You failing is part of your investors business model. They've moved on, they no longer care.
This sounds like a negative statement, but it actually has extremely positive repercussion: you no longer have to worry about them AND you have a few months to do whatever you want. Anything. Have fun and enjoy it. Maybe build something cool, completely new, something that you want to see exist in the world. And you never know, just letting go of the burden, accepting that what's done is done, and enjoying creating something for fun may actually lead to something.
Fantastic story. I would love to hear some first-hand accounts / comments from any Kenyans on HN. Is there anyone here currently in Kenya and involved in startups?
I'm Kenyan. The scene mostly revolves around the incubators in Nairobi, the iHub, Nailabs and the 88mph Garage being the most vibrant. The iHub is closer to a typical hackerspace than the others, which are more concerned with startups actively seeking investment than meetups and such. I'd wager that half of all Kenyan startups are building mobile apps of some sort. The stack is quite varied. SMS is king here, but J2ME, Symbian and Android are also fairly popular. Some of the more interesting startups I've interacted with:
There are many more, but those are the ones that immediately came to mind.
There's something of a running joke that every second startup is an M-something, presumably due to the runaway success of mpesa, a mobile money service by one of the telcos, Safaricom.
Some more established players, not startups in any sense, are Craft Silicon and Seven Seas technologies.
Kenyan startup guy here. In three years, my company has developed two top Kenyan websites. In 2009, we developed the largest lyrics site in Kenya, and now we run the largest blog in Kenya: http://ghafla.co.ke with close to 500,000 monthly uniques.
On consumer-facing startups, which are my expertise, I can say that the problems currently facing Kenyans online are basic content issues(online news, classifieds, downloads etc). If you stick to the basics, it's really easy to get some traction going.
Revenue-wise, HNers would love Kenya. The absolute best internet revenue model in Kenya is to charge your users one-time monthly subscriptions. Paid classifieds like cheki.co.ke and eatout.co.ke are making hundreds of thousands of dollars annually with this model. Ad-based revenue follows an extreme power-law. The digital budgets flow mainly to Google and Facebook. E-commerce is there, mainly in the tourism and daily deals spaces. Skimming commissions off the top of transactions is not very lucrative right now, haven't seen any success stories. All in all, the online space is more of a land-grab right now, than a gold-rush.
On acquisitions, there are VERY few. Most big companies would rather partner or compete. Most acquisitions are done by private equity companies or high net-worth individuals, and they only buy startups that absolutely kill it on each and every front(user growth, revenue growth, profit growth, brand awareness etc).
PS: My company shares the same investors with the M-Farm team.
I'm not Kenyan, but I've been based in East Africa for the last two years and have been living in Nairobi and running a startup there since March. Happy to answer questions. (I'll be on and offline today because of the holdiay)
It's fantastic to see Sue and M-Farm getting this kind of exposure.
I've used these stencils before. I would not recommend them. The icon stencils are cut out at the exact size of the icons, but when you're using a stencil you often have to make the stencil larger than the icon you're trying to draw. The result of tracing them often looks like you did a -2px stroke on whatever icon you're illustrating. Also for finer detailed icons, you often can't fit a pencil into the groove of the stencil, even with the provided pencil that comes with it. The lead of the pencil is thicker than the groove in the stencil. The edges of the stencil are often quite sharp as well, and will cut the tips off of felt pens (and create grooves in pencil lead which will cause it to break). Honestly the only thing I now use my stencil for is as a dull knife to open packages (you can easily cut paper, foam, cardboard, or tape with the sides of these things, they aren't sanded down at all).
Any thoughts on how to potentially apply these ideas to writing actual code?
For instance: imagine if there was an IDE for python that had the 'look & feel' of FreeMaps. Then, perhaps, you would effectively gain many of the same benefits applied directly to writing the program (ie: very dense; being able to see forest and the trees).
Agreed. I've been looking at ways of communicating complex science-based or data-driven insights in compelling ways, and I think easily digestible narratives, like this one, are a great way to get broad range of people interested. I would love to ask you some questions and get your advice on how to better do this. If you're interested, please drop me an email: jake at insightdatascience.com.
Here's a helpful mental hack that I've found has increased my grit as an entrepreneur:
I am very optimistic that I will be successful in the long term, but very pessimistic about the odds that the immediate next step will come easily or go well. This way, when a step proves difficult (and it very often does), it's not unexpected, making easier to keep moving forward without getting discouraged.
plessthanpoint5, I'm in the process of doing some research on techniques for learning software development online. Any chance I could email you with some questions? I'm at jake@noteleaf.com.
The Mountain View Hacker House has a room opening up August 15th, if you're interested (or know someone interested) please contact jake@noteleaf.com. Thanks!
You're absolutely right, being in silicon valley does not, by itself, equal success. There are other factors that are far more important and there is no silver bullet. That's why there are tons of examples of great startups all over the world, including ones based right in my hometown.
So, if you personally have no desire to move here and are happy with your startup right where it is, then you should stay where you are.
All that being said, if deep down you've got the feeling that the valley might be the place for you, you see that you're not moving forward on your startup as fast as you'd like, or you haven't yet found the right people to work with, then it's a move I highly recommend.
This sounds like a negative statement, but it actually has extremely positive repercussion: you no longer have to worry about them AND you have a few months to do whatever you want. Anything. Have fun and enjoy it. Maybe build something cool, completely new, something that you want to see exist in the world. And you never know, just letting go of the burden, accepting that what's done is done, and enjoying creating something for fun may actually lead to something.
See: http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~kilcup/262/feynman.html