To affect change at scale, start with the environment

A few years ago, over dinner at a restaurant on Victoria Island in Lagos, I asked E — the founding investor on the project I was building — why he stayed in Nigeria. He could live anywhere. Napa. Silicon Valley. Cinque Terre. He'd co-founded two unicorns. He had all the options.

He didn't pause. He said:

"You're always closest to what you build." — E, founding investor at Itana

It took me years to understand that line. I'm still understanding it.

If you looked at the list of things I've worked on, it would seem scattered. I designed digital products at Google and LINE. I researched shared living and coliving. I hosted community events for strangers in San Francisco. I co-built a digital special economic zone in Nigeria. I write a newsletter about architecture, patterns, and cities. And now I'm in Shenzhen, putting together a 7-day business immersion across China.

Five or six completely different things. Except they're not different at all.

The thread

There is one idea underneath everything I've ever built: the environment is the lever.

Not the people. Not the technology. Not the capital. The environment. Rooms shape conversations. Policies shape ecosystems. Cities shape civilizations. And someone has to design them.

When I was at Google, I designed digital products used by millions — and realized the screen isn't enough. The physical world shapes us more than pixels ever could. So I started designing physical environments.

In San Francisco, I created what I called Slow Spaces — events where strangers could have real conversations. Not networking events with loud music and business cards. Something different. I arranged chairs to face each other. I served hot tea instead of alcohol. I placed handmade laser-cut conversation coasters on the tables — instead of "What do you do?" they asked "When have you worked hard and loved every minute of it?"

It worked. People stayed for hours. They left connected in ways that surprised them. Not because I'm a great host — but because the design of the space did most of the work.

Same instinct, bigger scale

In 2020, I joined Itana as COO — a project to build Africa's first digital special economic zone. With Luqman Edu as CEO and Iyinoluwa Aboyeji (co-founder of Andela and Flutterwave) as founding investor, we set out to create what we called "the Delaware of Africa" — a jurisdiction designed from scratch for the digital economy.

We raised $100 million in partnership with Africa Finance Corporation. We designed a zone where businesses could incorporate remotely, operate with tax incentives, and scale across the continent. It was the same principle I'd applied in a San Francisco living room — design the conditions, and the right things happen inside them — but at the scale of a nation.

And the biggest lesson I took from it: I should have moved to Lagos. The deepest relationships, the sharpest insights, the trust that actually moved things forward — those only came from the days I was physically on the ground.

Being physically present builds trust.

Why China

After parting with the Nigeria project, I didn't wait when I sensed where the next opportunity was. I moved to Shenzhen.

Not because China is trendy. Because China is the best example in the world of building productive cities in a compressed timeframe. Shenzhen went from a fishing village to a global tech capital in forty years. This didn't happen by accident. It happened by design — urban design, policy design, ecosystem design.

City building, economic development, and special economic zones — these allow me to look at the world from the highest possible vantage point. They bridge urban planning and social impact. They're the lever that moves everything else.

The bigger picture

If I'm being honest about where this is going: I want to be the expert in how to build the best cities — and then scale that knowledge to the rest of the world.

China is the classroom. But the final exam is elsewhere. There are cities to be built in Africa, in Southeast Asia, in places where the infrastructure is still being decided. The question of how to create a district, a zone, a jurisdiction that enables growth — that question has answers in China that most of the world hasn't seen yet.

I've already spent four years building a special economic zone in Africa. I know what that work looks like from the inside. Now I'm studying the country that's done it better than anyone else in modern history. The bridge between those two experiences — that's my life's work.

And right now, I'm inviting you to step inside one of my environments.