Building a startup in Africa is like a tortoise climbing up a Baobab tree – By Bernard Momanyi Nyagaka

When you view a huge tree from a far, it’s easy to say “that is an easy tree to climb” You only realize that it will take you a whole day getting a grasp of the first branch from the bottom of it.

This is the same thing that happens to startups In Africa who think that signing up blue chip clients (mostly institutions and corporations) is easy. This is mostly a problem for B2B start-upside have been in the same situation myself when I was chasing an institution to be our client, our very first client. We had to hold a million and one meetings before even getting in touch with the public affairs administrator in that institution who handles such matters of outsourcing services. It took us almost 3 months going back and forth with those old folks (the age of my grandmother) who call themselves receptionists who ask you questions that they even have answers to.

They start asking you if you dropped a proposal explaining what your company does (you will see the proposal on the same desk you dropped it 3 weeks ago) They then tell you to send an email to book an appointment with the respective person) they never read emails… this is a point where you as an entrepreneur has to figure out the best way to shorten this process of meeting people who even have no idea what a software is (This is Africa)

How can you manoeuvre this to sell your idea to the people at the top? Next I will explain how I managed to do this to get our first to be client on board…

Check out the beta version of our product here, feel free to give me feedback at [email protected]