Hi guys, thought to share this here to anyone who might find this useful. I recently applied for the global talent endorsement. I am a technical founder with 5 years of experience. My application was forwarded on July 6th and I heard back today, August 10th (exactly 5 weeks)
I was rejected across all criteria. In all honestly, some of their criticisms made sense, however, some of them were quite interesting.
Here’s what made sense -
My recommendation letters came from former colleagues - I completely understand and agree with this
For OC1, these were their words - “Revenue was evidenced through transaction
screenshots and bank notifications rather than the formal accounts the guidance requests.”. This also made sense and is genuinely something worth noting.
However, here’s what, in my opinion, made no sense.
For MC, here’s the feedback - “Mandatory Criterion MC. The recognition evidence rests on the AI Examiner startup: two Techpoint Africa features, a TheCable interview, and the Termii Elevate pitch win. Techpoint and TheCable are credible outlets, but the coverage is of a founder or startup profile nature, and is interview content rather than independent recognition of the applicant personally as an emerging sector leader. The articles appear clustered within the ~12 months preceding the application, which reduces the evidential weight they carry.”
I honestly think the above makes no sense. My startup was launched in August of 2024. We grew to over 20k users and in 2025 these news outlets reached out to me to write about my journey. One of the articles was not even an interview, it was highlighting 10 AI startups which made impact in Africa in 2025. My startup was mentioned and I was mentioned as the founder. These happened between last year, 2025, to January this year, 2026. I’m not sure what else is independent recognition if this isn’t.
For OC3, here’s their feedback - “This is the strongest part of the application. As
technical cofounder the applicant’s personal contribution is more clearly separable, supported by
attributable GitHub commit history, app store installs and web user metrics. However, the impact evidenced is largely self reported product metrics without independent verification of significance to a wider field.”
Again, I believe the above also makes no sense. The evidence provided were literally screenshots with clickable links to the following -
Android store showing 10k downloads on the mobile app with a clickable link
Clickable and verifiable github repository showing commit history and contribution over the span of 2 years
Screenshot of Google Analytics Dashboard thousands of monthly active users
Screenshot of Google play analytics dashboard showing thousands of monthly active users
For some reason, the evidences above were not independently verifiable. Google play/Google Analytics provide no way to share a dashboard.
I found their feedback somewhat interesting. I don’t think its worth appealing. I hope someone finds this useful and I wish you the best in your journey!
The MC feedback is sharper than it reads. Assessors distinguish between coverage of a startup and recognition of you personally as an emerging sector leader. The media pieces centre the company and your journey building it, which assessors read as founder-profile coverage. The listicle is closer but recognises the venture with you attached as founder. For a resubmission, MC needs recognition that would exist even if the startup didn’t.
Your own analytics dashboards and bank notifications are exactly what assessors mean by self-reported metrics. These are platforms only you can access, and assessors treat them identically to a self-authored spreadsheet. The deeper issue in the feedback is about significance to a wider field: the numbers need external context showing where your product sits relative to comparable tools in your category. Third-party coverage of the traction, or a client letter confirming downstream impact, would shift this from self-attested to externally validated.
LOR and OC1 fixes are straightforward for a resubmission. Independent referees who aren’t former colleagues, and formal accounts instead of transaction screenshots, are within reach. MC is the harder reframe.
Thank you @Akash_Joshi for your detailed reply and for the community generally. Also thank you @richard_eradiri for sharing the feedback. It is incredibly helpful for the rest of us trying to decode the requirements.
I initially had the exact same thought when reading your OC3 feedback. I thought “third-party evidence” simply meant using reports generated by third-party platforms like a Google Play Store download chart, a Google Analytics dashboard of monthly active users, or a Stripe revenue chart. In my mind, a “self-authored” document was an Excel sheet the applicant typed up themselves.
But after reflecting on Akash’s response and digging into the guidelines, I had an insight about the “implied third-party verifier” that completely changes how founders need to approach OC3.
The Tech Nation guidelines are mostly interpreted through the lens of an employee. For an employee, proving impact is relatively straightforward: they submit the GitHub commits/dashboards, employment letter. and then a Senior Executive or CEO writes a letter verifying those numbers. The CEO is the independent third party. They have no incentive to lie to the Home Office about an employee’s impact.
But for a Founder, the dynamic breaks. The founders own the Google Analytics and Play Store accounts. Even though Google is a third-party tool, the dashboard is still technically “self-attested” because the assessor cannot log in to verify the context (e.g., traffic, paid user acquisition vs. organic, etc.), and there is no boss to write a letter vouching for the data.
This is probably why B2B founders often have an easier time with OC3 than B2C founders. A B2B founder can submit a redacted vendor contract or an email from a client CTO saying, “Your API handles 50k requests for us daily.” The client becomes the independent verifier.
Since your startup is a B2C consumer app, you don’t have B2B clients to write those verification letters. But you can still engineer independent third-party verification for your traction. Here are a few creative ways B2C founders can get those numbers externally validated for a resubmission:
Infrastructure / Vendor Case Studies: The platforms hosting your app know your real numbers. If you use infrastructure vendors like say AWS, Supabase, or whatever vendor you use, pitch their Developer Relations teams to write a technical case study on your startup’s architecture. When the company blog officially publishes that your backend handles 20k active users, that is unquestionable, third-party audited proof of scale.
Platform Tier Upgrades / Grants: If your traction caused infrastructure vendors who gave you credits and upgrade the startup credits, for example say AWS Activate startup credits went from $1k to $25k. These organizations do internal diligence before giving out infrastucture credits, so their approval verifies your scale.
Data-Driven Media Coverage: If a tech journalist at TechCabal or Disrupt Africa writes an article about your architecture and explicitly quotes your 10k downloads and 20k MAU in their publication, the media outlet acts as the independent verifier.
@iyanuashiri You’re absolutely right. The OC3 guidance lists different roles from founder, senior executive, board member, or employee and expects each to show significant contributions in one or more of three areas, technical, commercial, or entrepreneurial. But it doesn’t clearly separate examples for each role, which makes interpretation tricky.
In most structured companies, a software engineer rarely has access to financial or procurement data. So, when a technical applicant presents financial metrics, it can raise questions about whether the evidence was self-authored or the reputation of the company. On the other hand, a founder naturally has access to financial artefacts, that’s part of their role - sales strategy, company oversight to mention but a few
That’s why the first step in approaching OC3 is identifying your role and the artefacts that genuinely belong to it. For instance, a marketing expert showing GitHub commits, architectural diagram wouldn’t be taken seriously because that evidence doesn’t align with their function. And if someone presents artefacts outside their scope, it’s crucial to validate them with a letter from an executive who legitimately has access to that data. And for those who are technical founders they can show both technical and commercial as both still belongs to them.
In short, the strength of your evidence depends not just on what you show, but on whether it fits your role and is properly verified by the right and reputable individual, platform or organisation.
I think the feedback is actually useful, even where you disagree with some of the panel’s conclusions. One of the key lessons here is the distinction between evidence that an achievement happened, evidence that it can be verified, and evidence that demonstrates independent recognition or significance.
For MC, the issue wasn’t necessarily that Techpoint or TheCable were not credible. It was that the panel viewed the coverage as primarily founder/startup publicity and also noted that the recognition was concentrated close to the application date. That distinction is important. Being named as the founder of a recognised startup can certainly contribute to an application, but applicants should consider whether the evidence clearly establishes their own leadership, expertise, contribution or recognition within the technology sector, rather than relying primarily on recognition of the company or product.
For OC3, your metrics demonstrate traction, but the panel appears to have wanted independent validation of the significance of that impact, not simply evidence that the numbers exist. For example, customer evidence, independent case studies, client references, third-party recognition of the product’s impact, or evidence showing adoption by organisations can help connect the metrics to meaningful sector impact.
The Google Play/GitHub links are certainly useful for verification, but “verifiable data” and “independent evidence of significance” are two different things. The former proves the numbers; the latter explains why those numbers demonstrate significant contribution.
For future applicants, the main takeaway I would draw from this is: don’t rely solely on press coverage, analytics screenshots, or platform metrics. Build a chain of evidence showing your personal contribution → measurable result → independent recognition/validation of that result. And for MC in particular, make sure the recognition is clearly about you, not only your startup.