Now, lemme be honest: African founders at almost any given stage are the most blunt, ignorant folk to listen to ever! Allow me to introduce myself. I have spent the last two years in the Kenyan startup ecosystem helping institutions among them universities, divisions in some of the biggest embassies in Kenya as well as foundations and non-profits. In all my moving around, frankly speaking, I can attest to engaging over 1000 founders, attending and training in pitch events in the hundreds, and even getting to judge in multiple of them.

Maybe a few things from my honest analysis… There is no such thing as a unique idea. Each idea is seemingly unique to the founder, but when you sit from my perspective, it is all the same thing, repeated over and over again and paraded as ‘the next big thing’ by founders who are very unaware and disconnected from the ecosystem. One time I have had to mediate a disagreement between founders who felt another team stole their idea. Equally, there seems to be this very terrible culture around NDAs (Non-Disclosure Agreements) being dished out almost in every sitting, and it is boring the juggernauts out of me. Again, subject to further explanation.

So, lemme address the elephants in the room:

“Dear Founder, YOU are the main reason why your startup and your company will not succeed, and before you dish out the next NDA, at least give me a listening ear. When was the last time you sat down and genuinely desired to inform yourself on the sector you are in, and the problem you are trying to solve? When was the last time you opened a book, dug deep in to study and analyze the trends and patterns from past failures and successes? When did you compile the data you obtained in an orderly way to perhaps constitute a research paper or proposal?

Founders have been torn apart from the academic side of things and have been a lot more interested in flaunting their technical capacity without taking into keen assessment what knowledge base backs their build. Founders are no longer readers, researchers or writers. They are not, at least in Africa, producers. Rather, they have become scavengers. Sitting and waiting patiently for the next train so they can jump on it. ‘First Movers Advantage’ they call it. I call that mediocrity and a significant sign of the times. Opportunists in the capitalist society as it is.

Does this do us any good? In the short term, it does benefit some of the fastest movers, but to a limited degree. I like looking back at our days as a country post colonialism. The West had cracked the code to convert itself into an industrial machine producing at scale. They built a strong capacity to produce, and a new market was suddenly to emerge in urgent need for infrastructural developments and a whole systemic revamp. There was a demand to be met in a world that did not know they needed what they were about to presented with, but, with a little brainwashing, a new horizon opened up.

And those among our grandparents who were wise enough saw this opportunity, where they could become the doors that open up into the vastness of supply that would in the coming years need to be disseminated across the country for development purposes. This spawned the largest, and perhaps most dependable form of business which was the mediation and brokerage business. Ever since, the market has become too saturated, and even though a reliable one, it is very capital-intensive and the ones who are still eating big from it today began a lot earlier on the right footing.

This is not a very good way to approach enterprising in the 21st Century taking into account the speed at which information moves in this information era. Publically available information is no longer a valuable commodity as it was a few years back. With all the information available out there, the founder has to query themselves on the value of the information they are receiving, and assess it for a level of TRUTH that is significant enough for them to present it to anyone else.

The founder has to educate themselves to build up two things: Their level of CONVICTION and their depth of INSIGHT. Insight is in essence, their signal. The key prompter and drive on the founder to take action. Without insight, the founder is basically playing around and trying their luck. They are a blind man lurking in the dark without their stick; how unfortunate. Without conviction, the founder cannot be trusted to pursue the vision until its completion, and that makes them grossly undesirable. It means, they do not have the adamance to keep pressing even when all factors and odds are against them. They have no belief, and that means they are less probable to make a drastic decision in favor of the startup if things go South.

My baseline: founders need to read. They need to research. They need to bury themselves in knowledge and crave it and seek it out for two main reasons; to build up their insight and conviction, which is what constitutes formidable founders. Any founder who does not have these traits in them will fail, inevitably.

Before I can begin by saying anything, allow myself to be frank. As it stands, my confidence in early-stage startups and founders is sub-zero, at least for a majority of them. This is strongly driven by the current observations of the performative nature of founders and any other individual building in this century.

I have long realized that many, if not all founders, are building because they can be seen, or because they want to be seen. Finding a great founder/founding team has become a search for a needle in a haystack. Basically almost impossible. The oddity is that it is possible to predict how good or bad a founder is based on how they present themselves, but in a world where we are forced to believe value is hidden in data, we have no other alternative but to attempt to read through every website and database and pitchdeck in the hopes of landing upon the finest one.

The loud ones are not necessarily good or bad, based on first impressions. In fact, many of the founders I have worked with ended up being individuals I assessed via their socials before I was compelled enough to listen to them. Part of that proceeds from the fact that when you are dealing with early-stage founders, there is a limiting factor. You are betting, and every founder you say yes or no to is a big damage to your portfolio, or perhaps the best decision yet!

So, how do I intend to find the best founders? Based on my analysis, these are the top signals to look for that signal a great bet, and founders should increasingly gravitate towards these variants and checking these boxes. They come in no particular order except the order that which it landed in my brain.

Assess for Insight

I personally believe that what matters before a founder begins/decides to begin building is the amount of insight they have in the subject matter. And there are multiple factors which can help you tell how insightful a founder is, and some are a lot more basic than we can imagine.

From experience, I have realized the founders I trusted the most are the ones who significantly more knowledgeable than I was in the subject matter. If you claim to have an idea in finance for instance, I would be a lot more comfortable supporting you to build if I saw you have relevant experience in finance, if I saw you sit on panels, present in global research conference and win research awards and grants.

Great builders are not just technical people, they have a unique understanding which they must demonstrate through multiple channels of expressions. Having an idea is not sufficient. Aligning all your big decisions towards a trajectory which serves to position and differentiate you better is more important.

This matters more than anything. You will meet founders who are really skilled, but if I cannot sit and listen to them, try poking all holes in their ‘knowledge gap’ sufficiently and failing each time, then they are not worth my time or resources. It is not just in the abundance of knowledge, but the ability to analyze it very carefully and intricately, relate it with real-life experience, and sum it all down to a particular digest of insight (wisdom) that can become their core.

Assess For Experience

This is another hallmark sign that your founder, your big bet will fail or succeed. Heard of someone who woke up from finance and decided they wanted to build in space technology? Absolutely insane! Someone with a background in International Studies may not be the person to entrust resources to build in Physics. Notice how I did not say it is absolutely impossible, but it does take an insane person to pull that off.

For instance, nobody wants to believe me when I tell them for the first four years in University I pursued an undergrad degree in pharmacy. The next question that ensues however, is what every other founder with irrelevant experience to the sector they are building in should aspire to hear. It is never a question of, ‘Whoahh hold up how can I trust you to tell me the right things?’ It is always a question of, ‘How are you THAT good at what you do man?’

Lived/primary experience is perhaps the most desired, usually encompassing the sum of things a founder has gone through either real-life interactions with a problem in a domain, or being around a subset of people experiencing the problem.

The other form of experience is what I call secondary/told experience. This is garnered by interacting with materials relevant to the problem. However, I think this is where a majority of the founders lie. Not everyone has a firsthand experience in the domain in which they are building, but there has to be a threshold of secondary knowledge one needs to have to begin building. Most of it is driven by interests, and whoever wishes to position themselves this way must effectuate and demonstrate their knowledge, and perhaps demonstrate what unique insight they possess that makes them a preferred builder.

Assess for Skill

Skill refers to the ability to use knowledge, apply principles and consistently follow procedure outlined to achieve an outcome.

A great builder has surmounted enough knowledge, educated themselves to the highest levels of principle, and has also built up their execution capacity. A great bet we want to make is on people, not just because we like people, but because we believe they can execute and deliver.

What are your top picks when it comes to betting on founders? What do you look for?

I always talk about opportunity cost because this is a very crucial and determining thing when it comes to building. Many people I have seen venture into building end up either extremely satisfied and happy; or extremely devastated and worn out. The differences between these two individuals are usually very minute and nearly insignificant at the beginning, but when you narrow down, these small variations end up altering an entire trajectory of the company.

We must not separate the company from the individual, as the company is the outward expression of the individual (visionary) behind it. Their habits, weaknesses and strengths are often rippled out in the way the company is set up; and many, by virtue of this reality are doomed to fail from the very beginning. But I digress…

What is it then about great companies that we do not understand? The key is their direction, and how coincident the direction is to the timing and relevance. A company’s overall success rate can then be hypothesized to be directly proportional to the speed and capacity of execution assuming that direction and timing are held constant. What does this hypothesis mean?

HYPOTHETICAL BREAKDOWN

Any company, considering direction and timing are constant can succeed.

This is perhaps a statement worth ignoring; at your own peril. Yes, given these constants are held constant, building becomes dependent on a few variables which are very much within our effort and reach to change. That is how fast can you build, how many changes can you make; a more ‘quantitative input’ vs ‘quantitative output’ debate. The more you put in, the more you get out from your startup. This is also how we all tend to perceive startups, with a cognitive bias towards the thought that hard work and GRIT are merely sufficient enough to guarantee success, and if only we worked really hard enough, we would be entitled to success.

But that is absolutely misguided because it only happens to a few, if any individuals. The reality is that despite the labor and hard work, and consistency, one could still end up failing. And the bigger problem is that we barely have enough, if any control over those factors.

Consider timing, which dictates relevance. Trying to build a newer model of the steam engine, while perhaps serving as a great show of one’s scientific prowess, is outdated and irrelevant since the technology is a lot more backwards than it is progressive.

Secondly, consider the analogy of the fastest racer, who decides to try to win the race, but runs in the opposite direction. Speed is not always an indicator of progress. Speed is not always an indicator of the necessary changes that need to be done, because it never accounts for direction of the build momentum. (Will share a different article on this a lot later)

HOW TO BUILD RIGHT

If you care about conserving your energy and sparing your mental wellness too much trauma in the future, there is a proven way to mitigate the risks associated with the direction and timing of your startup.

The core secret (not so much so because it is gatekept, but rather because it is almost impossible to arrive at fully and concretely without being decisive) lies in being able to manage the ‘unmanageables’. ‘The ‘unseeables’. The things that are only made available to the ones who seek, and seek out with a lot of discretion.

The only right way to build a company fast and in the right direction, at the right time, is by being present as you build. And this only happens when you interact with consumers in real life. Spend time understanding and profiling the customer. Study their patterns, their behaviors, the spending habits, their average salaries, their age brackets, their socioculturoeconomic dynamics as well as their belief systems. Your job as a founder is not to assume for the customer and build a product that the customer can change or gravitate towards, it is to understand them so well that you build something they will have no problem/difficulty accepting/adopting.

Industry 1.0: The Mechanization Revolution (18th Century)

This was estimated to have taken place roughly from 1760 to 1840, with the core drivers of this revolution being water and steam power. The aftermath was undoubtedly remarkable due to steam-powered engines (improved drastically by James Watt), the spinning jenny and early railroads which shifted production from manual handcrafts to large-scale mechanized factories.

Industry 2.0: The Electrification Revolution (Late 19th Century)

This followed several years after into the entry of the 20th century and was driven by electrical energy by Thomas Eddison, Nikola Tesla (the Messi vs Ronaldo duel of that era) and Michael Faraday (seemingly the sweetheart of Physics) This era brought along benefits; it enabled mass production, assembly lines, and steel manufacturing, with major innovations including but not being limited to widespread electricity use, the internal combustion engine, and Henry Ford’s assembly line.

Industry 3.0: The Digital/Computer Revolution (Late 20th Century)

About a century later, roughly from 1969 to 2000, a new era in the technological world would spring forth, and changing the world in ways the godfathers of the previous eras of transformation could only imagine. Electronics, computing, and information technology became the new norm, with key changes including automated manufacturing processes and introduced early programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and computers becoming the norm. Personal computing and the internet alongside early digital automation would begin on a small scale with Hewlett and Packard battling it out with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates in the production of hardware and software that could sit in the hands of billions of people; to which they more than succeeded. They dominated and conquered, laying a solid foundation for the next era.

Industry 4.0: The Smart/Cyber-Physical Revolution (21st Century)

The latest kid in the block has had such a big part to play in why I want to rant in this article. Connectivity, data and Artificial Intelligence have been at every single person’s mouth since the early 2000’s, with the major changes including the blurring of the lines between the physical and digital worlds through the interconnected systems and real-time data analysis. Every major innovation and ground-breaking research has been around the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), and smart manufacturing; fields which have been dominated by the infrastructure moguls from the more recent era of the digital and computer revolution.

EACCELERATION ERA

Then, a new opportunist came about. In 2005, the first successful startup accelerator, Y Combinator, was put up in.

It was founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts, by Paul Graham, Jessica Livingston, Trevor Blackwell, and Robert Morris before later moving its headquarters to Silicon Valley, and there, an era of rapid growth sprung forth with one mission in mind. To empower young minds to take advantage of the available technologies to rapidly ship out products and solutions.

These spaces were built around a repeatable approach which served to always produce solutions rapidly using resources that were infinite, yet hard to quantify or qualify. They built these ‘accelerators’ and ‘incubators’ around universities seemingly because the US had some of the best academic institutions feeding the largest and most decentralized industrial revolution yet, meaning they could find the best of the best.

The Four Big Bets Behind The Success of Accelerators

1. Top Talent- Most of the best minds from across the continent gravitated towards the US institutions of higher learning. This means the most fit individuals; mentally, physically, socially and even spiritually individuals were all gravitating towards Silicon Valley for both academic and professional pursuits

2. Low-risk- At that time, taking a bet on young builders was seemingly less risky; no family, high risk appetite, lots of time on their hands and still, the promise of a successful career even if their bets failed

3. Strategic positioning- Being positioned in Silicon Valley was not just random; it was strategic. This industry was highly competitive, very capital-laden and also dominated by intensive market research which students from the top institutions could provide

4. The First-Movers Advantage- there was no reputable accelerator before YC.

Over the years, the core thesis lived strong and long after Paul Graham handed over leadership to Sam Altman and later to Gary Tan. But this is what has perhaps caused the cracks.

In the more recent past, YC has become the most AI-centric resource center for startups and this spurred a trail of thought that might lead you into two directions.

1. I AM SOOO WRONG, AND YC IS RIGHT

After all, they are the masters of big bets. So, once again, YC becomes a frontier in the agentic AI era, for the aforementioned reasons, and they become the cornerstone of the new transformative era of complete obliteration of Human-In-The-Loop business model, and they figure out the human-allowance to the global benefit of AI-native companies frontiering the next tranformation, which we cannot understand.

2. I AM SOOOO RIGHT, AND YC IS DAMN WRONG

Perhaps their core thesis has drifted and what made them great is precisely what they are now abandoning. YC was never just a funding vehicle. It was an ideology. A belief that the best use of human ingenuity was to take emerging technology and build something that solves a real human problem, for real human beings, at scale. The operative word there is human.

The four bets that built YC — talent, low risk, strategic positioning, and first-mover advantage — were all in service of one underlying assumption: that people would always be at the center of both the problem and the solution. Founders were solving for humans. Investors were betting on humans. The entire accelerator model was a structured wager on human potential.

But somewhere between Sam Altman leaving to run OpenAI and Gary Tan inheriting the keys, the mission seems to have quietly shifted. The question YC once asked was “what do people need and who can build it?” The question it now seems to ask is “what can AI do and how fast can we deploy it?” That is not a small distinction. That is a complete philosophical inversion.

And here is where it gets uncomfortable for me personally. I am not anti-AI. I am not nostalgic for a world without it. I understand Industry 4.0. I understand what agentic systems are capable of. But an accelerator that once bet on young founders from diverse backgrounds solving diverse problems has increasingly become a conveyor belt for AI-native startups that, in many cases, are not solving for the many — they are optimising for the few who can afford, access, and operate within an AI-first world.

The TikTok block was not rage. It was clarity. Every other post from their account felt less like inspiration for builders and more like a recruitment pipeline for a particular kind of builder — one who speaks the language of tokens, agents, and inference costs. And if you don’t, the content quietly signals that perhaps this era is not for you.

That might be the most dangerous thing a once-inclusive institution can do. Not exclude loudly. But make you feel irrelevant softly.

I could be wrong. In fact, I hope I am. Because the version of YC that launched Airbnb, Dropbox, and Reddit was one that changed what was possible for ordinary people building extraordinary things. If the new version of that institution is genuinely building toward a future where AI compounds human potential rather than replaces it, then I will gladly unblock them, rewatch every video, and write a very different article.

But until I see that — until the demos are less about removing humans from the loop and more about amplifying what humans can do within it — I’ll keep my feed a little quieter. And I’ll keep asking the question that YC itself once made famous: are you building something people actually want?

So today, I want to build around three principles that I think are foundational to understanding this. Not motivational fluff — real, practical shifts in how you think about your work and your responsibility to the people around you.

The first one is this: separate your output from your feelings. Most of us run on what I’d call emotional economics. We check in with ourselves before we do anything. Do I feel motivated today? Do I feel inspired? Do I feel confident enough to start? And then we let that internal weather report decide whether we act. The problem is that feelings are genuinely unstable. If your productivity is anchored to your emotional state, your output is going to fluctuate every time life fluctuates — and life fluctuates constantly.

The highest performers don’t ask “how do I feel today?” They ask “what does the mission require today?” Think about a firefighter. They don’t wait to feel motivated before running into a burning building. A surgeon doesn’t wait to feel inspired before picking up a scalpel. A parent doesn’t hold off on caring for their child until they feel energized. Responsibility comes first. Feelings come second. One of the biggest reframes I’ve had personally is realizing that motivation was never fuel to begin with. Motivation is a bonus. Systems are fuel. Discipline is fuel. Commitment is fuel. Your emotions are the weather. Your mission is the climate. Weather changes every single day. Climate holds.

Here’s a question worth sitting with: if all your motivation disappeared tomorrow, what work would still get done? That answer — honestly answered — reveals your real priorities.

The second principle is one that has shaped leaders, entrepreneurs, athletes, and people of faith for centuries: become a steward, not an owner. Most of us think our gifts belong to us. Our intelligence, our creativity, our leadership ability, our influence — we treat these things as personal property. And the moment we treat them as property, we feel entitled to withhold them. I’m tired. I’m hurt. Nobody appreciates what I do. I’ll get to it eventually. But a steward thinks differently. A steward asks: what is my responsibility to what I’ve been given?

That shift is enormous. If you’ve been entrusted with the ability to teach, to lead, to create, to encourage — those things weren’t given to you just to sit dormant during a hard season. A farmer doesn’t stop watering crops because he’s going through something painful. The crops still need water. And the people around you still need what you carry — your perspective, your service, your creativity — even while you’re in the middle of your own struggle. This doesn’t mean ignoring pain or pretending things are fine. It means refusing to let purpose go to waste.

One of the most seductive but dangerous ideas in modern culture is “focus on yourself until you feel better.” Sometimes that’s right. But often — more often than we admit — the fastest way back to feeling okay is to become useful again.

Which brings me to the third principle: focus on contribution, not condition. Most of us are quietly obsessed with our own condition. Our finances, our stress levels, our anxiety, our setbacks, our problems. And those things are real — I’m not dismissing them. But there’s a strange psychological phenomenon that happens when we turn our full attention inward: our problems get bigger. The more we focus on ourselves, the larger our circumstances loom. And the inverse is also true. The more we focus on contribution, the smaller we become relative to the mission — and somehow, that’s a relief.

Think about the people throughout history who created their most meaningful work during periods of grief, rejection, illness, or uncertainty. Not because suffering made them better, but because they became so consumed by what they could give that there was less room for their own struggles to take over. A teacher can still teach on a bad day. A founder can still serve their customers. A writer can still write. A friend can still pick up the phone and check in. Especially on the hard days. Because here’s the paradox: contribution often becomes the medicine. The act of helping someone else frequently restores the very energy we were convinced we had run out of.

So here’s a practical exercise I’d encourage you to try. Every morning, before you open your inbox or scroll anything, ask yourself one question: what is the smallest valuable thing I can produce today? Not the most impressive. Not the biggest. Just the most useful. Some days that’s one phone call. One page of writing. One workout. One honest conversation. One hour of focused work. Value compounds quietly. Small acts, repeated with consistency, become extraordinary outcomes over time.

The people who understand this don’t wait for the right conditions. They create under any conditions. And that, more than talent or timing or luck, is what separates the ones who build something lasting from the ones who are always getting ready to start.

Your pitch deck is a leave-behind, not the pitch. It’s the memoir, the souvenir that investors fall back into when they need to remember the magical moment of when they encountered the true magician you are. The investor meeting is the pitch. Founders who treat these as the same thing lose deals that should have been won.

Most fundraising advice focuses on the deck — structure, design, the "magic slide." So founders pour energy into the document, not the strategic introductions and how to steer conversations in their favor. Preparing to pitch is barely done, and perhaps that’s because we do not emphasize enough on the influence of psychology on successful pitches.

We undersell the possibility of being able to win people over, thus, we can’t bring ourselves to actually try to win people over.

Founders send the deck early, before any relationship exists. They open meetings by screen-sharing and reading slides aloud. They answer questions by pointing to a slide instead of talking to the person. The deck becomes a crutch, and the investor never really meets the founder.

Investors fund people first, ideas second. A polished deck from a founder who can't hold a room is a weaker signal than a rough deck from someone who communicates with conviction and clarity.

Pro-tip: Before you try to get yourself into any pitch competition, attend a hackathon or meet an angel, conduct thorough due diligence on the investors. Now, knowing their professional background is important, but there’s a lot more. Know their personality, their demeanor. Are they loud and flamboyant and flashy? Are they calm and pensive? Do they have a history that’s similar to yours? Are they risk averse? Are they interested in taking risky bets?

This is the psychology of winning people over. And you perhaps need to learn this, because it will leave a longstanding indelible impression that will see them interested in your pitch, or see you and your pitch deck forgotten the moment you leave the room.

I've sat across from hundreds of founders in Kenya. And one pattern breaks my heart every single time: the founder who spent 18 months building something nobody asked for — because everyone in their life told them it was a great idea. We have a politeness problem in our ecosystem. A sort of tolerance towards anything, as long as it affirms “our people”, however costly that mistake might be.

In Kenya, in Uganda, across much of Africa — we are raised to encourage. To never be the person who rains on someone's parade. It's a beautiful cultural instinct and I genuinely love it. But inside a startup, this glorified culture of tolerance can be and actually is, quietly lethal.

When a first-year founder at USIU-Africa walks up to me with an idea, my job is not to make them feel good. My job is to find out whether anyone, anywhere, will part with real money for what they're building. Those are two completely different conversations. And most of the people around that founder — parents, friends, even well-meaning mentors — are having the first one while thinking it's the second. On this note, I’d highly recommend reading “The Mom Test”

I learned this running HackHouse Africa. We had founders who showed up with nothing but a pitch deck and a room full of people nodding. They felt validated. They went away and built. Six months later, they came back with a product that had zero users — because they'd mistaken social warmth for market signal.

The Mom Test (I say it again for those at the back), a framework by Rob Fitzpatrick, exists precisely for this. The idea is simple: don't ask your mum if she likes your idea. Ask her about her life — her problems, her spending, her habits. The truth leaks out in stories. It never leaks out in compliments.

But here's the Africa-specific layer nobody talks about: even strangers do this. In our markets, people will tell you "yes, I would buy this" because saying no feels rude. It feels like rejecting the person, not the product. So founders collect a hundred enthusiastic "yes"es and launch — and then discover that enthusiasm doesn't convert.

What does convert? Prepayment. Repeated behaviour. Someone telling you the problem unprompted, before you've even named a solution. That's signal. Everything else is kindness.

I now train every founder I work with — all 31 in the current HackHouse cohort — to go find five people who are not their friends and ask them about the problem, not the solution. No pitching. No "would you use this?" Just: tell me about the last time this frustrated you. Tell me what you did. Tell me what it cost you.

If they walk out of those five conversations with receipts, referrals, or rage — they've found something real. If they walk out with compliments, they're back to square one.

The hardest skill to build as an African founder isn't raising capital or writing code. It's learning to distinguish between someone who cares about you and someone who cares about the problem you're solving. One of them will fund your company. The other will clap at your funeral.

So here's the question I'll leave you with: when last did someone who had no reason to be polite tell you the truth about your idea?

They pitch the problem, the market size, the team — and hope investors will fund the discovery phase. But investors aren't paying for your search; they're paying for your proof. A quick way to explain this is to have you sit with this thought for a second: would you buy a stock if you knew it’s value would crash? Even better, would you buy a stock for $100 dollars, even if you didn’t know the inherent value of the stock? How many of us, given the option, would choose to buy a mystery box for $100 when you also have an option to get a similarly valued commodity at the same price of $100?

What we tend to forget is that investors, just like founders, are also human beings. They make decisions involving money too, just the same way we would. They are always optimizing for profit, and thus always seeking out the best bet out of the multitude of options.

The founders who raise on the best terms are the ones who've already answered the hardest questions with their own resources — scrappy, slow, underfunded — and can show the receipts. Build the model first. The money gets easier to find when you need it less.

At 22, I look back at how much I have been able to do with the little much I have had. I say “little much” because sufficiency is relative. On one hand, what i have had compared to where I am and what investments I am pooling in on a daily basis is very little and beneath my given capacity, but very much when I consider myself and my resources in retrospect, and in respect to what others have.

I have a big dream, still the ardent little boy who dared dream. And the weight of what lies ahead is very heavy. It requires that i dedicate a lot more of the resources i obtain to more growth, faster growth and more conscious living. It is the burden of being but a dreamer. The alternative does not amuse or appeal to me as much as the dream. But the dream comes at a cost, and i have to question myself everyday, relinquishing every element of doubt and fear and insufficiency and desire for needless rest. Rest is vital, but vitally relative to the weight of responsibility.

Borne of the realization that not everyone has the courage to dream, and when a majority of them do, it is usually too late. Many spend their lives seeking validation and approval to chase their dreams and pursue the impossible. Many are just casual observers, who are meant to be struck in awe by the courage of the dreamers, living to tell tales of those who stood in the arena to pursue mighty feats. I have to wonder every other morning, what i am, what my pursuit is and what I let myself wonder at.

But the bigger leverage is the youthfulness I carry in my bones. I must long remember that my human body is at the finest state is shall ever be (however much I want to wrestle with that thought, oddly out of guilt). I can recover from fatigue with just enough sleep, with just enough love my emotions are regulated and with just enough exercise and meals and sleep, I have a license to act optimally. And I must because i must not spend my best years a mere observer and victim of life. I am the man in the arena, and my quest is to live in there, dedicating myself for that sole purpose. For myself. Not to be seen, but knowing very well that this defines my fulfillment in life.

What completes you?

Before you give again, before you throw yourself on the line, you need to understand this because it might birth your downfall.

Growing up, I would assume we have all witnessed what I am about to describe. You most probably grew up in a believing household, whatever faith or tradition that might have been. We would sit in those tiny wooden desks on endless occasions, with individuals who were a lot older than ourselves, getting to hear about a lot of things. Our minds were innocent, little to no exposure, but with an eagerness to explore of the world as much as we could. We would be made to know and trust we were safe, and in the safest hands to raise us. To teach us how we might walk, that even in old age, we may not lose our track. And listen did we.

Whenever a fight broke out, you would always receive a chastising, a thorough spanking for tolerating such evil. When you passed by the streets, you would always be encouraged to help those in need, to stand by them, and to do everything in your power to never be in their shoes. We would be encouraged to share lunch with that one forlorn child who seemed to never have a lunch box. It was the right thing to do. To stand in for the weak, and do whatever was necessary to always be on the giving end, not the receiving end. And that, did we embrace.

As I have grown up, I have so many questions to ask, that need answers. And that stems from the innocent realization that while you harbor virtue, and keep it safe, and share it to everyone, not everyone desires the same. I grew up seeing malice, seeing people suffer for consequences of other people’s misgivings. People paying the price by going through the hardships brought upon them by people who were living and walking scott-free, and most of all, painlessly. Amid the immense suffering the victims carried, I saw them with much agony, and yet fulfillment, share the little light, hope, warmth and kindness they had within them.

Here is the oddity about life. There are two types of people you will meet in life. The first category is the givers. These are people who have learnt, lived and can swear by giving. They give, and they tend to be happy even after giving. They never do so grudgingly. The more they give, the happier they get. The more fulfilled they become. Their lives are not full because of what they have, rather because of how much they have given. They tend to be more introspective, more reserved, more… philanthropic. They believe in the ideals of humanity.

The second archetype is that of human beings who find pleasure by agglomeration. Accumulation. Acquisition. They take as much as they can. As much as they need to. They fill their lives with what they can acquire, grasp under their control. They crave control, ownership and authority. It is neither wrong nor right. They attain happiness, which they can quantify by how much they have under their grasp.

I travel down the memory lane, and I wish that this was a lesson I should have learnt a lot earlier. Right on that wooden bench, listening to the people I was assured I could trust and learn from.

And the unfortunate truth is, a lot of us tend towards the first archetype. Which is why perhaps you are reading this piece. I sat down, and I wanted to give a piece of myself to you. You have been giving, but the reality is, you are drained, exhausted. Your giving is meant to be a blessing, but it feels like you have given too much, that you are nothing but a mere skeleton, and even that you would give away if you could see someone benefit from it.

Perhaps leading me to the point: you are filling cups of people who find pleasure in taking maniacally without feeding back into others. You are giving to humans whose pleasure is taking. You are emptying every ounce of yourself into the world, but the world is not becoming a better place, not because you are not giving enough, but because you are giving to the part of the world that can never heal. You are fuelling human greed, human desperation and affirming those who consume without control that they have a place in the world, and that they can still have their way in it. And in so doing, you agitate yourself in your giving over and over again, doing it all the more, just to buy yourself more frustration.

Maybe you don’t need to fill everyone’s cup. Because not every cup that seems empty is actually empty. The world has seen into you, and they know you give selflessly. They have seen you lay everything on the line before, and they will want you to do it again, and again, and again. And each time you succumb to goodness, you choke goodness out and resentment in, and may never live long enough to the benefit of those who actually needed it.

My mind is a storm, I should love this, but I hate it. Perhaps a little less than I make it sound, but I do kinda hate it anyways. Ever sit down and wonder, what am I even doing thinking all these thoughts?

When I was a kid, I remember losing all my stationeries every other week. I would get distracted by literally anything. My mind was always intrigued by anything new, and like a magical attraction spell was cast on me upon the encounter of anything “strange”, “new” and “unfamiliar”

I lived on the farm for the formative years of my life. Goats, cattle, chickens. But a lot deeper than that. Snails. Tortoises. Fishes. Wasps that would sting on occasion. I was stung severally by bees, to the point where I actually believe I must have developed some sort of immunity against the methanoic acid they infuse during their lethal stings. Hunting gazelles and antelopes. Snakes. And even setting up traps for birds.

All these happened while I was attending primary school, so I was not older than 10 years old when I was amassing these experiences. I would grudgingly go to school after bathing myself in the unceremonious “bathing stone” in the front porch of my grandmother’s house, and joyously run back home to continue filling up my mind all with all the oddities of life.

The curiosity rewarded more than it punished me, but it has perhaps become my greatest burden to bear in this fast-paced society that I was never prepared for. The one that comes with expectations in the form of bills to be paid, and responsibilities to be fulfilled. In this world where we laud performance more than we do curiosity, I’m perhaps the greatest victim.

On one end, I wanna keep exploring. Freely. I want to keep discovering. Unraveling. Filling my mind with the inconceivable things, truths. But, I somehow cannot do that freely without being punished greatly for it. Sometimes, I wish it could be rewarded. Celebrated on the daily. But, it’s not as much. And that is fine. Because that is perhaps the curse of carrying a curious mind, the one that never settles

 Here's why the space economy matters for founders who think they have nothing to do with space. The technologies that get developed to solve problems in extreme environments — low gravity, no atmosphere, no infrastructure, limited resources — almost always find civilian applications within 10 to 15 years. GPS came from military and space programs. The internet came from DARPA. The camera on your phone traces back to NASA image sensor research. Right now, the global space economy is projected to reach over $1 trillion by 2040. And Africa is a significant part of that story — not because we're building rockets, but because space infrastructure solves problems that are acutely felt here. Satellite connectivity in rural areas. Precision agriculture through satellite imaging. Climate monitoring for weather-dependent economies. Disaster early warning systems. These are not futuristic. They are being deployed now. Kenyan founders in agritech, connectivity, logistics, and climate — the infrastructure you should be thinking about building on top of is increasingly satellite-based. The companies that understand this early and build products designed for that infrastructure layer are going to have a significant edge. Artemis is not just a moon mission. It's the opening of an economic frontier. And the question for founders in Africa is: are you positioned to build on that frontier, or are you going to watch it from the outside?

The honest answer is uncomfortable. In theory, building a startup is one of the most clarifying things a person can do — it forces you to confront what you know, what you don't, and who you really are under pressure. In that narrow sense, everyone should try it at least once. The experience alone has value independent of the outcome.

But that is a theoretical answer. And we do not live in theory.

The startup world has romanticized the attempt to the point where trying has become conflated with succeeding — and suffering has been rebranded as character building.

The Case for Yes

There is a version of this argument that holds up. Building something from scratch — even if it fails, even if it never leaves a spreadsheet — teaches you things that no job, no course, and no mentor can fully replicate. You learn how to sell before you have anything to sell. You learn how to make decisions with incomplete information. You learn the hard line between what customers say they want and what they actually pay for.

These are not startup skills. They are life skills. And the startup environment is simply one of the most concentrated places to acquire them fast. A first-time founder who fails in eighteen months has compressed a decade of real-world education into less than two years. That is not nothing.

There is also a distributional argument. Most people dramatically underestimate what they are capable of. The structure of traditional employment — salary, hierarchy, defined roles — actively suppresses the discovery of one's own range. A startup, even a failed one, expands your understanding of your own ceiling. The attempt itself is often what converts a person from someone who executes instructions to someone who can generate direction.

The Case for No

But here is where the honesty has to start.

Building a startup is not for everyone — not because people lack intelligence or work ethic, but because the specific combination of traits required is genuinely rare. Startups do not just need people who work hard. They need people who can tolerate prolonged ambiguity without anxiety shutting down their function. People who can recruit others into a vision that does not yet exist. People who can absorb repeated rejection and recalibrate without losing conviction. People who can hold a long-term thesis while making short-term pivots that look like contradictions.

That is a narrow psychological profile. And no amount of motivation can manufacture it in someone for whom it is not there.

The scar tissue of a failed venture is only valuable if you were built to carry it. For others, it is just damage.

There is also the practical reality of cost. In markets like Kenya — and across most of Africa — the opportunity cost of pursuing a startup is not abstract. The person who leaves a stable income to chase a company that fails is not just disappointed. They may be unable to pay rent. They may default on family obligations that are not optional in the cultural context they operate in. They may permanently narrow their options in a job market that does not always reward failed entrepreneurship the way Silicon Valley mythology suggests it does.

Timing matters too. Building a startup requires more than a good idea. It requires the right conditions: some savings, a co-founder or strong support system, a problem that is actually a market, and ideally a moment in your life where failure does not cascade into catastrophe. Most people — most of the time — do not have all four of these simultaneously.

What the Startup World Gets Wrong

The ecosystem has overcorrected. In the attempt to democratize entrepreneurship and expand the founder pool, we have made the attempt feel obligatory. Hackathons, accelerators, pitch competitions — they are good things, but they have created a culture where not trying to build a startup feels like a failure of ambition.

That is a lie. Some people's highest-leverage contribution to the world is being an extraordinary operator inside someone else's company. Some people create more value as engineers, researchers, teachers, or clinicians than they ever would as founders. Pressuring those people into startup attempts does not unlock their potential. It misallocates it.

The best founders are not people who tried because it seemed like the thing to do. They are people who could not not do it — people for whom the alternative felt like a slow suffocation. That internal compulsion is not something you can manufacture through encouragement. It is either present or it is not.

The Honest Recommendation

If you are sitting with genuine conviction about a problem — not an idea, a problem — and you have the conditions that make the attempt survivable, try it. Do not wait for certainty. It will not come. But go in with clear eyes about what it actually costs, not what the pitch deck version of the story makes it look like.

If you are considering it because the culture around you makes it feel like the obvious move, or because you have a vague sense that you should be doing something more — pause. That feeling is real and worth taking seriously, but it does not automatically point to a startup. It might point to a career change, a side project, a creative practice, or simply a more ambitious version of the work you are already doing.

Everyone should think like a founder — with ownership, urgency, and a bias for making things happen. Not everyone should be one.

The distinction matters.

A startup, a not-for-profit, an investment firm... This is the new bare minimum. For a long while, Africa has been consuming, and the culture sits so deeply rooted within us that we have almost entirely lost touch with the ability to produce things. For a minute, we may be tempted to think that building is a reserve for the Western-ers and the few “gods” walking amongst us. Attempting to build seems to be an ordeal that we dare not venture into.

This of course comes from a culture of entire dependency, where in the past we have traded the natural resources, we had in exchange for opportunities. We embraced consuming since it was conventionally cheaper and less involving, but in so doing, we embraced a culture we couldn’t sustain, which is why a majority, if not all African countries are wallowing in debts larger than our economies can sustain.

The shifting dynamicity of society also dictates that the rest of the world which we entirely depended on for a majority of the things is also struggling to stay afloat, and as such, we have neither enough opportunities created nor enough products for us to consume steadily. This poses both a risk and an opportunity.

The risk being that continued consumption without concern for the existing limits in production will leave us helpless, but taking action early on to cater for our ever-increasing needs is the real opportunity. Which leads us to production, an Africa where every hand is on the plough that before settling for an opportunity, even after being the best and the most qualified, we go the extra mile to build something that could deliver more value to the world around us, and have Africa beginning to supply to the rest of the world.

Lots of founders trying to build startups reach out to me because I seemingly (and perhaps rightly assumed so) have connections and contacts which they can use to their advantage for fundraising to build their startups. Many forward (poorly done) word documents and PowerPoint presentations on their ideas, concept notes and partnership proposals on how they could change the world, given the opportunity.

The air is filled with this energy that we cannot seem to get rid of. The Kenyan startup ecosystem has seemingly stollen the show will relentlessly remain as the top destination for VC support for the next decade or so. This is after having as few as 5 companies raising $10,000,000 to several mega startups raising funds in the hundreds of millions.

Kenya’s Venture Capital funding surpassed the $10,000,000 mark between 2010 and 2014, a period which marked the maturation of the startup ecosystem in Kenya. During this four-year period, there were 23 deals or so valued between $5 million and $10 million, and only seven deals exceeding $10 million. Last year alone, three startups (d.light, Sun King and M-KOPA) raised over $600 million cumulatively, almost 60x the amounts raised by the top startups in the maturation phases of 2010-1014.

However, the major assumption many early stage founder have is that these startups raising money sold an idea first. That investors in Africa are moved by words, just as deals are made in the US. The unfortunate reality is that deal flow is as rare as capital/funding, and therefore, getting a good investment requires evidence that the startup is a good deal. We must realize that while the startups we are building are definitive of the future, and without which we may not grow beyond the plateau phase of economic growth, we also compete with infinitely investment-worthy assets which tend to be more attractive and profitable (thinner margins in comparison to what startups could yield but nonetheless…)

The one question that early-stage founders must strive to answer is: what actual value am I selling? Forget the plastic confidence that comes with chest-thumping to affirm, “I am profitable, believe me. I am going to show you”. What do you have that is a rare commodity. You are lobbying your value against that of precious metals, land and other investable assets. What do you have that makes you worth investing in?

In pursuit of growth, there are many values which when adopted, contribute greatly to the success of any individuals. In fact, the impact of this one attribute defines the direction of not just individuals, but also the biggest companies known to man today.

Examining some of the world’s most formidable entrepreneurs and their startups/enterprises determined a critical skill they all possessed: the ability to think and to persist on a trail of thought, even when they were the only ones who believed in it. Biographies of entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs reveal that he stubbornly insisted on a thought, even when in the very least they were the most irrational people.

Contrarian thinking has fueled more innovation than conformative, conservative or reserved thinking. The ability to explore the depths of reality and build something beyond what we already see, know or have already imagined is ingrained in the depths of imagination. If imagination is limited to what we know and are very familiar with, we cannot invent or innovate.

So, perhaps it is time indeed to drop down the our deeply rooted fear for the unknown because if we must really build and do so with impact, creating newer frameworks, policies, companies and products; we must be willing to think against the norm, and in so doing, do we discover a new way of life; the NEW NORMAL

There’s an easy analogy to explain this concept. When your car breaks down, you won’t take it to the doctor but the mechanic. No matter how experienced the chef is, they are your worst pilot if they have never flown a plane before. It’s the same thing with startups.

There is always a right person for the job, as well as the right job for someone. While problems are identifiable by different individuals, it does not necessarily qualify them to be the person to solve them. Many may attempt due to the first mover’s advantage, but even then, if there’s a specific set of values, traits and experience you lack, the first mover’s advantage is barely enough to jolt you to startup success.

I tried to simplify this concept in one line: founder-problem fit is a summation of utility data, skillsets and experience amassed over time before landing on the problem. While some things can be taught, we may not learn enough of life from structured classes than we could have potentially learnt through experience. Skills can be taught, but it is a bigger advantage to solve a problem you are already equipped for, than having to learn on the go.

Many will argue against the thought, but it remains apparent that while their objections are justified, they only stand when argued for a specific set of individuals, the outliers.