Ayodah
The blood donor platform that came first, won a national challenge, and then taught me why it had to be rebuilt.
Co-founder
- 400+ registered donors
- 310 donations
- 3 partner hospitals
- 5+ NGO partners
- Winner, Silicon Mountain Challenge 2022
Problem
Patients in urgent need of blood in Cameroon had no coordinated way to reach voluntary donors. A request for a specific blood type moved by word of mouth, phone calls, and hospital corridors, with no network connecting the people who needed blood to the people willing to give it.
Why it matters
A city can have enough blood somewhere in it while a specific patient still does not get it in time, because nobody connects supply to a request fast enough. Closing that gap, not manufacturing more blood, is what a donor network is for.
My role
Co-founder. I helped build and run the donor network, and I carried what it taught me directly into LifeDrop.
Stack
The website ran on HTML, CSS, and WordPress. The mobile app version was outsourced to a third-party developer.
Challenges
Ayodah died at the install screen.
People downloaded the app once, used it, and never opened it again. Everything behind that screen worked. The donor records worked, the hospital relationships worked, the volunteers worked. The one thing that broke was asking a frightened family, at two in the morning, to go to a store and install something.
I know the app failed because the requests never stopped. They just came somewhere else. “Do you know an O negative donor?” arriving in my personal WhatsApp, over and over, at every hour.
That is not a rejection of the service. That is people telling you exactly where they want it to live.
Screenshots
Architecture
Donor and blood-type matching ran on a database lookup. Hospital coordination was mostly manual, handled directly by the team rather than automated.
Outcome
Ayodah connected patients in urgent need of blood with voluntary donors, and pushed a culture of voluntary donation across Cameroon. It was a real platform with a real network behind it, not a pitch deck. It won the Silicon Mountain Challenge in 2022.
Over its run it supported 310 donations through a network of more than 400 registered donors, working with three partner hospitals and five or more NGO partners.
Lessons learned
Ayodah is the reason LifeDrop is a WhatsApp product rather than an app. The network carried over. The hospitals carried over. The lesson cost a year and it was worth it.