Sam Gichuru

Had a great meeting meeting with RDO today, at their office in Kigali, discussing how to plan a 2012 strategy on use of ICT in the development space.

This blog will be added much later today, Watch this space

This is more of a diary than my usual blog, covers the fun part I get to have while doing my work – lots of thanks to 1% Club, Akvo, Accenture and the people I bump into on my trips.

Stay: As usual I have this big sabbaticals from blogging, well.. I hope am back, this time am in Amsterdam, tempted to go to Paris, but will see, but for now I have this awesome apartment organised by an amazing lady called Nguyen facing a canal in Amsterdam . (For you Kenyans the G is silent.. Nuyen)

Business: Had a great meeting with guys from Accenture Holland, was inspired by their enthusiasm about the Nailab and for giving me a listening ear, am looking forward to 2012.

Food: On friday we went to a dutch club, that played dutch music, that is after an awesome dinner with the 1% club team, this guys know how to have fun not to mention they got me to ate oysters for the first time.. not doing that again.. with a good shrink I willl forget how it felt sliding down my throat, otherwise I had a great time dinning out with the team and catching up

Fun: So we later went to a dutch club with dutch music.. this is the mugithi version and it was off the hook!… everybody knew the songs and sang along, I must have been the only black dude who was smiling like an idiot.. I was having too much fun, the club was about 600X300 Sqfeet.. making it look like two buses put side by side.. the only problem is.. it never got packed like our old matatus.. people kept coming in.. and by the time we left.. you could only shake your head no space for movement.. took 5 mins to take 5 steps, but that was part of the fun for me, to be in a complete dutch environment, ofcourse Jaap CEO spot a cheetah keeps claiming he never hangs out in such places..

More fun, Peter the CEO/Fonder of AKVO.org suggested a boat ride and after finding a boat.. we needed to look for a captain, ofcourse a few phone-calls and peter got Captain Frodo (yes like the Lord of the Rings), Luuk joined us and his lovely girlfriend. This was probably the best time in Holland, 3 hours in the water and flying our Dutch flag, below are some of the photos taken by our captain the rest will be on my Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/sam.gichuru – now heading to the office, will catch up later on some more blogging… I named this post the “flying dutchman” from Pirates of the Caribbean after spotting an amazing ship docked at the harbour from them days.

Below are photos for the boat ride :

Ghafla! is a local entertainment website containing content and (soon) digital downloads from East Africa. It was founded by two passionate fellas: Mr. Majani and Lyosi Mwedekeli. They are incubated at the Nailab, and one remarkable thing about them is that they won an investment just 3 days after their incubation. The investment valued Ghafla! at a staggering 14 million shillings! We caught up with the Ghafla!Guys for them to share with us exactly how they won their investors over.

Lesson 1: Have some prior work  to show for

Mr. Majani holds the belief that investors don’t like to invest in absolute seed stage startups. “The risk factor is too high,” he states. So what did they do to solve this problem? They had their previous product, KenyanLyrics.com, which they had run for 18 months prior to pitching to investors. Ghafla! is basically a rebranding of KenyanLyrics. This gave the investors reassurance that Team Ghafla! had the vital experience needed to run the company.

Lesson 2: Learn the type of investors you are dealing with

From their experience, the Ghafla!Guys believe that there are two kinds of investors: product investors and people investors.

According to Lyosi, “people investors are those who believe that the idea for a company will keep changing, while the people behind the idea will hardly change over time. This kind of investor will invest after discovering some shining qualities in the founders.”

“Product investors are those who believe that a good product launched at the right time can carry even a bad team through to success. As the old saying goes, ‘you cannot stop an idea whose time has come.’  This kind of investors monitor trends in the market, then look for companies that appear to be riding the waves of change.”

Lyosi and Majani checked up on 88mph(the investment club that put money in them) and found that they were people investors. After finding this out, they then prioritised mingling with the 88mph guys over everything else. At every opportunity, they would invite people over to check out their product, and after that, they would engage in some non-technical banter to lighten the mood. This showed the investors that they were nice guys who are easy to work with.

Lesson 3: Look for investors who have done it before

Prior to meeting with 88mph, Mr. Majani and Lyosi had never put their product in front of investors before. One of the main reasons that attracted them to the 88mph group was that the investors had founded an online sports media startup before, named bold.dk. “The strategy for bold.dk is almost identical to the strategy we want to pursue at Ghafla!” said Mr. Majani, “when you have such a near perfect fit between the investors and the founders, a mutual respect for each other is developed, and there are less differences over the direction your company should take.” This similarity also endeared the investors to Ghafla! as they saw exactly what was needed to be done in that company.

I am hoping to be the first blogger in Kenya to write about Shaker,  Yesterdays winner of Tech Crunch Disrupt definitely deserved it, now imagine turning your facebook, google+ or twitter into a complete virtual hang out, dont get lost on the word “virtual” just finish this article, and you will be blown away.

When you get a Shaker app account, you can join a room, you can see who else is in that room – now forget the yahoo IM room – noo.. a room where you have your own avator so you can actually walk to the bar and order for a drink or go seat next to that cute girl and strike a conversation.

The guys in blue are your friend, the guys in yellow are your friends friends and the guys in grey are people you might have something in common.

The founders deny completely its not a dating site, but from where I am sited, we might need Jimmy Gathu if Kenyans adapt this app the way they adapt everything else.

The only other visible downside is that allot of information is given to strangers, too much private information is shared in the room, this might be a serious violation to privacy to a great extent, stalking etc.

So they have a couple of free accounts rush get one and I will do a follow up blog on the topic, you can follow me on twitter @samgichuru

Go to facebook and search for Shaker

1. Click go to app
2. Allow it access to your information
3. and join a room