The Other 95%
4 min read
Mitch Chibundu
Another September morning’s fading summer memories set the backdrop for a life-altering question.
What if I went all in?
It was a few days after my last day at Ledger. Beneath the noise of everything that needed to be figured out next, I already knew I wasn't going back into the job market. Before I’d even finished sitting with that realisation, I was deep in the operational reality of planning the Global Creative Festival.
Packing up company tools on my last day at my last job.
Executing two events in Lagos and Abuja from London, I had a growing list of problems to solve. So I kept moving, with the lingering thought of what would happen if I gave my most deeply held ideas more than just the safe 5%.
A few months later, in the aftermath of the festival’s undeniable success, the evidence of what that 5% had built was sitting right in front of me: a physical, breathing institution.
I laid all the cards on the table and chose to surrender the remaining 95% to my own vision.
The next seven hundred and thirty days have been a deliberate immersion into the unknown.
Announcing my Global Talent Visa award
People still ask about my next corporate move. Having anchored product design at institutions like Flutterwave, Wise, Ledger, and across the wider fintech world, it's easy to assume a continuous corporate trajectory. But my days now belong to building the architecture of my own spaces.
Designer Babe evolved through consistent, careful nurturing. We started with bite-sized educational carousels. The conversations became a community, and that community needed physical infrastructure. We built Wine & Design events to hold those first rooms, and the blueprint we created there eventually scaled into the Global Creative Festival.
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From there came education, media, experiences, programming, and partnerships. At some point, I realised brand was too small a word for what we were building. Today, Designer Babe operates as a creative institution that creates culture, convenes people, preserves knowledge, and makes new possibilities easier to reach.
We think of creativity less as a profession and more as the way anyone applies original thought to the unknown. It is why we care so deeply about giving creative people greater ownership of their time, talent, and future.
That conviction also brought another problem into closer perspective. As AI blurs the boundaries between what people can do, the old boxes become less useful. What matters now is proving the distinctive capability of the human directing it and turning that evidence into economic value. That realisation became Hourze /ours/.
After spending time in San Francisco last September, I returned to London with a sharper conviction that the future of work requires better infrastructure around human talent. Hourze is our mechanism for professionals to prove how they think, make decisions, and own the evidence of what they can do.
Designer Babe once looked like a collection of ideas before it became an institution. Now, I am building again from that same conviction.
Proof, then ownership
Reflecting as I watch the ocean on a beach in the Algarve
Parallel to this professional expansion came a deep psychological adjustment brought about by securing my Indefinite Leave to Remain. Looking back, the journey from Skilled Worker to Global Talent, and finally to full-time founder, was never conventional. Being able to document that evolution through the ventures I had built, and to include that work in my case for permanence, gave me a different kind of confidence in the path I had chosen.
Operating under the subtle, persistent anxiety of borrowed time limits the imagination. Gaining ILR changed my relationship with the future, replacing uncertainty with a profound sense of rootedness.
Building long-term institutions requires the permission to envision a distant horizon. I care less about proving an idea works immediately than whether it can become valuable enough to last. With the freedom to cast my vision outward, I can map where this ecosystem needs to exist next across the globe.
A longer horizon
“Rest deserves a place. So does joy. So does a life the work is building toward, instead of one it simply consumes.”
This period of building demanded an entirely new vocabulary of survival and growth. Money becomes more personal when it is your own money. Time becomes more precious when no one pays you for every hour.
I learned patience with nascent ideas. Left alone, they reveal their true form on their own timeline, rather than the one imposed by immediate demands. I’m still learning to embrace the vulnerability of asking, and to understand that allowing others to contribute to something you care deeply about is part of learning how to scale.
There were sacrifices, too. Some relationships are deeply anchored to who you used to be, and being more fully yourself can change the ground you share. I’ve had to make peace with that movement.
Learning is magic
Reflecting as I watch the ocean on a beach in the Algarve
Going all in did not mean knowing exactly how I would get there. I trusted the vision enough to begin; I stayed open as the path revealed itself, and I dared to adapt without abandoning the original conviction.
Two years ago, I wondered what would happen if I went all in. Today, the evidence surrounds me, and the desire to build has only deepened. There was a greater chance of me giving up yesterday than there is today.
The real dance has started.
Keep Exploring
Proof of You: My third book.
Designer Babe: The creative institution.
Buttersoar: Cultural production house.
Uto Coterie: Culinary experiences and taste curation.
Hourze: Proof layer for the AI workforce.
Institutional Programming: Partner with us.
Careers: Come build with us.