Apple Acquires Nigerian Tech Entrepreneur's Startup HopStop | Hacker News Reader

Apple Acquires Nigerian Tech Entrepreneur's Startup HopStop

cp-africa.com

94 pointsjkuria31 comments

This is a very news worthy story irrespective of the founder's origin. The founder being Nigerian makes it much more newsworthy. We all know what Nigeria's reputation is like on this thread.

Irrespective of what people would want to agree with, there is pattern matching going on. It is not exclusive to this thread or HN. See other blogs and the absence of comments. If it was a randon former Stanford grad and ex-Facebook employeee, he would have been a toast of the US tech world and definitely the HN thread. If it were a post about deciphering the motivation or techniques of scammers, everyone will have an opinion.

This is not the first time I am seeing this here and on the tech circuit. When a Nigeria company BASED in Nigeria raised $8 million, the tech newswire and HN was quiet. Do any of you remember this story? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3810466

It is nobody's fault or responsibility so I cannot or will not apportion blame. It is just how things are. It is only a reminder.

I am proud of Chinedu not only because he we attended the same High School with me, but that he surmounted the odds and has had a massive successful and useful exit. Hopefully, he will serve as an inspiration and motivate more Nigerians/ Africans to tackle problems on a gbobal scale.

PS: I actually mentioned him 3 years ago when I wrote about the dearth of black founders of globally renowned startups. http://oonwoye.com/2010/04/05/black-founders/

Very illuminating, albeit unnecessary information. But, thank you.

We don't hear a lot about non-American startups in general. Or even those outside SF and maybe NY. It's the ecosystem effect.

I thought it was an Nigerian startup, but it's just that the entrepreneur is Nigerian. Somehow that feels less newsworthy.

Why? TechCrunch publishes stories every day about US companies acquiring US companies. These stories are newsworthy. But if an entrepreneur who happens to have been born in Nigeria sells his company to Apple it is not newsworthy? Did he have to be living on a tree and subsisting on wild fruits and nuts in the Niger Delta swamps for it to be newsworthy?

He said "less newsworthy", not "not newsworthy".

He means that it's not newsworthy to include that the founder is Nigerian in the headline. The big news is that Apple acquired HopStop.

Relax, bro. He just means that the US-based founder's country of origin is not that significant to this audience, since many American startups have been founded by immigrants from all over the world. This came up because the title of this submission emphasised the founder's country of origin, which in turn is because the post was originally written for a Nigerian audience, for whom the founder's country of origin IS newsworthy.

Yep.

What tptacek, rdouble and james_madison said is accurate.

Also I don't consider most acquisitions all that interesting, but I would have been interested in reading about the Nigerian startup scene (if there is such a scene).

What tptacek, rdouble and james_madison said is accurate.

Hmm? I love being accurate but I didn't post anything to this thread.

Strangely enough, neither did the other two...

They were thinking it.

Indeed oO I meant cncool, clark-kent and seunosewa. Must have looked at the wrong section of the page or the wrong page or I don't know.

I stand behind everything I've said in this thread 1000%.

"If I write their comments, they will come."

EDIT: I want to downvote you for your name dropping, but I want to upvote you in the hope that you are a kindred nihilist.

Ah, I wish I'd be that clever.

There's a very small scene, yes. It's growing.

... and Immediately Drops Windows Phone Support

http://www.windowsobserver.com/2013/07/19/apple-buys-hopstop...

Shameless plug: For more stories like these check out http://AfriTech.com

Bittersweet for me. I love hearing good news in the tech space out of Africa. Yay!. But then as a Windows Phone fan, I see that with this announcement they've promptly canned their support for the platform. Boo!

Maybe they were looking forward to Halo before Microsoft bought Bungie.

Google cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:dRw4c11...

Very proud to hear this. Now the world can hear good news about Nigeria beyond internet scams

Same here. Amazed this made it to HN front page.

What's interesting here is that there's value in providing better solutions than the official ones.

Every transit system on HopStop has its official site, with its (usually crappy) website. I assume most of the info in HopStop is either scraped or consumed through undocumented APIs.

Good! Transit directions coming to Apple Maps. That's great news for bus-takers everywhere.

Well, bus-takers who use iPhones at least.

And who haven't already switched to Google Maps...

Nigeria could probably use more Engineers and less MBA's. I just hope it doesn't twists the local populations mind into thinking that MBA degrees are useful.

Plenty of engineers there but most work in petroleum. I do get what you are saying.

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