I had an incident just last month where I was accused of using the company's resources and time to build a rival product. Truth be told, I didn't start working on the product to challenge my current company. My friend just felt we needed a personal payment app, we built the first version and we felt this app could someday save the entire fintech industry in Nigeria and we kept adding more features and improving the entire product. It got leaked that I was building something similar and a rival product, the rest is history. Let us be very honest with ourselves, no one wants to admit but we have a shared playbook in this industry. What we think is a secret is not really a secret. The way certain things are done is shared, no one wakes up one day and thinks they have figured out how to build a fintech app. No way, you figure that out by interacting with others in the industry, from how to get a license, to building a very secure fintech app. Personally I feel we should start sharing more in the industry, there should be a playbook for any young mad fellow that thinks he has the solution to fintech in Nigeria. That young fellow should not get ass fucked by gamers because he could not implement the minimum basic security in his app. We need a Fintech 101 and it should be shared massively across the industry.
Suing a developer because you think he breached a non-compete is stupid, quote me anywhere. While you are at it, please sue ChatGPT, Stack Overflow, YouTube, and every single forum and blog post where he copied those codes to make your application work. It's like music, the fundamentals are the same, a whole lot of songs with the same chord progression, it's possible because the fundamentals are the same.
While we celebrate the OGs in this industry, let us not forget how their idea came to be and what made them who they are. Innovation and competition should be encouraged and not stifled.