Asher's Blog

In 2012, I was working in the media sector, and things were moving fast for me. I had grown quickly on the job and received three promotions within my first twelve months, so naturally, I had built strong relationships with my bosses. One of them was part of a bikers’ club, and on weekends, they would ride around Lagos, covering distances that sounded completely unreal to me at the time. Five hours on a bicycle, Non-stop! It felt almost impossible.

I was fascinated. Not just by the endurance, but by the discipline. So I decided I wanted to learn how to ride a bicycle.

Around that same time, my boss (Marho) mentioned he was getting a new bike and offered to sell me the one he was using. I remember buying it for ₦30,000, which, at the time, was more than my monthly salary. It felt unusual and bold, but something in me just knew I had to do it.

A few days later, I went to pick up the bicycle. The only problem was, I couldn’t ride it. So I pushed it all the way home. Twenty to thirty minutes. A full sports bicycle, and me, walking beside it. I remember feeling like everyone was staring, probably wondering how someone could own such a serious bike and still not know how to ride it. That walk home was humbling.

Then came the learning.

Like anything unfamiliar, it started with repeated failure. I rode around the estate, fell down, got up, rode again, and fell again. At first, I could barely ride for fifteen seconds before losing balance and hitting the ground. Over time, fifteen seconds became thirty, then a minute, then two. I was still making mistakes, but something had changed, I wasn’t crashing to the ground anymore. I learned how to balance. I learned how to slow down. I learned how to ride downhill without pedalling. Gradually, control replaced panic.

What surprised me most was how visible progress was. Every small improvement boosted my confidence, because I could feel it immediately. Riding longer without falling. Turning better. Braking smarter. The reward for persistence showed up quickly.

Entrepreneurship feels exactly like that.

Most people only see the confident rider cruising smoothly on the road. They don’t see the months of falling, the scraped knees, or the embarrassment of pushing the bicycle home before the first real ride ever happened. In the same way, people celebrate “successful startups” without seeing the many versions that didn’t work before one finally did.

Many great businesses didn’t start with the idea they eventually won with. Some failed at pricing before they got it right. Some failed at distribution before they understood their customer. Some failed at hiring before they learned how to build teams. Others built products nobody wanted before discovering what people were actually willing to pay for. Those early attempts weren’t wasted, they were the falls that taught balance.

My own journey has been no different.

I’ve failed at strategies I was convinced would work. I’ve invested time and energy into plans that went nowhere. I’ve tried to scale things prematurely, communicated the wrong stories, hired the wrong people at the wrong time, and pushed ideas that simply weren’t ready. Each one felt like falling off the bike, sometimes painfully, sometimes publicly.

But just like learning to ride, every failure taught me something specific. I learned how to spot imbalance earlier. I learned when to slow down. I learned when speed was dangerous and when it was necessary. Over time, I stopped crashing completely. I still make mistakes, but I recover faster, and I stay upright more consistently.

What’s changed is not that I no longer fail, but that failure no longer overwhelms me. Experience has taught me how to win more often than I lose. I now understand that consistency doesn’t come from perfection; it comes from accumulated learning. When you’ve fallen enough times, you develop instincts. You know how to adjust your posture before you lose balance. You sense trouble earlier. You ride with confidence, not because the road is smooth, but because you trust your ability to stay upright.

Failed startups don’t mean failed founders. More often than not, they mean founders who are still learning how to ride.

And just like my learning to ride in 2012, sometimes the journey starts with buying something you don’t yet know how to use, pushing it awkwardly through public spaces, falling repeatedly in private, but slowly, almost imperceptibly, becoming someone who rides with ease.

If you stay on the bike long enough, balance eventually becomes second nature.