Success Story: Mark Essien

Mark Essien (currently 32 years old) is a Nigerian entrepreneur and a Software developer. He is the founder and CEO of Hotels.ng, one of the first and most successful online hotel booking site, which he started in 2013. In 2015, he made Forbes list of 30 most promising young entrepreneurs in Africa.

Photo Credit: forbes.com

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Mark was born and grew up in Akwa Ibom state, where he did his primary and secondary school education before moving to Germany for his Bachelors in Computer Engineering and Master's degree. While growing up, he was inspired by his Dad's fascination in building machines and equipment even though his Dad didn't study Engineering. Mark also read a lot. He did visit the library frequently. During his growing years, Google was not yet in existence and so he had to make use of the library.

In Germany, Mark didn't start education immediately. He had to do a program similar to A level for about a year. He didn't pass the compulsory German language test, and had to spend another six months, making it about a year and six months before he started his Bachelors program. During this period, he did some jobs. He worked as a ticket tearer in a cinema for about two months, before he then worked night shifts taking care of a paralyzed man.

While in this second job taking care of the paralyzed man, he had to learn programming during the night shifts in other to keep himself awake. Within three months, he developed a file sharing software, which was acquired by a big software company, where he gained a good work experience and knowledge in programming.

After his Bachelors program, he spent some time before he did his masters. During that period of time, he created the first version of Hotels.ng, which just had a few list of hotels then. But after his masters, he came back to Nigeria to fully develop and work on his idea. He had always wanted to be an Entrepreneur and he was able to look at the market and create a solution to one of the needs of the market.

Today, Hotel.ng has over 7,000 hotels listed on it and reaches over 400 million people. Mark has over 80 workers, and his business (which he started with just $300) is worth billions of naira.

Mark advises young Entrepreneurs to read a lot and do a lot.  He learnt from his experience that the best way to achieve anything is to simply do it and not to over plan it.

Be passionate about your dreams; make use of the opportunities you have; no time is a waste. If you have a passion, you don't need to wait for a right time to start doing something about it. Start with the available time, just as Mark made use of the time when he was taking care of the paralyzed man, during the night shifts. And keep working hard and improving till you get to the height you desire, you'll probably achieve bigger than what you dreamt about.

What does Mark's story teach you?