment I realized I needed something to hold on to. Some
sort of meaning to get me back to being a normal human. I could code. I
could write (somewhat), I had got some marketing certificates too. So how
about I go into the job market again. But this time, strictly a less
stressful and part–time role. I needed something that would not take less
than 2 hours to complete in a day so I could focus the rest of the day
thinking about what I wanted to do next. After some search, I discovered I
could be a home tutor. Perfect for my specifications. And how boring could
things possibly get if I am teaching kids. Stressful? Yes! But boring?
No!. Kids always have next questions!
I found a Ghanaian company and sent in my application. Afterwards, I took
my phone, tracked the founder on LinkedIn, and called his phone. Told him
about my intentions, my skillset and after a week, I was a tutor. A new
path I never thought I would come across.
When The idea Clicked;
The company I signed up with was only offering programming tutoring. Pay
was not that great. But I loved every bit of it. The first client I was
assigned to was a high achieving MOM of 3. She was the most kind-hearted,
driven and super involved in her kids education almost to an absurd
degree. I was tutoring her kids coding fundamentals and robotics. I didn’t
have the flexibility to decide with the parent what I wanted to teach to
the child. I was just handed a curriculum and I had to strictly go by it.
To be honest, it was all just scratch programming and dragging and
dropping stuff. I didn’t like that the kids couldn’t have a peek into how
real world programs were being made. So I would intentionally try and
finish as I had to teach for a session as early as I can, install vscode
and take them through some real world codes in the last 10-15 mins of the
class. It was not enough. But it was something. Essentially, all the
company focused on was lego robotics and scratch programming, and
sometimes a bit of electronics. While that was cool, I felt the students
needed to be immersed into things that were practical in the real world
and how codes were written. Not just playing around with scratch and lego
robotics, especially when A.I is on the rise and people are building Apps
with little to no coding skillls. It was a feeling. But I didn’t take it
too seriously.
One day, I came to this education-obsessed mom’s house to teach her kids
and she expressed to me how she got the reports from the tutoring company
I was working with and lamented about how she is not seeing any value for
what was being taught and how she wished we could teach her kids
programming in the real world so they can learn to build their own
websites and App in the real world. Let’s call her “Ms. Lady”. I told her,
I had already thought of this and that I would discuss with the Boss to
try and make changes in the curriculum. And I did.
Some weeks later, In my spare time, I built a website for her business.
Just as a christmas gift sort of, since she and her family had been really
nice to me and wanted to express my gratitude. She was so amazed and
excited when I showed it to her. We didn’t deploy that website. I had to
make a new one. Oh did I forget to tell you how much of a perfectionist
she is? She ended up contracting my software development company to build
a better and perfect one for her and another as her personal website. At a
cost of course.
After the website I made for her, she asked that I teach her kids to be
able to build such websites on their own atop of the regular scratch
tutoring I am doing with them. I was already doing it. This time, she
wanted to just pay me for it, and she wanted more than 15 mins class. Mind
you, before then, I had about 3 other students that I was teaching
programming. Extra students were a bit too much for me. So I contacted my
best friend who was also tech-savvy and ran him through a 1 week training
to take over the other students so I can just maintain 2 students.
After a couple of weeks, Ms. Perfectionist referred 4 more students from 1
family to me. Now, it wasn’t between me and my bestfriend anymore. I had
to get more tutors. So I did. Another parent also referred me to some
students that needed Maths tutoring assistance in preparation for their
exams. I loved Maths. But I thought I was the coding teacher and not
Maths. Anyways, I love Maths and I am good at it. I will teach Maths then.
What seemed to have been a side hobby to enable me to find meaning ended
up growing quicker a job. I got some friends of Mine to take up with some
students that came along the way that also wanted exams prep. At our peak
at that time, we had about 13 students who were either teaching coding or
prepping for international exams like SAT, IGCSE and NOVDEC. And I hadn’t
even registered as an actual company yet. I took payments through my
software company’s bank account. I got very busy very quickly.
Couple of Months later, the students that were prepping for the exams
wrote it, and that freed up my time. They were the majority of students
that we had. Their results also came back a couple of weeks before writing
this essay and most of them did way better than they did in school
learning for 4 years. Mind you, we taught them in only 4-5 months. I was
blown away by the impact we had on the lives of these students in such a
short period. But I also wondered why the teachers in school weren’t able
to help them pass their exams when they had 4 years to do so. I got the
answer; 1:1 tutoring is the difference. Students feel more connected to
teachers that way and they feel free to ask even the dumbest questions. In
a group classroom setting, there is a lot of status play and shyness.
Students aren’t able to be themselves. I saw a light at the end of the
tunnel. A feeling truly meaningful and confident. At that moment, I asked
myself; “What if I took this seriously, actually focused my time on it as
an actual start up? How many more kids could we impact?”. That was the
next chapter for me. I had to put everything aside and go all in on this.
But I want a cofounder. Someone that can connect with parents like I
can’t. Preferably female. Ms. Lady crossed my mind. But I thought she was
too busy with her interior design company that she would not be willing to
jump on with me. Although, I also was more convinced that with her being
obsessed with education, she could surprisingly agree to join me in a
flash. I will throw the idea to her and hear what she thinks.
At this time, I was still going to Ms. Lady’s house once a week to teach
her kids coding. One day after coding class, I walked to her and told her
what was on my mind. I can’t put into words how much she embraced the idea
and even further on went on to tell me about how she’s always had a dream
to build a school someday. Traditional education just focuses on academics
and she wants to build a unique system that builds kids into well-rounded
students. That, dear reader, is how NextGenHub started. We spent some days
discussing and agreeing on a brand name, registering the company, sharing
structure and that was it. We compliment each other effortlessly. She
brings on her high standards, marketing experience and business
management, while I focus on technology, and company operations.
We cleared up the entire system and rebuilt it from scratch making sure we
are providing parents with value beyond what they are even paying for and
raising the bar higher for competitors.
First off, Under no way was I going to allow us to pay our tutors the same
what my previous employer was paying. I would pay more. When we pay more,
we attract more qualified teachers and we wouldn’t need to spend so much
on training anymore.
Secondly, our tutoring services must transcend academics. I am a coder, I
like Maths, I drink wine, I play the piano, I play chess, I love art, and
I love literature. These are things that I only got exposed to at a later
stage in my life and I only got exposed to them because I am a nerd. We
are human. And humans feel, love, and do human stuff. I want us to not
only focus on academics but also arts, leadership, strategic thinking,
history, and anything else that would shape well-rounded figure grown-up
humans that not only are brilliant mathematicians or scientists, but also
appreciate arts, literature, emotional intelligence and love things deeply
to go all in on them. This is how NextGenHubGlobal.com begins, and unless
I die, or get acquired, I am going to be working on this for the next
decade! We connect kids with great tutors for 1:1 tutoring!
With respect, Easy!
E.B
NextGenHub- The Story
2025 April 1st See all postsNever for a minute in my entire life entertained the idea of me being a teacher at any point in my life. Teacher, growing up, was the career you resort to when all hell breaks loose on you. Say you’d be a teacher in class and you’d get laughed at so hard. Yet, some decades later, here I am not only being a tutor but also leading other tutors to globalize their impact. This is a quick story of how I decided to start working on NextGenHub, how I am finding purpose in ways I never thought about before. And what it took for me to get here.
Late 2021, 22 and 23. Those are some rough years right there. I walked away from my full time job a year or two before to thread my own path. Why? I didn’t know then. I just didn’t have any meaning. I was just doing what I was being told to do. Looking back, and with the understanding I have about myself now. I think I decided on that simply because it didn’t fit my way of work. As I have grown, I have discovered that I have sort of a fixed cognitive budget every day and translate to the entire year. It runs out as I spend on things to think about. And so, I get to spend it on urgent, important and high priority things every day. Now, in my day job, I was spending this budget on mini-tasks. And the amount of tasks to be done every day was almost unpredictable in a definite manner. Anyways, that is a story for another day.
After some time of unemployment, I decided to explore entrepreneurship. How hard could it be? I thought. My previous job was in the blockchain (now web 3) space so it was quite obvious to me that the next venture would have to be crypto–related because that is the industry I know inside out. Although I didn’t know what specifically it would be yet. Still exploring after some weeks, I remember, I jumped on a quick gig. That required that I pay a colleague in Nigeria. I will share the details in a post later (maybe), but long-story short, I ended up starting a fintech company that enables cross-border payment between African countries by utilizing stablecoins. Great idea, great opportunity. Less funding, Suboptimal team execution, zero to no team conviction. It failed. The team lost interest and most of them went on further academic pursuits.
First actual start up failure. I took some time to reflect on what went wrong. At that moment I realized I needed something to hold on to. Some sort of meaning to get me back to being a normal human. I could code. I could write (somewhat), I had got some marketing certificates too. So how about I go into the job market again. But this time, strictly a less stressful and part–time role. I needed something that would not take less than 2 hours to complete in a day so I could focus the rest of the day thinking about what I wanted to do next. After some search, I discovered I could be a home tutor. Perfect for my specifications. And how boring could things possibly get if I am teaching kids. Stressful? Yes! But boring? No!. Kids always have next questions!
I found a Ghanaian company and sent in my application. Afterwards, I took my phone, tracked the founder on LinkedIn, and called his phone. Told him about my intentions, my skillset and after a week, I was a tutor. A new path I never thought I would come across.
When The idea Clicked;
The company I signed up with was only offering programming tutoring. Pay was not that great. But I loved every bit of it. The first client I was assigned to was a high achieving MOM of 3. She was the most kind-hearted, driven and super involved in her kids education almost to an absurd degree. I was tutoring her kids coding fundamentals and robotics. I didn’t have the flexibility to decide with the parent what I wanted to teach to the child. I was just handed a curriculum and I had to strictly go by it. To be honest, it was all just scratch programming and dragging and dropping stuff. I didn’t like that the kids couldn’t have a peek into how real world programs were being made. So I would intentionally try and finish as I had to teach for a session as early as I can, install vscode and take them through some real world codes in the last 10-15 mins of the class. It was not enough. But it was something. Essentially, all the company focused on was lego robotics and scratch programming, and sometimes a bit of electronics. While that was cool, I felt the students needed to be immersed into things that were practical in the real world and how codes were written. Not just playing around with scratch and lego robotics, especially when A.I is on the rise and people are building Apps with little to no coding skillls. It was a feeling. But I didn’t take it too seriously.
One day, I came to this education-obsessed mom’s house to teach her kids and she expressed to me how she got the reports from the tutoring company I was working with and lamented about how she is not seeing any value for what was being taught and how she wished we could teach her kids programming in the real world so they can learn to build their own websites and App in the real world. Let’s call her “Ms. Lady”. I told her, I had already thought of this and that I would discuss with the Boss to try and make changes in the curriculum. And I did.
Some weeks later, In my spare time, I built a website for her business. Just as a christmas gift sort of, since she and her family had been really nice to me and wanted to express my gratitude. She was so amazed and excited when I showed it to her. We didn’t deploy that website. I had to make a new one. Oh did I forget to tell you how much of a perfectionist she is? She ended up contracting my software development company to build a better and perfect one for her and another as her personal website. At a cost of course.
After the website I made for her, she asked that I teach her kids to be able to build such websites on their own atop of the regular scratch tutoring I am doing with them. I was already doing it. This time, she wanted to just pay me for it, and she wanted more than 15 mins class. Mind you, before then, I had about 3 other students that I was teaching programming. Extra students were a bit too much for me. So I contacted my best friend who was also tech-savvy and ran him through a 1 week training to take over the other students so I can just maintain 2 students.
After a couple of weeks, Ms. Perfectionist referred 4 more students from 1 family to me. Now, it wasn’t between me and my bestfriend anymore. I had to get more tutors. So I did. Another parent also referred me to some students that needed Maths tutoring assistance in preparation for their exams. I loved Maths. But I thought I was the coding teacher and not Maths. Anyways, I love Maths and I am good at it. I will teach Maths then. What seemed to have been a side hobby to enable me to find meaning ended up growing quicker a job. I got some friends of Mine to take up with some students that came along the way that also wanted exams prep. At our peak at that time, we had about 13 students who were either teaching coding or prepping for international exams like SAT, IGCSE and NOVDEC. And I hadn’t even registered as an actual company yet. I took payments through my software company’s bank account. I got very busy very quickly.
Couple of Months later, the students that were prepping for the exams wrote it, and that freed up my time. They were the majority of students that we had. Their results also came back a couple of weeks before writing this essay and most of them did way better than they did in school learning for 4 years. Mind you, we taught them in only 4-5 months. I was blown away by the impact we had on the lives of these students in such a short period. But I also wondered why the teachers in school weren’t able to help them pass their exams when they had 4 years to do so. I got the answer; 1:1 tutoring is the difference. Students feel more connected to teachers that way and they feel free to ask even the dumbest questions. In a group classroom setting, there is a lot of status play and shyness. Students aren’t able to be themselves. I saw a light at the end of the tunnel. A feeling truly meaningful and confident. At that moment, I asked myself; “What if I took this seriously, actually focused my time on it as an actual start up? How many more kids could we impact?”. That was the next chapter for me. I had to put everything aside and go all in on this. But I want a cofounder. Someone that can connect with parents like I can’t. Preferably female. Ms. Lady crossed my mind. But I thought she was too busy with her interior design company that she would not be willing to jump on with me. Although, I also was more convinced that with her being obsessed with education, she could surprisingly agree to join me in a flash. I will throw the idea to her and hear what she thinks.
At this time, I was still going to Ms. Lady’s house once a week to teach her kids coding. One day after coding class, I walked to her and told her what was on my mind. I can’t put into words how much she embraced the idea and even further on went on to tell me about how she’s always had a dream to build a school someday. Traditional education just focuses on academics and she wants to build a unique system that builds kids into well-rounded students. That, dear reader, is how NextGenHub started. We spent some days discussing and agreeing on a brand name, registering the company, sharing structure and that was it. We compliment each other effortlessly. She brings on her high standards, marketing experience and business management, while I focus on technology, and company operations.
We cleared up the entire system and rebuilt it from scratch making sure we are providing parents with value beyond what they are even paying for and raising the bar higher for competitors.
First off, Under no way was I going to allow us to pay our tutors the same what my previous employer was paying. I would pay more. When we pay more, we attract more qualified teachers and we wouldn’t need to spend so much on training anymore.
Secondly, our tutoring services must transcend academics. I am a coder, I like Maths, I drink wine, I play the piano, I play chess, I love art, and I love literature. These are things that I only got exposed to at a later stage in my life and I only got exposed to them because I am a nerd. We are human. And humans feel, love, and do human stuff. I want us to not only focus on academics but also arts, leadership, strategic thinking, history, and anything else that would shape well-rounded figure grown-up humans that not only are brilliant mathematicians or scientists, but also appreciate arts, literature, emotional intelligence and love things deeply to go all in on them. This is how NextGenHubGlobal.com begins, and unless I die, or get acquired, I am going to be working on this for the next decade! We connect kids with great tutors for 1:1 tutoring!
With respect, Easy!
E.B