Category startup

My career has been business facing for the last 10 years.  I’ve been GM of a tech startup, and now I’m a relationship/negotiation person for another startup.  I want to be a product manager, and I’m taking steps now to…

I saw a quote by Naval once that said if you can build and sell you’ll be unstoppable.  I think that’s true. The most successful entrepreneurs in our world right now could do both.  The best CEOs in the world…

One of the harder parts about working in tech in Africa is nailing down your distribution channel. The market is not at the level yet where having a good website and a social media presence will drive enough traffic to…

After I graduated college I moved out to Kenya. That was 9 years ago. My work had taken me to four East African countries in that time, the majority in Tanzania. Most of that time was spent in mobile tech;…

This is a mental model I haven’t started yet.  I bought a book about it yesterday, called the “The Decision Checklist”, and the first three chapters were good.  My wife and I tried it, albeit not journaling but using the…

Taxify, the Estonian competitor to Uber, is making a big push in Africa.  While Uber was here first, and aggressively pushed into multiple countries in Africa, their first mover advantage is being eroded quickly by Taxify.  This is partly due…

I saw a bit of a condescending post on twitter today, which despite its tone, delivered a powerful message.  The picture that sums up the idea is below, and the gist of the tweet below that.   8/ There are…

Shipping is super hard. I  think everyone in tech gets that. A shipped product is the culmination of so many different pieces of work, from legal to engineering.  All of it needs to be completed, often in parallel as different…

 I’m a big fan of how the Heath brothers distilled marketing down into several easy to understand steps in their famous book “Made to Stick”.  Their acronym – SUCCESs – stands for Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, and Story.  According to…

I touched briefly on this yesterday in my post.  There’s a problem that inevitably faces many startups in Africa where a strategic decision must be made whether to work with an MNO or not. For most, that decision is closer to…