Comments on: Startup Governance in Silicon Savannah

By: Mr. Majani

Mr. Majani — Sun, 29 Nov 2015 23:22:02 +0000

Remember there are THREE sides to every story: this side, that side, and the truth.

That being said, I still maintain that the coverage of this issue was overblown in the wrong direction. The only real public facing issue was that there was an unforgivably long outage at Angani. The leadership wrangles are a completely normal step in startup life and we’re wrongly given the most attention.

By: robert yawe

robert yawe — Wed, 25 Nov 2015 07:18:12 +0000

Hi,

Thanks for your factual and un-emotional response to this issue I hope the rest of the startup ecosystem will listen to the message.

regards

By: CertainKenyan

CertainKenyan — Tue, 24 Nov 2015 07:45:57 +0000

Thank you for sharing your perspective on this, much appreciated. Though i don’t you have really addressed the issue at hand. The board might have been right to do what they did. The founders might also lack management skills but was the actions taken by the board the best plan? Why not do things professionally and do a proper hand over? Why not help the co-founders by building their capacity to make a better company? or even why not mentor them to build the next amazon? If indeed the board had good motives to build a sustainable, profitable company then other alternatives would have presented instead of the actions that had followed. I believe it was not a professional board but rather one with a point to prove about who is the boss with a mentality of i have the money and we do with it as a I please.

By: Allan Mukhwana

Allan Mukhwana — Tue, 24 Nov 2015 06:39:59 +0000

I agree it shouldn’t be a race issue.

By: Kamau Wanyoike

Kamau Wanyoike — Tue, 24 Nov 2015 06:39:09 +0000

Recalling a talk by celebrated Nigerian writer Chimamanda Adichie, The Danger of a Single Story, I must admit I briefly fell victim to the narrative you highlight above until I asked my self what’s the other side to this matter. Thanks for setting the record straight. Being involved in tech start-ups “in the Savannah” myself I guess the learning are plenty, and sometimes can be very hard and unforgiving. But we must begin to appreciate the mettle and the capital, human or otherwise, that are the required blocks of building lasting companies. The basic fundamentals of well run, well oiled businesses are constant for any startup to thrive or even scale.

By: Kane

Kane — Tue, 24 Nov 2015 04:23:58 +0000

Eric,
I am sure that you have noted from this experience that there are gaps in knowledge and expectations which most people in the ecosystem would benefit from.
1. There is need to educate entrepreneurs on company law especially around ownership structures, governance and boundaries.
2. The understanding of intellectual property specifically as a separate and transferable asset from the individual needs to be debated to the point of clarification.
3. Entrepreneurs have to be made to face the reality that changes in ownership mean changes in organization structure, culture, in some cases a change in strategy and most definitely a change in power. This requires the key individuals to accept and embrace this Before the new owners settle in. You just cannot eat your cake and have it.
4. Business continuity and succession planning is a requirement for any business however small. The weakest link in that chain was exposed and that was unfortunate.

I wish you all the best, I’m sure Angani and all parties involved will be stronger after this.

By: Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley — Mon, 23 Nov 2015 22:12:26 +0000

I spent many years at a Silicon Valley-based startup that grew in leaps and bounds and I was one of the founders of.

These things happen all the time. As an entrepreneur, you learn from your mistakes and move on. When you start injecting nonexistent racial overtones, which I think was inappropriate, as my fellow commenter ‘kenyan Talker’ does, you waste not only your time but the ecosystem’s.

As Kenyans, we must be wary of wading into gratuitously finger-pointing the ‘other’. An environment where diversity is welcomed has been and will continue to be conducive for success.

An example of such finger-pointing is the xenophobic attacks in South Africa where instead of people focusing on systemic problems, they chose to focus on other Africans present in the country. Even if all these outsiders left, systemic problems would not go away.

Yes, local Kenyans are not investing in tech. Blaming outsiders is a waste of time and I nearly fell into that trap as a black, native Kenyan.

The right approach would be to do the hard work of educating both local entrepreneurs and investors. Or focusing on your startup and making it a shining example of possible outcomes.

It is a well-known fact that over 50% of Silicon Valley technology companies were started by immigrants. This diversity is at the very core of Silicon Valley.

By: Moses Kemibaro

Moses Kemibaro — Mon, 23 Nov 2015 20:07:31 +0000

@erik thanks for shedding some light on what happened at Angani. I have also gotten other insights on the same and like you put it there are two sides to every story when things go pear shaped.

Going forward, my biggest concern for Angani is if they can recover any sort of goodwill after what happened? It could be a long painful road to recovery.

By: Kelvin Mutuma

Kelvin Mutuma — Mon, 23 Nov 2015 14:03:31 +0000

“This didn’t happen, which precipitated even more issues that culminated in the platform failing and taking down client accounts”

What were this issues?

By: kenyan Talker

kenyan Talker — Mon, 23 Nov 2015 13:14:14 +0000

Well put, who said startups don’t fail, they do and they fail a lot.Instead of learning from this failure, some are trying to bring racial topics into this which i agree is very inappropriate.