Doubled His income in 2 Months | Bibobra Alabrah | #19

Welcome back to Founder Fumbles 🎙️ where real startup struggles meet real comeback stories.

In this episode, Dahmari Taplin sits down with Bibobra Alabrah, a Principal Consultant at Prexiso and an emerging force in data analytics and scalable systems. From his journey into tech to building high-performing infrastructures, Bibo breaks down the mindset, challenges, and lessons behind his growth as a founder.

We dive into the startup grind, overcoming doubt, finding purpose, and what it really takes to stay in the game when things get tough. If you’re building something from the ground up or thinking about making the leap—this one’s for you.

Don’t forget to subscribe, like, and leave a review if this episode hits home.

Connect with Bibo:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alabrahbibobra/

Support the show!: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2517890/support

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Founder Fumbles Podcast where we go deep into real life entrepreneur struggles and comeback strategies. I'm your host, Damari Taplin, and today we have my boy Bebo. Bebo, how you say your first name one more time? Bebobra. Bebo short form. That's great. Okay, Bobra. Okay, nice. So y'all, Bebo, he is a principal consultant at Pre Preciso. Preciso. Preciso, had it. Principal consultant at Precisio. He's an analytics leader and MBA candidate at CU Boulder, a data and analytics leader, and now he is building high performance data systems and designing scalable infrastructures. We good?

SPEAKER_01 0:45

Good.

SPEAKER_00 0:45

Alright, for sure, bro. So what's been going on with you, man? Where you been?

SPEAKER_01 0:51

Building within the company, put in new products, building myself to ensure that I can build sustainable, dynamic teams that can lead us to where we're headed with Precisio.

SPEAKER_00 1:07

That's dope, that's dope. So, yeah, how is Precisio? How's everything been going? What is Precisio? Tell everybody what that is exactly.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

That's a great question. So Precisio is a data and AI consulting company.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

Data and AI consulting company.

SPEAKER_01 1:23

Yes. And we started that about four years ago and will help medium-sized companies build their data infrastructure. That's integrating data from different sources, creating data products that help drive data-driven decisions. Usually this is available to the multi-big companies. And the mid-sized companies oftentimes don't have data teams or business intelligence teams or IT teams. So we come in there to bridge that gap for them to use their data to produce solutions that help drive their business forward.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

Precisio, where did you get the name from?

SPEAKER_01 2:03

I did a rebranding. Initially it was ADB Data Solutions, but Precisio was thinking about what is the value? What do we bring to customers? And it is precise insights.

SPEAKER_00 2:17

Gotcha. Okay. So what happened to the other thing you had going on? You were doing some like new CRM or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

It's the life. That's part of Precisio's product. It's called Dyer B.

SPEAKER_00 2:27

Oh, yeah, that's right. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 2:28

It's called Dia B. And Diab is a business management system. And it helps small businesses manage your entire business end-to-end. So you can connect it to QuickBooks to have access to all your customers and financial data, project data. And then it also serves as a CRM and an invoicing system. Also like a broad basic financial management system. It gives business leaders visibility into the entire business and they can get some core financial insights.

SPEAKER_00 3:05

That's dope.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

When you are is it launched? Yeah, it's launched, it's live and it's been used. People are using it.

SPEAKER_00 3:11

Yeah, people using the guys.

SPEAKER_01 3:12

I have currently have 25 users. That's enough. No advertisements, anything like that. I never really talk about it because the newest product we're building is FinTelix. But recently, about a month ago, we upgraded Dyerby to be an AI-powered system. So now it's a smart system where you can tell it to create customers for you. And then it writes, it automatically creates that and writes it to QuickBooks if you have a QuickBooks account integrated. And also you can create a project, and that's what you need to do. It automatically then creates about 15 tasks that you need to do and auto-assigns them to all your teammates based on skill level and availability. So you a developer. I am. That's one of my skill sets.

SPEAKER_00 4:02

You're a developer. So did you build this like from code, or did you use like an AI, no code building?

SPEAKER_01 4:10

Like vibe coding?

SPEAKER_00 4:10

Vibecoding, or I don't know what vibe coding is. I know one, I think it's called like love lovable or something like that. That's a good one.

SPEAKER_01 4:18

I've never used it. Again, I am a developer. I'm an engineer by training. And I also took my third degree is in software development. So I can write code myself. So Diaby, I created that end-to-end by myself. And then Felix also, I created by myself. So no vibe coding for me. But hey, the AI is very valuable to do maybe writing tests for me and brainstorm ideas. But I code everything from scratch.

SPEAKER_00 4:50

That's dope, man. Yeah, because I was trying to get you to become like my CTO, man. I needed you. But luckily, I found the CTO. He's great. Giovanni is fantastic. Hopefully, by the time this episode drops, he's still with me. You know what I mean? Because moving soon and stuff like that. He is here in Denver. Damn, I'm going to Detroit soon, back home. But anyway, I am super excited. I haven't been home since I was 17 years old. And I yeah, I've been away for 19 years, basically. So I've been away longer than I was raised there. I could finally get to go back, give back, spend time with my nephews, my brother, granny, uncles, aunties, all that good stuff. My cousins. I just can't wait to see everybody. That's what my family is. So anyway, I met you through Access Mode. Yeah, that's great. What's your how did you what's your relationship? Were you cool with Zanetta? Or I know how did you get that relationship with Access Mode?

SPEAKER_01 5:44

I don't know. I think I'm I always like to familiarize myself with Wiley. And being a black person, I was looking at what are the platforms out there, opportunities out there for black founders or minority founders. So I just stumbled on Access Mode during Denver Startup Week, I think two or three years ago, two years ago. Gotcha. And we're doing an event, and then that was the first time I went there for the first time and I won a meta VR as a I don't know, raffle draw that I made. And since then, yeah. You did you what you won the Oculus? I think the Meta VR, I don't remember the version, but it's still at home. So that was my very first encounter with Access Mode, and I won something. So I remained there. I got invites from them, attend events. So you, I think I met you when you guys were on the final day when you were launching your pitch, demo day.

SPEAKER_00 6:44

Yeah, demo day.

SPEAKER_01 6:46

And you pitched an idea at the time, Ziga, your business, is similar to the first AI product I built. And my idea there was having an AI as your co-founder. And so that's why, hey, your idea kind of resonates. We can work together.

SPEAKER_00 7:03

Correct. Man, we're gonna have to keep in touch. Well, how to make that happen? Because that's I need to utilize this AI more than what I am. So we need to make that happen. Well, I'm ready. The code is available. For sure. We're gonna talk, we're gonna touch base as touch base. For sure. So yeah, so what made you want to be a developer?

SPEAKER_01 7:21

Problem solving, right? When I went to study petroleum engineering, it is predicted and forecasted that in the year 2035 we are going to have an energy crisis, right? Population is increasing, more people are buying cars, building homes and stuff. So I wanted to be part of the solution. And petroleum engineering seemed to be the right way where we explore for oil and gas to increase the energy to match what the demand is going to be. So I've always been around problem solving. But when I migrated to the US, I I wanted to enhance my skill set, right? So I started teaching myself how to code. And I did that for about eight months. Then I transitioned fully into writing code, doing data analytics and business intelligence. And I've not looked back since.

SPEAKER_00 8:10

So you say when you came to the US, so where are you from?

SPEAKER_01 8:15

Originally from Nigeria.

SPEAKER_00 8:16

From Nigeria. That's cool. How long have you been here?

SPEAKER_01 8:19

Been in the US, nine years now.

SPEAKER_00 8:22

That's dope, bro.

SPEAKER_01 8:23

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 8:23

I gotta get to Nigeria, man. I've been to South Africa, that's where my wife is from. I'll still want to go to Ghana, Nigeria, and a lot of other places, but those like the main places I want to go.

SPEAKER_01 8:33

Nigeria, we're very resilient people. You can know the researcher. We were very resilient. We add value wherever we find ourselves. And yeah, Ghana, West Africa. Yeah, you should totally visit it. You will love it.

SPEAKER_00 8:48

Yeah, for sure. I'm gonna get there. I promise you. What would you say, like your biggest struggle is as a technical founder?

SPEAKER_01 9:00

I think the biggest thing being a technical founder is the fact that you can create the solution yourself. Even that is a strength and a weakness in itself. That the ideas never stop coming, and because you can just revisit the code right away and implement the idea, and then you can easily have feature blood where there's just too many things that the customers do not ask for, you think they need, and because it's not costing you extra money, you know because you are the developer.

SPEAKER_00 9:28

Because you're the developer, you can do all you can do it all. So if you need something to stick it in in a way, are you working by do you have a co-founder?

SPEAKER_01 9:35

No, AI is my co-founder.

SPEAKER_00 9:37

AI is your co-founder.

SPEAKER_01 9:39

You don't think you need a co-founder? I do think I need a co-founder because the human touch is very important. Like I mentioned, the AI cannot hold me accountable to stop adding more features. Exactly. Right. So the human co-founder can say, Hey, you know what, we don't need this feature.

SPEAKER_00 9:56

Bro, this is too much. This is too much. We need to stick to the our core values.

SPEAKER_01 10:00

Correct.

SPEAKER_00 10:01

You know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_01 10:02

So the human co-founder is very important.

SPEAKER_00 10:04

And we talked about partner up so many times, yo. We gotta make this happen. Let's do it. Yeah, next, next. So Zega will be coming out with the AI co-founder, the buddy, and you're gonna help me guide that.

SPEAKER_01 10:20

I'm open to, like I mentioned, the code already exists, and we can do integration. It's called Ideate Edge. It's called Ziga. So you say we can merge that. Okay, Ziga is fine, but then we can merge the code. What IDED does is it collects about 15 data points, and it's on a case-by-case basis. The founders can integrate what their business is about, who the ideal customer is, what problems they are solving, and then it collects about 10 data points, about 15 data points. Basically, what are you trying to achieve? That's a goal, and what is stopping you from achieving that goal? And then what are the resources that you have? Like how much time do you have? Do you have social network? Do you have how much money do you have to accomplish that goal? And all those other questions. And the AI takes that and goes into working, looking at benchmarks, your industry benchmarks, and it then suggests three ideas that you can execute. Of those three ideas, you have three action items each that you can execute within the time that you say you have and the resources that you have, and then it also holds you accountable when you can ask you. It holds you accountable. So you can see, did you do this XYZ time?

SPEAKER_00 11:40

How does it hold you accountable?

SPEAKER_01 11:42

Because then it's connected to your calendar, just sending you reminders. Hey, have you done this and different things like that? So it's very powerful. And I do know that small type are building similar things, but that was a product that I built in as two years ago. I didn't build it myself, I contracted that with a team of 10. A team of 10. The builder is a very powerful tool.

SPEAKER_00 12:08

We gotta give that a shot. I want to see it. Do you have a prototype?

SPEAKER_01 12:12

I have the probe working. You have everything. Yeah, I will show you up until Stripe, everything is integrated. So let's touch base. And I'm gonna.

SPEAKER_00 12:22

Let's touch base next week. Next week, I'm gonna be I ain't gonna be that busy. I'm gonna be in Detroit by next week. That's fine. But we're gonna link up virtually, you're gonna show me this, and we're gonna, I'm putting we put this on the schedule today.

SPEAKER_01 12:34

Put it on schedule and get it to work. Like I'm gonna hold you accountable.

SPEAKER_00 12:37

Yeah, you put this on today. We're putting this on the calendar.

SPEAKER_01 12:40

Like even your founders who use Ziga, they will find it very valuable. Like yesterday, I don't want to mention where it was, because I don't know if I'm allowed to mention that, but like you're asking these top companies, how do they see AI as a virtual team member? So the top companies are using it. So, what's going to stop startups from using it? So even if they're using Ziga to find their human co-founder, they can have their buddy who like brainstorm ideas with them, who gives them what to work on, and they can say we want to do this or not. And so it removes that the not the critical thinking or strategic thinking, but it gives them something to start with where they can strategically look at where they're headed and if what is producing is aligned.

SPEAKER_00 13:28

So you said, I'm just thinking it this way now. You said that as far as you need a partner to hold you accountable and stuff like that, right? So, what type of business skills do you feel like you lack in?

SPEAKER_01 13:40

That's a great question. Usually my philosophy about about entrepreneurship is very interesting. Don't be married to an idea.

SPEAKER_00 13:52

If you're a problem solver, yeah. Um that's one of the main rules. You gotta be open for change. If you build something and your customers, oh, we want this, you gotta be you have to change it to that because that's gonna be your paying customers. You can't keep it, be all stubborn, oh, this is how I want it. You have to adjust it to your customers, right?

SPEAKER_01 14:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:08

What are you trying to say?

SPEAKER_01 14:09

Yeah, 100%. So with the business side of things, it's wanting to be very technical. I'm very heavy on the technical side. And business side, you have to negotiate, you have to negotiate partnerships, you're bringing in a co-founder, there has to be some kind of negotiation, some kind of agreement. And things like what is the transactive memory system? Like, what do they bring to the table? What do you bring to the table? And based on that, what should the equity look like? Should you even have equity? And things like should you hire employees, great talent, and then you pay them with stock options or different things. So all those negotiation tactics and real business questions that you, as a technical person, will not think of are the things that at the time I felt I was lacking. And to solve that, I went to to Harvard Business School Online and I did a launching tech ventures. And that was for I think, I don't remember, is it 12 weeks and stuff? And that was very powerful. They brought people to talk to us, how they launch their products, how they do negotiations, and I got to look at white company uh documentations to look at how do you negotiate, who should even bring to your team. You know, and so those things helping now. Obviously, I'm doing my MBA because I understand the value of business, understanding business, as you want to build scalable products that turn into big companies that can even lead to acquisition. So I think the MBA is giving me those powerful business skills that I lacked.

SPEAKER_00 15:42

I'm thinking, like, how is it that like, not how is it, but have you ever got to a point where you felt like quitting? You know what I mean? 100%. Like, and what did you how did you get yourself out of that mindset?

SPEAKER_01 15:55

Yeah, I think for an entrepreneur, you always get to that point where, like, why am I doing this to myself?

SPEAKER_00 16:02

Tell me about the last time you felt like giving up.

SPEAKER_01 16:06

Yeah, I'm laughing because was it yesterday? But no, tell me about that. Tell me about it. Maybe not yesterday. You are stuck there writing code or thinking about business strategies way into 2 a.m., 3 a.m. And then you go to bed super angry because you still didn't come up with a solution.

SPEAKER_00 16:27

And your only piece is to sleep at that moment.

SPEAKER_01 16:29

And you you are still upset, right? You you start where I could just go really get a job. Like, especially you have a high-paying job, uh job on my skill set I'm sure you can get paid a lot if you get paid. I get paid a lot. Yeah, so when I think about that whole time you put into the entrepreneurship, and you are paying yourself not as much because you're not making a lot of money, even though you probably are making money, but you still need to pay people who are working with you even on a contract basis. And you have different things like meeting up regulations with the IRS, like all those other things. And the city and county of Denver, they will not stop asking you for taxes, like so many things that are very stressful.

SPEAKER_00 17:15

They don't play about them taxes, man.

SPEAKER_01 17:17

They don't play about it. So you get to points where you really feel like, why am I doing this to myself?

SPEAKER_00 17:22

It's not more exactly, it's not like why am I doing this? It's like, why am I causing myself this much pain? I could just stop it right here. Yep. That's it.

SPEAKER_01 17:31

Yeah, and then the experience, you can take the experience to actually get a very high-paying job too. But how I've been able to stay true is I just remember why. What's your why? It's deep because I started persisting when my first son was born.

SPEAKER_00 17:49

I didn't know you had a kid.

SPEAKER_01 17:51

I have three boys. You have three boys, and I have twins. Oh my god. Yeah. My first son, and then a set of twins. Damn. So I need to teach them resilience. When I had my first son, and I remember asking for paternity leave because I was feeling like a zombie. Like I wasn't able to give my best, and that wasn't forthcoming. And so I made a decision. Like I have skill sets that are very valuable that people are paying me high-end tickets for. So I'm gonna bear on myself and build my own thing. And so I gave him my two weeks, crazy. But I gave him my two weeks the same week my son was born. People might say it's a very stupid decision because you need to.

SPEAKER_00 18:32

Your mental health is more important and all that.

SPEAKER_01 18:34

Yeah, because sometimes like you have to think about I'd already created the company a year ago. I've not started anything, no customers, no clients, and different things. But I had to go in, I have to bet on myself. I know what I bring to the table. And luckily, two months later, I signed a two-year contract that was worth a lot of money times two of what I was making as an employee. So that's why. I still always remember that why. And since then, I've not had to go to work, I've not had to go to office or something. So I'm available to give counsel, to give training to my three boys. Like I wake up and I go to work when I have to work, I make sure I deliver client results. But at the same time, I'm there to impute the values that I want into my sons. So that is the most important to my family. Always there for them. I don't have to choose work over them. So that's the big why.

SPEAKER_00 19:37

That's fire, bro. And that's I gotta give you some depth on that one. Yo, that's dope. Thank you. So, what would you say was the biggest lesson learned while being a founder? And if you can go back and tell the new founder that biggest lesson, what would that be? Biggest lesson.

SPEAKER_01 19:53

It will be there's this saying in Africa if you want to go fast, go along. If you want to go far, go together. And so if I was to go back to start again, I would look for people who share the same passion, what I'm doing, and then form a team. And that's the that's what I'm doing now with building products. Like, I build products really fast. Like last week I built a new product because I identified a problem for a target market that I currently have. But I'm not shy to share the idea with people anymore. So I just, hey, here's what I'm building, XYZ, share that to people who are likely going to use it and so they can critique the idea. So now I'm open to collaborations more, partnerships more, yeah. And that's how I'm doing it now. If I was to if I'm to advise an entrepreneur, you have an idea. Your idea needs to be tested. And some ideas, once they hit reality, they die. And then you spend so much time on them. And money. And money, especially if you can't build it yourself. And so one big thing I learned is really working together, looking for your tribe, your community. You can work together.

SPEAKER_00 21:10

Start with the community, start with the partner, start with your customers, basically, right?

SPEAKER_01 21:16

Start with your customers is great. But when it comes to building products, I learned recently, about two weeks ago, speaking with some venture guy, you want to think about the exit strategy from the beginning.

SPEAKER_00 21:32

Exactly. That's what I learned in my first accelerator. Start with the exit in mind. That was and I was gonna say access mode was a start with the why. Start always remember your why, go back to your why. If all went right this year with your company, if everything was perfect, what does that look like for you?

SPEAKER_01 21:56

That's a great question. It would we uh Trying to have two streams of income, the consulting side, which is consulting as a service, and then the two products. And so we want to drive revenue. 60% of our revenue should come from our products, and 40% from consulting. And so the idea is building these two products are data-driven products where we can go in there and help businesses clean their data up, build systems, pipelines, data pipelines for them that they can then pipe back into the two products that we are building. And so then they don't need to pay higher consulting fees because then our AI-powered solutions can do exactly what we do. It's like in a way of replacing ourselves, but it gives them more value while also giving us the opportunity to serve our customers better in those realms. So everything goes well. The two of our products hit product market fit, and we can help our customers with consulting also to make sure that they are maximizing their data to get value and expand their business, accomplish their objectives and business goals.

SPEAKER_00 23:09

That's dope, bro. That's that's like my final question that I ask everybody. Before I let you go today, please let everybody know where they can find you, your socials, Instagram, LinkedIn, email if you want to give that. However, you want people to find you, let them know.

SPEAKER_01 23:24

Yep. Unlike LinkedIn, let's say you always find them super active on LinkedIn. You go there, you see me, and if you want to try out our business management platform, AI Powered, you can go to www.diabi.com. Diabi is d a yabi.com. Nice. Thanks. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 23:48

For sure, bro. Thank you so much for joining us today. Joining me in this episode today. I really appreciate you. And thank all of y'all for watching this episode of Founder Fumbles. If Bebo inspired you in any way, shape, or form, if you like anything you said, if you want to reach out to him, please hit him up on LinkedIn. And for everybody watching this video, once again, please do not forget to comment, subscribe, and all that good stuff. And don't forget to share it too. Thanks for having me. And don't forget to download the Zega app. We need y'all on there. And I'm gonna get Bebo on there. So if y'all look for a seat, if I don't get them first, but I'm gonna get Bebo on there and all that good stuff. So I catch y'all next time. Peace. Peace out.