For startups venturing out into the unknown territories of a tech startup business, here a few tips shared by Wiza Jalakasi, head of international expansion at Africa’s Talking on how to build a successful tech company at the just-concluded third Google Launchpad Accelerator Africa program held in Lagos Nigeria. Wiza runs Africa’s Talking which raised $8.6m from the IFC, Orange Digital Ventures and other partners. Africa’s Talking is on its international expansion efforts as it scales APIs for infrastructure (SMS, USSD, voice, airtime, banking, and mobile money) across Africa
Patience And Passion
- Building a business takes time, for most, it takes four to five years. There is a process that is involved and it’s not always colorful. It’s day-to-day grinds, doing seemingly mundane things and you need to get it in your head that that’s the only way for you to get where you’re going. Fall in love with the process.
Focus
- You need to focus on your business. It’s very easy for you to get distracted by ecosystem events. Don’t be your start-ups. Spend your time and energy on things that are directly related to the outcomes of your business. Mind your own business, drink water. Remain teachable. Check your psychology as grow, especially when people start talking about you. Don’t let that get into your head, tomorrow is another day and you still need to pay your bills.
Customer Care
- Spend time with your customers. If as an entrepreneur you’re not willing to get your hands dirty, it’s not going to work out for you. Do not fall in love with this notion that you can sit on your high table with a laptop on your lap and think this is how you’ll build your business. Sometimes you need to sit down and talk to someone to get things done. That’s how you build a technology company.
Be Stable In Competition
- When you see similar business pop up, that’s a good thing. It validates that there’s value in the space that you’re creating and it’s important for you to be aware of what’s happening in the industry. Don’t be scared when you see the competition and don’t double down on trying to beat the competition directly. Focus on your customers.
Be Accountable
- If you’re trying to run a business and you’re trying to avoid accounting, it’s not going to work. You need to get comfortable with basic administration. You need to be running a profit and loss from day one.
Loss Will Come Anyway
- Don’t have a goal of making a profit immediately. You’ll make a loss for many years. What’s important is keeping those records so when the time comes for fundraising, you have your ducks in order.
- You may think investors don’t want to see losses on your books but what investors are looking for is a consistent attitude towards record-keeping and responsibility, you must build that from day one.
Get Some Culture For Your Startup
- The company culture is what you as the founder do on a day-to-day basis. You can’t build culture through writing nice bullet points. It’s what you do on a day-to-day basis and you can only lead by example. Be deliberate about the culture from day one.
Fundraising Is About Story-telling
- Fundraising is about telling a good story. The market doesn’t always reward great ideas, if you fail to tell a good story you might not have access to capital. Be good at storytelling. If as a founder you are not good at storytelling, find someone who can do it for you.
- If you’re not good at storytelling, start building relationships early. Some investors will back you simply because you’re consistent with the information and they’ve seen you grow.
Think Twice Before Expanding
- Expansion is extremely difficult. You’ll spend twice your budget. I don’t recommend that tech startup jumps into expansion from day one. Stop and validate your idea in your home market and respect that base.
See Yourself As A Different Person From Your Startup And Respect Partners And Staff
- Kindness is an important tool that you can leverage to build your tech startup. Be kind to yourself as a founder. Separate yourself as a founder from your tech startup. The success or failure of your start-ups will never be tied to the success or failure of you as a person.
- Your business partner will more likely become one of the most important people in your life. Have empathy for who they are — their strengths and weaknesses. Take time to cultivate an authentic relationship in which you as co-founders can have extremely difficult conversations on a day to day basis without breaking the company.
- Take care of yourself. You can be a start-up founder and live a normal life. This idea that you need to be breaking your back to make your start-up work is not true. Let it go.
- Be kind to your staff. The people working for you are going to make a pass on opportunities that they could take advantage of elsewhere. If you treat your staff members as your first customers and your job as the CEO is to make sure your customer is happy, they will actually build the business for you.
Reputation Opens Doors
- Be guarded about your reputation and integrity, people will use it to decide on whether to work with you.
- You don’t get what you don’t ask for. Speak to people and share your progress and struggles.
Launchpad Accelerator Africa Class 3 comprised of 12 startups from six African countries — Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, and Uganda. 58% of co-founders were female.
Teams who graduated were trained in machine-learning technologies and implemented AI in their product as a result. The startups in this class raised about R129 million in funding, created more than 120 jobs and accumulated over 270,000 users on their services.
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based Lawyer with special focus on Business Law, Intellectual Property Rights, Entertainment and Technology Law. He is also an award-winning writer. Working for notable organizations so far has exposed him to some of industry best practices in business, finance strategies, law, dispute resolution, and data analytics both in Nigeria and across the world.