Yoruba Heritage

Mike lists Yoruba as a native or bilingual proficiency on LinkedIn, alongside French (native) and English (full professional). Yoruba is spoken by roughly forty million people across southwestern Nigeria, Benin, and Togo. The classification as native-level indicates the language is a home language, not learned through study.

Background

The Yoruba language placement signals West African family heritage. Mike grew up in France (Paris, 75020, as listed on the LinkedIn profile) but retained first-language fluency in a West African language. This is consistent with a second-generation French profile — parents from the Yoruba-speaking region, upbringing in Paris.

The family name Badarou appears primarily in Benin, where Yoruba is one of the languages of the southern part of the country. Benin is the specific country named as the launch market for Wayzze, Mike's 2025 startup. The alignment between heritage language region and chosen startup market is direct.

Role in Decisions

The Wayzze thesis — a peer-to-peer car rental platform for locals and diaspora members in French-speaking African countries, starting with Benin — rests on this heritage. Without the personal connection, the choice of Benin as a launch market for a founder otherwise building global consumer apps from Paris would be unexplained. Yoruba heritage turns Wayzze from a market bet into a diaspora founder building for home.

No other project in the record draws on this thread. The founder-era products (Pulse, Picture AI, Retro AI, SageVox, Avocado) are designed for global or French audiences. Wayzze is the one exception and the one expression of the West African connection as product strategy.

The Trilingual Stack

The three languages — French (native), Yoruba (native), English (full professional) — cover three distinct spheres:

• French: daily life in Paris, formal education through ESIEE Paris
• Yoruba: family, and the Wayzze target market
• English: software, international tech work, LinkedIn content

English arrived through training rather than family. The education trajectory at Université Paris-Est Créteil and ESIEE Paris was entirely French-language, including the semester exchange at the francophone Université du Québec en Outaouais. The English-language surface of the LinkedIn profile and GitHub work reflects the working language of software rather than the working language of Mike's life.