I’m increasingly worried about the negative effects of regulation on startups in Africa. Regulation is best done with a light touch, and laid out in a consistent framework. While Africa is celebrated for it’s diversity, that shouldn’t extend to a…
Why build a platform? That’s a question we wrestled with at Jumo when deciding between building a marketplace platform or continuing our successful mobile credit business. We chose to go platform because we believe it allows for better choices for…
One of Charlie Munger’s favorite stories is about the man who only wanted to know where he would die, so he would never go there. Inversion is all about solving a problem backward. Figure out each step from the end…
My friend Mbwana told me this at dinner the other night. We were at his favorite Indian restaurant in Nairobi, and I was lamenting the fact that the mobile lending space was getting crowded with new entrants, all who are…
Since I graduated college, I’ve worked abroad my entire professional career. The countries that I’ve spent time working in include Tanzania, South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and India. Each of these countries differs extensively in the work and personal culture. I…
I realized in the confusion of coming back to South Africa I didn’t post a Mental Model Monday. Here’s a cheat sheet to make up for that. This is from Buster Benson, someone who tweets a lot of great stuff…
The Second Machine Age by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee lays out the problems humans will face as technology rapidly consumes more of our daily lives. The second half of the book is about ‘bounty and spread,’ meaning the rewards and…
I bought two Amazon Echo Dot’s this Christmas and set one of them up last night. It connected to my bluetooth speaker, but didn’t connect to my Amazon Fire Stick. I’m not sure if I haven’t been able to figure…
Math is cool. It’s getting cooler as well. This year I’m giving myself the goal to become fluent in math. What that means is left vague, so that I have options to pursue based on what I enjoy. To start…
End of the year is here and our office is shutting down on Thursday. At the end of each year I run a retrospective with my team on our accomplishments and failures for that year. In a startup, it’s easy…