Timothy Kotin ​was born and bred in Ghana. ​​He is the co-founder and chief executive of SuperFluid Labs​--​ an ambitious African data analytics firm which supports enterprise clients spread across multiple sectors. Superfluid has offices in Kenya, Ghana and Germany.

Kotin holds an MPhil. in E​ngineering for ​Sustainable ​D​evelopment from the University of Cambridge and a B.Sc. in ​Electrical ​E​ngineering and ​Computer Science from Harvard University. Prior to co-founding Superfluids Labs, he worked as a research scientist at IBM as part of a team which developed financial services innovations for multinational enterprise clients in Africa. Before that, he worked for Dalberg’s New York and Nairobi offices— playing consultant to key public and private sector development actors such as the U.S. Government, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Open Society Foundations and the UN Foundation.

In this conversation with Andile Masuku, Timothy relates how he and his team at Superfluid Labs have built a sustainable business around delivering business value through developing and deploying data analytics solutions, and explains why technical founders in his line of work who fail to rope in solid business development-oriented co-founders are likely to choke when reeling in the big fish.