More and more startups in Africa are finding more funding for their businesses. The latest in town is the Cairo-based foodtech startup, Yumamia, which has raised $1.5 million in its Pre-Series A funding round.
Saudi Arabia-based boutique consulting firm, Pure Consulting, is providing the funding for the startup. The funding round would take Yumamia’s total investment raised so far to $2.8 million. This would make it one of the best-funded startups in Egypt.
The startup has already decided on what it is going to do with its latest funding: expand to Saudi by launching in Riyadh later this year and accelerate growth in Egypt.
Yumamia Food At A Glance
The startup was founded in 2014 by Belal El Borno. What Yumamia does is to deliver junk-free (wholesome) food prepared by professional chefs using premium ingredients and top hygiene standards to customers in Cairo. It has also recently expanded into corporate catering, with an additional business-to-business (B2B) solution.
Yumamia’s Strategies
To make the startup stand out, it partners with Food & Beverages outlets to assist them in making money out of their underutilized resources. They do this by outsourcing their entire food preparation operations.
Yumamia relies on a franchise-like model that allows these F&B outlets to operate using existing resources while following operating rules and recipes of Yumamia.
Yumamia takes the food and sells it to companies through its corporate catering solutions.
With its ordering platform for offices, employees of companies (that partner with Yumamia) may order food (lunch) on a daily basis. The platform comes with a dashboard for HR/Operations to manage the invoices.
Yumamia charges the companies who can either provide the food for free to their employees or charge them perhaps by deducting the monthly invoices from their payroll.
Yumamia also has a food delivery platform for consumers (B2C), although over eighty percent (80%) of its revenue comes from its B2B platform.
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh, 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 organisations 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.
There is now the fourth board on the Nigerian Stock Exchange meant for small businesses and startups. The board, known as the Growth Board will offer startups and small businesses the opportunity to raise equities for their businesses. All the startups and the SMEs need to do is to obtain approval from the Nigerian Securities and Exchange Commission and then list their shares for public subscription.
The New Framework For Startups, SMEs
The framework for the operation of the new listing platform at the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), to be known as growth board, has been approved by Nigerian apex capital market regulator, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The framework creates two segments on the growth board for start-ups, micro and small companies and medium-sized companies.
Start-ups and small companies are denoted by market capitalisation of between N50million and N500million while medium-sized enterprises are companies with market capitalisation of between N500million and N4billion.
Start-ups and small companies are expected to be listed on the first segment, known as entry segment, while medium-sized companies will be listed on the second segment, known as standard segment.
The growth board will be the fourth board at the NSE. There are three existing listing boards at the Exchange, including premium board-for large-cap companies that meet additional requirements on dedicated corporate governance assessment, main board- the general board for all companies that meet the specific stringent listing rules and alternative securities market (ASeM), which provides listing for quotable companies that cannot meet or sustain listing requirements for the main board.
Requirements For Listing
For any company to be listed on the growth board, it must be a duly incorporated public limited liability company with at least two years of operations, audited financial statements in line with the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and must have grown its revenue by a minimum of 20 per cent cumulatively in its last two years of operations.
Also, all companies to be listed on the growth board must undertake that their promoters or directors shall retain a minimum of 50 per cent of their shares for a minimum period of 12 months from date of their listing, and that the directors or promoters shall not directly or indirectly sell or offer to sell such securities during that 12-month period.
The framework meanwhile provides alternative requirements for listing for each segment.
Under the entry segment, a new business may be considered for listing if it can provide evidence of investment in it by a core investor or a strong technical partner that has a minimum of two years’ operating track record, or a majority shareholder, who is either a High Net Worth Individual (HNI) or is a director of a listed company.
Under Nigerian rules, High Net-worth Individual is an individual with net worth of more than N100 million.
Besides, companies heading for the entry segment must have market capitalization of not less than N50 million, a minimum of 10 per cent of its shares available or to be available to minority retail investors and at least 25 shareholders.
Under the standard segment, a new business may be considered for listing if it can provide evidence of a core investor or a strong technical partner who has a minimum of four years operating track record, or a majority shareholder who is a HNI.
The company must also have a minimum market capitalization of N500million, at least 15 per cent of its shares must be held or will be held by minority retail shareholders and it must have a minimum of 51 shareholders.
The NSE stated that it aims to use the growth board for greater global visibility for eligible Nigerian entities and foreign companies in order to engender global capital flows.
The new board is designed to support SMEs’ growth as part of the strategic initiatives by the stock market to enhance its traditional roles as catalyst for economic growth and development.
SMEs and start-ups account for more than 90 per cent of businesses in Nigeria and provide about 85 per cent of employment, according to various national and international data.
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh, 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 organisations 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.
Can your startup really remain in business without marketing?
While most startup owners struggle on the best ways to pitch their deals, marketing still remains the only way to shoot your startups out there. Marketing is a hard game; sometimes nothing even comes out of it after a hard day’s labour.
Targeted markets have also become extremely intelligent and discerning. Below, we discuss some of the best marketing approaches for your startups.
Network With The Press and Journalists
While many people get all their stories from social media, a lot still has to be done about the trust they have on those stories. In fact, more than eight-in-ten U.S. adults (85%) got news on a mobile device, up from 72% in 2016. However, while 39 percent of Americans who got news in newspapers, on TV or on the radio believed the news is misinformation, more of them believed that 65 percent of news on social media is made up or can’t be verified as accurate. The implication of this to your startup can only be better imagined.
The role of journalists here is to help dig out your business, through press releases and other strategies and bring it out more into public domains. Therefore, look out for journalists with a track history of reporting on the subject areas your startup focuses on. ShapeShif is a list of journalists on Twitter worthy of note.
Instead of Attending Others’ Events, Try Organizing Your Own Events
Plan and host a memorable event to make an impact. Through events, you allow people to experience and interact with your startup, product or service while participating in the event. Most times, the events may not even cost much; just a space, a time slot and a few people sharing a few ideas or inviting discussion. You get a great opportunity to do a bit of informal market research/user testing. Events could be done online through Webinars, Virtual Events, Live Streaming Events, or physical events through workshops, conferences,trade-shows, breakfast, launches or dinners.
“Not all events are created equal. Companies must consider live events an extension of their brand and content marketing and build events that really engage. For me that means thinking about the customer experience you REALLY want to portray!”
Book A Stand At Major Events
According to a 2018 event trends study, a majority of senior-level marketers agreed that live events are the single-most effective marketing channel, beating out content marketing, email, social media, paid, and search. A good strategy is to look out for any industry-specific events in your area where the audience is more suited to your product, hoist your stand and do the real marketing.
Be A Panelist or Do A Keynote Speech At Major Events
Participating in panel discussions or being a keynote speaker at a major industry event is a powerful way to share your ideas and get recognized for what you do. To find events to feature in, get yourself closer to events in your area. Once you are accepted, make sure to include links to your social pages and encourage people to reach out. According to a Medical Marketing & Media (MM&M) survey, 80 percent of marketers targeting Health Care Professionals in 2015 said they relied on meetings and events, 64 percent used printed sales materials, 57 percent used patient education materials, and 50 percent relied on paid speaker programs.
Pull Down Your Out-of-Fashion Websites and Put Up A More Professional One
Having a good website can never be overemphasized. Among the first things a potential investor or buyer will look out for is your website. According to the Medical Marketing & Media (MM&M) survey, 59 percent of marketers say they use websites, 45 percent use social media, 32 percent use digital ads, and 20 percent use mobile apps for their marketing efforts. For example, Forty-one percent of Americans search online for health information, and digital-savvy consumers are more than two times as likely to say their healthcare quality has increased due to their digital engagement, according to a 2016 Adobe Digital Insights U.S. Digital Health Survey.
Tom Swanson, head of Healthcare Industry Strategy at Adobe, has this to say about the increasing online presence of consumers:
“If pharma companies are attempting to reach patients or consumers, digital channels are where those consumers are, where they’re conducting their research, and where they want to be engaged.”
Podcasting has generated immense prominence as a tool for marketing over the years. A podcast is a set of digital audio files that are available on the internet for downloading. A user can subscribe to the podcast to receive the digital files once they are uploaded.
In fact, the increased usage of mobile phones has led to the explosive growth of podcasting. Podcast subscriptions on iTunes alone surpassed 1 billion in 2014. RawVoice, which tracks 20,000 shows, said the number of unique monthly podcast listeners has tripled to 75 million from 25 million five years ago. Podcast is alternative marketing tool because not everyone is comfortable to shoot videos and some small businesses may not have the right equipment to shoot videos that will stand out.
In a survey conducted on 300,000 podcast listeners, it was found that 63 percent of the respondents had bought what the host had promoted. This indicates the effect of using podcast to reach out to the audience and influence their buying decisions.Once you have created the podcast, you can start promoting it to increase its exposure and reach out to a larger audience. John Levy on Forbes has a good primer on what you need to get started.
“Thank God It’s Monday” is a phrase Shopify is banking on in their new podcast. Shopify calls it the podcast for people who can’t wait for the week to start. The TGIM shows aim to inspire Shopify’s audience of innovators by telling success stories of like-minded entrepreneurs, packaged in 30 to 45 minute themed episodes.
Partner with Another company In Related Industries To Boost Marketing
Partnering with other companies in your space can help your marketing strategy in a big way. In the decentralized space, even your competitors are your greatest collaborators. Therefore, prepare list of companies in your industry and look for ways to work on projects together.
An interesting scenario about how such partnership has worked is that of on-demand shipping startup, Shyp which partnered with Banana Republic, in the Christmas of 2014 to help last-minute shoppers get presents to family and friends. Shyp representatives handled wrapping and shipping, offering a more traditional concierge for those who didn’t want to wait to use the service until they got to their home or office. Banana Republic got to experience working with Shyp, while the start-up got visibility and the opportunity to meet many potential customers.
Stage A Viral Campaign On Social Media
Creating a viral content might seem impossible. While this may be the case, each of the viral video marketing campaigns has proved that viral content creation can be done, any time. For most businesses, using a combination of social sharing and PPC video campaigns to give your campaigns the initial visibility they need to go viral is going to be a great choice, regardless of whether you have a big or small social following. The goal will be to get the ad in front of as many relevant audience members as you possibly can so that it can gain momentum in share.
Branded videos are increasing in popularity, with one in five social media users willing to share them on their news feed, and 85% of people actually saying they would like to see morevideo content from brands
In 2013 carbonated soft drinks were down 3.3% . Coca-Cola has not been immune to these pressures. For generations, Coca-Cola has been one of the world’s most iconic brands.
But something is different for teens today. There are so many more beverage options that ‘iconic’ does not readily translate into ‘for me.’ In fact, half of all US teens had not enjoyed a Coke in 2012.
In order to increase sales, Coke needed to make a personal connection with teens. There is nothing more personal than your name. That is where the ‘Share a Coke’ concept was born: take the Coca-Cola brand name off 20-ounce bottles and replace it with 250 of the most common teen names, a simple, powerful idea that would connect teens to Coca-Cola.
Overall, paid media drove 10% of incremental sales for Coca Cola. It also drove sales directly and indirectly through owned/earned channels which in turn generated another 9% of incremental sales lift. Static and interactive outdoor drove 3.3% of sales and paid influencer content programmes drove 2.1% of sales— the highest paid media contributions.
Write Guest Posts or Articles on News Sites or Newspapers
Guest blogging is one of the best online marketing strategies to invest in. It is a way of spreading your brand’s message and wining the trust of your target audience. This could be a useful way to help position yourself as an authority on certain subjects.
Andrew Youderian, an eCommerce entrepreneur and owner of numerous online stores using the dropshipping model is a regular guest blogger on Shopify.com. According to him:
‘‘ Despite having only three guest posts published, traffic from the Shopify blog made up the fourth largest traffic stream to my blog, sending nearly 2,400 visits! Even more important, the Shopify readers were the most engaged, spending significantly more time on my site than direct or Google visitors.
The conversion data was even more impressive. My analytics are set up to track conversions/goals as anyone who subscribes to my blog by downloading my eBook. Despite being #4 in traffic, Shopify visitors were the second biggest source of subscribers — even beating out visitors from Google! Over three months, those few articles generated more than 550 subscribers.’’
Give Out Token and Free Gifts To Customers
These can be a great way of rewarding your community.
The commitment brought the Zappos brand closer to more customers. Indeed, in 2009, a very impressive 44% of new Zappos customers heard about the retailer simply by word of mouth.
Make Use of A Wide Range of Social Media Platforms:
Twitter is such a good platform for its users. Your business could get such an instant retweet that may spiral into thousands of retweets. To be more strategic, increase your following by tweeting regularly, day and night (use staff/freelancers in other countries) and make sure to engage with other leaders in the space.
Use Medium Blog for Announcements
A blog is the place for major announcements, roadmap updates, and more technical pieces. According to the New York Times, as of May 2017, Medium was up to 60 million unique visitors each month What makes Medium unique is that it has a 93 Domain Authority (DA). DA is a 0–100 statistical measure of a website’s reputation.
Because of Medium’s high Domain Authority, you have a higher likelihood of getting traffic to your content from Search. All things being equal, the same content has a higher likelihood of ranking on Medium than on your own domain that has a substantially lower domain authority — especially when you are just getting started. Domain Authority is a significant factor in how a website will rank in search engines.
Airbnb Engineering & Data Science is one of the numerous companies that have presence on Medium. The company has more than 80k followers on the platform.
Blogging on Medium is a far quicker way of establishing yourself. You get to publish into specific categories with millions of followers in each.
Reddit is a popular forum for all things internet-based. The trick is to take part in the communities you want to join. Upvote, comment, and share articles–not just your own–to show that you’re a valid part of the community. Once you have done that, you can create a sub-Reddit for your product specifically and invite your new found fellow Redditors to discuss and explore your content.
Brian Swichkow, founder of the social-marketing firm Ghost Influence, said he now “gets calls all of the time” from agencies wanting to subcontract his work, which has the potential to quadruple a brand’s social impressions, from Reddit. Swichkow said he attracted $500,000 in new business in just a few weeks after a campaign for an unnamed wearables product went viral.
“You have to present value to the community in the voice of the community. If you don’t do that, you will fail. There’s no way around it, ”Swichkow said.
Use LinkedIn To Grow Your Business
Although much of the attention goes to Facebook, Twitter and Telegram for marketing channels, LinkedIn is a powerful marketing tool. Some of its 87 million Millennial users are highly influential: nearly 11 million of them have decision making authority for their companies. When executives were asked about the top places to find relevant, high-quality content, 91 percent cited LinkedIn, while only 29 percent said Twitter, and 27 percent said Facebook. So open your own LinkedIn profile and head straight to groups. There are a number of groups with high profile individuals you should be targeting with your startup marketing campaign.
Answers Questions on Quora as an Expert
Quora, the Q&A hub has seen every tech entrepreneur, and occasional billionaire CEO and former President answer questions for the curious public. Answering questions for people on all matters gives you an opportunity to include links to resources, you have found useful, and even your website! It is a smart tool for marketing that many other industries have overlooked. But note that Quora answers are upvoted. The implication of this is that if you use it to spam others, you may have difficulty getting very far.
Facebook?
Only a small percentage — maybe 1% to 5% — of people who have liked your page will see your updates. To get a wider reach, you will need to spend more money. This can range from $5 to $300 to reach 500 to 50,000 people; not just your fans. However, ‘reaching’ these people will only put your ad into their newsfeeds; there is no guarantee that they will click or even see it. Actual engagements can then prove expensive, sometimes reaching $12 each — far too expensive considering advertising alternatives.
Influencer marketing is one of the best ways to quickly build your brand online and raise awareness among your target audience.
According to Forbes, influencer marketing is growing faster than digital ads, with emphasis placed on leveraging an industry leaders’ followers to foster growth in your own business. By having their own highly curated following, social influencers represent a great way to directly access a certain target audience. The most important thing is in finding which social influencer has created a target market that matches yours, and how effective their campaigns have been. Instagram has some of the most sophisticated tools for measuring the success of an influencer. Here’s a decent list.
Engage Celebrities or Music Artistes Who Use Tech
What better way to share your project than by turning it into a work of art? This can be a really good way of letting your audience find out what you do in an interactive way. Who said marketing needed to be dull?
Spotify made the best move linking the music streaming company with the best of celebrity bloggers. These bloggers not only danced to the music but spread the good news.The result: they kept coming back for more of the music.
In just one year, Spotify had built a product that music bloggers were already excited about. This was followed by negotiations with record labels. With sales falling, negotiation with the American “Big Four” record labels — EMI, Sony, Universal, and Warner Music — became an option. A couple of smaller labels also agreed to make their entire back catalogs available to Spotify for use outside the U.S. on a limited basis. Indeed, this was a game-changing deal. In fact, Spotify needed the labels — and their back catalogs — as much as the labels needed a new way to reach young music fans.
Create Referral Links To Business
A referral program is a deliberate, systematic way of getting people to make referrals to your business. People are twice as likely to pay attention to referrals from a friend. Plus, referrals get some of the best new customers you can get, with higher brand loyalty and profit margins. Here’s a substantial list of great examples of referral programs by some of the world’s most successful companies.
A book publishing company called Scribe Writing offers $2,000 for every referral made. Authors who have already published a book with the company can refer other authors. If they sign up, the referrer gets the money in cash, or have it applied as credit to their Scribe Writing account. There’s also a third option to donate the referral reward to charity. With this strategy, Scribe Writing leverages their customers’ network to get more authors to publish with them. The monetary reward is compelling, and new authors are more likely to trust other authors who have experienced the service, and recommend it. In fact, a Harris Poll survey says that 77% of Americans prefer cash as a reward in exchange for referrals.
However, not many small businesses have the cash to splash out on such programs like this. You need to have a solid strategy if you want to make this worth your while.
Get A PR Team Who Can Place Your Adverts On The Right Places
PR marketers help put you reach your target audience. Since they are usually agents who help place your brands in all media, they are one sure-fire way of producing results. Implementing a PR plan enables you to establish your brand identity in a practical, cost-efficient manner, and helps you market your business in several important ways.The biggest piece of advice is to work out what your company is and what it is trying to promote before heading out to an agency. You will be burn through cash if your key selling points are not clear enough.
Optimise Your Website’s Search Engine Capacity
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of increasing the visibility of a website or a web page to users of a web search engine. Good SEO however takes time, and ranking for certain terms can feel endless. Doing an audit on what terms you currently rank for and what you would like to rank for is a great place to start. Here are six free resources to help get you started.
Use Telegram to Communicate Directly
Telegram — a cloud-based messaging app, available for desktop and mobile devices with a high level of information security. In March 2018 telegram hit 200 million monthly active users. It also has 15 billion daily messages.
More than 220 000 new users sign up every day. Budget spent on app promotion: $0. Telegram is free of charge; its main financial source is donations. This brings countless opportunities for Telegram advertising. Since there is still little competition, new comers stand a chance reaping the rewards from it. That is good news for small and middle-sized companies, because they can build their presence without competing against large ad budgets. Telegram’s services include: Concierge; Online ordering; Real-time support; Individual assistance; Customer feedback processing; Team communication and coordination; Up-to-date information; Product promotion; Additional traffic to the site; Increasing brand awareness; Non-stop client support; Additional channel for payment processing.
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh, 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 organisations 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.
Leaving the security of a daily job for something as uncertain as running your own startup could be one of the hardest experience you could ever have in life. Behind the hard calculations and planning and stiffness, we found some random thoughts from top startup owners, some of whom even started out as losers.
Jason Njoku, Founder of iROKOtv
In 2010, the Nigerian Jason Njoku and the German Bastian Gotter launched irokotv, a web platform that provides paid-for Nigerian films on-demand, which is usually dubbed ‘the Netflix of Africa’ and which is believed to be one of Africa’s first mainstream online movie streaming websites. With its headquaters in Lagos, Nigeria and offices in London and New York. iROKOtv brand was so valuable that Jason said in less than a year old at the time, investors paid $80,000 for 10% of the iROKOtv but sold to other existing investors, for $2.4 million. In some of his posts, he made the following points about starting out.
‘I remember when I started iroko. Everyone thought I was an idiot. That’s fine, it wasn’t a bad conclusion. I was x10 failure in startup hits. When we started making investments in Nigeria back in 2012, that seemed stupid. We were way too early. Pretty stupid. I agree. Consumer internet in Nigeria is so early; it’s pretty scary today. Breaking rocks and bleeding stones for every Naira of revenue is the least fun thing to do… I don’t believe in game changing strategic moves. I don’t believe that there is one decision you make which fundamentally certifies your success. I believe in iteration, in inch by inch tactical hits and misses……I believe in a thousand small decisions.’’
On why IROKO has remained profitable, Jason wrote thatIROKO has diversified the business where no one unit represents more than 35% of revenue.’’
Alemu owns SoleRebels, an Ethiopian company that makes made-to-order sustainable footwear handcrafted in Addis Ababa by Ethiopian artisans. The company has a distribution network in over thirty countries worldwide; selling to market kings such as Whole Foods, Urban Outfitters and Amazon.
‘‘ Stop looking at consumers and start looking at them as what they are: people! Being a successful entrepreneur is not simply hard work. It is about having good fortune and also a great team beside you! These multiple factors have allowed me to take SoleRebels to the next level.’’
Mostafa Kandil, CEO SWVL, Egypt
Mostafa Kandil, Mahmoud Nouh and Ahmed Sabbah were all below 30 years of age when they founded SWVL, a premium mass transit system in Egypt’s capital city, Cairo. The goal was to make it easier for Egypt’s residents to book bus rides at fixed rate on existing routes. Users schedule trips, pay online or in cash and are given virtual boarding passes. Even with fierce competition from the likes of Buseet and Uber vying into premium public transport service, SWVL’s application has been downloaded for well over 360,000 times on Google play store and Apple iStore. The platform completes 100,000 rides monthly. It was the first company to introduce the service in Egypt in 2017 before Careem and Uber joined the sector late last year. SWVL has expanded to Kenya.
In a recent interview with Start Scene, he shared some of his experience:
“I had graduated in Petroleum engineering, but as I started working I hated it; I felt it was too stiff for me,…I was also part of something called the Growth Team, which directly reports to the CEO [Mudassir Sheikha]. I remember it was my first week and he came to me and said: “when I quit McKinsey [& Company], I knew I could come back. The same goes for you; if you leave Careem now to start something and fail, you can always come back.” That was on my first week. I kept meeting him every day, and something we used to check at the Growth Group was the average trip fare, which in Egypt was about 3–4 dollars. I knew that was a lot for an average Egyptian; so in February I decided I would leave to create something new.
…..Around the world, public transportation is a loss-making machine. If you can take this load off the government and privatise it in a way that is super cheap and create job opportunities, you are revitalising a sector. We now have a huge fleet; we have 40 routes and 300 buses on the road, but we don’t own any assets, so it’s super scalable”
“You need to have the right people around you — you can’t do everything yourself. A lot of entrepreneurs think they need to be good at every aspect of the business but this is not the case.”
Shola Akinlade, Founder Paystack
Paystack is a Lagos-based, e-payment solution founded by Shola Akinlade and Ezra Olubi. The company reported in 2017, barely two years after its founding, that its user base grew from 1,400 merchants to close with over 7,700 live merchants, accepting payments with Paystack. It also reported that in 2017, the startup reached 1 billion Naira ($3 million) in monthly transaction value, closing 2017 with NGN 2.7 billion Naira ($7.5 million) in monthly transaction value. In an interview with Forbes Magazine, Shola Akinlade, noted that:
‘‘ We started Paystack because we knew online payments in Africa were essentially broken and someone definitely had to do the hard work of fixing it… The challenge was to solve the issue of online payments in Africa, somehow connecting the super-fragmented aspects of the sector. What we did was develop multi-channel payment options for merchants across the country, enabling them to accept payments from around the world, via credit card, debit card, and direct bank transfer on web and mobile. It’s taken two years of non-stop hard work to grow it from idea stage, to the product we have today.’’
On what made them grow so fast, Akinlade said:
‘‘ When we tell people that they can start receiving payments within 30 minutes from sign-up, I think many are, initially, a little cynical. So many merchants in Nigeria have faced so many challenges with receiving payments over the years, I think perhaps they thought it sounded a little too good to be true. But they had faith, they tried us out, our product worked for them. Our customers have been our evangelists, and that has really helped us grow quickly.’’
Andrew Watkins-Ball -Founder JUMO
JUMO was founded in 2014 by the South African-born CEO, Andrew Watkins-Ball. JUMO started as a mobile financial services startup company in Ghana, providing payroll loans to government and corporate workers and consumer loans to informal and market traders. Through September 2016, it had delivered more than 10 million loans to customers in 6 countries including Tanzania, Kenya, Zambia, Rwanda and Uganda. The platform leverages an uncommon digital credit model that does not require customers to have prior financial account ownership or a credit history.
‘‘ Building something to solve a big problem is hard… Products that are designed from positive and authentic emotions will be loved by customers…. Your customer must love your product or you don’t get the adoption you need to build a big business against sustainable demand. They must feel that you care and they must feel that the product comes from an authentic objective. A great example is Wikipedia. You can feel the social objective of the product.’’
Anne Wawira Njiru, Founder Food4Education, Kenya
Wawira Njiru founded in 2012 Food4Education, the social enterprise startup which provides 2000 meals per day across 4 schools around Ruiru, a small town in the Central Part of Kenya. The startup is aimed at improving children’s health, school performance as well as increasing their chances of getting into good high schools in a merit-based high school entrance system.The startup secured US$ 300,000 funding from Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation to expand their reach over the next 3 years, in 2015. This was followed up by Wawira Njiru being awarded the 2018 Global Citizen Prize for Youth Leadership thereafter receiving US$250,000 from the Global Citizen in partnership with Cisco.
‘‘ It’s easy to get side-tracked especially if you’re talented (or think you are) in many things, but there’s a lot of value in mastering one thing and learning how to do it well. There’s also a lot of value in consistency and learning how to do things excellently. It may sound boring but doing the same thing over and over will help you become better and a master in your field.”
Christain Ngan, Founder Adlyn Holdings and Madlyn Cazalis Group, Cameroun
Adlyn Holdings and Madlyn Cazalis Group designs, manufactures, transports natural beauty products and operates in Central Africa and West Africa with more than 200 distributors (supermarkets, pharmacies and beauty institutes). Ngan was listed two consecutive years (2014 and 2015) in Forbes magazine as one of the 30 Most Promising Young Entrepreneurs in Africa.
‘‘ My greatest weakness was not having enough talent around me for a long time. It was difficult to find the right people. Then I decided to train, motivate and coach. Training is important in Africa because we often tend to choose between honesty and competency. It was difficult to find honest, skilled people. But, with time, I managed to empower my employees and they are now good managers.’’
Churchill’s Njorku was named by Forbes as one of the top 20 technology startups in Africa (Forbes Africa Magazine, 2011) and by FastCompany as one of the most innovative companies in Africa (FastCompany February 2017). Over the years Njorku has grown to serve 200,000+ monthly unique users across Africa. Njorku.com is one of Africa’s first job search engines that help thousands of job seekers daily find jobs in locations nearest to them. Mambe Churchill Nanje taught himself software engineering and is based in Buea, Cameroon.
He has this advice for startups in one of his interviews with Whoot Africa:
‘‘ To be successful in business, you must believe in yourself, be patient, extend your comfort zone, expect and be ready for failure, integrity and be very passionate in whatever you do… Business in general has a lot of obstacles but the main ones are finding the right people for the job and raising capital. I was lucky to be self-taught so I get to hire people and train them on the job. I also was opportune to make a lot of friends that trusted me and overtime they gave me loans and financing opportunities to continue with my ventures.’’
Arianna Huffington, Co-Founder Huffington Post
The Greek-American Arianna is co-founder of The Huffington Post and also the author of the New York Times best-seller The Sleep Revolution. She has stepped down as Editor-in-Chief of The Huffington Post to pursue her new wellness startup, Thrive Global. Her business advice for entrepreneurs who want to start a business for the first time is:
“If you’re going to start a business, you need to really love it, because not everybody is going to love it. When The Huffington Post was first launched in 2005, there were so many detractors. I remember a critic who wrote that The Huffington Post was an unsurvivable failure.”
“When you get reviews like that and detractors like that, you have to really believe in your product. When you really believe in your product, you are willing to deal with all the naysayers and persevere.”
The founder of WPBeginner, Optinmonster and several more successful online businesses, who has also learned so much in business in his 25 years as an entrepreneur has this advice for budding startup owners:
“Often new entrepreneurs wait too long to put their product out in the market. With limited resources at hand, its crucial that you get an MVP out ASAP and start getting traction. Take the user’s feedback to iterate and improve your products.”
“Not launching fast enough is a mistake you simply can’t afford to make. If you want to get an edge over others, launch now!”
Sujan is the co-founder of the content marketing agency, Web Profits. Here’s his best business advice for first-time entrepreneurs who want to start a business today:
“The most painful mistake I see inexperienced entrepreneurs make is copying or doing the same things that successful entrepreneurs have done, expecting similar results. What first-time entrepreneurs don’t realize is that the world is not a vacuum and there’s more going on behind the scenes than it appears. There’s much more effort that has gone into creating the success they see on the surface, and there’s no guarantee that a particular tactic or strategy will be successful for everyone.”
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh 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 organisations 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.
Take it or leave it, startups are displacing large, established corporate organisations with the structures and the hierarchies and the sufficient capital base. Startups like Cellullant, Abacus, Paystack, iROKOtv are already gnawing at the big organisations’ market shares. While startups are going to be corporates someday anyway, exploring how best startups can partner with large organisations can be the best deal in an age of disruption. Below, we explore ways startups can partner with large established business organisations in ways that would be beneficial to both parties.
Startups Have To Understand Their Strengths and Weaknesses To Be Able To Explore Partnership With Corporates Fully.
The Strengths of Most Startups Include that:
They have the freedom and less bureaucracy to explore trends and disruption opportunities.
Startup owners have the capacity to make quick decisions, and in less formal ways.
Startups are always in a constant state of movement, refining, testing and in some cases entirely reviewing their business models.
Startup owners are therefore more flexible and open-minded.
Most startups use the lean startup strategy whereby they use trial and error methods to validate their results.
They are also more willing to share their knowledge and experience easily.
Weaknesses
Most startups assume un-calculated and less managed risk.
Their financial capacity is still less strong.
Their flexibility and fragility may mean they may sometimes end up closing bad deals.
They are more or less in the process of building their brands or reputation, hence they may have credibility deficit issues.
Corporates’ Strengths
Large corporations have the capital base, and most times, longer history. They can easily influence their ways through most things because of their size and financial capacity. They also do not need to prove themselves much. That they are still existing is because their business model is viable. They have different sources of income in most cases and have bigger weight in the economy. Most corporates, depending on their size, are well connected with the establishment and industry regulators. With longstanding brands and goodwill, they are usually afraid to make mistakes which could rub off on their reputations. They also have less threat to face if they don’t deliver.
Weaknesses:
Most corporates are bureaucratic in their operations. This means that they are less agile to catch up with disruption. In most corporates, information is shared only to a few people. Most of their employees are old fellows, who are out of touch with technology trends and innovations. Most of them spend large chunks of their time on internal politics, and are less likely to share ideas and test their products. Then come their high-level approaches, meetings and processes that require series of approval and authorizations.
Why Corporate-Startup Partnerships Are Yet To Succeed
Most partnership entered by startups with corporate organisations such as banks, multi-national organisations fail most because most times, startup owners have to move through the whole organisation’s hierarchy in order to reach a consensus and secure budgets. A recent WRL data suggest that interview respondents from large companies — who may not be their representatives in any case — disclosed a lack of faith in the ability of startups to deliver high-value goods or services that they may benefit from. Corporate respondents also appeared to feel that startups may be unable to deliver without adequate operational experience. In essence, corporate respondents think that startups suffer from a credibility deficit, which, justified or not, limits the willingness of corporations to work with them.
Most large organisations are also less willing to take risk and are heavily averse towards change. There is also some major lack of understanding of how each other works and makes decisions; this usually affects the way trust is built between the two.
Why Startups Need To Seal Partnership Deals With Corporates
Once such deals are sealed, many more deals could be sealed because external investors would now see the startups as trust-worthy and reliable. Again, the partnership can lower customer acquisition costs, and make market penetration come faster.
For Tina Sharkey, CEO and co-Founder of Brandless, the reasons to engage with a corporate partner center on “access to knowledge, experts, distribution channels, pricing or data. It could also be access to interesting projects or hard problems to solve.”
Knowing Why Corporates Are Looking For Startups To Partner With Gives You More Power
Banks and big corporations are increasingly looking for ways to partner with startups to solve their growing needs. Corporates need innovation and quickly. They need it mostly because a startup can just stick out of the woods and disrupt how everything has always been done. Big businesses are figuring out how to acquire, retain and deploy the kind of talent that can develop new markets or cannibalize existing markets, for fear of being replaced. This means more power for startups with unique solutions seeking to partner with corporate organisations.
How Startups Can Go About Partnering With Big Organisations
According to Daphnee Lucenet VC — Founder of my MVP and Me & Khmer Vibration (non-profit)- Advisor, when partnering with big corporations, first ask yourself the following questions:
“Can you trust them? How can you build/win their trust? What are their past successes? What’s their reputation? Are they reliable? Are they responsive? How does their internal turnover look like? (high employee turnover +long sales cycles=NOGO!) What’s the potential outcome of a long term partnership? How strong are they in their area? Do they have the potential to make an outbreak thanks to you?Who are the decision makers? How fast is their market going?Who are their competitors? How do you position yourself compared to them?How much budget does your counterpart have to solve their problem? How much money do they lose if they don’t solve X problem? How much money can they make if they do? When do you have to deliver? (The answer is often “yesterday” but a realistic answer is better).”
“The wrong thing to do is to just litter your start-up with a lot of corporate logos and become distracted from execution. You’re looking for the corporate to accelerate execution, not decelerate it,” Sharkey observes.
She also notes that startup founders often make the mistake of trying to build a partnering relationship with the CEO of the corporate. “Better to use the CEO as a channel to finding the right person in the organization and then cultivate that relationship closely,” says Sharkey.
An interesting scenario about how corporate-startup strategy has worked is that of on-demand shipping startup, Shyp which partnered with Banana Republic, in the Christmas of 2014 to help last-minute shoppers get presents to family and friends. Shyp representatives handled wrapping and shipping, offering a more traditional concierge for those who didn’t want to wait to use the service until they got to their home or office. Banana Republic got to experience working with Shyp, while the start-up got visibility and the opportunity to meet many potential customers.
According to Prith Banerjee, the chief technology officer of Schneider:
“Don’t be too excited about the first meeting. This large company is potentially talking to a thousand start-ups. Make sure that after the meeting, the next steps, the actions, are very well defined. You need to say to the corporate, we expect these things to happen or we walk away.”
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh 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 organisations 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.
The dream of every startup is to start off the project first, and then make profit. Having in-house or external auditors for the startups is not usually part of the game. Auditors are, however, usually there to review the accounts of companies and organizations to ensure the financial records of the company are accurate and rid of any illegality. They can also act in an advisory role to recommend possible risk aversion measures and cost savings that could be made by the business. An auditor can simply spill the beans about how you go about your expenses or how to go on borrowing. Here we discuss whether your startup business really needs an auditor in the first years of its doing business.
Auditing Gives You A Chance To Know More About How Well You Keep Your Records
Auditing is important for your startup because it will help review the procedures your business uses to create and store records. The auditor reviews an inventory or listing — digital or physical — of the records your company keeps. The listing provides the auditor with an understanding of the volume and type of records your business manages. Auditing is incredibly important as bad accounting could lead to allegation of fraud and negligence, which may give rise to other serious issues in the future.
Once business owners know that their accounting process is up to date, it would offer them the opportunity to make key financial decisions for the growth of the business. They would also learn that for the business to be successful, they have to all work towards delivering the best results.
Auditing Will Give You A Chance To Fix Certain Errors Early
Businesses often slide into bigger problems because some minor issues were not detected and resolved at the outset of the business. What auditing does is to forestall this problem, including resolving any legal or tax issues immediately as they occur.
The risk here is that since most startups may lack the technical skills to detect some game-changing errors, errors can usually find their ways into the business and remain there, even for a long time. An auditor can set the records straight and also educate the business owner on how to effectively manage the accounting process and make sure everything is up to standards for the future of the business.
Auditing Is The Best Strategy For Tracking Your Finance and Making Adjustment
The best way to always track your finance and expenditure is to go by auditing. Auditing will make it possible for business owners to make more effective decisions, and channel their investment appropriately. Any accounting errors would usually be bad for the future of the company.
Auditing Would also Be Required When You Are Seeking Equity Investors, or Looking For Lenders, Or Before Going On Your IPO or Simply Selling Off Your Business
Auditing is required most times, when you are looking for equity investors for your business— usually after a Series B or a Series C funding stage . In these cases, a lower level self-auditing may not be enough. However, before your business starts making profit, you may still be able to negotiate away from a full audit, even when it has been required. This may not be the case when the company matures. Again, auditing may be required if you are scouting for a lender by way of venture capital, or other types of bank loans. Audits of your business may also be required if you are thinking about selling off your business, finally.
Thinking about going public also?Audit is usually a must.
Where Traditional Auditing Proves Costly, You Can Carry Out Self-Auditing
Getting a traditional external auditor to do the auditing may be like squeezing life out of your new business. The cost may be shooting through the roof. The best deal is to go the way of self-auditing. This would mean assigning a member of your business to look through the books and find the faults. Of course, nobody expects that this effort would generate information as accurate as that provided by a professional. It would, however, give deep insights about the startup’s finances. In all, although internal auditing may have its own set backs, it could be a good option for startups with very little money to spare.
Moira Vetter, Founder & CEO of Modo Modo Agency, a strategic marketing firm, that was recognized as a 2018 & 2017 Inc. 5000 company and a 2017 Best Places To Work, advises startups to adopt the following simple strategies towards a more effective self-auditing.
Formalize monthly financial statement review with your team — Awareness is the first step to managing budgets frugally. When the person charged with keeping the books closes the books each month, schedule a meeting to sit down and review the financial statement as a group. Ask questions about line items that are going up. Look for line items that are larger than you imagined and ask questions about why.
Review credit card statements as a group for recurring expenses & CUT THEM — For this to be efficient you need the team using the company credit card for all expenses rather than buying things on personal cards and expensing them. This is particularly important for recurring expenses so the group can see how seemingly small monthly items add up. Before you know it, lists of $5 to $25 monthly amounts are a serious monthly expense. My firm recently did such an audit and uncovered an analytics account that we are no longer using. These are the items to ensure you are still using, and take the time to cancel accounts if you’re not using them. Among these hosted items are:
Email Hosting — if you’re growing, the number of people with email accounts can grow quickly and a change in hosting can help optimize expenses. Change your hosting agreement if you need to.
Social Accounts — LinkedInLNKD +0% and Job promotions, FacebookFB +0% and page boosts, Hootsuite or Buffer distribution services, Follower management apps like Unfollowers. Are you getting a return on these expenditures? If you don’t know, find out before you keep spending blindly.
Web Hosting — How much space and how much functionality do you need from your Web host? Could you be spending less for your website host.
Memberships — some startups belong to business clubs or Regus office locations. It can be a point of pride to invite people to a business club. If you haven’t been more than a couple of times in the last year, see if you can pay as you go versus carrying the cost of memberships you are not using.
Planning for Computer Expenditures — As a part of our year-end audit we assess the current operating condition of our computers and any anticipated expenses. New computers are like going to an office supply store, you want everything you see and all the shiny new stuff is fantastic. The extra step you should take as a startup up is not simply adding new computers, but determining who can use a computer hand me down. People that aren’t power users can use the current system of someone you are buying a new machine for to help maximize your investment.
Staffing Planning & Associated Expenses — If your startup engages recruiters, temporary staffing firms or advertises for a lot of positions, these expenses can add up quickly. Take time to assess all the positions you feel you’ll need. Only advertise when referrals aren’t a good source of candidates. If you have to use temporary staffing, pick a firm that does contingent placement and discounts fees based on the amount you have spent with the to temporarily staff a position.
Meal Expenses — As an early business you may be inclined to treat all the people you know to lunch or drinks on your card. You may also get in the habit of providing lunch on a regular basis for the staff. Remember that only a portion of these expenses can be written off on your taxes and think about when you really should be paying the tab. Food costs a lot, adds up quickly and is NOT an essential business expense.
Office Rental Expenses— Fight the urge to rent class A office space until you’re well along in terms of profitability. If you’re not using your space, consider a non-competitive sub-tenant. You could reduce your costs by hundreds or thousands of dollars a month.
Bottom Line:
Auditing can provide serious lifelines for startups plotting to go far. It starts from the first day to keep your business on focus and on the right track. It gives you deep insights on the errors of the business, including ways through which you lose money and how to move away from them. Even though it can be expensive, it could end up saving the day for startups if it can prevent costly errors.
You can check out a list of auditing firms for small businesses in your country’s business directories. Nigeria |South Africa | Egypt |Kenya
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh 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 organisations 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
Pitching your ideas as a Startup to investors is one of the hardest things to do. David Rose, founder of New York Angels and Gust explained that, “[Each year] roughly 1,500 startups get funded by venture capitalists (investors) in the US, and 50,000 by angel investors. VCs look at around 400 companies for every one in which they invest; angels look at 40.” So this means that of the 400 startups, for example, 399 others get their pitches rejected.
Searching for the right investors and convincing them through your investor pitch can be an intensive experience as a startup. There is no doubt about it. DocSend’s studies reveal that companies needed an average of 40 investor pitches over 12 weeks to close a funding round. Twelve weeks might seem a big deal especially when your startup relies on funding to move to the next level. While being rejected after the investor pitch can be depressing for most startups, the following are the reasons why investor pitch efforts by most startups do not turn out successful.
1. Bad delivery
Eric Ries, a founder of IMVU and an advisor to Kleiner Perkins, and the Author of the Lean Startupsays startup investor pitches fail because of bad delivery, and particularly because startup owners answer the wrong questions during pitch events. He advised that:
“I have come to believe that there is a hierarchy of pitches, and that understanding where your pitch falls in this hierarchy can assist in making decisions about what information to highlight. Pitches that sit higher in the hierarchy tend to be more successful, and if you can fit your company into one of those categories, you can get better results or better terms. It’s not always about what is being said; how it’s being said is equally as important. It doesn’t matter that you have a great business model with incredible traction and the ability to scale if you can’t properly convey those qualities in your elevator pitch.” Eric Ries proceeds to advise on the best ways to pitch deals, by answering questions, to avoid bad delivery.
On Printing money.
Key questions: Are those numbers real? How big is the market? Can your team execute the growth plan?
Most important slide: Valuation ( However, wait for the investor to begin the discussion of valuation and pricing.)
Key questions: Who is the customer, and how do you know? What is the potential market size? What are the business economics?
Most important slide: Lessons learned.
Practice your investor pitch. Make sure it is well organized, and that you have done enough research to know who you’re pitching to. If you have been successful in the elevator pitch, and are using the PowerPoint presentation style, you have to present a slide presentation in about 15 minutes, then leave time to answer questions within another 15 minutes
2. Traction Is Not Just Enough
Again, many times, startups get turned down after their investor pitch because they simply have not proven themselves enough. Almost no investor will fund a startup that has not demonstrated some initial success — meaning sales or users. Eric Ries further offers the following set of questions and answers to help your pitch get traction:
On Working Product.
Key questions: What does the product do? What’s the launch plan? Who’s on the marketing team?
Most important slide: Live demo.
On Prototype Product.
Key questions: What will it take to ship a working product? How do you know anyone would want it? Who’s on the engineering team?
Most important slide: Demo (if the product solves an obvious problem), engineering resumes
On Breakthrough Technology.
Key questions: Who owns the patents? Can we make a product out of this technology? Are there any good substitutes?
Most important slide: Barriers to entry.
On All-star Team.
Key questions: Has the team made money for their investors in the past? Are they domain experts? Are they committed to an idea in their domain of expertise?
Most important slide: Problem we are trying to solve.
On Good Product Idea.
Key questions: What kind of risk does this company need to mitigate (technology risk, market risk, team risk, funding risk)? Is it a revolutionary and novel idea? Is this team the one to back? Can the team bring the product to market? Who is the customer? Who is the competition? Will they fail fast?
Most important slide: About the founders.
You may believe in your startup, but investors believe in the numbers behind the startup. Although your funding resources may be small today, investors want to know that you were able to use those limited resources wisely to prove your concept and secure initial customers.
3. You May Be Dealing With The Wrong Investor
All investors are not the same; the same with their investment strategies. While some firms and angels prefer to invest in startups in the very early stages, others prefer to invest later funding rounds.
“An investor with millions of dollars to spare usually requires a different level of oversight than an investor who’s dropped his entire life savings into your startup and needs it back in time to pay his kid’s tuition for college next year. It is also helpful to bring on investors who can make follow-up investments as you grow so you don’t convolute your capitalization table with more investors.”
Again, the choice of investment depends on the interest of the particular investor. While some may only invest in tech startups, others may only partner with hardware startups. The bulk of the work would be done by you, however, in finding out the best investors that fit your portfolio. You can also evaluate the investor’s personal business history before pitching the deals.
4. Your Investor Pitch Is Below Standards
Investors are interested in having best returns on their money. They like to put their money into something promising, and the best time to win their enthusiasm is during the initial investor pitch. An exceptional startup investor pitch is unforgettable. Even if an investor heard 50 investor pitches that day, only a few great ones will stand a chance for a deal. The keys to powerful investor pitch that get startups funded include that the investor pitch deck must be:
Clear and simple
Compelling
Easy to act on
Standard slides should contain the following: Problem; Solution; Market; Product; Traction; Team; Competition; Financials; Amount being raised.
According to some researches done by DocSend, potential investors spend on average 3 minutes and 44 seconds per investor pitch deck. The studies in about 200 investor pitch decks were analyzed, investors spent the most amount of time reviewing the contents concerning financials, team, and competition.
5. Very Bad or Inexperienced Team
Having a very a bad or inexperienced team may rub off on your investor pitch efforts. Bad or inexperienced team members may have hard times getting the interests of potential investors.
Your team members need to leave their pride at the door when making an investment presentation and be open to the investors’ suggestions. The fundraising process can be grueling because experienced investors tend to ask numerous questions that are likely to have been posed to your team before. These questions test your business model and technology platform so all parties might realize the best way of structuring an investment.
Rick Frasch, a partner in venture fund KLM Capital Group has this to say:
“Most of the time, these questions are offered in the spirit of openness to justify the investment of such a large sum of money. But rather than viewing the questioning process as an exploration of alternatives by an investor who is obviously interested in the startup (otherwise why else would the investor have met with the entrepreneur in the first place?), some people reactively resist suggestions to consider changes to their business model or technology platform. Such a reaction is likely to cause a thoughtful investor to move on. You should instead take the time to consider the investor’s questions and suggestions, and view the process as useful insight into his or her thinking.”
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh 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 organisations 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.
Even with limited funds, startups can hardly survive without intense, aggressive marketing. According to a 2018–2019 Gartner Research study, companies are now spending roughly 11% of their annual budget on overall marketing. The study concluded that “The largest companies…those with more than $10 billion in annual revenue — have the largest appetite for digital advertising, averaging 11.6% of the marketing budget,” while those “with annual revenues of $500 million to $1 billion allocated 8.5% of their marketing budget to digital advertising.” Percent of revenue by different industries on marketing include: Education: 18.5%;Consumer services: 10.7%; Transportation: 4.1%; Consumer Packaged Goods: 8.1%; Service Consulting: 3.4%; Tech/Software/Biotech: 9.7%;Communications/Media: 17.8%; Healthcare: 9.5%; Banking/Finance/Insurance: 5.3%;Retail/Wholesale: 4.7%; Energy: 0.5%; Mining/Construction: 1%. With these in mind, here are the reasons where marketing is inevitable for your startups.
Gradually Building a Customer Base
Consistent quality advertising increases consumer loyalty for your product, service or idea. Advertising seeks to maintain the current customer base by reinforcing purchasing behavior with additional information about the benefits of brands. The goal of advertising is to build and reinforce relationships with customers, prospects, retailers and important stakeholders.
Promotion of Your Products or Services
George Felton, author of “Advertising: Concept and Copy’’, believes that without marketing, you have got nothing to offer. Promoting your business could take the shape of flyers, media commercials, billboards or handbills, and the content adheres to the rules of journalism by identifying who, what, when, where and why of your products or services.
You Can Get A Fair Test Of How Your Products or Services Compare with Competitors’
Gerard Tellis, the author of “Effective Advertising: Understanding When, How, and Why Advertising Works,’’ says that marketing offers your target audience the chance to evaluate whether your product or service measures up against your competitors’. Marketing in this area would help you to consider possible areas of improvement on your products or services, and adjust accordingly.
You Get A Chance To Know How Effective Your Pricing Strategy Is.
With marketing, you get to expose your goods and their prices to the public. Marketing lets you know what your competitors are doing, when the next sale is, and how you can receive the latest pay which is the best value for your money.
Marketing Is All About Generating Leads For Startups
The demand generated by advertising, public relations, and sales promotion “pulls” the goods or services through channels of distribution, notes “Reference for Business.” One of the powerful functions of marketing is to arouse consumers to demand specific products, services and ideas through ad campaigns that target the audiences that are most likely to buy them.” Products, services and concepts are sold in volume, if consumers actually need them.
Brand Building
With good marketing you build brands and develop goodwill with time. But that is never really going to happen if brand identity is not communicated to the public via advertising. Consistent, result-oriented marketing builds on your brand identity and develops good or bad will for you with time.
You Offer One More New Trend
Previewing new trends is a technique employed by advertisers that capitalizes on consumers’ desires to “keep up with the Jones” by owning the latest and greatest product, service or idea. Yours may be the next trend in town, who knows?
Customer Awareness
The more people know your products, the better. With targeted marketing, you can raise the awareness of your customers at target demographics about issues they may be ignorant about. The health industry is often a case in point. Billboards are everywhere about flu and disease outbreak.
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh, 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 organisations 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.
The story first came from Tunisia in May 2018, and now Mali. The Malian government has put in place machinery to begin the process of legislating for a new startup Act.
Mali’s Minister of Digital Economy, Arouna Modibo Touré recently declared that all is now set to enact a new Startup Act for Mali.
Mali’s Minister of Digital Economy, Arouna Modibo Touré
Key Insights Into What The Startup Act Is Going To Look Like
Mali’s Startup Act, if passed by Parliament without delay would be second in Africa after Tunisia passed its Startup Act in May 2018.
The Act is going to contain 23 Articles which will set an administrative, economic and fiscal environment favourable to young entrepreneurs who are usually confronted with numerous challenges like company creation and management as well as access to funding.
The Act is targeting startups which are less than four years old, which has Malian nationals owning about one-third of its equities and which have less than ten employees.
Companies of this nature will be provided with seed funding as well as the possibility for innovation grants.
Additionally, a start-up guarantee fund will also be created to help those startups raise about 80% of the funds they need.
Malian government would also help to promote it abroad.
The Act will also encourage startup incubators to be more rigorous in their choice of the various projects and in their coaching.
To make this happen, the Act will provide that for an incubator to be funded, 50% of its startups should have survived for two years. That’s a big deal!
The selection of coaching, mentoring and training professionals will be based on performances and only the best will survive. This will guarantee the success and quality of the firms in the market.
The Act also plans to create research and development laboratories in schools to grow the entrepreneurship sense of its youth. A special scholarship will then be awarded to any student carrying an innovative project.
Mali’s Startup Act is Similar to the Tunisian Startup Act.
Unarguably, Tunisia leads other African countries in bold startup legislations. The Tunisian Startup Act, passed in May, 2018, also reveals the following similarities with the Malian Startup Act.
Tunisian Startup Act defines startups as an entity having legal existence not exceeding eight (08) years from the date of its constitution,while Mali’s makes provision only for startups less than four years.
More than two-thirds (2/3) of Tunisian startups’ capital must be natural persons, venture capital investment companies, collective investment funds, investment, seed money and any other investment body according to the legislation in force or by foreign Startups to qualify as startups under the Act.
The business model envisaged by the Tunisian Startup Act is one that is highly innovative, utilizing cutting-edge technology.
Under the Act, any individual promoter of a Startup, public agent or employee of a private company, may benefit from the right to Startup Leave for creation of a Startup for a period of one year renewable once
Any promoter of a Startup may benefit from a Startup scholarship for a duration of one (01) year. Only three (03) shareholders and full-time employees in the relevant Startup may however benefit from the scholarship awarded.
Young graduates who create startups are free from taxation for three years.
The profits from the sale of the securities relating to the shares in the Startups are exempt from the capital gains tax.
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh 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 organisations 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.
Startups are newly founded companies that are just beginning to develop, just as toddlers need six classes of food to develop strong immune systems so do startups with reading as one of the nutrients required for their necessary growth.
Reading is always attributed to students and academia but rarely attributed to startups. Reading is referred to as one of the basic tools of success in life because it increases your confidence and makes you fit for the tasks ahead. An average startup needs to read at least once a week to survive challenges of life.
The importance of reading cannot be overemphasized especially for the growth of startups; reading gives startups the wings to fly and necessary techniques to have a soft landing.
An average startup needs to read at least once a week to survive challenges of life.
Often, as easy as reading sounds, it is one of the most difficult tasks to carry out but it becomes quite easy when the reasons for reading are valid and the reasons include:
Constant learning
New Ideas
Business Skills
Global Competition
Inspiration and Motivation
Building Relationships
Constant
Learning
Learning is a daily activity that can be achieved through reading. Reading frequently enables startups to learn how to solve problems and think critically in the most dynamic way. Learning via reading helps startups to learn from the experience of others most especially experiences from businesses which have grown from being startups to successful business empires. Reading gives startups blueprints of businesses they aspire to go into.
New
Ideas
Reading helps to connect more ideas on what you already know to some ideas on your mind to give birth (bring to reality) new products or services. Reading helps to validate most ideas of startups; many ideas startups develop aside from some original seed ideas give startups abilities to climb the ladder of success and growth speedily.
Business
Skills
The ability for startups to open their gates to business is good; the acquiring of business skills and improvement of previous business skills are more important and they can mostly be gotten through reading. The acquisition of these skills increase the longevity of startups.
Global Competition
Given that startups start operating from their local markets, most startups have the vision to operate in the global market and become global competitors.
Startups can do investigations about the feasibility
of conquering a foreign market without going over themselves.
Inspiration
and Motivation
Starting and running startups daily is not a walk in the park. The trials, difficulties, and mistakes a startup goes through are huge; only a startup that reads daily can overcome.
Reading gives you an insight into what other startups went through and what they are still going through. It inspires startups to wield through the storm and motivates them to do exploits even with their present challenges.
Building
Relationships
Hard work, dedication and long hours are good traits in startups but the ability for startups to build and sustain relationships with different human resources that contribute positively to them is key for the survival of any business and this can be achieved through reading.
Reading is wealth. No doubt, different challenges of business could be solved through reading. Constant reading keeps startups steps away from liquidation.
Chisom Okeke, popularly known as “Somly” is a graduate of Accounting from the University of Benin, Benin City. She is a phenomenal writer and an “Agripreneur” whose focus is to change the narrative of the agricultural sector by providing timely agricultural information and opportunities available in the agricultural sector. She is also a virtual assistant and the anchor of Somly Writes. You can connect with her via Social Media, Facebook – Okeke Chisom; Instagram – okeke_somly; Twitter – somly
