On Being Each Other's Keepers...

I’ve been writing this for weeks on end and I’m sure it will still not be as coherent as I’d like it to be.  I’m sharing now because ;

 I receive those quite often but these days I just buckle up and wait for the next opportunity to apply. But a dear friend of mine can’t even go so far as applying. Why? Simple. Fear. This might seem like a flippant reason but it’s not. See, I was her just a few months ago.  Self-doubt plagued (still does) me till it crippled me. I was my own worst enemy. The only reason I got (still getting) over it is that I have an amazing support network. God created the most passionate cheerleaders a girl could ever need and placed them in my yard. From my co-founders, my friends to my family (in its own interesting way). 

I got possibly the biggest rejection of my life recently (professionally). I was thousands of miles away from my troupe, my army. I couldn’t leave my bed. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I felt like I had failed myself, my daughter, the company, everyone. Somehow, one of them (my awesome cheer-leading troupe) managed to get through to me and what followed was a whirlwind of crying on Skype together, pep talks and lectures for the entire duration I was huddled in my bed. Slowly as the day went on, it didn’t feel so terrible. My jar of hope started to be refilled. I managed to get out of my room at the end of the day and face the world again.

But that is not all that this troupe provides, emotional support is great but man cannot eat hope. I don’t know how many emails I receive in a week with opportunities, people to meet, and customer referrals. Frankly, it overwhelms me sometimes. (I’m not complaining ooh. Don’t stop!) But yes, people out there really have my back. And that is why I fiercely (sometimes too much) support the entrepreneurs around me. Because I know what I have, not many people do. In fact, I’m the exception. 

Entrepreneurship is a lonely lonely journey.So it befuddles me to see entrepreneurs tear each other down, knowing this first hand. There’s been a lot of talk lately about African startups not sharing, first it was being whispered in hushed tones but now we are out and proud (See Tech Cabal article here). I’ve ranted several times on twitter about this. My tipping point; I just got invited to a B2B event with investors/business owners from the UAE. The RSVP had strict instructions; COME ALONE. DO NOT SHARE! What the hell! This mind you is a not a private function. It is organized by an agency that is run by tax payer shillings. So I wonder at the secrecy. Why are we hoarding investors (and other resources) from each other? To what end?  What is this poverty mentality?! Why are we so bent as a society on holding each other back?  

But then I guess misery revels in company and we are a miserable lot. I thought I’d tell this story when I’m old and grey and when it has seized to be relevant but apparently not. It seems, it needs to be told and told urgently. Just months into launching Zimba, someone I highly respect(ed) in the Tech Community dared to try and bad mouth the company to one of our partners, luckily for us, our partners saw through their lies and petty and paid them no mind. But this baffled me, why would someone go out of their way to try and sabotage a company that wasn’t even 6 months old. We already have so much working against us (lack of funding, novelty hard to understand product), there is no need for vindictiveness to get to us. Thankfully, this just spurred us on. But I will wonder to my grave.(No, being me, there will be a confrontation. I’m just bidding my time) The target market for our companies is very different and even if it were the same, I’m sure as Zimba we are never going to reach even 40% of the people we would like to reach, and here is someone squabbling over virgin territory. What shall happen when the market is saturated, shall we turn to physical violence then?

Anyway, I digress. I truly believe that the only way we will get to be competitive as the rest of the world is when we start to work together as opposed to silos. We have to so much to learn and gain from each other, different strengths that if brought together would be formidable. Across startups, across ecosystems even. There are components of Zimba and The Baby Store that I’m happily handing over to other startups, business for them and time for me to focus on my core strengths. Imagine if instead of duplicating each other’s ideas, we just complimented each other. Even across borders, I’d be happier to help another African startup scale to Uganda than set up local competition for them.

The gist of this long incoherent tirade; we need each other. Urgently. Desperately. We need to be our brother’s keepers.

On Startups; From Ideation To Exit...MWF Chronicles V

This week we had what I will term as the most thought provoking session for me. KP Reddy, and amazing serial entrepreneur was invited by Duncan, one of the faculty to give a presentation on startups. He started his first business at age 19 and by 27 he had grown his startup to a publicly listed company. At this point, he handed over the reigns and took off 3 years. In this time, he was growing his own food and doing yoga everyday (Yes, seriously) 

Currently, the techie turned investor and speaker is highly sought after due to his candid counsel to both startups and Fortune 1000 companies alike, he has been requested by organizations such as IBM, Coca-Cola, UPS, Cox Communications and Autodesk. K.P. has spoken at universities all over the U.S. including: Harvard, Georgia Institute of Technology, Vanderbilt, Stanford, Emory, San Jose State, University of South Carolina, and Cleveland State.

Innovative and witty, K.P. speaks to leaders with intriguing topics such as: Your Culture Sucks Because You Suck, Why Big Companies Can’t Innovate, Disruption Is Not A Marketing Campaign, Why You’re Not a CEO, Yet… and Why Every Recent Grad Should Work at a Startup.

In 2012, K.P. published BIM for Building Owners and Developers, a book on the adoption of advanced technology in the infrastructure space employed by leading companies and universities.

K.P. is also startup Catalyst, helping organizations accelerate through coaching and programs such as: Startup Weekend, Customer Discovery Classes, Accelerators and Hackathons. These can range from one day to six week cohorts, depending on your needs and timeline.

From this session, I was able to see clearly what I’m doing right but most importantly , what I’m doing wrong and how I can start to correct it. I wished that my co-founders and all the startup founders from my eco-system were there. There were so many take-aways and here’s a few of the gold nuggets that K.P shared ;

1.Be an expert in a field of study. Find something that you are really good at and become king at it. Whether it is a particular form of technology, marketing or finance subject. For example, you should be able to say something like, “I’m among the top 5 experts in cryptocurrency transfer services among the unbanked in sub-Saharan Africa.” For you to achieve this, it means you have to dedicate an insane amount of time to reading and research. You should achieve top of mind status for your field.

2.Don’t rush and quit the day job; Learn new skills first to de-risk yourself. Secondly, learn about the market you want to enter to de-risk the business. You have to be realistic based on the experience you have, because this is what drives results. DO NOT QUIT UNTIL YOU HAVE A PLAN.

3.Build your equity; Ideas are a dime a dozen, they do not matter. You cannot base your equity on an idea. What matters is deliverables. What have you done with your idea? Have you documented your work? Before you go out hunting for investors, have you done your own due diligence? If any mistakes are to be made, make these on your own dime. Realize that some ‘founder’ have unfair advantage, be it a degree (and hence connections) from Stanford or celebrity status. Find a unique way to compete.

4.Capital; Capital is not to be used for founder salaries or exploration of business models. Capital is essentially meant to be used to build production platforms and to scale sales teams that a utilizing a proven methodology. Do not raise capital to a “dead end.” You must always know how much total capital is needed to execute on your plan. Your gross margin must be able to support your cost of capital. For early stage investment, you need to have revenue to validate the customer need. Think of capital as a highly structured supply chain.

5.Start with the exit in mind. This was my biggest takeaway. I am essentially building a business to handover to my children and all this talk of exits that is trending has had me worried for a while. I do not want to sweat blood and tears all for some guy in a suit to come and slap a value to my work and walk away with it.I expressed this to Reddy and he allayed my fears. An exit doesn’t always mean selling your company off to some huge corporate investor. An exit strategy can be handing over to the next generation. Do not build a company around yourself. It should be able to exist successfully in your absence. This for me was key because most successful businesses in Uganda collapse soon after the death of the founder. And it is because of this very reason, not having the end in mind so there is no business continuity plan set up. I am glad that he emphasized that we should always be cognizant of this fact.

I got such deep insight for my startup and I can’t wait to get back home and start implementing what I learnt.

#UgBloggers7Days Blog Post Numero Trois : On "Free" work!

Ola Dolls,

An acquaintance called me up this morning talking bout some work they'd like me to do. I say; "cool, aight. I'll swing by and see what you've got. Am a tad busy but if the pay is right, am good." She says OK.  I get there and she's talking about a really exciting project. She's re-launching her fabulous urban fashion store and she needed to gain a legit social media and web presence for her brand. I am about that life! I love fashion. I love social media. Bring the two together and we have a winner.

Yass! Bring that work here. Momma's gonna do it.

So we sit down to discuss strategy; I was supposed to cover five sites, twitter, Facebook, instagram, pinterest and her website. It's a fashion store, a lot of images to be taken and edited but I wasn't fazed. I love my work, I do it wholeheartedly and it shows.

So at the end of this, she gets up as if to leave. And I'm like, wait. Wait a minute, we haven't discussed my fee. She looks at me like all of a sudden I'd started speaking in tongues.

Seriously. This was the look!

So she settles back into her chair and goes on about how she thought I do this for free. FOR FREE!

What!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Where and when did I say that. Free! Am I the UN? RedCross? Bono? Who pays for my internet? Are the pictures going to take and edit themselves? This  *insert expletives* woman wanted to pay me in air and gratitude. Gratitude don't buy food. I cannot go to emirates and book a ticket to Dubai with oohh so much gratitude! Jesus, take the wheel. This b***h cray! What part of: "if the pay is right" did she not understand?! No No No. I was having none of that. You want to make money off the exposure that my hard work (And it is hard HARD work I assure you) is going to garner but you want to pay me in feels. Of Gratitude!

Damn right!

Got up. Gathered my bags and was out of there like the air currency I was going to be paid in.

I know my profile is not big. I have not done work for any major brands but for those that I have, they are happy and have seen returns. Unless it's for charity, am done past the free work. I have 2 mouths to feed! It is not much but I do charge a nominal fee for my services. I can't waste (yes, it's a waste) any time on freebies cause it takes away time from my essential nation building projects , from my family time, from my social time all of which I hold very dear. So for anyone hoping to suggest such nasty things to my face again;

Bisous.

Progress report numero..trois

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  Ola dolls,
  
  This is a blog supposed to be chronicling my climb to being the fiercest real life IT barbie ever with random bits on the side but lately I have just been writing a lot of random stuff and nothing IT related or even career related. So I felt I owed you dolls an update on what I have been up to career- wise.
  
  I still have not got the red hat certificate I promised I would have by this time. What I do have is a new job. I am now a Network management Engineer with the outsourcing giant WIPRO and I have people reporting to me now. Baby steps to my destination as the Africa manager for Google (If there's any recruiter from google..please please please..I die to work for your company). I did not have a chance to much in my role because I went for my maternity leave shortly after I got it but not before I helped set up a centralized service desk for 2 countries (Yes, am cool like that!)
  
  I go back to work in 3 weeks and I have big plans to make it work. I am going to put my heart and soul into it as I cannot do anything school related at the moment cause have another job as a baby mama and I have do that better than well.Like Beyonce says strong enough to bear the children and get back to business. All the while wearing heels. I AM A GIRL WHO RUNS THE WORLD.
  
  Enjoy the rest of the week dolls.
  xoxo

A la Interview..deux!

Hey dolls,

I have an interview today, scared shit less! At the moment, I really can't regurgitate anything sensible so just decide to write you a manual. IT Barbie's guide to preparing for interviews. Here goes;

1. Read, read and read and then some more. No use going for the damn thing if you don't know anything.
2. Make sure you know the place the interview is going to be carried out. If you get lost prior to getting there, this will just throw you off hence fail.
3. Dress up. And don't take this lightly this is the deal breaker..at least for me. Don't be tacky. Don't be flashy. Be classy.
3(b) It never hurt to wear good lingerie(underwear for men). This is your shield people! So you can have a smug look when anyone looks at you cause you're thinking.."am effing hot from head to toe."
4.Comb your hair. Tres tres importante. Hair says alot about you(Don't go believing that India Arie crap..she only sang that to sell records. She didn't really mean it!)
5. The most important one of all. Act as if you already have the job. Ever heard of fake it till you make it. This is it right here.
Wish me luck dolls,
xoxo

Corporate Kampala,WTF?!

Hi dolls,
Am left with only 2 months to complete my undergraduate degree and I've been pondering on what to do with myself after am done. Of course, the first thought that has come to my mind is to get a job in a bank or a telco and live the glossy life of a young corporate in kampala. This thought was banished out of my mind soon as I started temping at one of the the telco's I really wanted to join.

The reality is that most of these corporates get dressed in fancy clothes that they buy for work and drive through traffic in a car that they are still paying for-in order to get to the job they need to pay for the fancy clothes and the car, and the house that they leave vacant all day so that they can afford to live in it. This is the proverbial golden cage, all shinny and glossy from the outside but it's still a mother f***ing cage on the inside.

This is not the life I want. So on to thought number two- hustling!

A LA INTERVIEW

Hi dolls,
Am super excited!!!! Just got called by a telco in town for an interview!!! Cool beans,huh?! It's for a really cool post,So to imagine that i was just experimenting is incredibly funny. I applied for it to see how far the little experince i have, could get me. I waited for about a week and when noone had called me,i gave up on it entirely. And today while am at work(amazingly enough, i work at a telco already) I get called to go for an interview. Am going to do abit of reading up and then go. Interview's tommorrow at 10.00am(wonder what i'll wear!!).
My job at the moment is nice enough though and I have no thoughts about leaving it unless am given an earth shattering offer(lets not get too ahead of ourselves here!!) but it will be nice to see what else is out there.
So dolls, keep your fingers(and your tiny weeny toes!!)crossed for me!!!
XOXO