Fifteen years later, while in college, I found myself working on a new project during the summer of COVID. I was collaborating with Leo to build Rustikfit, a startup aimed at helping small clothing designers showcase their creative process and auction off exclusive items to their audience. At the time, I was still in college and planned to use WordPress, with the Dokan plugin managing the client areas and marketing features. However, I soon realized that the platform needed a social component that WordPress couldn’t handle effectively. That’s when I reached out to Blaise for help.

Reconnecting with Blaise

Reconnecting with Blaise on Rustikfit was a pivotal moment. While working together, I realized two important things. First, Blaise’s technical expertise and problem-solving skills hadn’t missed a beat. Second, platforms like TikTok were already doing an excellent job at empowering creators in ways I couldn’t match at the time. Rather than trying to compete, I decided it was time to shift my focus to a different challenge—something where my skills could make a deeper impact.

Building Zotech

As Blaise and I continued working together, he shared more about Zotech Company Ltd., the business he was building back in Cameroon. We started talking about how we could pool our talents to take on bigger, more ambitious projects. Eventually, with input from Leo, we decided to form a partnership that would combine Blaise’s backend engineering expertise, my frontend skills, and Leo’s operational strengths. That’s when Zotech became more than just an idea—it became the platform through which we could make a real difference.

Refining and Upgrading Our Products

The first step was refining and upgrading our existing products to appeal to higher-ticket clients. We enhanced Zocamhost by adding VPS, reseller, and shared hosting options. To focus our efforts, I proposed creating a separate brand, Zotech Designs, dedicated solely to client-facing web design. This allowed Zotech Company Ltd. to focus more on promoting its internal apps and their potential uses. After that, we refined Infinite School and Studma, fully developed Salezoft into a functional inventory management system, and onboarded our first clients. These efforts attracted a new wave of high-value clients, including developers who needed reliable hosting infrastructure and businesses looking for software solutions to improve efficiency.

Collaboration and Growth

Through our partnership, Blaise, Leo, and I were able to dramatically increase Zotech’s revenue. Instead of Blaise juggling everything, we split the workload. Blaise focused on pitching to clients, backend engineering, and handling legal matters with our lawyer. I handled frontend development, ensuring the team stayed motivated and productive. I created meeting schedules, organized workflows, interviewed applicants, led internships, ran monthly standups for team members, and strategized ways to acquire new talent and improve organizational processes. Meanwhile, Leo managed non-technical tasks like optimizing operations, organizing finances, managing subscriptions, researching tools to improve efficiency, and crafting marketing strategies. He essentially took on the roles of both CMO and CFO.

Looking Ahead

Today, we’re at the midpoint of our journey—landing high-ticket clients who want to build impactful software for the nation. But there’s still a long road ahead and an even harder path to discover. I’m not sure what the future holds, but we’re positioning ourselves to be on the best path possible to make a lasting impact. Through it all, the lessons we’ve learned have been invaluable, and I’m excited to see what lies ahead.