Today we’d like to introduce you to Ejimofor Oruche.
Hi Ejimofor, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
My parents are from Nigeria. I was born in Michigan and grew up in Indianapolis, IN. My childhood was definitely interesting. It was hard to navigate being the first gen Nigerian in the Midwest. I always felt in between cultures. On top of that, I felt drawn to many different topics: science, music, and computers. Tradition and convention were all around me, but I was trying to break out of both without fully understanding why. I ended up going to engineering school at Rose Hulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute, IN. I study biomedical engineering and I was in a bunch of clubs. I also started producing music during school which was crazy trying to balance all that. When I graduated, I didn’t really feel called to get a regular engineering job, but I also didn’t know what else to do. I ended up finding out about this entrepreneur fellowship program back in Indy that places graduates at startups and high-growth tech companies. I got in and worked at one started by some Rose alums. Then six months in I got laid off due to funding issues. That was crazy for me. I ended up going to another host company and finishing my fellowship there. I wasn’t totally in sync with everything happening there and it was hard for me there.
During that time, I also realized I didn’t feel like I was growing in Indy anymore. I needed a change. I went to LA for a music production conference and just really connected to it. It had the music and tech scene I wanted and was just different. I looked for a job for six months and couldn’t find anything, so I just ended up moving out here and staying on my friends’ couch. I got a job 2 weeks into moving thankfully at a civic engagement startup in town. I was there for 1.75 years and then I got a job at CBS interactive in product management. That was a right place/right time thing I as got to build out CBS All Access which is now Paramount Plus. During that time, I got married to my wife Chelsea. After that worked at a startup called Seed&Spark which was really cool for me. I got to work for an awesome founder Emily Best. It was a hard 2 years especially b/c of the pandemic as we had to switch up the business a bit but I learned a lot about a different way you could envision and run a company. I also got to see the hard parts of startup life as well firsthand without having to take the leap myself. All of that help lead me and my co-founder to go full-time on our startup Bosa in March 2021. In October 2020 Chelsea and I had our son Soluchi. We have been living down in San Pedro since March 2021 and it’s been a great place to be especially post-pandemic.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
It has not been a smooth road, haha. I still feel like I am in the wilderness, maybe finally coming out now? I think when I was younger it felt pretty smooth. I was pretty good at school and hard-working. It felt like all I had to do was apply myself and I could do it all. Post-college that’s when things got hard. Getting laid off from my first job was a huge jolt. It happened when I was on a vacation of all times. I didn’t even know what being laid off was. I think also throughout my career thus far being a black man in tech has been hard. Trying to walk the line between being confident and assertive without being seen as aggressive has been difficult. I also feel like I have been tokenized a lot but I didn’t always catch it because I was really focused on the work and succeeding. Being a startup founder has been the most challenging yet. I experience so much imposter syndrome, and having a family makes the need to succeed feel so prevalent. It can be easy to start to copy how other folks do certain things vs sticking to what makes me my best self. It takes a lot of work to own and appreciate my journey and acknowledge that nothing has been wasted along the way and that I have a lot to offer that hasn’t been seen yet.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Bosa?
Bosa is a life management platform for working parents. You can use it in your browser or on your phone. Our goal is to capture tribal knowledge to help parents get more done. Most of us already rely on key people in our lives to give recommendations, help us with our goals, and encourage us. The reality Is that it’s hard to really take full advantage of all that community support without a lot of effort on our part. Bosa makes this easier by bringing all the people and knowledge into one system so you can easily take advantage of it. So for example, if you want to plan a family trip to Mexico, you can just put that into Bosa and we will pull up tips and advice from your friends and even people you don’t know yet in a larger community but have a similar life situation as you so you can trust their advice. Friends and family can also offer to take things off your plate without you having to ask. There are even opportunities for Bosa to automate certain things for you to help get them done. I think what really set us apart is this community-driven approach that really focuses on improving our wellness so that we can all have a greater quality of life and have a greater impact in our communities.
We’d love to hear about how you think about risk taking?
I think risk-taking is a really personal thing. We all have different risk appetites for different things. For example, I would never skydive, I want no part of that. But when I sold my car, bought a one-way ticket, and went to LA with no job, that seemed like the best option for me. I think some people would look at that like I would at skydiving. I think in cases like that the bigger risk for me would have been to stay where I was and not go. I felt like my faith in God really drives those decisions. I feel the call in those moments and I have to go, even if I look crazy to everyone else.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: ejoruche
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ejoruche/
- Twitter: ejoruche
