Conversation Theme: What mature African founders can give back to the ecosystem

Date: 8th Sept, 2022

Time: 12pm WAT

Venue: GMeet

Participants

  1. Miishe Addy
  2. Wossen Ayele
  3. Jason Eisen
  4. Nkechi Oguchi

Catch Up

  1. Miishe is working on a bridge round leading to series A for Jetstream. Hiring people in data and dev ops. It’s been difficult finding talent and managing the currency depreciation issue. She has connected with Meghan and Daniel Yu.
  2. Jason has been focused on closing his round, launching a product, he’s also getting ready for ETH Safari and has found it both challenging and fun.

Impactful support received on their startup journey.

  1. Pariti has received a lot of support through advice on what pit falls to avoid, introductions, reference checks. They’ve also been able to support companies in the earlier stage with advice on how to validate their markets, triage resources which we make available to them, connecting them with people.
  2. Miishe says the most helpful support she’s received on her journey was advice on how to structure equity for employees, how to scale and navigate their market. Dan Yu helped them structure their equity program. Greg Rockson helped them in engaging with regulators. There are transferable lessons across African startups. Other founders have also been helpful in giving specific examples of what to expect and how to navigate things.
  3. Jason has enjoyed so much support from much mature founder that he credits it to his own journey. There’s value in nurturing these relationships with people who have gone ahead that we could learn from. He had tried to start an entrepreneurship community in Nairobi called the Wonder House. He believes that brining founders with similar mindset and better alignment has been more useful in sharing and supporting.
  4. Whenever Wossen is hit with a challenge or a road block he asks himself “who can I reach out to who could have gone through this and would provide useful insight”. When he had issues with throughput for the pitch review product he reached out to COO of Lori.