Loy Okezie

Nigerian-born co-founder of OnePage, Osita Nwoye has quit the startup he helped found in 2009 along with British-born Joel Gascoigne. The announcement came as a surprise to me considering the fact that OnePage has huge potentials.

OnePage is a new and easy way to share your contact details. OnePage lets you put all your contact details including email address, website, blog, MSN/Yahoo! Messengers, Facebook and Twitter accounts, etc., in one place.

According to Nwoye, “Joel and I came to the conclusion that it would be better for OnePage if only one of us took it forward and I offered to step down”. When I spoke to Nwoye today, he told me that the reasons were based on “differences in thoughts”, but maintained that he’s still in a good relationship with Joel.

In his personal blog, he wrote:

I will be taking a little break to plan my future and decide on my next steps. My commitment to Internet Entrepreneurship and putting Nigeria on the global start map remains very firm.

I still believe in the vision we had for OnePage and I am very certain Joel is very capable of getting it there. I would like to thank those who have supported me while I was with OnePage, I would be calling on you guys soon. Please keep supporting OnePage as you have always done.

Update – 24/06

Joel wrote this on the OnePage official blog,

We recently agreed that it would be better for OnePage if one of us were to take it forward and Oo is kindly stepping down from the day-to-day runnings of OnePage. I am delighted to say we will both be supporting each other in current and future ventures. Oo has played an important role in shaping the start of the process and I hope that he will continue to be a great ambassador for the service.

I emailed Joel and below are his responses:

It is a decision we have come to for the benefit of OnePage and on amicable terms. We are actually flat mates and we are still and will be bouncing ideas off each other. Oo is a fantastic character and he will do very well and make a big impact, so be sure to keep up with his future ventures.

Was there any particular reason(s) or incident(s) before the decision was taken?

His response:

This is not a case of a particular “incident”, it is simply that there are some differences in the way me and Oo go about things. We will both benefit by sharing skills across endeavours rather than to be fully involved in something together.

While I’m not sure what the other opportunities Nwoye plans to pursue in the next months are, my guess is that he’s got something in the box waiting to be unveiled.

At OnePage, Nwoye led innovation and product design, business development, marketing and anything else the business guy should do.