I'm David Elikwu
To be brutally honest, I'm just a nerd with some fountain pens who hasn't stopped writing since he was five.
- I started sharing everything I learned online and a few thousand people signed up to come along for the ride.
- This is the place where you'll find everything you'll need to know about thinking deeper, working smarter, and making better decisions.
- 'The Knowledge' is named after one of the hardest exams in the world - an infamously gruelling test for taxi drivers in London. London 'cabbies' study the Knowledge to memorise the 25,000 roads, alleys, nooks and crannies spread across a sprawling city. Likewise, this platform maps data points for navigating the world around us. I'm building a cognitive compass. A place you go to figure things out.
- In addition to my newsletter and podcast, I run a course helping people like you build kick-ass careers, and coach driven operators!
My career journey
As a more professional introduction, I started my career early, working on marketing campaigns for companies like Amazon, Krispy Kreme, and Credit Suisse.
I interned at Google, moved to Shanghai, came back when I ran out of money and nabbed a grad job in consulting. I hadn't graduated but I brought on four Tier-1 clients in 6 months before being offered my 'dream job' working on billion dollar deals in Corporate Law.
It took half a decade to realise I had bigger dreams. At some point I'd picked up photography as a hobby, was shooting New York and London fashion weeks within two years, and turned the side gig into a brand strategy consulting practice.
After consulting for a bunch of startups I pivoted to technology full-time, joining a startup as Chief of Staff and then transitioning to Product Strategy and Operations.
I built a few businesses along the way including:
- Skytribe (Baba's Flight Club), a global collective of +2000 millennial travellers;
- The Knowledge, a media platform helping +15,000 curious professionals think deeper and work smarter;
- Democratic Republic, a value-led brand supporting global artisanship through African coffee and biodynamic wine, and;
- Jendaya (co-founder), an Africa-first luxury e-commerce platform.
That's the boring stuff out of the way! If you want brutally honest accounts of my early career experiences, go here and here.
But trust me - the content only gets better once you subscribe.
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Why subscribe?
Because none of us know everything about what it takes to navigate this spinning blue marble, but by communicating ideas and learnings we can have a bloody good crack at it. I’m addicted to learning. The things I study are consolidated here for you to read and share.
Subscribe for frank, oft sarcastic, and generally humorous thoughts on things I’m exploring and ideas that matter.