If you can think it
you can do it
Welcome to Peter Alfred-Adekeye’s bio page
A serial entrepreneur, with a passion for innovation, an eye for opportunities, and a deep desire to use his talents to help others.
Origin
Born and raised in Lagos, Nigeria by his Nigerian-British Royal Navy veteran father, he now calls Zurich, London and Monaco home, but is truly a citizen of the world.
Peter, a self-made billionaire, has enjoyed an incredible career from his first startup which exported sustainable teak wood from Nigeria to India and made him a millionaire in his 20s, to evangelising about technology in Palo Alto, California, to being name-checked in the pages of British Vogue.
Boom
Peter has recently launched his new company, having spent over a decade pondering how billions of cellphone-owning but unbanked people in Africa, the Middle East and other emerging economies can transact online, so they can become part of the global digital economy and improve their socio-economic well-being. The answer is Boom – an integrated commerce ecosystem that comprises of a blockchain for instant transaction settlements, a built-in decentralised exchange that enables instant swaps of tokenised currencies and a marketplace and wallet super-app that enables the unbanked to buy, sell, pay and get paid online, independent of the banking system.
To create Boom, which Peter personally funded with a seed capital of $100 million, he drew on his deep knowledge of computer science, cyber-defence and blockchain technology. He founded the Pingsta intellectual network for engineers, cryptographers and scientists in 2007; its members included the late renowned cryptographer Hal Finney who was integral to the creation of Bitcoin.
Air
Maison
Not content with one groundbreaking project at a time, In 2019, Peter spotted a gap in the market for competitively priced, high-quality cosmetics, designed for women of all colour and creed. Despite no experience in the cutthroat makeup industry, Peter founded Air Maison, the world’s first and only African-owned luxury makeup brand. Featured in Vogue (link) and sold worldwide, Air Maison's cruelty-free products use unique natural African ingredients while their names are designed to inspire pride in the continent’s heritage.
While Air and Boom might seem to have few similarities, the common thread in Peter’s career has always been his drive to open up opportunities to new groups of people through innovation. At his core, Peter is a problem solver, with a pioneering spirit, an inquisitive mind, and a strong moral compass.
His early career highlights all these traits. After a stint as an engineer and a technical leader at Cisco in the 2000s helping to manage the software systems that power the internet, Peter set up Multiven in Palo Alto. Its goal of independent internet software maintenance and cyber-defence prompted (link) a series of successful (link) legal battles with Cisco (link) that eventually helped to set the internet free link, paving the way for today’s cheaper and safer online world. Multiven’s customer base ranges from Fortune 500 companies to government agencies. It includes AB InBev, (the world’s largest brewer), Barclays Bank, Orange, Dassault Systems, TF1, (France’s most popular TV station), the US Department of Defense (Army, Navy and Air Force), Thales, Capgemini, HP, IKEA, the Dutch National Police, MIT, and many more.