I quite like this model. Autocatalysis is a model from chemistry, which occurs when a reaction speeds up on its own. Essentially one reaction creates another, which creates another, so on and so forth until at some point it tapers…
This weekend I’m going to the Cape Town Sevens and a summer concert at Kirstenbosch Gardens. I won’t have much time to read, but I plan on getting through Jeremy Epstein’s e-book on blockchains. It’s called “Block Chains in the…
I’m reading Lean Analytics by right now and have found some absolute gems in the book. One of my favorite sections so far is called Empathy, and describes what founders should measure when they are setting up their MVPs. In…
M-Shwari is a digital savings and loan product by Safaricom in Kenya. This is the company that was responsible for building M-Pesa. They were tremendously successful with that payment product, and have started moving out of the P2P (peer to…
I’m starting a new tradition here, after one of my role models – Fred Wilson. He used to write an MBA Monday section for his blog, AVC, which was great. I’ve decided to write about mental models, heuristics, and biases.…
My friend Mbwana told me this at dinner. We were at his favorite Indian restaurant in Nairobi, and I was discussing the fact that the mobile lending space was getting crowded with new entrants, all who are using android apps.…
Dave McClure has this pirate acronym (AARRR) which he uses to help founders remember five important pillars of growth for startups. They are: Acquisition Activation Retention Referral Revenue I’m a big fan of using it and have implemented it at…
In the rest of the world the majority of startups look at the internet as their primary distribution channel. If you build an app, and someone has internet, that person will get your app if they want it. In Africa, where…
Financial regulation in Africa is a hard problem for fintech startups and companies. Regulation is different across the countries in Africa, and different in difficult ways. I think that’s why fintech startups struggle to scale in Africa. They have to…
For hundreds of years banks have been secure from disruption. They’ve maintained economic moats that would make any company jealous, including their access to government liquidity, branch networks, favorable regulation, and credit expertise. Bar some near catastrophic disasters, they’ve managed the…