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. Who we become is dictated by our environment more than most people realize. We are made up of micro-units of behavioral patterns directly affected by who and what is in our physical surroundings.
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?"
As guests arrived, I sat them in small groups of four to eight, introduced them to one another, and occasionally shuffled the groups so people would meet others sitting at the far corner of the room. No one had to approach a stranger on their own. The space did that work for them.
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.
I spent four years on that project. It was the work of my life.
And the biggest lesson I took from it had nothing to do with policy or economics. It was this: I should have moved to Lagos.
I stayed in New York. For what felt like good reasons at the time — dating, comfort, sidewalks, gyms. I could work remotely. I could fly in when needed. But 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. Walking the streets of Victoria Island. Eating amala and pepper soup. Sitting through traffic on the Lekki-Epe Expressway. Being present in the chaos.
Being physically present builds trust.
Remote work let me optimize for life. But life felt most full when life and work fed into each other. When I was closest to what I was building.
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. Hangzhou became the e-commerce capital of the world. Shanghai reinvented itself as a global financial hub. This didn't happen by accident. It happened by design — urban design, policy design, ecosystem design.
I came to China to answer specific questions:
What enables innovation at this speed? What role did the government play — and when did they step in versus step back? What specific policies created growth? What is the advantage of creating an entire district that produces one item? How do special economic zones actually work when they work well?
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.
And China is where that lever is being pulled most aggressively right now.
What I'm building now
Parallax is the distilled version of everything I've been studying.
I take a small group — 8 people maximum — across three cities in seven days. Shenzhen for hardware and manufacturing. Hangzhou for e-commerce. Shanghai for finance and investors. 20+ curated meetings with founders, factory owners, and VCs. I speak Mandarin. I handle translation, logistics, introductions, everything.
It's not a tour. It's not a retreat. It's not a "network state" pop-up city.
That distinction matters to me. I've seen too many projects in this space that are based on decentralization hype rather than real policy understanding. And nomad communities tend to attract people who have the time to travel for months at a time. But if someone is truly building something important — a company, a fund, a project — they simply don't have months to spare.
Parallax is designed for people who are building something too important to take a month off — but who know that being in the room changes everything.
Seven days. High-intensity learning. Real access. Then you go back to what you're building, with relationships and knowledge you couldn't have gotten any other way.
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.
Parallax is how I build the knowledge, the relationships, and the community to make that bridge real. Every high-caliber person who comes to China with me is someone who might be part of that bigger story. Investors who fund cities. Founders who build infrastructure. Corporate leaders who bring innovation back to their teams.
The kind of community I want: people with similar ambition and drive. Founders. Those who've drastically shifted their career patterns. Those willing to take life-changing risks. Not tourists — builders.
The principle that holds it all together
When I was designing Slow Spaces in San Francisco, I learned that the design of the room matters more than who's in it. If the chairs face each other, people talk. If the questions are right, people go deep. If the host removes every barrier to connection, connection happens.
When I was building Itana in Nigeria, I learned the same thing at jurisdiction scale. If the policies are right, businesses come. If the infrastructure is designed for the digital economy, the digital economy grows. If you build it, they come — but only if you build it right.
Now in China, I'm seeing it at city scale. Entire districts designed around a single industry. Policies calibrated to attract specific kinds of innovation. Cities built from scratch in a generation.
The scale changes. The principle doesn't.
To affect change at scale, it starts with the environment.
That's what I believe. That's what I've always believed. From conversation coasters to economic zones, from a living room to a city — it's all the same work.
I design environments that make new things possible.
And right now, I'm inviting you to step inside one.