At 22, this cybersecurity graduate is building an anti-piracy creator platform with his father

In this edition of After Hours, Adeyemi Akitoye, a cybersecurity graduate and the co-founder of Knowvas, a creator platform, shares his journey building a startup with his father.

Twenty-two-year-old Adeyemi Akitoye wants to bridge the gap between security and the African creator economy. From teaching himself penetration testing while studying cybersecurity at the university to building a startup alongside his father, Akitoye offers a look into the life of a Gen Z engineer.

In this edition of After Hours, the co-founder of Knowvas shares his journey from playing games on his parents’ computer as a four-year-old to building a Netflix-style protection layer for African authors and artists.

Early interactions with technology

My first real encounter with technology goes all the way back to when I was about four or five years old. We had a computer at home. Actually, both my parents were quite exposed to the Internet and computers at the time, so I had early access. Most of what I did then was play video games, even though my dad wasn’t exactly a fan.

But it wasn’t just games. I was also introduced to some tutoring software, and that’s where my curiosity started to grow. I began wondering how these things actually worked and what was happening on the backend. 

I didn’t start coding seriously until much later. During my early university days, I began learning HTML, JavaScript, and a bit of Python. That was really the beginning of my journey into building things.

From cybersecurity student to startup founder

I studied cybersecurity at Dominion University, Ibadan, Nigeria, after starting in a direct-entry program. 

Choosing cybersecurity was very intentional. At the time, I felt like it was a relatively new field, especially in Nigeria, and one that would soon become highly in demand. Looking at how companies and digital infrastructure were evolving, it just made sense to me that security would become critical.

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