Startup Kenya

I feel very fortunate in the time I have spent as an entrepreneur. Not only have I gotten to meet a great number of different people: partners, suppliers, clients, proteges, employees but I've also provided products and businesses of utility AND made money. I like think of myself as an innovator as most of my ventures have been firsts: 1st person to publish the laws of Kenya online , 1st person to launch a low cost business centre , 1st person to automate the company registration person ; but I do not naively believe that I was the first one to come up with these ideas. Rather I was the first one to move from conceptual stage to actual implementation. As any real entrepreneur knows, implementation is 80% of the work. If you regularly read this blog, you'll therefore know that when I get a new business idea I usually share it freely. No need hoarding an idea, get it out to there and then make it a race to see who can make it work first. It is with this same spirit that I'd...

For those who've been reading my blog you know that I have a love/hate relationship with Safaricom. One week I will lavish praise on them, the next I'll be trashing them. With such swinging passions, it is easy to find inspiration to write on them, and resultantly I do it often. This week I'm at it again, giving my 3 reasons why I'll be sticking with Big Green and ignore the Vuka to Zhairtel wave currently going on. 1. Data Services. Safaricom's recent press release responding to its competitors drop in voice call charges captured one thing right on the mark. They are no longer just a mobile telephone company, they are a total (communications) solutions company. Just like DoCoMo of Japan, Safaricom early on realized that voice services were not enough and their future lay in data/internet services on mobile phone handsets. They've gone ahead and backed this conviction with some serious investment in 3G, fibre, WiMax, and now 4G. Safaricom has not stopped a...

When we are young most of us dream of being rich and famous. I was no exception and I made sure I started working towards this early in my youth. I sold contraband, got three jobs, started a business, and did consultancy, trying to add up the shillings and cents to meet my goal. At some point though (especially after finishing college) I discovered that sometimes the goal was just getting by. The reason I'd wake up in the morning, get myself to the office, answer calls and emails, meet clients and suppliers, write reports and proposals, balance books, was just to make payroll and rent. And even when the money came, it didn't bring any satisfaction, after spending  16 hour days doing the same-old, same-old. When my business finally gained stem I really thought I had escaped the rat race, but by settling back into a routine just to 'survive' I realized that all I had done was change lanes. To further drive home the futility of it all someone told me that the worst thing...

A detour from the constitutional debate. This week there has been a very public back and forth between Safaricom on one side and CCK, Yu, Zain, and Telkom on the other. The brouhaha is over a set of regulations published by CCK, which you can view here and here . Now, I'll be honest I tried reading the regulations but I got bored, but if I'm to believe the arguments of CCK and Safaricom then I'm going to give this one to Safaricom. Why lie Safaricom deserves to be market leader. Not only have they cranked out great product after great product, they've done this while keeping their business very profitable using the "just good enough formula". In case you have not read The Innovator's Solution , by Clayton Christensen and Michael Raynor, then I'll explain. The just-good-enough formula means that a product need not be perfect to be marketable, it must only meet the minimum threshold of the job the consumer is trying to achieve. The clearest example ...

Ah, the uninhibited joy of wishful thinking. After Safaricom introduced Voice SMS - a product that I had dreamed of since I first used a mobile phone - I started thinking "hey, perhaps I can voice some of my other fanciful mobile phone product ideas, and someone may just take notice"? Well, here goes ... the following list are some of the next products I'd like to see from the trio of Safaricom, Zain and Orange. An SMS autoresponder. Everytime you get an SMS you can optionally send back a response like "Thanks for your SMS I'll get back to you", or "Sorry I'm not able to respond to your SMS right now but I'll do so as soon as I'm able" It would be quite useful, especially when your phone is off/out of reach/on divert. The ability to convert unused airtime back to cash (although I know this makes absolutely no financial sense to these companies, it would be really cool!) Free voicemail depositing. Mobile Number Porting, just let me use ...