Three killed in Israeli strike targeting Hezbollah militant in Beirut

At least three people were killed and seven wounded in an Israeli airstrike on Beirut's southern suburbs early on Tuesday, the Lebanese health ministry said, further testing a shaky four-month ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.

The Israeli military said on Tuesday in a statement that it attacked a Hezbollah militant "who had recently directed Hamas operatives and assisted them."

The attack took place a few days after a previous strike by Israel on the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital, a Hezbollah stronghold known as the Dahiyeh.

There was no immediate statement from Hezbollah on the identity of the target.

The strike appeared to have damaged the upper three floors of a building in Beirut's southern suburbs, a Reuters reporter at the scene said, with the balconies of those floors blown out. The glass on the floors below was intact, indicating a target strike. Ambulances were at the scene to recover casualties.

There was no evacuation warning issued for the area ahead of the strike, and families fled in the aftermath to other parts of Beirut, according to witnesses.

The ceasefire agreement halted the year-long conflict and mandated that southern Lebanon be free of Hezbollah fighters and weapons, that Lebanese troops deploy to the area and that Israeli ground troops withdraw from the zone. But each side accuses the other of not entirely living up to those terms.

However, the U.S.-brokered truce has looked increasingly flimsy lately. Israel delayed a promised troop withdrawal in January and said that it had intercepted rockets fired from Lebanon in March, which led it to bombard targets in Beirut's southern suburbs and southern Lebanon.

The Iran-aligned Hezbollah has denied any involvement in the rocket firings.

The U.S. State Department said on Tuesday that Israel was defending itself from rocket attacks that came from Lebanon and that Washington blamed "terrorists" for the resumption of hostilities.

"Hostilities have resumed because terrorists launched rockets into Israel from Lebanon," a State Department spokesperson said in an email, adding Washington supported Israel's response.

The Israeli-Lebanese conflict, in which thousands of people have been killed, was ignited by the Gaza war in 2023 when Hezbollah started firing rockets at Israeli military positions in support of its ally Hamas.

The Gaza war, in which Palestinian health authorities say more than 50,000 people have been killed, was triggered when Hamas militants attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Reuters

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Russia pounds Kharkiv for second night in row, Ukraine says

Russia has attacked the city of Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine for a second consecutive night, injuring three people, sparking fires at industrial buildings and damaging two kindergartens, Ukrainian officials said early on Monday.

The attack on Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, lasted most of the night and hit the city's largest and oldest district, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said.

"Five industrial buildings of one of the research and production enterprises were damaged," Terekhov said on Telegram.

Emergency crews said they battled a large fire which spanned 3,900 square meters after the strike. The drone assault on the city also damaged 11 apartment buildings, Terekhov said.

The attack came a week after a U.S.-brokered partial ceasefire on strikes on energy and Black Sea infrastructure. Both sides have accused each other of breaking the moratorium.

The Ukrainian air force said it shot down 57 of 131 drones launched by Russia during the overnight attack that also used two Iskander-M ballistic missiles.

Another 45 drones did not reach their targets, likely due to electronic countermeasures, it said.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday that Russia had fired more than 1,000 drones over the past week and he called for a response from the U.S. and other allies. Russia said Ukrainian drones attacked its energy facilities last week.

Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 and has waged a bloody and brutal three-year war. Both sides deny targeting civilians, saying their attacks are aimed at destroying each other's infrastructure crucial to war efforts.

Over the weekend a Russian drone strike on Kharkiv killed two people and wounded 35, a Ukrainian official said.

Oleh Sinehubov, governor of the Kharkiv region, said on Monday that the overnight attacks followed a Sunday guided aerial bomb strike on the city of Kupiansk that left five injured and damaged an apartment building.

Kupiansk, east of Kharkiv, was seized by Russia early in the invasion of Ukraine and recaptured by Ukrainian troops later that year. It has now come under new, intense Russian pressure.

There was no immediate comment from Moscow on the attacks.

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Ukraine again violated energy strike ceasefire – Russia

Ukraine has again violated the moratorium on strikes on energy infrastructure by launching two attacks on the power grid in Russia’s border Bryansk Region, the Defense Ministry in Moscow has said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to halt strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure for 30 days following a phone call with his US counterpart Donald Trump earlier this month, an agreement later confirmed by Kiev.

Moscow, however, accused Ukraine of violating the ceasefire almost immediately, with several similar breaches occurring in the following days.
In a statement on Monday, the Russian Defense Ministry signaled that Kiev did not change its approach to the moratorium. “Over the past 24 hours, despite the Kiev regime’s statements about not striking energy facilities, the Ukrainian armed forces continued to attack Russia’s energy infrastructure.”

One attack, which took place on Sunday evening, targeted a facility in Bryansk Region and involved an artillery shelling of a branch of energy company Rosseti Centre – Bryanskenergo, the ministry said. “Due to a break in the wire on the support, the high-voltage line was disconnected, and household consumers in the Suzemsky district were cut off from the energy supply.”

Less than half an hour later, a Ukrainian drone attacked an electricity substation in the same area, also leading to energy disruptions, officials added.

“The continued deliberate attacks by the Armed Forces of Ukraine on Russian energy facilities indicate the complete inability of the Kiev regime to abide by any of its obligations regarding the settlement of the conflict in Ukraine,” the ministry stressed.

While Moscow has repeatedly accused Kiev of violating the moratorium on energy strikes, it has signaled that it intends to uphold its end of the bargain because the deal serves as a sign of progress in improving US-Russian bilateral relations. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has warned, however, that Moscow may retaliate symmetrically for Kiev’s violations.

Reuters/RT

Tendayi Viki

You don’t ever have to make your case.

You don’t have to beg, coerce or plead with people to join your movement.

You don’t need to host a massive event to announce the start of the transformation.

There is only one thing you need to do… createmomentum.

Invite the right people to your movement at the beginning. Then work with those people to create the gravity that will attract the rest of the organization.

Over time you will get to a tipping point where the momentum you have created makes organizational change inevitable.

Find Your Tribe

Forget about walking around the company with a PowerPoint deck trying to convince everyone. That’s a losing game.

Find your tribe and invite them to join you.

Everett Rodgers’ work on the Diffusion of Innovation shows that change starts with a small group of people (i.e. innovators and early adopters). These are the people who embrace new ideas without needing social proof. They make up around 16% of any organization, but they are your bridge to the rest of the company.

If you don’t find early adopters, it is difficult to create momentum for your initiative.

At the beginning, when you have zero evidence of traction, look for people who:

• Already believe that change is needed
• Have been actively looking for solutions
• Have tried to come up with their own solutions
• Are willing to invest time and resources to support you.

Early adopters who become champions have been the strategic heartbeat of every successful innovation and transformation program I have worked on.

Get Early Wins

Now that you have found your tribe, work with them to get early wins.

Getting early wins is the first step in creating momentum; and I am often surprised by how many transformation leaders ignore this fact.

Here is something you need to understand.

Change makes people nervous. People fear uncertainty. So your colleagues are not evaluating your idea on its merits. They are paying attention to who else in the company is supporting your idea or whether you have early successes.

They are looking for social proof before they are comfortable to get onboard.

Usually the positive results of our transformation will take time to show. But this should not be used as an excuse for not getting early wins.

Get the latest news on special offers, product updates and content suggestions from Forbes and its affiliates.

You can work with your early adopters to solve their most pressing problems using your process. You can also break up your transformation into small chunks of work that can produce early results for your champions. To be effective, your early wins should be:

• Visible: People can see the impact
• Valuable: It solves a real business problem
• Verifiable: You can measure success and quantify the impact

Getting early wins for your champions is a great way to further cement their buy-in. Those early successes help them justify their decision to join your movement. This will make them happy to stick with you for the long haul.

Tell Your Story

Those early wins are the starting motions of the flywheel of change. You have created momentum. You are on your way.

Now it’s time to share your story with the rest of the organization.

Don’t use facts and data. Use narrative to help people develop an emotional connection to your transformation.

Make your champions the centre of the story. Put the spotlight on them and not yourself. Have them tell the story of how you helped them succeed.

People connect with a story when they can see themselves in the narrative.

This is how you attract the next group of people to your movement.

Getting To The Tipping Point

Research by Damon Centola shows that change becomes inevitable when at least 25% of a group embraces a new idea.

That’s right—you don’t need to get to 51% of the group.

Once your early adopters generate enough traction, the early majority will start paying attention. These are the people who weren’t ready at first but are now intrigued by your success stories.

Map each of those stakeholders and make a plan to engage with them. This is the time to start explicitly asking for what you need for success. You may want them to:

• Endorse your initiative
• Advocate for it publicly
• Contribute financial resources
• Send their teams to work with you
• Have a conversation with a key function on your behalf

Your early adopters and champions can also help you with the conversations you are having with this next group of stakeholders.

The ultimate goal is to push your initiative to the point where more than 25% of the people in your company actively support your idea. When you get there, you will have created the momentum that will make change inevitable.

A Final Thought

Transformation is not about having good ideas and selling them to people.

Transformations succeed when they create momentum.

Finding your early adopters and getting early wins is the first turn of that flywheel.

Telling your stories and recruiting the early majority will get you to the tipping point.

Forbes

Fuel stations across Lagos and surrounding areas have increased the price of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), commonly called petrol, to between N930 and N970 per litre, up from the previous N865 per litre rate.

On Sunday morning, BusinessDay observed that numerous filling stations throughout Lagos had adjusted their pump prices upward. Concurrently, depot prices rose to between N890 and N900 per litre, marking an increase from below N850 per litre just two weeks ago.

Industry experts attribute this price hike to recently reported increases in petrol landing costs, which oil marketers say have jumped by N88 per litre in a single week, alongside growing import volumes.

BusinessDay confirmed an AP filling station on Admiralty Road in Lekki Phase 1 selling fuel at N930 per litre, while other Lagos outlets priced petrol between N930 and N935 per litre. Further afield, stations in Abuja and Magboro, Ogun State have set prices between N960 and N970 per litre.

This represents the first petrol price increase of 2025, following several price reductions earlier in the year during heightened competition between the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited and Dangote Refinery.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

The Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria, MACBAN in Benue State has raised the alarm over the alleged poisoning and rustling of members’ cattle by criminal elements in Agatu Local Government Area, LGA, of Benue state.

The Chairman of MACBAN in the state, Risku Muhammed who raised the alarm weekend said over 20 cows belonging to Fulani herdsmen were Saturday poisoned at Ucha village in Agatu.

He explained that aside the poisoned cattle, “over 200 cows were last Thursday also rustled by the criminals but for the prompt intervention of security operatives who arrested one of the rustlers while others escaped.”

Mohammed alleged that a farmer in Ucha community, name withheld, poisioned the cows with the chaff of rice after he invited a herder to feed his cows with it leading to the death of 13 of the cows while seven others thar survived were undergoing treatment.

He said, “I got report from my members in Agatu LGA that a criminal who had laced rice chaff with poison invited one of our members to come and graze on the rice chaff, unfortunately, 13 cows died instantly while seven are being treated by a veterinary doctor.”

He commended the Local Government Council Chairman, Melvin Ejeh for promptly responding to issues concerning the herders and communities in the area saying “the Local Government Chairman with some Non Governmental Organizations working in the LGA have several times paid for cows killed by these criminals.”
He disclosed that herders had at one time or other lost several cows to criminals in Olegodege, Utigologwu, Egwuma, Akele, Okwtanobe and now Ucha through rustling and killing.

Contacted, Chairman of Agatu LGA, Melvin Ejeh acknowledged receipt of the complaint from MACBAN, assuring that the matter was being investigated though a farmer had been arrested in connection with the poisoned cows.
He noted that Agatu had enjoyed relative peace in recent time following the help from the state government and security operatives deployed to the area.

The Council Chairman said: “We have received complaints from Miyetti Allah and investigation is going on about the incident. Agatu has been enjoying peace and this is as a result of the Peace Committee that was set up and on daily basis we review the peace process.

“It is unfortunate that some criminal elements are bent on instigating crisis and destroying the peace process but government will not fold its arms and allow that to happen.”

The Chairman who lauded the state government for ensuring peace in Agatu appealed for the deployment of more security operatives to the LGA.

The Police Public Relations Officer, Catherine Anene who confirmed the development said “I have a briefing this morning (Sunday) about dead cows said to have been poisoned, investigation is ongoing and a suspect has been arrested over the matter.”

Anene also confirmed the existence of a Peace Committee working tirelessly in the area to ensure sustainable peace in the communities of Agatu LGA.

Vanguard

Israeli PM Netanyahu vows to pressure Hamas after ceasefire proposal

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeated a demand on Sunday for Hamas to disarm and for its leaders to leave Gaza as he promised to step up pressure on the group while continuing efforts to return hostages.

He said Israel would work to implement U.S. President Donald Trump's "voluntary emigration plan" for Gaza and said his cabinet had agreed to keep pressuring Hamas, which says it has agreed to a ceasefire proposal from mediators Egypt and Qatar.

Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said Netanyahu's comments were a recipe for "endless escalation" in the region.

Netanyahu rejected assertions that Israel, which has resumed its bombardment of Gaza after a two-month truce and sent troops back into the enclave, was not negotiating, saying "we are conducting it under fire, and therefore it is also effective".

"We see that there are suddenly cracks," he said in a video statement issued on Sunday.

On Saturday, Khalil al-Hayya, the Hamas leader in Gaza, said the group had agreed to a proposal that security sources said included the release of five Israeli hostages each week. But he said laying down its arms as Israel has demanded was a "red line" the group would not cross.

On Sunday, the first day of the Muslim Eid al-Fitr holiday, health authorities in Gaza said at least 24 people, including several children, had been killed in Israeli strikes. Nine were killed in a single tent in the southern city of Khan Younis, they said.

Later on Sunday, the Palestinian Red Crescent Service said it had finally been able to get access to search for rescue teams that had come under Israeli fire during a rescue mission in western Rafah, a week after the attack.

It said it had recovered 13 bodies from the scene, seven of them were Palestinian Red Crescent members, another five were from the Gaza Civil Emergency Service, and another was a United Nations worker. There was no immediate Israeli comment.

Since Israel resumed its attacks in Gaza on March 18, hundreds of Palestinians have been killed and tens of thousands have been forced to evacuate areas in northern Gaza where they had returned following the ceasefire agreement in January.

Netanyahu said Israel was demanding that Hamas lay down its arms and said its leaders would be allowed to leave Gaza. He gave no detail on how long Israeli troops would remain in the enclave but repeated that Hamas's military and government capacities must be crushed.

"We will ensure general security in the Gaza Strip and enable the implementation of the Trump plan, the voluntary emigration plan," he said. "That is the plan, we do not hide it, we are ready to discuss it at any time."

Trump originally proposed moving the entire 2.3 million population of Gaza to countries including Egypt and Jordan and developing the Gaza Strip as a U.S.-owned resort. However, no country has agreed to take in the population and Israel has since said that any departures by Palestinians would be voluntary.

EID IN GAZA

Israel launched its campaign in Gaza after a devastating Hamas attack on Israeli communities around the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023 that killed some 1,200 people, according to an Israeli tally, and saw 251 abducted as hostages.

The Israeli campaign has killed more than 50,000 Palestinians, according to Palestinian health authorities, and devastated much of the coastal enclave, leaving hundreds of thousands of people in tents and makeshift shelters.

Sunday's strikes took place as Palestinians celebrated the Eid holiday marking the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

"We are here to celebrate the rituals of God amid the destruction and the sounds of cannons," said Minnatallah Al-Far, in Jabalia, in northern Gaza, where most of the area has been laid waste by Israeli bombardment.

"In Gaza, our situation is very difficult. Other people are celebrating these rituals in peace and safety, but we do them amid destruction and bombardment," she said.

In Israel, Netanyahu has faced a wave of demonstrations since the military resumed its action in Gaza, with families and supporters of the remaining 59 hostages joining forces with protesters angry at government actions they see as undermining Israeli democracy.

On Sunday, he rejected what he described as "empty claims and slogans" and said military pressure was the only thing that had returned hostages.

Reuters

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

'Pissed off' at Putin, Trump threatens tariffs on Russian oil if Moscow blocks Ukraine deal

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday he was "pissed off" at Russian President Vladimir Putin and will impose secondary tariffs of 25% to 50% on buyers of Russian oil if he feels Moscow is blocking his efforts to end the war in Ukraine.

Trump told NBC News he was very angry after Putin last week criticized the credibility of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's leadership, the television network reported, citing a telephone interview early on Sunday.

Since taking office in January, Trump has adopted a more conciliatory stance towards Russia that has left Western allies wary as he tries to broker an end to Moscow's three-year-old war in Ukraine.

His sharp comments about Putin on Sunday reflect his growing frustration about the lack of movement on a ceasefire.

"If Russia and I are unable to make a deal on stopping the bloodshed in Ukraine, and if I think it was Russia’s fault ... I am going to put secondary tariffs on oil, on all oil coming out of Russia,” Trump said.

“That would be, that if you buy oil from Russia, you can’t do business in the United States,” Trump said. “There will be a 25% tariff on all oil, a 25- to 50-point tariff on all oil.”

Trump later reiterated to reporters he was disappointed with Putin but added: "I think we are making progress, step by step."

Trump said he could impose the new trade measures within a month.

There was no immediate reaction from Moscow. Russia has called numerous Western sanctions and restrictions “illegal” and designed for the West to take economic advantage in its rivalry with Russia.

Trump, who spent the weekend at his estate in Palm Beach, Florida, told NBC News he planned to speak with Putin this week. The two leaders have had two publicly announced telephone calls in recent months but may have had more contacts, the Kremlin said in video footage last week.

The White House had no immediate comment on when the call would take place, or if Trump would also speak with Zelenskiy.

Trump has focused heavily on ending what he calls a "ridiculous" war, which began when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, but has made little progress.

Putin on Friday suggested Ukraine could be placed under a form of temporary administration to allow for new elections that could push out Zelenskiy.

Trump, who himself has called for new elections in Ukraine and denounced Zelenskiy as a dictator, said Putin knows he is angry with him. But Trump added he had “a very good relationship with him” and “the anger dissipates quickly ... if he does the right thing.”

GROWING PRESSURE TO END WAR

Trump's comments followed a day of meetings and golf with Finnish President Alexander Stubb on Saturday, during Stubb's surprise visit to Florida.

Stubb's office on Sunday said he told Trump a deadline needs to be set for establishing a Russia-Ukraine ceasefire to make it happen and suggested April 20 since Trump would have been in office then for three months.

U.S. officials have been separately pushing Kyiv to accept a critical minerals agreement, a summary of which suggested the U.S. was demanding all Ukraine's natural resources income for years. Zelenskiy has said Kyiv's lawyers need to review the draft before he can say more about the U.S. offer.

Trump told reporters on Air Force One he thought Zelenskiy was "trying to back out of the rare earth deal.... if he's looking to renegotiate the deal, he's got big problems." Trump also told reporters that Ukraine would never be part of NATO.

Trump's latest tariff threats would add to the pain already facing China, India and other countries through trade measures imposed during his first two months in office, including duties on steel, aluminum and cars. More duties on imports from the countries with the largest trade surpluses are slated to be announced on Wednesday.

William Reinsch, a former senior Commerce Department official now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the haphazard way Trump was announcing and threatening tariffs leaves many questions unanswered, including how U.S. officials could trace and prove which countries were buying Russian oil.

Trump set the stage for Sunday's news with a 25% secondary tariffimposed last week on U.S. imports from any country buying oil or gas from Venezuela.

His remarks to NBC suggest he could take similar action against U.S. imports from countries that buy oil from Russia, a move that could hit China and India particularly hard.

The U.S. has not imported any Russian barrels of crude oil since April 2022, according to U.S. government data. Before that, U.S. refiners bought inconsistent volumes of Russian oil, with a high of 98.1 million barrels in 2010 and low of 6.6 million in 2014, according to a review of EIA data since 2000.

India has surpassed China to become the biggest buyer of seaborne Russian crude, which comprised about 35% of India's total crude imports in 2024.

Trump on Sunday also said he could hit buyers of Iranian oil with secondary sanctions if Tehran did not reach an agreement to end their nuclear weapons program.

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Intel sharing and ‘boots on the ground’: Takeaways from NYT investigation into ‘secret’ US-Ukraine partnership

A New York Times investigation has found that the administration of former US President Joe Biden provided Ukraine with support that went far beyond arms shipments – extending to daily battlefield coordination, intelligence sharing, and joint strategy planning that were indispensable in Kiev’s fight against Russia.

The report, which was prepared based on more than 300 interviews with Ukrainian and Western government and military officials, takes a deep dive into the cooperation between Washington and Kiev from the early days of the conflict through late 2024.

Attempt at Vietnam rematch

Following the outbreak of the hostilities in February 2022, the US and Ukraine gradually moved towards an “extraordinary partnership of intelligence, strategy, planning and technology” that became Kiev’s “secret weapon” in fighting Russia, the investigation said.

The outlet noted that Washington’s campaign to support Ukraine reached such a scale that it became “a rematch in a long history of US-Russia proxy wars – Vietnam in the 1960s, Afghanistan in the 1980s, Syria three decades later.” 

'Points of interest,' not 'targets'

The US Army garrison in Wiesbaden, Germany, became the nerve center of the cooperation, according to the report. American and Ukrainian officers worked jointly each day to select Russian targets – although they avoided using the phrase, using instead the euphemism “points of interest” out of fear that the phrase could be deemed too provocative. Intelligence flowed from satellite imagery and intercepted communications directly into Ukrainian targeting decisions.

Since mid-2022, Ukraine heavily relied on US data to attack Russian command and control centers and other high-value targets. Targeting sheets contained dozens of objectives listed in order of priority, the NYT said.

Some of the massive strikes made using Western-supplied long-range missiles were aimed at targets in Crimea, including Russian warships. Some of the strikes have resulted in civilian casualties.

One unnamed European official told the paper that he was shocked by the extent of the involvement. “They are part of the kill chain now,” he was quoted as saying.

‘Boots on the ground’ after all

While early into the conflict the Biden administration promised that the US would not “put boots on the ground” in Ukraine, the cooperation in Wiesbaden ended up leading to an easing of this prohibition, the report claims.

Under Biden, the US “authorized clandestine operations,” and “American military advisers were dispatched to Kiev and later allowed to travel closer to the fighting,” NYT said, estimating their number in the dozens.

Walking over ‘red lines’

As the conflict progressed, the Biden administration gradually relaxed the self-imposed restrictions on supplying Kiev with arms, particularly long-range missiles. In 2024, the US extended its permissions to allow Ukraine to carry out limited long-range strikes using American-supplied weapons into internationally recognized Russian territory while providing Kiev with the relevant targeting data.

Tensions over strategy

While cooperation with the US provided Ukraine with invaluable data and resources to fight Russia, the sides at times had major disagreements over strategy and objectives, the NYT noted.

“Where the Americans focused on measured, achievable objectives, they saw the Ukrainians as constantly grasping for the big win, the bright, shining prize,” the report said.

The contradictions became particularly apparent during Ukraine’s botched counteroffensive in the southern sector of the front in the summer of 2023. The Ukrainian leadership was split between competing objectives – pursuing an assault toward Melitopol, and prioritizing the area of Artyomovsk (Bakhmut).

What now?

While describing the cooperation as a “secret weapon” in Kiev’s arsenal, the NYT noted that the arrangement now “teeters on a knife edge”as US President Donald Trump is pushing for talks with Russia and seeking to end the conflict.

“For the Ukrainians, the auguries are not encouraging… the American president has baselessly blamed the Ukrainians for starting the war, pressured them to forfeit much of their mineral wealth and asked the Ukrainians to agree to a ceasefire without a promise of concrete American security guarantees,” the outlet summarized, adding that Trump has already started to wind down some elements of the partnership.

Reuters/RT

Tom Huddleston Jr.

People who start a new business often make one “fatal mistake” that″ll likely doom their venture before it even starts, says Steve Blank.

The mistake: not researching your prospective customers or clients before deciding what kind of company you want to build, and the products or services you’ll offer. ”[I’ve] seen this a million times,” says Blank, an adjunct professor at Stanford University who has written four books on the subject of entrepreneurship and helped build eight different tech startups, of which he co-founded four.

Coming up with an idea for a business first, and then determining how to sell that product or service — before you’ve confirmed it’s something your prospective customers actually desire, is a recipe for failure, Blank says.

“The most important [question] is: ‘Well, who are my customers?’ And the second one is: ‘What do they want?’” adds Blank, who sold his final startup, business software company Epiphany, sold to SSA Global Technologies for $329 million in 2005. “It’s not: ‘Here’s what I’m building. Can I sell it to someone?’”

For years, Blank has told his students to “get the heck outside” of the office or classroom and hear from actual potential customers, he says. He’s not alone: Talking to customers as early as possible is necessary to ascertain the best product-market fit, putting founders on the path to building a successful business, according to the Small Business Administration.

Alberto Perlman, co-founder and CEO of Zumba Fitness, says the “biggest mistake” entrepreneurs make is thinking they “know more than their customer.”

“You have to always be listening, and listening between the lines, to your customer,” Perlman told CNBC Make It in 2020.

Not listening to your customers “can make the difference between a business that thrives and one that fades,” investor and co-star of ABC’s “Shark Tank” Robert Herjavec wrote in a recent LinkedIn post. “It’s natural to get attached to your product or service, but success hinges on seeing its value through the customer’s eyes.”

Blank points toward his own entrepreneurial track record — specifically, one of his biggest failures — as an example. He co-founded a video game company called Rocket Science Games in 1993 and raised $35 million for it. The company made a cover of Wired magazinethat dubbed them Silicon Valley’s next hot startup.

Rocket Science Games had talented engineers and its initial line of games created buzz with polished trailers, but Blank found out too late that customers thought the games “sucked,” and sales never materialized, he told Fast Companyin 2014.

The company shuttered in 1997, becoming a high-profile tech industry flop. Blank probably would never have started it, or “definitely changed its trajectory,” if he’d followed his current advice and sought out customer feedback before it was too late, he says.

“The biggest killer for me, and the biggest failure, was hubris,” says Blank, bluntly adding: “Don’t believe your own bulls---. It’s really easy to get convinced about your passion and your vision.”

CNBC

Foreign investment inflows to Nigeria's equities market dropped by 29.66% in February 2025, falling to ₦18.05 billion from ₦25.66 billion in January.

The reduction in foreign participation was significant, with total foreign portfolio transactions on the Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX) declining by 40.36% from ₦71.51 billion to ₦42.65 billion. Foreign outflows also decreased substantially, down 46.33% to ₦24.60 billion from January's ₦45.85 billion.

Overall trading activity on the exchange fell by 16.07% month-on-month, with total transactions dropping from ₦607.05 billion (approximately $410.84 million) in January to ₦509.47 billion (about $341.36 million) in February. However, compared to February 2024, trading volumes were up 42.36% year-on-year.

Domestic investors continued to dominate the market, accounting for 91.63% (₦466.82 billion) of all equity transactions in February, while foreign investors contributed just 8.37% (₦42.65 billion). This represents an increase in domestic market share from 88.22% in January.

Among domestic participants, institutional investors remained more active than retail traders, though both segments saw declines. Institutional transactions decreased by 5.92% to ₦252.31 billion, while retail investor activity fell more sharply by 19.76% to ₦214.51 billion.

Despite monthly fluctuations, cumulative domestic transactions for 2025 reached ₦1.002 trillion by the end of February, surpassing the ₦890.48 billion recorded during the same period in 2024. Meanwhile, foreign portfolio activity totaled ₦114.16 billion, slightly below the ₦118.92 billion seen in early 2024.

The declining foreign participation may reflect ongoing concerns about macroeconomic uncertainties and volatility in Nigeria's foreign exchange market.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​