Why I Stopped Waiting for Permission–And Why You Should Too!

I wanted to be a start-up founder before I wanted to be anything else.

My plan was to get into Covenant University (CU), find a brilliant computer science student to be my co-founder and build Africa’s next unicorn. 

Many great products were built by university students. Facebook came out of a Harvard dorm room. Tinder was built by students at USC. Snapchat started at Stanford. These were not ideas that waited for the perfect conditions or the right industry backing. They started with a student who saw something and decided to build it. 

So I thought if I could find the right computer science student at CU and get them on board, we could do something like that together. So I asked around. I met someone who said he had experience with building something similar to what I wanted to create. I reached out to him online. His username was unreachable, and nothing solid ever came out of that interaction. 

I tried again. 

Multiple times. 

But every path led to another maybe. 

Another wait. 

Another door that was almost open.

Six months ago, I read a book by Maxwell Maltz titled “The New Psycho-cybernetics”. The central thesis of the book is that the way you think shapes the results you get. I remember reading it and thinking, "This is not motivational talk, this is almost mechanical. If I can set my mind on something clearly and think about it accurately, I could build a different kind of life”. Inaccurate thinking, clouded by doubt or borrowed fear, builds delay. Accurate thinking builds momentum. 

So I decided to stop waiting. Somewhere along the line, I realised I had outsourced my own start date to a stranger’s response time. I was letting my beginning depend on someone else’s convenience. And I remember thinking, if I am going to sit here waiting for a conversation that may never happen, I am not going to become a start-up founder at all.

So I stopped waiting. I stopped asking. And I started building. As a student of Policy and Strategic Studies, this was no easy feat. I had never written a line of code before Vlyt. I did not know what a bundle identifier was. I did not know what OAuth meant, why a package name mattered, or what the difference was between a TestFlight build and a Play Store submission. I knew none of it.

Vlyt is an intra-community ride-hailing platform. Think of it the way Uber handles Port Harcourt or Lagos as a whole city. Vlyt does not handle the city. Vlyt handles what happens inside a specific community within that city. Right now, that means university campuses, with Covenant University as our pilot campus. The reach is not limited to campuses; this model also works for large residential estates, such as Victoria Garden City in Lagos, where getting from one end to the other is a hassle. With the Vylt app, multiple communities are served the way they actually need to be served.

I knew the problem I wanted to solve was real because it was my daily reality. So I went to work. I used AI tools to teach myself what I needed to learn, using the knowledge to solve the problems that came up while building at the time. I learned what it takes to build an app from scratch, publish on the App Store and the Play Store, handle Google sign-in client IDs, and shrink a logo so it renders correctly on Android without bleeding into the border while the iOS version still looks exactly right. I became a full-stack developer not because I planned to, but because each challenge that came up demanded a new level of knowledge, and I had no one to hand it off to.

I built most of this in my hostel room at Covenant University. Late nights, early mornings, and the specific kind of silence that comes when everyone else has gone to sleep, and you are still staring at a bug you have to fix before morning. Because I do not own an Android device, there were times I had to go out and borrow one just to test something. Not a co-founder. Not a technical lead. Just me, a borrowed phone, and whatever I could figure out before the day ended. The CAC registration, the pitch decks, the investor materials, all of it, I handled alone.

A technical founder would probably have known most of what I had to learn from scratch. They would have moved faster on some things. But here is what I gained that they might not have: every problem I solved gave me knowledge that showed up useful three problems later. I did not just build Vlyt Technologies. I built the capacity to understand every layer of what I was building. That in itself was one of my biggest accomplishments.

None of this came on a platter of gold. Building Vlyt Technologies has cost me real things. It has cost me time with my family, evenings I would have spent just being present instead of working. It has cost me the easy version of friendship, the casual hangouts, the spontaneous plans, because there were nights I had to sit down and finish something instead. Those are not small sacrifices. But they are the ones I chose, because the alternative was staying comfortable and staying stuck.

Looking beyond myself and my start-up, I realise I have seen the same pattern outside of Vlyt. People wait for someone to align with their vision before they move. They wait for a team meeting, a partner sign-off, a green light from somebody who was never going to give it. And I understand the instinct. But permission from other people is not a business plan. It is a delay wearing a nicer name.

I learned to drive the same way.

I did not want to wait for my parents’ schedules to line up with a driving school's schedule. I was old enough, I wanted it done, and waiting felt pointless. So I practised in the compound, quietly, before anyone officially signed off on it. I reversed the car, took turns around the compound, again and again, teaching myself the basics before I ever sat in front of an instructor. By the time I got into driving school, I already knew what I was doing. I finished quickly and got my license.

A small example. But it is the same principle. If the thing is in front of you and you are capable, waiting for someone to formally sign off on it might just be a waste of time. Realistically speaking, you are the only signature the decision actually needs. As Bishop David Oyedepo would say, “You don’t need anyone’s vote to be great in life; your vote is enough”.

This is what I tell my friends who are graduating soon and stepping into a version of life that has no more semesters to hide behind. Some people are about to start working. Some are job hunting. Some are relying on parents whose resources will not stretch forever. Here is the truth nobody ever states plainly enough: your ceiling should never be tied only to monetary resources. 

The book I referenced earlier established that your mind is a resource too, and most people never use it at full capacity because they are too busy scrolling past someone else’s highlight reel and calling it motivation. Stop borrowing discipline from Instagram. Build your own.

Look at the founders like Aliko Dangote, Femi Otedola, Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, who are running organisations people respect. They did not wait for permission to disrupt or innovate. They took the bull by its horns. They stopped waiting for the future to introduce itself and built it instead. Nobody is coming to build your future for you. So start now.

Not next month. 

Not after the next opportunity. 

Not after things calm down. 

Start now, because later has a way of never arriving on schedule.

I stopped waiting for permission because every time I checked, it never actually came. 

The only permission that ever mattered was the one I gave myself.

If you are still waiting for yours, stop checking your phone for it. It is not going to arrive that way.

I can’t wait to see what you build.