Jidé Maduako (J) CEO and Mustafa Mohamed (M) CTO, are the co-founders of Yoke Network, an international Tik Tok-focused influencer agency where brands and creators can be matched to create successful campaigns on the short-form video platform.

Tell me about the founders behind the brand?

M - Me and Jidé met at Lancaster University and we were both interested in business and involved in the entrepreneur society, running events like 'Start-up Weekend'. Jidé graduated and I stayed on to do my Masters, but we kept in touch and we were still talking about business ideas. 

J - After university I went to work at Sweatcoin where we saw a real boost in business via influencers. Those influencers often asked me if there were any other brands or apps to work with. I felt it was a big opportunity and I'd be working during the day and Mustafa was studying for his Masters, then in the evenings we would work on how we could solve this problem for the influencers. When he got his masters I left my job and we just went for it.

What inspired you to launch your business and what is the end goal?

J - When we started, the influencers we were working with were under-served creators and meme-makers. Brands didn't always want to work with them, but they collectively had millions of followers and that was a good place to start. 

As we progressed we realised that was not the whole opportunity and that these influencers didn't always monetize well. We also saw that creators on Instagram didn't have the scale and quality follower engagement that the brands needed so we brainstormed this problem and decided to explore Tiktok. We now have full focus on Tik tok and we’re able to bring influencers and brands together through transparent marketing campaigns driving results for everyone involved.

How do you set yourself apart from other businesses in your industry?

M - We are results oriented and we run actual performance influencer campaigns, by connecting influencers and apps. When influencers advertise they get paid per download. We use this model instead of a fixed fee where the results can be mixed and harder to track. We operate on harder metrics than other agencies who work with likes or views, we prefer downloads and sales, things that really matter for our clients. We pride ourselves on this. 

This way we are also able to sift through influencers and find out which ones are the top performers to offer to brands. It might seem a concern for the influencers but once they start earning money and see that the audiences are really engaging with different products then they get hooked and can earn more than their usual rates, their true value.

What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learnt so far as an entrepreneur?

M - Early on we realised that you must undersell and over-perform. You can't make crazy promises without being sure you can deliver. With our offering now, we know we can always perform and the customer is always happy.  

Also - don't focus on the competition. You hear rumours of what others are doing which might lead you to lose focus, but in a race, the winner is never looking at second place, so we stay focused and stay firm with the plans we have for what we are building. 

J - Now that we have built a team, we have different sectors in the business that are growing and you must always help out your team-mates, no matter what level you are in the business. I seek out new business and when I make that sale and hand it over to the account managers, I make sure they can deliver. It's about managing expectations with our clients that makes work easier and better for all of us. 

M - Another key thing is customer service. Although we have our platform, we are still very focused on customer service and we pride ourselves on that. If you get feedback that means you could have kept a customer but communication was poor, then you need to adjust and make sure you have the best and clearest service to encourage loyalty. When we bring new people onto the team, one of the main things we stress with them is transparency, honesty and good communication, within the team, with our clients and with our influencers.

With all the success stories around entrepreneurship and how innovative people have to be to take the leap. How do you think you’ve innovated your sector and why?

J - In our sector we are doing clean business. In the advertising industry, there are so many people who bullshit their clients and bullshit their results and it can be the same for and with influencers. Our influencers only get paid when there are real results but they can earn infinitely for good work. 

Because we are so results-driven and we have tangible data for our clients we are different. We are clean cut and not trying to bullshit anyone, you can't lie about the data. Influencer marketing is a young person's game in comparison with traditional marketing and there can be a lack of maturity sometimes that can lead to overstating results. We have a clearer focus on helping influencers have a good income and clients to see concrete results. 

M - We have spent a long time testing methods and looking at results to find a formula that works on TikTok. What sets us apart is that we get good results for influencers and for brands too and we are very open with the data so everyone can see how they are performing.

What are your thoughts on failure?

J - For me personally, you never really fail, you only learn. The most important thing about failing is your reaction to it. If you fail and let that be your focus without looking for a solution, you never benefit and you'll only ever fear failure. If you understand that you're not always going to win, you'll also lose sometimes and when you do, you need to understand why so it puts you in a position to improve.

M - It hurts of course when something goes wrong, but you have to be proactive about that. You can’t fail at something and not learn, you need to make sure it doesn't happen again. If you don't learn from failure it will keep happening. 

For Yoke, we factor in failure, we expect it will happen sometimes on some level so we make sure we minimise it and we learn from it. We try to sing from the same hymn book for the team too. We want everyone to understand that failure is a chance to learn and can push us all to be so much better in everything we do.

What plans do you have for Yoke Network over the next two years?

J - What we are trying to build is a self-sustaining ecosystem. The more people benefit, the more people they will bring into that system and we will grow. We've got clients in the US already and we are working to increase our business over there. There's a lot of opportunity for us internationally and we want to be at the forefront of what we do all over the world. 

M - We got into TikTok quite early and we got to know the platform really well. We always keep a lookout at what's going on and new things that are coming out.  People are really starting to make use of TikTok now during the lockdown, we saw what was going on in America where things were moving a lot faster so we keep our eyes on what's happening in faster moving markets so we can stay ahead.

J - We're always coming up with new ideas. I literally woke up at three this morning and I called Mustafa, I thought I would leave him a message with an idea but he was up too. As we continue the journey we realise there's a wealth of opportunity and ways we can help our community that we couldn't even envisage when we started out.

How important is company culture and what is your top tip to get it right?

M - Culture is super-important. We now have experience of hiring different types of people and we learned what suits different people and who works well for us in terms of the company we are trying to run. You have to be results oriented in terms of yourself and pushing yourself onward as well as your campaigns and clients. 

Honesty and transparency needs to work within the team and externally in the way we do business. These are the key things we reiterate with the team and we have been really fortunate with the people we have brought in. As we bring in more, we make sure we have shared beliefs so that it is the right fit.

J - I come from a sporting background and I have noticed that teams that do well are the ones that have respect for each other. That's important to us - as long as you can hear each other's opinion, consider their insight and respect that. Mustafa and I are from really different backgrounds but we get along well because there's not anything he could say to me I would not have time for and that's what helps us work together in the long term.

What’s the single most important decision that you made that contributed to your business?

M - For me, there was a point where we had a bad batch of pages that were promoting for us and things were not working out the way we thought it might. So we decided to cut all of those pages and start from scratch. This was last year and our revenue took a real hit. 

We had a few TikTok creators on the books but we were not focusing on them. We were talking to each other about these things at one o’clock in the morning sometimes, saying we didn't want to work with those pages, but we all really believe in the TikTok creators and their potential growth. So we cut a large part of our network out and we struggled for two or three months but then that focus really paid off. 

We had a plan, set targets and exceeded them by making this decision but it was like cutting off an arm to rescue the body. But by February/March time we had doubled our revenue and we took the team from a period of nothingness to doing much better. When you make that sacrifice and have that focus you can really turn things around. 

J - This moment came to my mind too. The writing was on the wall back then. We noticed how doing business then made us feel and it told us that we had to refresh and restart. We followed our instinct and it took us to better creators and a much bigger market. We also used our data well which reduced the risk. As an entrepreneur you really need to look at the data and then weigh whether a risk is worth the reward and not just in the short term.

How did you fund the launch of your business and what creative strategies did you use to execute a minimal cash flow?

M - The only thing we spent on initially was our website. This was while I was at Uni and I didn't have any money. Jidé put some of his money in to get someone to design the website. Once we did that, we managed to get a workspace for free through connections and someone who really helped us out early on to give us office space for those first months. We got our first client within three weeks - the week that I graduated on a Tuesday and we secured our first client on the Friday. From the start it was crazy, we saw massive growth and started to make enough money to buy different software services, set up what we needed. 

We then got into an accelerator. It was one we had approached before but it was too early. Two months later we caught up with them when we were making revenue and impressed during the application process because we were young and we were the only ones making money. We were being very scrappy then as well, we were not paying ourselves until we ran out of savings. Then the accelerator invested a bit of money and it got us off the ground. 

Once we had that money we could pay for our own office space but there were periods where our cash flow was terrible. There was one evening where we did our best month ever but the customer was paying much later and we were used to getting paid every week from our first clients. We had £100 in our account with rent due and no money to do anything. It was a terrible period but we got through it by making decisions not to pay ourselves and lowering costs where we could, but we can proudly say that we have never missed a staff or an Influencer payment to date. You have to prioritize.

How did you conquer those moments of doubt that so often affect entrepreneurs or stop many with great ideas – what pushes you through?

J - One thing I would say is to any entrepreneur who does it by themselves - they have my respect. We work so well together and it's always two-way. I can tell just by the way Mustafa is talking and tell him if he needs to take a rest and he knows how things are with me. 

For me personally what pushes me is that I wasn't the best behaved kid when I was younger so what pushes me forward is my Mum, I want to make her proud. My family too, I have cousins and lots of younger family who look up to me so I know especially in the UK, young black people are not always seen as entrepreneurs but that's what pushes me, to inspire the next generation. I want to be there for the kid that doesn't behave well to show them what they can achieve. 

M - There's lots of moments of doubt where it is scary, but there's no way either of us could have done this by ourselves. If there are moments where Jidé is in doubt, then I am probably not - which is lucky and when I have doubts, he always knows the way. We're lucky we work like that and when there are times we are both in doubt - like when we cut off those influencers early on, we both know we have to face things head on. 

What pushes me is where I am from, I went to one of the worst schools in one of the worst boroughs and I came from nothing. This is all I have and there's no other way around it, I am going to be successful.  What I have seen is that there is no one else in these positions who are like us to show the next generations and so we take it upon ourselves to be that inspiration and prove that it can be done. When I did my Masters, no one else had done that where I was from and I wanted to show you can get your masters, I got that.

If you asked me ten years ago what I wanted to do, I was not going to start a business, but I did it and I want to inspire others that you don't have to take the usual route and we are both super-certain about where we want to go.