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
Raised in Lagos by his British-Nigerian Royal Navy veteran father, he now calls Paris, Zurich, London and Monaco home, but is truly a citizen of the world.
Peter has enjoyed an incredible career, from his first startup which exported sustainable teak wood from Nigeria to India in his 20s, to evangelizing about technology in Palo Alto, California, to being name-checked in the pages of UK Vogue.
Boom
His current ventures highlight the extraordinary breadth of his interests and aptitudes. Peter has recently launched a new company, having spent over a decade pondering how Africa’s millions of cellphone-owning but unbanked people can transact online, so they can become a part of the global economy and improve their economic wellbeing. The answer is Boom – an inclusive electronic commerce marketplace for goods and services and a blockchain wallet for payments that allows anyone to buy and sell online without needing a bank account.
To create Boom, Peter drew on his deep knowledge of blockchain. 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 birth 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 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 a series of successful legal battles with Cisco that eventually helped to set the internet free, 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.