Is It Ever Too Early To Build?
By: Efosa Obano
Tags: Entrepreneurship, Founders, Kenya, Africa, Impact Investing

The 1st African Impact Challenge Cohort (Ghana 2020)

This is a question I’ve struggled with for the last 6 months. It’s funny, because we actually started the African Impact Initiative 4 years ago as students, in an effort to challenge this narrative. The organization exists to help young Africans take action in shaping the future we want to see for our continent. So unsurprisingly, I don’t think it’s ever too early to build. But I do think there’s a lot to be said about how hard it is when you’re building something for the first time. This is what makes the question pop up continuously.

Since we started the Initiative, it has become clear that a lot of people like us are passionate about making a difference in one way or another, but usually don’t know how to begin. Then when they eventually decide to take action, they realize they don’t have the resources needed. I feel like we always hear about success stories, but not enough about difficult beginnings before they become “successful”. So I thought to share some learnings from the difficult beginnings in our own journey, and our first African Impact Challenge cohort which started this summer. I hope it helps someone who can relate.

There’s a bias against you if you’re perceived as too young or lacking experience

I remember the first time I pitched the African Impact Challenge idea to someone who could help us make it a reality. Our goal was to help build the Africa we want to see, by investing in our continent’s young entrepreneurs-to-be. He said that it would be a waste of money, because the young folks we wanted to invest in wouldn’t have the experience to build sustainable businesses. This is the sentiment that many investors in our ecosystem have; and it makes sense since investors are generally risk averse. The problem with this is that it leaves too many like us — young, inexperienced, first-time entrepreneurs, discouraged to take action on our ideas. It causes us to subconsciously believe that we must have a lot of experience and credibility before we can be taken seriously. Thankfully all the times we heard “no” and got unanswered messages reinforced the importance of what we were trying to build, and kept us going until we got our first “yes” from University of Toronto. They helped us set up a $100,000 fund, which we are using to play our part in changing this narrative. We are helping young Africans build early- starting with Ghana, Kenya and Rwanda in 2020, 2021 and 2022. But ambitiously, we hope to take this around the continent, with more capacity in the longer run. Applications are now open for our Kenya 2021 cohort; please help us share the application with anyone who might be interested!

The bias creates a significant opportunity gap for first time founders

If we look at the data, the amount of investment in African startups is growing rapidly (in 2020, over $1 billion in funding has been injected into the ecosystem according to Briter Bridges). A lot of this is going to serial entrepreneurs with impressive track records. Not nearly enough is going to first time founders. From reflecting, the most fulfilling parts of our work so far are the friendships built with members of our pilot Ghana cohort. Seeing things from their perspective has given us a clearer purpose. An example is Kevin, a final year computer science student at Ghana Communication Technology University. I’m sure he’s going to spend his life solving many problems with technology. He doesn’t have the network or experience to raise rounds of funding easily, but he has the passion and work ethic to build impactful solutions. What we’re trying to do for folks like him, is to smoothen the process of building from scratch. We’ve also been encouraged to make our platform more accessible (thank you Sheena). The journey is tough, and we’re still learning valuable lessons. I’ll use the rest of this post to highlight the most important ones we’ve learnt so far.

This is a note from Kevin, one of the team leads in our Ghana cohort. LookUpp is now rolling out their MVP on the GCTU campus, with 130+ users and counting

Start with a need/problem; then get very close to those you are trying to address it for before building the solution

A common mistake we’ve seen is people doing this the opposite way. This leads to a risk of building something that doesn’t properly meet the needs of who you’re creating it for, and a bigger risk of getting too married to your solution to make the necessary changes. It’s so important to speak with your target users before building, empathize completely with their pain points, and understand the problem(s) they’re looking to get solved. One of our advisors (the senior Efosa) defines this as the “jobs to be done” in a book he co-authored called The Prosperity Paradox. Our challenge is built on principles from this book, and you can get a free copy from us if you’d like to read it (on Twitter or Instagram).

The bigger the problem/struggle, the larger the potential impact

The impact of what you build is a function of how critical the problem being solved (or need being met) is. I remember speaking with one of my biggest inspirations for advice (E from Future Africa), and how much he emphasized the importance of solving big problems. This has proven true from the feedback and research with all our partners. It’s also why there’s so much focus on the size of the potential market when investors are evaluating what to invest in. Getting accurate insights about how many people are facing the specific problem you’re trying to fix, the intensity of the problem for them, and why the existing alternatives have failed to solve it all help with this.

Technology is the (not so) secret sauce

This should go without saying; the future is digital, and technology is what’s making this happen. It can be seen across industries, with the emergence of markets defined by technology enablement (EdTech, Health-Tech, Fintech, aggrotech, prop-tech, the list goes on). This year has also highlighted the role it plays in adapting to pandemics and social issues. From all this, we have to be intentional about supporting the creation of technology enabled solutions as part of our criteria. With the help of partners like Dell Technologies (where I also work), IBM, Microsoft, AWS and Google, we are able to do this for the teams we support.

Hype gets you attention, but listening and filling real gaps gets you growth with product-market fit

This isn’t as obvious, and it’s easy to get distracted by the daily press releases. But the goal should be finding real product market fit. There’s too much to say on this for the space left on this post, but I would highly recommend reading Michael Seibel’s thoughts on it here. Michael says “to find product market fit, choose a market where users have a real, meaningful problem, launch quickly, and listen to your users”. It takes an iterative process which usually begins with an MVP to get there. And it’s an approach we’re trying to use in our challenge as well.

Get bold about telling your story, and help will come from the right people

You can get everything else right, but getting this wrong will make success very difficult. The “right people” is a very contextual term; it can mean your team, your partners, your advisors/board, and even your customers. We try to help our cohorts navigate this for their startups, although it’s never an easy task. We facilitate introductions and establish partnerships where we see mutual value. For us, it became easier to identify & attract the right people when we got bolder about telling our story and asking for help. They usually believe strongly in your vision, and are willing (and able) to contribute to making it happen. I’d like to use this opportunity to thank our advisors, partners, challenge team and supporters for getting us to this point. If you also feel like it’s never too early to build, I would love to hear your thoughts or lessons. My email is efosa@africanimpactinitiative.com and I enjoy talking about this. You can also join our community, to stay updated on how our journey goes. Thanks a lot for reading!