Ifi Akpandak

Ifi is Co-Founder and CEO of VueBox and Brava, two jointly-held software companies backed by Supernode Ventures, Quake Capital, and Techstars. VueBox places entertainment tablets in rideshare vehicles, allowing brands to access consumers in a new and captive space. The startup has demonstrated their passion to bring consumers closer to businesses with its launch of Brava— a digital gift card subscription that makes it easy to support black-owned businesses.

His daily routine

I try to meditate in the mornings, if I have time, but I should probably be better about it.

What I find most effective to have in my routine is ending my day looking at what I’m going to be doing the following day. This allows me to mentally frame what needs to be done and creates an action-oriented mindset for when I wake up.

In regards to my day-to-day business routine, it changes a lot especially being an early stage startup. When you're a founder or CEO of the company, you're really just performing the duties that are needed to move the needle forward. Sometimes you're in fundraising mode, taking meetings and pitching all day. Other days, you’re executing due diligence papers and focusing on product launch and sales.

The most consistent daily activity that I have is leading and strategizing. Leading my team to ensure that everyone can do their jobs effectively while strategically planning where we’re going to be spending our time and our efforts as a company.

On heat checking his day

The more tasks I accomplish, the more I get into my optimal flow state. By going into the office with the mental framework of my day and my agenda, I take the less desirable work out of the way so I feel a sense of greater accomplishment.

It’s kind of like a heat check in sports where, for example Steph curry hits his first two threes of the game and he’s at 15 and 17 points… Then he ends up with 50 points while making the most ridiculous shots you've ever seen. Those first shots gave him the confidence for his superstar performances.

His inspiration for VueBox

When I got the idea for VueBox, I was thinking about how technology has permeated most spaces in our lives but the car remains relatively “dumb”. I thought about the future of screens in vehicles and noticed no one was building it.

Leading his team through COVID, and after

Everyone is working remotely, which isn’t a huge drop off from our work-view before COVID, especially because we’re in the tech space. VueBox is geographically diverse and remote, as we have team members on the West Coast and business partners in South Asia.

From an emotional perspective, my day to day does require a greater sense of leadership rather than management recently. Even beyond just COVID, with everything that's going on in this country, my co-founder and I like to give people the space to express how they feel and let them dictate how and when they work. 

Some of our employees wanted to partake in the protests and/or take mental health days. We are more than happy to facilitate that. As long as the work gets done, that’s fine by us. We strive to treat our employees as people rather than human capital, and hopefully we’ll see more of that from other companies coming out of COVID.

What is BRAVA?

This year, a lot of people asked me how they could support black-owned businesses and I didn’t have a simple answer. So I built one.

Brava is a service that makes it super easy to support black-owned businesses. Each month you receive a digital gift card to a black-owned restaurant in your area. You’ll enjoy great food while the restaurants receive predictable revenues and early cash flows to reinvest in their business and communities. 

During the holidays you can even send gift cards to friends and family so I encourage everyone to check it out.

Transitioning from corporate to startup

I was a trader at Goldman Sachs for a few years, and discovered pretty early on that I didn’t want to stay in finance long term because I was a bit more entrepreneurial in spirit. The industry can be rewarding and it’s definitely financially lucrative, but I decided that it wasn't the best for me. So about two years in, I started teaching myself how to code. I moved out to San Francisco, and joined Optimizely as a software engineer, where I was doing full stack development. A year later is when I founded VueBox.

Medium, TechCrunch, and “How to” searches on Google were the resources I relied on to absorb as much information as I could off the internet. Research what other companies are doing to solve the problem first and determine who are your closest competitors and how you can beat them. Then, validate your idea before implementing. It’s usually pretty cheap to validate an idea—maybe stand up a landing page that discusses your solution and see if you get interest. If you have a lot of people saying “YES I NEED THAT” then you're onto something

On mentors and camaraderie

I had the gumption to move forward within finance so I kind of kept my desires and learnings close to the chest. It wasn't until I thought I was ready to make the move that I really brought it up to any of my mentors or bosses–but they’re all super supportive. There's no secret sauce here—I worked A LOT. 15 to 20 hour days. It’s not sustainable long term but it worked for me.

In hindsight, I would probably have leaned on them a little bit more earlier on to get their help. At the end of the day, they really just want to see you grow as a person. I think I had a little bit of trepidation given the fact that I was leaving the industry and they were trying to coach me. 

My northstar was people that have done it before. I was curious about other founders, and would look up their stories of how they transitioned from their jobs into the spaces that they're in. A lot of their stories are public and a great source of inspirational guidance.

Vacationing like a CEO

The last “vacation” I took was to a wedding in Mexico and I went two days early to enjoy my trip while still working. So, the last time I didn’t work for a prolonged period of time was probably before I started Vuebox. For better or for worse, I think founders feel a sense of responsibility and an obligation to be present and resourceful until you get to a significant milestone. I hear a lot of founders take their first real vacation once they've raised their Series A, because it's like taking your training wheels off.

I don’t really get FOMO. The reason why I don't take vacations is because I want to fulfill our duties to shareholders and employees—simply, which is to turn this idea into something that can support their lives and ambitions. That’s the mindset you need to be in the 2% of startups that actually succeed.

Mexico Recommendations

La Hydra by Gigi was the perfect outdoor cafe for me to work in Tulum. Great food, drinks, and music. Mexico City and Guadalajara have some absolutely stunning WeWork spaces with unreal views of the city.