Over the last two years, Kenya Airways (KQ) has experienced huge losses that are said to have been caused by growing competition, poor fuel hedging contracts, poor management, reduced travel due to Ebola in West Africa and terrorism threats in Kenya. In 2015, the government loaned KQ Shs 4.2 billion which barely made a dent in the airline’s cash hole, and treasury is now looking…
Read MoreA son of two career parents, Martin Njuguna wonders how he ended up an entrepreneur. In his own words, his parents did not even own a kiosk, they just taught. Inspiration is drawn from different places, and Martin’s clearly came outside of home. Today, he is the force behind Chamasoft, a web-based accounting software for investment clubs, popularly known as Chamas. When I first spoke…
Read MoreIt is now becoming evident that the Chase Bank saga will end with an acquisition, which in my opinion is great for all stakeholders, especially the depositors whose money is still held by the bank. So far, we have 5 declared suitors; KCB (On Citizen TV last evening, their CEO hinted that there would be a deal by end of week), Equity Bank, Centum, CBA…
Read MoreJoel Gascoigne had been using Twitter for about 1.5 years when he realized that his Twitter feed would be more beneficial if he could schedule interesting content he came across online, instead of just sharing it randomly. In 2010, he started developing an app that would do exactly that, and that is how Buffer was born. Buffer has since grown from its first paying user…
Read MoreThe other day, Amazon announced that it would be shipping to Kenya and Nigeria (though I thought it has been shipping to Kenya all along). Even as people celebrated this announcement, I couldn’t help but think of the opportunities there are to sell in the global market, yet we have remained mostly importers. The web has make it possible to import a car from Japan…
Read MoreThe startup phase of a business is often a tough and lonely time for an entrepreneur, especially when one is short of funds. Joining an incubator often fixes many of the difficulties at once: the incubator (may) offer funding or access to potential funders, office space, mentorship, the company of other entrepreneurs and much needed admin support that most entrepreneurs are not equipped to handle…
Read MoreAfter I wrote this post, I had a lively discussion with @Roomthinker in the comments section. He made great points on the importance of formalizing your business before you go out to sell your product/solution to the market. His view was that this is critical if you want to be taken seriously by the corporates or out in the business world and I fully concur with him….
Read MoreWhenever I hold a conversation with a group of techies, the issue of Kenyan corporations stealing ideas from young techies comes up for discussion. We all know how it happens; you come up with an idea that is useful to a big corporation, say a mobile banking platform for a bank, or a payment platform for a mobile service operator. You spend some time building…
Read MoreThe other day, I attended a training forum where the speaker said something that stuck with me. He said that a good majority of us (more than 90%) will die having taken more out of this earth than we will have added. This is something that requires deeper thought in the context of our relationships, our ecosystems and the way we work, but today I…
Read MoreMost young people face the decision of either joining start up/small company or a big corporation when job searching, and rarely have experiential information on the advantages / disadvantages of each. On this post and series, I share my experience working for a start up, the advantages and disadvantages, and what I belief is the right skill set one needs to thrive in a start…
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