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There’s a Problem with Seed Capital in Africa

October 20, 2008 / HASH / 22 Comments

John Balen of Canaan Partners, originally uploaded by whiteafrican.

Wherever I go in Africa, one of the consistent comments that I hear from young entrepreneurs in the technology space is that there is no way to get started. There is little seed capital and very few angel investors to be found. That’s a problem – and it’s true in East Africa as well as South Africa.

In a conversation with John Balen, General Manager of Canaan Partners – a top tier Bay Area venture capital firm, over breakfast this morning at PopTech Fellows we discussed a few of these challenges. Canaan has operations and offices in India, Israel and the US, which means that they have some experience working in areas with non-traditional VC ecosystems.

Problem: The Investment Community

It turns out that one of the main problems in places like Africa, which is somewhat similar to places in India, is that the investors have to be educated first. Seed capital and early venture funding is a high risk proposition. There are few investors who care about technology, and those that do are interested in the later stages of investing.

A common problem in Africa is finding young entrepreneurs with a good idea, generally technical in nature, and they need about $5000-$10,000 to handle operations and build out of their technology in the first 6 months to a year. If they can find a local funder, that person generally wants an inordinate amount of equity in the operation – anywhere from 40-80%.

Some serious education in the investor circles in Africa needs to take place.

Lastly, there should be some recognition that a lot of the young entrepreneurs need some help. Beyond the funding, just giving some help in learning how to set up and grow a real business is hugely important. Introducing potential partners, helping broker deals and giving advice on how to hire employees are ways that investors grow into being a true partner – and African entrepreneurs badly need this too.

Ideas

I’m interested in seeing some Y-Combinator style venture funding companies AND communities developing around different regions in Africa. Groups that only fund the very early stages of development ($5000 – $15000) for very short periods of time (3-6 months).

I know there are some individuals doing just that, but let’s talk about communities around this space. What I think would be interesting would be to see these individuals band together and create real communities that connect with and plug in to the community in much closer ways. Become part of the local technology ecosystem and really learn how to find promising individuals and foster them to greatness – and make a lot of money along the way.

As John Balen said, “It’s hard for large VC funds to invest in small enterprises.” This is especially true in Africa, so why not figure out a way to foster earlier stage investments as a community of smaller investors?

Quick Hits Around African Tech (May 2012)

May 6, 2012 / HASH / Comments Off

This last month has kept me too off-kilter to get a good blog post up. However, there have been some very interesting happenings around the continent, here are the ones that caught my attention:

Pivot East

East Africa’s mobile startup pitching competition is just a month away. We announced the top 50 a few weeks ago, and now the 25 Finalists are named as well. Don’t miss this event, June 5 & 6th at the Ole Sereni hotel in Nairobi.

Google Releases “Insights Africa”

This truly deserves a blog post of its own… Google spent a lot of money and time gathering information from over 13,000 people across 6 African countries (Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Uganda) to determine why, and how, people use the internet. This data is all openly available, with an outstanding visualization tool to see what the information really means, and compare it, at InsightsAfrica.com. My chart below is just one example, showing how people access the internet across these 6 countries:

Donors prioritized â€œindustrial policyâ€ in Asia, but â€œsocial sectorsâ€ in Africa. Why?

Kariobangi writes a compelling blog post on the difference between the aid that was prioritized for Asia versus that for Africa.

TeleRivet: An Android SMS gateway

Similar what Ushahidi offers at SMSsync, TeleRivet is a tool that allows you to use your Android phone as an SMS gateway. It’s more robust, offers an API, and makes it easy for people to get started on SMS and USSD apps. Mbwana Alliy writes up a blog post on why this is important, and the business prospects involved in utilizing this type of service.

WEF: The Global Information Technology Report 2012

The World Economic Forum’s annual report on IT has some good information on emerging markets. You can read it online here. Here’s the video:

ForgetMeNot and the rise of Africa’s Smart(er) Phones

BizCommunity has a good article on ForgetMeNot’s Message Optimizer service’s growth on the continent. This service delivers internet content to users who can only access that information via SMS. Here’s how it works:

“First, a mobile phone subscriber sends an SMS to a given short code. The message is received in the mobile company’s message centre, which then forwards to ForgetMeNot Africa’s internet servers. The servers process, route and deliver the message to the subscriber, who can then respond.”

Kenya study, impact of venture capital on small and medium sized enterprise

VC4Africa reviews a report on VC’s in Kenya. This isn’t just tech, but it is interesting and surfaces some great information. [PDF Download]

“The minimum profit before use of venture capital was Ksh 34, 866. Upon use of venture capital, the minimum profit increased to Ksh 600, 000. This shows an increase in minimum profit of 94%. The maximum profit respondents reported before use of venture capital was Ksh 38, 567,951 which increased to Ksh 62, 864,152 an increase of 63%. The average profit also increased by 69% (from Ksh 7,204,653 to Ksh 12, 202,775)”

Mpesa, a 5 Year Infographic

Just how big has Mpesa become? Take a look [PDF version].

Jason Njoku, Funding and Nigerian Movies Online

In Nigeria, Jason Njoku is at it again, raising $8m from Tiger Global Management, a US-based PE and hedge fund. Here’s an interview with him on Forbes. Iroko Partners is the worldâ€™s largest digital distributor of Nigerian movies and African music. The firm is YouTubeâ€™s biggest partner in Africa, boasting over 152 million views in 2011.

What’s on Tap for 2012

January 4, 2012 / HASH / 10 Comments

2011 was a good year – a great one even. Here’s why:

iHub reaches one year, clocks over 6,000 members and more than 100 events. Companies were founded, business got funded and many companies found CTOs and employees through the network. (What makes the iHub work?)
The m:lab (East Africa’s mobile lab) was founded, with a testing center, 7 companies incubating and 2 classes of mobile app development trained.
AfriLabs was founded and now has grown to see over 15 labs in Senegal, Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Zambia, Cameroon, Ghana and South Africa.
The first Pivot pitching competition and conference was a massive hit. Look for regional versions in South and West Africa in the coming years.
Ushahidi has over 20,000 deployments in 132 countries, the community grows.
Kenya leads an open data revolution in Africa, and we also held the IGF which brought many big names into town.
African tech startups start to get some real attention globally.
Massive growth in bandwidth mixed with lower costs on smartphones, internet itself and mobile services as well as increases in internet and mobile users across the continent.

2012 looks to be even better

The past few years have been about building an infrastructure that improves the chances of the technology startups in Africa to succeed. Seeing this buildout in action in 2011 was exciting, but it should be recognized for what it really was: a setup for 2012 and beyond.

You see, all those labs and hubs around the continent, the startups and the media coverage? They’re all about getting attention and increasing the awareness of the pent up startup potential in Africa’s technology space. Media and funders both have a bigger target to hit when looking for entrepreneurs. We were setting the stage to broaden the base of our startup pyramid: finding the local innovators and entrepreneurs and getting more of them funded.

Where we stand now is an order of magnitude beyond what we had just a few short years ago. In 2006 if you stated that you want to be a web or mobile entrepreneur you weren’t taken seriously. Five years later and it’s a legitimate position to take. We now have some successes to point out (think mPedigree, Mxit, PesaPal, Sproxil and Ushahidi etc), which make it a lot easier for the new breed of startups to get started.

This is what we’re aiming for: a playing field that allows more entrepreneurs to startup, get some seed funding and fail fast if necessary. The ones who make it, the ones who get beyond the startup phase and become real companies with cashflow and employees, are why this is being done. This will make some people a lot of money, and it will make millions of others lives a lot better because they have better and more relevant products locally.

2012 is set. It’s the year where we grow the seed funding and early stage venture capital investments so that five years from now we have the ecosystem needed to support a much larger investment and startup community.

My prediction is this: In 2012, if you have a startup in one of the main tech cities in Africa and are unable to get funding, it is due to one of two things: Your idea isn’t viable or you don’t know how to pitch.

The funding is coming, and it’s up to you to create a business and make it succeed.

(To do this, I suggest you read 2 posts on the Afrinnovator blog: “15 Skills African Tech Talent Must Acquire in 2012” and Mbwana Alliy’s “12 Predictions for African Tech in 2012“.)

Dragon’s Den: Kenya

September 19, 2011 / HASH / 7 Comments

This should be a fun one. I was approached a month or so back about the Dragon’s Den coming to Kenya, and it looks like it’s actually going to happen (It’s much like Shark Tank if you’re in the US). If you think you have what it takes to pitch your idea in front of these guys, here’s your chance.

To make it easy, here’s the Dragon’s Den Application Form – Kenya (Word Doc).

“Dragons’ Den is a series of reality television programmes featuring entrepreneurs pitching their business ideas in order to secure investment finance from a panel of venture capitalists.”

Five experienced investors (the â€˜Dragonsâ€™) are coming to Nairobi in the next few months to hear the pitches of some of Kenyaâ€™s brightest business men and women with the intention of investing in the very best. But these Dragons are not easy to please; they will be looking for entrepreneurs who are offering investable money-making opportunities, who can also explain why their proposal has what it takes to be a success and will make a difference to the local community.

The rules are simple: entrepreneurs ask for a reasonable cash investment in return for a negotiated equity in their business. However, they must get at least the amount they ask for or they will walk away with nothing.

The Dragons are prepared to listen to a pitch for any kind of business but they must be convinced that it requires investment and will make money. Ideas, businesses and products that have previously gained financial backing in the UK Den have demonstrated one or more of the following:

Unique selling point
Scalability
Clear route to market
Planned exit strategy

If you havenâ€™t seen the programme, visit www.bbc.co.uk/dragonsden for more info, or search â€œDragons Den Series 9â€ on YouTube to watch previous entrepreneurs pitching to the Dragons. Email DragonsDenNairobi@bbc.co.uk for an application form.

This isn’t the first time it’s been done in Africa. It ran in Nigeria in 2008. This Dragon’s Den is done by the BBC as a special edition for Comic Relief – a major charity based in the UK.

Virtual City’s Mobile Distributor Solution Wins Nokia’s $1m

September 15, 2010 / HASH / 59 Comments

John Waibochi of Virtual City, from Kenya, won the Nokia $1,000,000 Growth Economy Venture Challenge here at Nokia World today. This is an investment of $1m in John’s business, so it comes with support and connections that only an organization of Nokia’s size can provide. The award was given out by Stephen Elop, Nokia’s new CEO, as the first action of his at Nokia – this sends a certain signal to all devs around the world.

I asked John to give a quick soundbite on what this solution is:

John Waibochi wins the Nokia $1m Challenge from WhiteAfrican on Vimeo.

Here’s more:

Virtual City Ltd, a home-grown Kenyan company, has developed a solution that aims at addressing systemic issues along the Supply Chain for distributors and retailers of Fast Moving Consumer Goods in emerging markets. The Mobile Distributor Solution is designed to contribute to improved efficiencies and value to all the stakeholders in the value chain and result in increased number of transactions, accurate records, improved Inventory management & reporting from the field and effective management decision making. The solution will also bring value to a large number of beneficiaries comprising of thousands of small and micro enterprises in the FMCG Market.

It’s a product that can be monetized due to high demand by both retailers and distributors in Kenya. This is a very solid company, with a solid proposal. Seeing the video (not available yet) of this working with one of Africa’s leading beverage company’s was impressive.

From a Nokia Challenge perspective, this provides a solution that will bring value to a large number of beneficiaries comprising thousands of small and micro enterprises in the Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) Market through the smart application of mobile business and cashless payment technologies.

The project will generate revenue for the partners Virtual City and Nokia, while increasing the income levels of the stakeholders in the supply chain by opening up increased product sales coupled with additional benefits of mobile payment capabilities, transaction fees revenue, loyalty programs benefits, etc all facilitated by inexpensive and affordable mobile phones.

The new found ability to transact via mobile phones and use cashless means to make payments for goods or services, has the potential of availing solutions that the over 6 million users of mobile payment solutions from the telecommunication players can access and utilize in their business dealings, the aim is to fully utilize the potential that a mobile phone has in adding value to the user.

Background on Nokiaâ€™s Growth Economy Venture Challenge

Launched at CES 2010 by Nokia CEO, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, Nokiaâ€™s Growth Economy Venture Challenge called on innovators from around the world to create a mobile product or service to improve the lives of people in developing nations and compete for the chance to win venture capital investment of $1 million.

Why is Nokia holding the Growth Economy Venture Challenge?

Nokia is a leader in enabling mobile technology to transform peopleâ€™s lives for the better (through projects like Nokia Life Tools, etc.). Efforts like The Progress Project and the Nokia Growth Economy Venture Challenge endeavor to show the mobile community what is possible in order to focus the entrepreneurial spirit of innovators on accelerating transformation in these areas of the world. We see this Challenge as a win for Nokia, a win for the developer that is selected, and a win for their customers.

What are the criteria for selection of the finalists and eventual winner of the challenge?

The mobile product, application or service must undeniably enhance the standard of living or lifestyle of the target customer.
The target customer must be from a region of the world where the general daily per capita income is $5 USD or less.
The organization that receives the $1 million USD investment must have shown that it has the potential to be a vibrant and successful business that will be profitable for itself and its investors (as judged through normal venture investment vetting procedures).

Mobile Web East Africa – Stream

February 3, 2010 / HASH / 25 Comments

[I probably won’t be able to keep this up all day, but I’ll try to blog/stream what’s happening here at Mobile Web East Africa as best I can. Refresh for updates]

It’s day one of the Mobile Web East Africa conference in Nairobi. This is a new conference, started up in South Africa to great success, and now spreading to other regions of the continent.

Paul Kukubo of the ICT Board

Paul Kukubo, of the Kenya ICT Board, is talking about the future of tech in Kenya, and how the government’s aim is to be a major hub for technology in the region. Explaining how the changes in the industry are brought into context for the government’s vision 2030. He talks about mobile payments, digitizing of government documents and processes, developing software standards and the growing tech community within Nairobi.

Paul continues with mentioning how their approach is to influence policy formulation, intellectual property, data protection, linkages to venture capital and basically catalyzing growth in the ICT sector between government, the public and business.

Rick Joubert of Yonder Media

Rick Joubert, from Yonder Media, “the mobile phone is the most ubiquitous consumer device in the world.” He goes on to talk about how the phone is now even more spread through South Africa than radios. There are 2x as many phones as TV sets. There are 6x more mobile phone subscribers than internet users (in South Africa).

Rick defines the Mobile Web this way:

Tier 1: The WAP internet
Tier 2: The mobile web application internet
Tier 3: Web browsing on phone

**Interruption**
PS Ndemo, who I know and like, is going to give a short address. This isn’t cool, as he’s interrupting Rick Joubert mid-talk (and a very interesting one too). Case-in-point for why government needs to get out of the way more than anything else in the technology field… [Yes, I note that this is probably the American viewpoint on equality coming out].

PS Ndemo is talking through how there were 3.5 million internet users in Kenya last year. Now, with the cost of laptops dropping, we now see 500 laptops sold per day (there were only 20k per year sold before).

Kenya also has the digital villages project (Pasha) with the World Bank is seeing long lines of individuals in far off places coming in to try the internet, get on Skype and figure out how to set up email and other services.

PS Ndemo, ever the gracious person, has at least apologized for the interruption and made amends to the speaker and the conference as a whole. There’s a reason I like him… 🙂

**Back to our scheduled program**

“The Apple iPhone is the number one handset on every continent in the world, except… Africa”. The Nokia 3110 and Samsung E250 are the two biggest phones on the continent. The fact of the matter is, the real money is being made in the inexpensive DVD/Nollywood areas, not in the mobile web yet. Services that play to USSD, Voice and SMS are where the real opportunities lie.

Driving forces:

Growth in data networks and coverage
Mobile data access charges
Local content
Better quality handsets shipping at the cheapest possible price
Mobile wallets, mobile commerce, mobile banking

Business models and monetization routes:

Commerce
Transactions and financial institutions
Content
Advertising

Rick projects that the “size of the prize” in mobile advertising is approximately $8 billion per year in Africa.

Rick finishes showing a video from LynxEffect on how consumers see mobile web, the seductive side of it.

Eric Cantor of AppLab Uganda & Grameen Foundation

I wrote about AppLab and their work with MTN and Google last year. Eric wants to talk about a critical look at a critical space, the 95% of the African population that doesn’t own a smartphone.

(Get the full presentation of Eric Cantor’s slides as a PDF)

“There are more people having conferences and running too many pilots around the use of social mobile work than there is real practical applications and scaling of the products in the market.”

Technology: Be Patient
SMS is not the only way. It’s very challenging and very expensive to work with SMS. One way to adjust this focus is into voice – people like people, and want to talk with each other.

Handsets need to evolve. Nokia 1100 vs Java 1680 ($20 vs $60) – we’re waiting on the $40 smartphone.

Eric reminds us that we need to get back to the Four-Ps of marketing. We can’t forget user experience, the services might be serious, but still need to be fun to use. At the AppLab they don’t believe what they hear (because everyone says “yes, this product will be great in our market”). They try to dig deeper, learned from Google, on what customers really want and see what people are really using.

Question time

I’ve asked the question for Eric Cantor about why we’re not seeing very simple data hooks built into some of the USSD and SMS applications running in Uganda. (more on this here: “Should we be building SMS or internet services for Africa?“). Eric agrees that there is a lot of upside in that space, and that they’re trying to push more towards the data channel, but until we start seeing more data-enabled handsets in ordinary people’s hands out in the villages, it’s just not a main priority yet.

Robert Alai asks what is driving advertising growth in South Africa? Is it the large companies, or smaller organizations?
Rick responds saying that it’s large companies trying to reach their customers, from banks to Coca Cola and everyone in between. Businesses build grow in this space to find solutions for that, and that’s primarily small innovative companies (like his own), small nimble startups.

Agatha Gikonda of Nokia East Africa talks about the Ovi Store and the opportunities for local developers to create applications and put them on the store to make money.

Peter Arina of Safaricom

What are we going to do to drive interent usage in Kenya? Some stats:

Mobile users are estitmated at 19.05m subscribers. Kenya population estimated at 40m with 22m being the addressable market (15yo or older).

70% of mobile data users spend less than 20ksh on a monthly basis. Industry data enabled handsets estimated at 5m or 26% of GSM users. Cost of a 3G handset is 3x higher than that of a non-data enabled handset. Computer prices are way too high compared to the disposable income of majority of Kenyans.

“The cost of devices that access the internet is the biggest barrier to entry for ordinary Kenyans.”

Cost of broadband (price) is prohibitive due to infrastructure investment.

Local content – the most popular sites accessed on the Safaricom network is Facebook and YouTube. Limited content which is highly priced, is also a barrier locally. There’s a need for high quality data enabled handsets to get good experience.

Conclusion
Mobile data users estimated to reach 10m in the next five years subject to availability of affordable devices, increase awareness, local content development and drop in data prices. Safaricom is trying to work directly with the manufacturers to get more data-enabled devices into normal Kenyan’s hands.

There is a need for more local content that is relevant at affordable rates. Need for reduction in frequency costs, a creation of daily usage habits among users and a need for the government to remove VAT on modems.

Questions
@Kahenya is asking a question. Safaricom is trying to become more affordable, it’s still the most expensive network in Kenya. It’s still has no fixed rate for the mobile data network access. It doesn’t work for small and medium sized business, is Safaricom doing anything to change this?

Peter Arina says they are trying to be cautious. They’re trying to focus on quality (bull$%@& as they have the worst network connectivity in Kenya). He says that they have plans to reduce the cost of data as well, but he has no details on it.

The Safaricom rep says that their main goal is to provide services to the Wananchi (the ordinary/mass Kenyan). The question remains then, why is the cost so high for all of their services?

Paul Kukubo asks when Safaricom will open up their network for value added services for developers and other companies. He’s wondering why the revenue share is so high here (currently if you partner with Safaricom, they’ll take about 60% of revenues), meanwhile elsewhere in the world, like Japan, give 70% to the developer.

Paul asks about the issue with the networks taking advantage of the developers who are out there who come to them with ideas and new products.

The Safaricom rep states that this is not the case any longer. They partner with MobilePlanet and Cellulant (as examples, but it’s a poor one because they’re established companies now). He says that at first they start off with a big chunk of the revenues, but as the product does better, then the developer will get more of the share.

Basically, we get no straight answers from Safaricom and only promises of better things in the future with no details.

Jose Henriques, Executive Head: Online Product Management, Vodacom South Africa

6.65% of the African population currently uses PC internet. The top ten countries make up 85% of that.

Some more stats:

Africa represents 15% of the world population, but only 3.9″% of the world’s PC internet usage.
Africa’s PC Internet users have increased by 1359% from 2000 to 2009.
The global service revenue generated from subscriptions to mobile internet access are forecasted by Informa Telecoms & Media to rise from $57 billion in 2008 to $120 billion in 2013.
Mobile ad revenue is estimated to be at $2 billion by 2014. Total value of marketing spend on mobile to be around $6 billion.
Mobile subscription rose from 54 million to almost 350 million between 2003 and 2008.
On average there are 60% mobile penetration in the world. In developing countries the figure stands at 48% , which is 8x bigger than in 2000.
Lack of fixed-line access will drive huge mobile internet usage and revenues.
Vodacom generates 49 million ad impressions per month in South Africa (big opportunity).

(Full presentation by Jose Henriques from Vodacom South Africa)

Questions
What has been defined as a smartphone, is not what we define one as today. How would you define it?
Cheapest data enabled devices are about 2000Ksh in Kenya. Safaricom thinks that these are smartphones.

Mpesa… Why is Safaricom unable to cooperate with and provide third-party access (opening their APIs) to developers in Kenya for Mpesa?

The Safaricom rep says that they are willing to do this, and that they’re hungry for people to come in with ideas and products. No specifics given on this. @TMSruge, the moderator, asks her to provide details on how they are actively trying to seek out and help grow this as there is no API or SDK.

@wanjiku says she’s heard Safaricom saying that they have a tendency to do well with big companies, but holding smaller company money for 3-4 months, hurting their cash flow.

Steve Vosloo asks what types of local content are people really willing to pay for?
The Safaricom rep is out of touch… she states that, “no one is willing to pay anything for mobile content”. This is bunk.

Rick Joubert comes in to state facts on how much money there is being made in South Africa in mobile content, $540 million is the real number just in SA. It’s not whether people will pay or not, it’s whether they find value in local content.

A question was asked of Safaricom, why they don’t open up the ability for third-party service providers to bill consumers? The answer by Safaricom is that they are. (I can’t confirm this)

We have Zap, Mobile Pay, Mpesa, etc… when are we going to have an agnostic system to send/receive money? by @kahenya

MTN rep says to come to Uganda to see this working. It’s there working on the MTN system. It’s a serious issue of not having your payment system to go beyond your own network.

Mpesa is a wall gardened. Kahenya and Teddy Ruge ask when there will be a need to NOT walk around with 3 handsets to send money within each one.

Safaricom states that they can already do this within their system. They lay the blame at the regulators feet for why it hasn’t happened.

**Lunch**

Brett StClair of AdMob

Brett starts by asking, “what is mobile internet?” It’s a website that is built for mobile handsets. Admob puts banner advertisement on these sites. They server 12-14 billion advertisements into this network each month. The man on the street can earn revenues start advertising today. There’s a 60% payout to publishers.

Have access to 53 countries in Africa. Monthly ads serves is 750 million in Africa alone.

African Mobile Web currently has South Africa, Nigeria, Libya, Egypt and Kenya as the top 5. Data prices do have a huge effect on the advertising revenues available in Africa.

Nokia 3110c is the most pervasive phone in the market (3.8%), Samsung E250 is at 3.7% penetration. Top smartphones are the Nokia N70 at 10.8% and then Nokia 6300 at 10.3% and then the iPhone at 8.2%.

Top reasons why South Africa is working:

5 million fixed line internet vs 10 million mobile internet users
Strong operator billing infrastructure
However, mobile money is not mature yet
Early adoption by premium traditional publishers
consumers traditionally have had a fast adoption rate
Due to vast competition for impressions average CPC pricing grew from $0.03 to $0.27 in a year.

Is Africa next? The rest of the world thinks it is, but we need to get the local people to understand this.

Cheapest inventory in the world is in Africa… global accesss average is $0.03, in Africa it’s at $0.01. Local contet providers will benefit as they understand the local African consumers.

Key to making this work:

3g network coverage
Cheap data pricing
GPRS enabled handset penetration

What are the opportunities in Africa?
Strong tend to follow the West and South Africa. Paid for content, reliant on operator billing. Free content, which is ad funded. The top publisher types are communities, portals and downloads. The top categories are music, religion (15%), games and brands.

African traffic is made of 54% Nokia handsets, then 18% Samsung handsets. iPhone requests make up 18 million impressions in Africa.

South Africa’s Synthasite Raises $5 Million in Funding

November 18, 2007 / HASH / 7 Comments

Synthasite Logo It’s not that often that one of Africa’s new web companies makes a big international splash. Synthasite has done just that, just announcing a $5 million round of financing from Swiss-based Columbus Venture Capital. That’s big money no matter where you’re at, and I’m interested in seeing what Synthasite does with it.

Synthasite is a free Web 2.0 Publishing Platform that allows users to construct a website without any knowledge of HTML or programming, using drag & drop along with configurable dialog windows. The Company recently launched its AJAX based platform into Beta and has attracted nearly 10,000 users so far. Synthasite also plans to open it’s platform to third party developers next year, in order to allow them to create widgets, templates & other plugins for the platform.

I’ve been particularly impressed watching Vinny Lingham’s hard work and determination to make Synthasite into something bigger – something global. When he sent me the press release, I was really happy to hear the news, because it shows that firms in Africa have the possibility of building global software/websites and can play at the same level as their counterparts around the world.

They’ll be using part of this money to create a larger footprint outside of South Africa. Vinny will be opening an office in California, so will have part of his team in the US and the other still in Africa. This is a really important move actually – those who are in this space realize how hard it is to be taken seriously amongst the web intelligentsia if you’re not located in their own back yard.

Giving it a Test Run
I haven’t tested Synthasite since last year, so I got to work creating a simple site to test out what is possible. First off, it is SO much easier to use than the previous version. I remember how hard of a time I had on the first version – and I know what I’m doing on the web, and this new version is so much better that I think the only thing that remains the same is the name of the product.

The basic design templates look outstanding and seem to work well with the editing. Adding images and text was a breeze, as was adding more pages.

Synthasite - Website Editor

[The Website Editor – You can see what I built here]

One of my favorite features is that you can download your whole website as a zip file. Doing something like this allows you to use their editor to build your site, but you can still host it on your own server if you like. Nice addition!

There seems to be a lack of widgets, the one thing that the old Synthasite had a lot of. Before, you could build Yahoo and Amazon affiliate widgets into your site quite easily, I didn’t see that option at all anymore. Hopefully they’ll see some real 3rd-party development as I’d like to see a full widget library for people to use.

Summary
If you’re in Africa, why should you care about Synthasite? Well, it’s a free website builder offering free hosting – given the internet costs in Africa – this should appeal to many people. It’s a good product, that’s easy to use and will allow novices to build a good looking site easily.

Wow! I Won a Wii at Web 2.0

April 18, 2007 / HASH / 15 Comments

What a stroke of luck! I never thought I’d be leaving here with a Nintendo Wii.

Nintendo Wii I entered into the Ask.com Experts session. Funnily enough, they asked a venture capital question trying to find a “VC expert”. No one could answer the question, “who writes VentureBlog?” – interestingly enough, I wrote about him yesterday, and David Hornik commented on it… (By the way, I’m NOT a VC expert)

The best thing about this is now I don’t need to think up an excuse to tell my wife in order to buy one. 🙂

Reflection on 5 Years of BRCK

October 17, 2018 / hash / 1 Comment

It was 5 years ago that we created BRCK as a company, and I’ve had the great joy of being on a journey with some fantastic people, including the three here with me in this picture (Reg Orton, Emmanuel Kala, and Philip Walton).

We had an idea of what we were getting into back in October 2013, but none of us were sure where it would actually take us. All we knew then was that the barriers to creating hardware had dropped enough for us to get into it, that there was a problem in the internet connectivity space in Africa (and other frontier markets), and that we had the right mixture of skills, naiveté, and optimism to figure it out. Over the next 12 months we grew to a team of 10 that had this the desire to meet a big challenge and believed we could do hard things. As I write this, 8 of those 10 are still at BRCK.

In the intervening years we’ve built 3 full products and taken them to market (BRCK v1, Kio Kit, SupaBRCK), and a fourth (PicoBRCK) that is still in R&D. That alone is quite an accomplishment. I hadn’t known back in 2011 when the idea for creating a device was first hatched, just what the life cycle of building a hardware+software product would be. I do remember having a conversation with an old friend, Robert Fabricant, that I thought we should be done with the first one in about a year. He laughed and said it would be at least 2-3 years. He was mostly right.

The BRCK at a dry Victoria Falls

I’ve since learned that it takes approximately 18 months for a product to go through the concept, design, testing, productization, and first samples stages. Then it typically takes us another 9 months for iterations and small fixes on hardware to happen, while that same time is spent concurrently hardening up the software side of things. For example, our most recent SupaBRCK took approximately almost two years from conception to product, and then another 6 months of continued fixes/changes to the low-level software and the hardware before it worked well consistently.

Asking the Right Question

You would often hear us saying, “Why do we use hardware designed for London or New York, when we live in Nairobi or New Delhi?” as a way to frame the problem we thought we were solving. It was only in late December 2014, after we had shipped the BRCK v1 to 50+ countries, that we realized we were only partially on the right track.

It turns out the problem isn’t in making the best hardware for connectivity in difficult environments. Sure, that’s part of the equation – making sure that you have the right tools for people to connect to the internet. But the bigger question involves people, who is connecting to the internet and who isn’t? If, after many years of building BRCK, we had built the best, most rugged and reliable solution for internet connectivity, that would be something we could pat each other on our backs for. However, if the problem instead was “How do we get the rest of Africa online?”, and we were able to solve that problem, then that was a legacy we’d be proud to tell our children about one day.

Sitting in our tiny office around Christmas 2014, we started thinking hard about this bigger issue and began doing deeper research into the problems of this loosely defined “connectivity” space. We started doing some user experience research, manon the street interviews, to figure out what the pain points were for people in Kenya.

Connectivity can generally be broken into two buckets:
First, accessibility – can I connect my device to a nearby signal?
Second, affordability – can I afford that connection?

The results were quite telling, it was definitely about affordability.

For everyone who’s not deep in African tech, let me lay out some interesting numbers for you. Accessibility in most of the emerging markets has been moving rapidly since the mid-2000s when we started to get the undersea cables coming into the continent. These cables then went inland and started a rapid increase in available internet connections and wholesale internet costs decreased rapidly. Since 2008 we’ve had more than one million kilometers of cable dug across the continent, and we have over 240,000 cell phone towers. Concurrently, the mobile device prices continued to drop globally, and by 2016 we started to have more smartphones imported into Africa than non-smartphones.

Reaching deeper into the market research, we started to study this affordability problem.

“A4AI found that the average price of 1GB prepaid mobile broadband, when expressed as a % of average per capita Gross National Income (GNI), varied between 0.84% in North America and 17.49% in Africa.”

It turns out that in almost every country in Africa, there is a consistent ratio among all the smartphone owners in a country: 20% could afford to pay for the internet regularly, and an incredible 80% couldn’t.

Interestingly, when we looked at who else was working in this connectivity space, almost everyone was focused on accessibility, not affordability. Those that were focused on affordability thought that just making the price cheaper was enough. What we’ve seen is that if you just make “less expensive” subscription WiFi (as most do), then you’ll capture another 10% of the market. And while that can make a profitable enterprise, it still leaves 70% of the market unaddressed.

This last blue ocean of internet users in Africa, as well as Asia and Latin America, is still largely ignored. Those who do have the resources go to after it tend to try with iterative approaches in both business models around affordability, and only marginal creativeness in solving for technology accessibility.

Moja Means ONE

It’s taken us five years, going through multiple iterations of new tech, building new hardware, and creating new software stacks that go from the firmware up to the cloud. We’ve been mostly quiet for the past year as we put our heads down and tried to take a new platform to market. Where are we now?

“Moja” means “one” in Swahili, and it was the brand name that we chose to call the software platform that we would build on top of the BRCK hardware. While Moja means one, “pamoja” means “together” or “oneness”, and that was the root we were looking for. To us, Moja is the internet for everyone.

We started by trying to make it work on the BRCK v1, but that was a bit like trying to make a sedan do a job built for a lorry (truck) – it wasn’t powerful enough. The SupaBRCK was envisioned as the hardware we could leverage that would allow us to not just have enough of a powerful and enterprise-level router, but a tool that was actually a highly ruggedized micro-data center. With this, we could host content on each device, as well as get people connected to the internet. Another way to think about the accessibility side of what we do is that we have a new model for how a distributed CDN works on a nation-scale, moving away from the centralized model that the rest of the world uses. In environments like Kenya, we can’t continue to just copy and paste models from more developed infrastructure markets, we have to think of new ways to deal with how the undergirding system actually works and operates.

We give the internet away for free to consumers. How does that work if we all know that the internet isn’t free? After all, someone always pays.

The business model is an indirect one. We charge businesses for some form of digital engagement on our Moja platform (app downloads, surveys, or content caching), and the free internet to our consumers is a by-product of this b2b business model. Like everyone else, we thought we could do it with advertising at first. But we realized that our unique hardware capabilities allowed us some other options, since advertising is a poor option for all but a few of the biggest global tech platforms.

Today we’ve deployed 850 of the SupaBRCK’s running our Moja software into public transportation (buses and matatus) in Kenya and Rwanda. They’ve been quite successful with almost 1/4 million unique users monthly in just the first 3 months. We have both a tested and working technology platform, as well as product market fit. With unit economics that make sense, a growing user base, and a business model that works, we’re excited for the growth phase of the business. This next step means going nation-scale in each of these countries, and also determining our next market to enter.

It’s important that ordinary people across Africa and other frontier markets can stop thinking about the costs of the internet and don’t have to turn off their mobile internet on the smartphones that they already have in their pockets.

Once they know they can afford it, the way they used the internet changes dramatically. An Internet like this is feasible today, and it’s a cheaper, faster, more distributed and resilient one. It’s also being built from the ground up in Africa, where we’re close to both the technology and human problems, and have a better chance of building a the right thing.

Thoughts and Lessons Over 5 Years

First, make sure it’s a big enough problem.
If you’re going to spend 5+ years of your life on something, make sure it’s something that matters. At BRCK we are creating the onramp to the internet for anyone to connect to the internet, and a distribution platform for organizations trying to reach them. If we succeed we only succeed at scale, which by its nature means that we’ve done something big and that it has made a large impact on people.

Second, figure out what to focus on.
When you start out it’s difficult to determine product market fit. We started with a wide funnel of possibilities for our technology, industries that we could target and consumer plays. Over time, we were able to narrow down what could work, and what we could actually do, to the point where we focused on this big “connecting people” problem. We did detour into education with our Kio Kit, which we still think is one of the best (if not the best) holistic solutions for emerging market schools – after all, it’s in places across Africa, as well as the Pacific Islands and as far as Mexico. However, it proved to be too costly for our bottom line to hold inventory, sales cycles are too long, and it was largely a product sale. When we realized that, we started to focus most of our efforts on the bigger underlying issue across all of the markets, which was affordable connectivity and our Moja platform.

Third, persistence trumps skill.
building hardware is hard. It’s even harder doing it in Africa. The upside however is that you’re both closer to the problem, and that if you succeed in figuring it out, you have a good head start on everyone else. The process takes time, costs money, and there are people and organizations who don’t want you to succeed. It always takes longer than you want to get software working properly, or hardware built and reliable. We’ve often been faced by that same problem that plagues all venture backed companies in Africa, in that you have to do a lot of education to investors to even raise the capital, and then when you do you get charged a premium for perceived risk. Partner organizations take resources and time to work with, and they don’t always come through on their promises. All of these things (and more) mean that the best ideas don’t always win in the market, because it’s those that push the hardest and longest that win.

Fourth, it’s the people you do it with.
If you’re going to be on a journey that takes a great deal of time, with intense pressure, and where success is not guaranteed, then you had better do it with people that you can trust, who you can work with, and it helps if you like them too. Throughout my work career I’ve been more fortunate than most (whether at Ushahidi, iHub or BRCK), and this time is no exception. I get to work with a host of wonderful people; not just smart and talented, but also genuinely good human beings. It makes work a joyful challenge, not an exhausting chore.

So, to those back in the day who believed we could do this when it was just a sketch in my notebook, thank you Shuler, Kobia, Nat and Juliana (and the rest of the team at Ushahidi). To our investors who have joined us in this dream of connecting and doing hard things, you’ve continued to step up and that has made this possible. Thank you.

To Jeff, Janet, Birir, Kurt, Barre, and Oira, thank you for sticking it out for all these years and stepping up to more leadership challenges as we’ve evolved. To Philip, Reg, and Kala, I want to thank you for making the impossible happen, time and again, each for more than 5+ years.

Remembering the Genius and Grace of Carey Eaton

June 6, 2014 / hash / 31 Comments

Carey Eaton, with Isis Nyongo and Mbwana Alliy at PivotEast last year

Carey Eaton was one of the true sparks of genius in Kenya’s tech ecosystem… in Africa’s.

“It is with great sadness and regret that we announce the untimely death of Kenyan businessman Carey Eaton, who passed away in tragic circumstances after an armed robbery at a friend’s home in Nairobi in the early hours of this morning.” (more)

Carey Eaton was a friend. He grew up here in Kenya, went to Hillcrest and then bounced back to Australia to eventually become the CIO of SEEK. Back in 2011, when the iHub was just one year old, he came ambling into the space and we grabbed a coffee together. Right away we hit it off, as he mixed deep business instincts and experience with a humble and generous spirit. He started telling me of his plans to take on the Kenyan classifieds markets, the same as he and his partners had done in Australia.

While others talked, he built. And build he did, creating an empire of classifieds websites in Kenya and Nigeria that no one could compete with.

In the years ahead, he would build the powerhouse Cheki brand to takeover the Kenyan vehicle classifieds space (and also Nigeria and 8 other countries), through a combination of persistence, intelligence and a deep understanding of what businesses need here. He also had great success with his job classifieds sites BrighterMonday and Jobberman, and then went on to see an acquisition by One Africa Media and his empire blossomed. Through all of this, he was fair and honest, humble and generous, traits sorely lacking in so many business leaders of our day.

Carey Eaton sitting down with startups in Nairobi, passing on his experience and knowledge

All through this he would carve out hours of his time for younger entrepreneurs. He was a perennial presence at PivotEast, not just to see what was next, but to coach some of the new guys. Carey gave 2-3 hours of a day for each group of Savannah Fund startups. In fact, that’s where I last saw and talked to him, last week as he spent a few hours at Pete’s Coffee with the 3 companies currently in the program.

Carey was a friend and peer, someone I could call on to ask questions and think through hard problems with. Today I have that feeling of loss, that untethered feeling that one gets when something you’ve always expected to see and be with you is no longer present.

We’ve lost one of the anchors of the African tech community.

Tributes from others

If anyone else would like to add a remembrance, a tribute, to Carey send it to me and I’d be happy to add it here.

Blog post by Moses Kemibaro
Blog post by Savannah Fund
Article on FT.com
Blog post by Odipa Riaga

“Carey was a wonderful, supportive friend. Kind, gentle and oh so brilliant. that we have been robbed of his presence in our lives is an inconsolable loss.”

– Juliana Rotich, Ushahidi

“I could not sleep well last night knowing that we had lost such an inspiration and caring person in Africa.

Carey Eaton proved that with hard work, passion and big ambition you could build an Africa tech powerhouse. When I arrived moved back to East Africa , 2 years ago- one of the biggest challenges I had was to pick great mentors that could inspire young first time startups in the newly formed Savannah Fund Accelerator. Carey Eaton was quickly someone who not only agreed to give time, but often offered suggestions, he also always challenged widely held assumptions and made the sessions entertaining. Many of the startups’ thinking were radically improved in dimensions from hiring, marketplaces to business strategy as well as practical Africa startup tips. Carey Eaton played many roles in the Africa tech ecosystem, from mentor, board member to fearless executer of his business in Africa- a true role model of what is possible.

My last memory of him was hardly 2 weeks ago visiting his newly decorated Nairobi office where you might think you were walking into Silicon Valley’s best startup pads. Paul Bragiel, visiting partner from Silicon Valley, was amazed at the space. My last lunch with Carey was entertaining with important business lessons- like his expansion of Cheki car marketplace into Lagos’s biggest car lot and how he outwitted, not out only compete-ting his competitors. Carey’s unique brilliance crossed boundaries in Africa and that legacy will be greatly remembered by me and Savannah Fund.

RIP- Carey Eaton.”

– Mbwana Alliy, Savannah Fund

“As with everyone else, I was shocked and numbed to learn of Carey’s untimely and incomprehensible passing. I had spoken to him just the day before seeking advice on what to about a dodgy car purchase (of all things!) at a local dealer – we bantered for a while on consumer rights in Kenya (another sore topic), how One Africa Media was coming along and how my new baby was doing. In many ways it this brief conversation reminds me of a much longer one that we had sharing a 1-hour cab ride to the airport after Pivot East in Uganda last year. After spending two days together judging the latest ideas coming out of East Africa, we were invigorated by what we saw and spent the cab ride reflecting on how amazing it is to have the chance to play a role in building an industry. I learned a ton about his experiences in Australia, how he got Cheki off the ground, and how he raised capital to build One Media Africa. We talked a lot about his family and how he balances his life with frequent trips to see them and spend time with friends in Nanyuki. I remember getting on the plane impressed by not only how genuine, open and funny he was but also that he was a person living his life’s purpose. Not only was he making life better for thousands of people through One Media Africa’s products, but he was enjoying his life, spending time with the people he loved. You could feel that content and happiness in him – perhaps it’s the grace that many others have mentioned. Carey has been a generous mentor to me in my work and always reminds me that it’s certainly not everything. Pivot East is just around the corner and I still have not accepted that I won’t see his big grin there this time.”

– Isis Nyong’o Madison

“Carey was a board member at Kopo Kopo but more importantly he was a friend. He was someone with the guts, the spirit and the brains to guide Kopo Kopo through rough times and to keep Ben and I focused on the grander vision. His loss is personally devastating. I will do everything I can do ensure his spirit will remain and grow.

Carey was just getting started. Now, it’s on us to keep it going.”

– Dylan Higgins, Kopo Kopo

“Carey was one interesting guy – who always had a ready smile and would have a friendly chat for a few minutes (even as he tried to rememebr when we’d last met). When I last saw him at the launch of their new offices in Nairobi, he was very happy, and more so for the team who had worked hard to get the event and place set up.

Cheki is the site for which he’s known and it’s hands down the best web site for car sellers and buyers. When I seriously used it, it was timely – and whenever a new car was posted there, it was easy to find and the directions, and description matched. The Cheki team were responsive, they’d even call to ask how the car sale process was going and offer tips on how to improve the ads for better responses from buyers. Even two years since I last had to buy/sell a car, I’m still hooked to it and I’ve never deactivated my e-mail alert so I can still see the cool way they interact with car buyers & sellers.

I think I once asked him how I could contribute to the free Cheki site as it was so useful. He said they had put up a tiny “Donate via M-pesa” button on the Cheki site due to public demand, but clearly he had a bigger goal in mind than even building the largest online car marketplace site in East or West Africa.

Carey made running a business look effortless. Later he was part of an informal initiative that tried to help other tech entrepreneurs sort out the perennial challenge of accessing vital working capital on friendly terms.

My condolences to his family, and he is missed by many friends.

#RIPCarey

– Limo Taboi, @Bankelele

“I never met Carey Eaton in person but I interacted with him digitally.

With all the noise and hype about Silicon Savannahs, Carey was one of the few who actually walked the talk and built something of substance.

He once told me the success of Cheki was not the website – a website is just a window into a business.

That is the sort of thinking that led him to scale heights where it was not known that there were heights to scale.

The list of visionaries I admire is a short one, and Carey was the head of that list.

A luta continua, good sir.

Rest easy

#RIPCarey”

– Conrad Akunga, Innova

“There are too many things I could say in praise of Carey. More than I could write here. He was a super generous guy. He had a true sense of passion and purpose for technology and Kenya that was simply inspiring and infectious. What Carey accomplished through his technology businesses in Africa over the last 5 years or so is mind blowing. Where many talk, Carey just did it. Pragmatic and effective execution seemed to be his domain. As a friend I knew from my high school days over 20 years ago in Nairobi I will miss him. May he rest in peace.”

– Moses Kemibaro (also see his blog post on Carey)

“I felt horrid when Carey’s mum told me about his untimely death! More mad about why they would rake a way a brilliant, easy going and fun loving Carey. I first knew Carey when I was a kid, my parents and his parents were then fellow leaders in the Nairobi Baptist church of which his dad Michael Eaton was one of the founding pastors. Later, when my husband and I moved to Australia, I would attend his wedding (small and family centered with his friends) and later re-meet in Kenya when I returned before him and he followed later.

He always knew what he wanted to do. I remember asking him about visiting iHub and mLab and everything else that was getting out on ICT in Kenya. He was passionate, easy going and had no airs. The Carey I will miss was someone who always willing to share. He loved his family and always spoke to his kids on skype if he was not with them. I miss him, and am mad at our ruthless Kenyans who won’t work hard but instead steal others thunder. Carey, you will be missed, but I know you even with all you had achieved, you had found rest high above in God. May we even here remember there is life in Christ. God bless.”

– Dr. Monica Kerretts Makau

“I met Carey through an introduction by Erik. At the time we were a bunch of tech entrepreneurs in Nairobi trying to set up an informal network to help each others business weather the storms and make it. Carey had a ready smile and a hunger to know what your business was up to and how he could help.

We talked about our ventures and I remember his insights on Cheki, Brighter Monday and Jobberman. He reminded me of the magic of the web. And how we all keep chasing it and trying to make it. He had successfully navigated the earlier stages of the journey, and a bright future was in store for him and his ventures. His passing has robbed us of a tech leading light in Africa. We have to keep going on. Rest in peace brother. You will be missed.”

– Joshua Wanyama, Pamoja Media

“Carey was the true embodiment described in “The Man in the Arena”. It was such an honour to meet such a smart, energetic, fun guy who made everything look easy.Carey forever will be with those he affected the most, and his family will be in our thoughts and prayers.”

– Kahenya, Able Wireless

“It is with great sadness that I find myself writing here, not only have we lost a brilliant man who was taken too soon, but also a genuine friend to so many of us.

My first encounter with him was in 2012. We had just launched buyrentkenya.com and he dropped me an email asking if I was interested in meeting up. He had a genuine interest in what we were doing and was ever ready to offer advice and guidance. He continued to check in with us as we grew, and when the opportunity arose to join One Africa Media, knowing that Carey was there made the decision very easy.

As a young entrepreneur every conversation with Carey was priceless. You would leave every meeting feeling more focused and confident. He had an innate gift of conveying his immense knowledge and business acumen through his warm and friendly persona.

May you rest in peace Carey. Thank you for all you taught us. For the laughs and the jokes. The advice and the guidance. We miss you and hope we make you proud when we finish the work you started.

#ripcarey”

– Jamie Pujara, BuyRentKenya

“I feel very privileged (and a bit unworthy) of the time I got to spend with Carey in both a professional and personal capacity through the last few years. What an absurdly fantastic father, captain, friend, CEO, brother, colleague, inspiration, human. He was all of these things and more, and my favorite part of Carey was that he was wonderfully frustrating. He would answer my questions before I even had a chance to ask and continually ask me “but why?” when I announced that I was certain I had finally uncovered the real problem. He would come back from business trips with new best friends, new companies, and tales of clever offensive strikes against competitors. He would invest time he clearly didn’t have into me — into all of us. The thing I admired most about Carey was that he was raw and real and made no apologies for who he was, but always admitted his failures. I hope we can all help Carey live on through us.”

– Jess Shorland, Cheki

“I have been too shocked to say anything until now.

Many have talked about Carey’s intelligence, warmth and humility. About his tremendous professional success, and his passion for Kenya and Africa. About the mentorship role that he played for the entire Nairobi tech community. And he was all that for me too, for sure.

In our last conversation, just a few hours before that gun shot, I had told him I wanted to discuss some business items with him. “Go ahead”, he said. “I will when I see you”, I responded.

We were supposed to have dinner that night.

We would have talked about business, yes. And I might have made some big decisions based almost solely on his advice – that’s how much I trusted it. But from our first meeting, it had not really been about work. We had recognized each other: we were of the same tribe. Adventurers, restless travelers, risk takers, creative thinkers. We had found each other.

It’s sometimes hard – impossible even – to talk about my life as a nomad entrepreneur to some of my oldest friends. It is so strange really, hopping from city to city trying to get your business off the ground, away from your family or things that might tether you to the ground. But at the same time it is so exhilarating to be living exactly the life you want, when so many people have compromised on their dreams. Sometimes you are so obscenely happy that you don’t dare tell anyone. Carey and I shared that feeling, and the relief to have found a partner in crime.

We used to talk about what we wanted to do once we’d be able to step aside from our day-to-day, sometimes prosaic and often stressful, empire-building responsibilities. The places we wanted to go, a specific restaurant we wanted to visit together in Italy. And also about love and relationships and all these things that have absolutely nothing to do with work.

He could read my mind – which is why, even if there are many things I was not in a hurry to tell him because I was expecting our friendship to last forever, I think that he already knew.

Carey had a crazy life. His achievements are well known. The tragedies he had to endure, a lot less. Nothing he did was boring or average or pedestrian. Even in death, he surprised us all. And as someone who believes that we should all thrive to make our own life the most exciting story we’ve ever heard, I can certainly say that he succeeded.”

– Marie Lora-Mungai, Buni TV

Carey Eaton at the iHub, a regular

(As much as I’m sad, I’m also angry about his murder. This type of violence only happens because of an endemic corruption in the gov’t (That’s from President Kenyatta to the Nairobi Governor and down), a ridiculously low-paid police force, and a basic “shrug your shoulders” culture of tolerance for crime at all levels. But, this isn’t the time to go deep into that, it’s a time to remember Carey for who he was.)

Where Africa and Technology Collide!