Building an Afrikan Startup - EP1

This question has been gnawing at me for a while: how can we build African startups that stand the test of time? Can we shrink the number of ventures that fizzle out after a promising launch? What can we do differently in this unique market? These burning questions are why I'm launching this newsletter – to share insights that I believe are crucial for understanding the African market before you launch your next game-changing startup.

Something relatable (Maybe a Little Too Relatable)

As a serial entrepreneur (twice officially, but maybe closer to ten times if you count the "ideas" phase), I started my journey back in 2017, during my freshman year of college. Back then, support for startups was scarce. Heck, I barely even grasped what a startup truly was. All I knew was that I craved building something incredible, something epic, something that would catapult me to billionaire status in no time🙄. Sharing this story is important because it highlights why this newsletter matters to me and the next generation of African founders. It's a reminder that success rarely follows a straight line, and the lessons learned from failures are just as valuable, if not more so, than the victories.

Phindor

In 2018, I launched Getlisa , a platform, then, designed to help students unearth sweet school deals online. My ambitious dream was to transform it into the biggest online marketplace for products and services across Africa. We launched strong, with hundreds of vendors, but reality hit us like a ton of bricks a few months in. Turns out, a ton of sellers doesn't always mean a ton of buyers (who knew? ☠️).

See, I thought this revolutionary product would have people throwing money at us. We even had a cool slogan: "Phindor - Find it all!" It sounded amazing, life-changing even.

What we missed was that the African market had distinct challenges, and a one-size-fits-all approach wouldn't fly.

Here's the deal: my biggest mistakes? Unrealistic expectations and being totally blind to the market. Let's be real, I was fanboying over Mark Zuckerberg, picturing myself building a platform so loved I wouldn't be able to handle it. Here, reality did me the thing.

Ready to raise and scale - our revolutionary product!

Turns out, marketing an e-commerce platform takes some serious cash or a market that's already super hyped. In our case, the market needed some convincing and soothing, hapa na pale... and that, of course, costs money. So, my friend and I, with zero knowledge of VC/Angel funding (because, hello, clueless! The next Zuckerberg🤌🏾), went the crowdfunding route.

Three months later, guess how much we raised? A whopping 1000 shillings. That's when I realized I was way closer to the cliff edge than I thought. It also exposed to me of how either poor or unsupportive my network was. I won't say which.

We even tried leveraging our influencer friends for a little push, but all we got were doubts and worries. "What if someone buys something faulty? It'll damage my reputation!" or "Are you sure this even works?" Needless to say, that was our last shot. We had no more bullets to shoot.

By month nine, selling "Phindor" was getting frustrating AF. We ultimately shut down shop later in 2019.

Rebuilding, but with better Knowledge.

The Phindor experience hammered home the vastness of my ignorance about building startups and how unrealistic expectations can lead to spectacular failure. I firmly believe we could have navigated things differently, and Phindor might even be a competitor to Jumia Group or Jiji Kenya today.

Looking back, the experience was a crash course in what NOT to do when building a startup. It showed me just how much I didn't know. But guess what? It also showed me the incredible potential of the African market.

Now, I'm rebuilding Phindor as something entirely new. Since ditching my corporate job in 2022, I've been deeply researching the African market. And let me tell you, it's been fascinating to discover that many solutions pitched by founders as the answer to African business and consumer woes often miss the mark.

For instance, I met a woman who owned two highly-rated business management platforms in Nairobi, yet she wasn't using either. Instead, she relied on WhatsApp for record-keeping – a method that, according to her, only highlighted the fact that while these apps were powerful, they ultimately added to her workload. In her words "All of them are good, especially in generating reports, but sasa they add to the work I have to do".

This anecdote perfectly illustrates the importance of truly understanding the market you're entering. African consumers and businesses have unique needs and preferences that can't be simply copied from Western models. It's about building solutions that solve real problems, not just problems that look good on a pitch deck.

That's why I'm starting this newsletter. I want to share the knowledge I've gained from my experiences and those of other founders and hopefully help future founders avoid some major fails when building startups in Africa. It takes hard work, grit, and a real desire to understand and solve problems.

Here's to building something dope together!🍻

pheneas@phindor.com