Latest / Voices and Visions / Episode 10. Building Companies From Zero in East Africa | Melalite Ayenew

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Episode 10. Building Companies From Zero in East Africa | Melalite Ayenew · Voices and Visions

0:01
SPEAKER_01: This is Voices and Visions.
0:03
SPEAKER_01: Kenya is truly the land of manifestations.
0:06
SPEAKER_00: A podcast profiling Africa's business polls through the people shaping it.
0:10
SPEAKER_00: I don't think Kenya gets enough credit for how well it manages relationships.
0:16
SPEAKER_01: Recorded in Nairobi, this season looks beyond headlines and funding rounds to understand how capital moves, how trust is built.
0:22
SPEAKER_01: As much as I have a lot of respect for what Starbucks has done for the coffee community in the world, they wouldn't survive here.
0:27
SPEAKER_01: And how companies scale in real conditions.
0:33
SPEAKER_01: This podcast is produced by Tutopasa Agency.
0:36
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Silicon Savannah.
0:42
SPEAKER_01: Today I am joined by Melalitz INL, an early stage technology investor.
0:46
SPEAKER_01: She's ex-Bain, Antler, and Oracle, and we're speaking about the earliest stages of founding a company in Kenya.
0:52
SPEAKER_01: The AI hype versus infrastructure innovation is something we're also going to be talking about.
0:56
SPEAKER_01: And let's also discuss the startup culture.
1:00
SPEAKER_01: So I'm really glad you're here.
1:01
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for coming.
1:02
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for having me here.
1:04
SPEAKER_01: And I'm actually really excited to talk to you because you've had quite a career already.
1:09
SPEAKER_01: You just told me you're Ethiopian, living in Nairobi.
1:13
SPEAKER_01: Maybe actually let's start with that.
1:15
SPEAKER_01: How is it to be in Nairobi?
1:18
SPEAKER_00: It's very exciting.
1:19
SPEAKER_00: Um I uh moved here um and back into the back into the East African space um in 2019 with the purpose of um opening Antler's first office here in East Africa.
1:33
SPEAKER_00: So we opened that with a team in 2019, and uh it was very um it was an exciting time to be in this part of you know the African continent because um uh the startup, the PC ecosystem was taking off, which at the time we thought there were some signs of it, but in retrospect, that was really a key time to be entering.
1:50
SPEAKER_00: Um because then came 2021, 2022, when the founding space went completely crazy um in here in Kenya as well as the rest of the world.
1:59
SPEAKER_00: And since then we have seen a little bit of contraction, but it was a very opposite time to be to be back.
2:04
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of um innovation and positivism um coming out of Nairobi, so it's it's very nice and exciting to be a part of it.
2:12
SPEAKER_01: But you started in 2019, which is interesting because that's when COVID hit.
2:16
SPEAKER_01: So you'd say that might have not been, I mean, in Europe, that was not the best time to do fundraising or start a business, but that was still a moment here when Yeah, um it was.
2:29
SPEAKER_00: Um it it's it wasn't that it wasn't challenging.
2:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
2:32
SPEAKER_00: Um, but um we worked through it.
2:35
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I landed here six months later, yeah, you know, the country and the world shut down.
2:40
SPEAKER_00: Um when the world was saying that uh remote working was possible, one of the first realizations that we had running the entrepreneurial building program is that we couldn't do it remotely because founding a company is a very in-person, um, very intensive um kind of process.
2:57
SPEAKER_00: And so very quickly we tried to figure out how do we um respect you know COVID distances um while also enabling people to execute in a high pressure environment where they can you know create startups.
3:09
SPEAKER_00: Um How did you do that?
3:12
SPEAKER_00: Well, uh earlier we were talking about how um Nairobi has space.
3:16
SPEAKER_01: Oh no.
3:18
SPEAKER_00: I love it.
3:19
SPEAKER_00: And so I mean we're in a city, but at the same time, um, we basically went to a restaurant that had a huge garden.
3:24
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
3:25
SPEAKER_00: Um and we started having people spaced out sitting um in an outdoor space and having discussions about what they're going to build and and running the program out of an outdoors location with social distancing, which is a luxury that you have in Nairobi.
3:38
SPEAKER_00: Maybe London doesn't have or New York doesn't have.
3:41
SPEAKER_00: Um, but here we could.
3:42
SPEAKER_00: Um that's amazing.
3:43
SPEAKER_01: I remember we couldn't do that.
3:45
SPEAKER_01: I was at some point we were just locked in our houses for almost months, and you were allowed to go outside for like an hour or two a day to walk or walk your dog.
3:53
SPEAKER_01: If you'd have a dog, you'd be lucky because you were allowed outside way more.
3:56
SPEAKER_01: Um, but I remember writing my my bachelor's thesis and my master's thesis in lockdown and really not seeing enough people.
4:04
SPEAKER_01: And then it was also winter, which you guys don't really have here, I think.
4:08
SPEAKER_01: So being able to build a company from a restaurant, I'm a little jealous.
4:12
SPEAKER_00: Restaurant, garden.
4:13
SPEAKER_00: Restaurant garden, even which is even better.
4:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
4:17
SPEAKER_00: No, I I think um uh you know, a little bit uh uh you know digressing from the the VC space, but one of the things COVID did um for Kenya, yeah, at least is I mean, we I I'm into hiking and rock climbing and so on.
4:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and so we were doing that for the first six months when we arrived.
4:31
SPEAKER_00: And then when COVID happened, people started hiking more because that was the only thing that you could do.
4:34
SPEAKER_00: You couldn't go to restaurants, you couldn't go to bars.
4:37
SPEAKER_00: Even restaurants that had gardens had shut down, technically.
4:40
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they could deliver, but they weren't um actively hosting customers.
4:43
SPEAKER_00: So um we started seeing a lot more people um on the hiking trails, and that culture has remained since uh since COVID.
4:51
SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot more outdoor.
4:53
SPEAKER_00: It's more active lifestyle that came with it.
4:55
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
4:55
SPEAKER_01: That's interesting.
4:56
SPEAKER_01: Um I think that's something we also have in Europe, that state, because you could only do that.
5:01
SPEAKER_01: You can go to the gym, you can do anything.
5:02
SPEAKER_01: So a lot of people started running.
5:04
SPEAKER_01: Fortunately, now it's been uh turned into high rocks.
5:07
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you heard about that.
5:08
SPEAKER_00: There was uh competition here.
5:09
SPEAKER_00: They have one here.
5:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
5:11
SPEAKER_00: Last weekend I heard about it.
5:12
SPEAKER_00: I I don't know what it is exactly, but I know somebody was participating in it.
5:15
SPEAKER_01: It's CrossFit with running, I think.
5:16
SPEAKER_01: But it's uh something I don't really do.
5:18
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I could do hiking.
5:20
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, maybe next year when I come back, I could think about it.
5:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
5:24
SPEAKER_01: But tell me, um, so before you you uh worked at Antler, you were at Bain and at Oracle, right?
5:29
SPEAKER_01: Correct.
5:30
SPEAKER_01: But you were not an investor back then.
5:32
SPEAKER_00: No.
5:32
SPEAKER_01: You were in a consultant?
5:34
SPEAKER_00: Or I uh yeah yes, at both both places I was a consultant.
5:37
SPEAKER_00: Okay, in tech?
5:38
SPEAKER_00: Uh not at Bain.
5:40
SPEAKER_00: Um at Bain, uh it was, you know, the traditional management consulting.
5:43
SPEAKER_00: In uh Oracle, it was tech strategy consulting.
5:45
SPEAKER_00: So it was management consulting performance on tech.
5:48
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
5:48
SPEAKER_01: So then what what happened?
5:50
SPEAKER_01: You received a call, like, hey, do you want to be an investor?
5:52
SPEAKER_00: Or how did how did that work?
5:54
SPEAKER_00: So uh maybe you know, backtracking a little bit, um actually my the origin of my career is in tech.
6:00
SPEAKER_00: I started computer science for my bachelor's and masters in the US, and I worked in the tech space in the US for a good number of years before I realized that actually I don't understand how business decisions are made.
6:13
SPEAKER_00: And already I could see how some of that was affecting tech.
6:16
SPEAKER_00: I was you know becoming curious about tech startups and I didn't know where to get started.
6:20
SPEAKER_00: I knew how to build products, but I didn't know how to think about you know a business case or you know, and so um I ended up going to NCAD um to do an MBA, and it was by way of that that I ended up at Bain.
6:33
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
6:34
SPEAKER_00: Um, which was you know um kind of a natural transition.
6:36
SPEAKER_01: It's nice, uh, the MBAs, they a lot of them go into consulting, and then hopefully at some point they figure out they should do something more.
6:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
6:42
SPEAKER_00: Uh well in my case, yeah.
6:44
SPEAKER_00: I thought I went into uh NCAD thinking I would not do management consulting, and then it was kind of funny that I came out of it um doing that.
6:50
SPEAKER_00: One of the things INCAD allowed me also was to transition from you know the US into a different ecosystem.
6:56
SPEAKER_00: And I ended up with Bain.
6:57
SPEAKER_00: I was based out of Johannesburg in South Africa, so that was kind of a way of coming back to the continent.
7:02
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
7:03
SPEAKER_00: Um, I was doing a lot of organization design.
7:06
SPEAKER_00: Um uh I think that would be the I would say the majority of my projects.
7:11
SPEAKER_00: How do we describe organization design?
7:14
SPEAKER_00: Um it would be thinking about how do you make um the company more effective by uh rethinking about how teams are um sometimes maybe you're trimming you know um the the organization, you know, people, you know, uh and um sometimes you can work on cost effectiveness and then it was it would be um um other optimizations.
7:38
SPEAKER_00: So um it it was very different from what I did and um uh and interesting, but I I like tech and I didn't leave tech because I didn't want to do it.
7:50
SPEAKER_00: You just left because you wanted to do a great up MBA and then get exposed and be able to go to Joe Burg?
7:54
SPEAKER_00: I get it.
7:55
SPEAKER_00: I get it.
7:56
SPEAKER_00: Um but yeah, so so Oracle was a great way of marrying uh, you know, kind of business school bane and where I came from, which was tech, because it ended up being tech strategy.
8:06
SPEAKER_00: And what I did with Oracle was advising uh some of the largest corporations across Africa um on how to um think about the tech strategy in alignment with um their you know business strategy, you know whatever they would put out in their you know, an reports and so on.
8:22
SPEAKER_00: Um and so that was very interesting, and that actually directly translates to what venture building would be.
8:30
SPEAKER_00: So instead of looking at it at the interest enterprise scale, I would be looking at it um at a very early stage.
8:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
8:37
SPEAKER_00: And so that was the stepping stone.
8:39
SPEAKER_00: Um, but to be honest, uh all of these transitions make a lot more sense now when I'm looking at them backwards than they did at the time.
8:46
SPEAKER_00: When I was yeah, so I was just kind of looking at okay, what looks next and you know what opportunities are open.
8:52
SPEAKER_00: But I had been traveling in and out of Kenya for personal and work reasons between 2013 onwards.
8:58
SPEAKER_00: Um I had seen its transformation around um 2016.
9:02
SPEAKER_00: I was becoming in every quarter or every two months or so, and yeah, um, Kenya was growing at a phenomenal pace.
9:08
SPEAKER_00: I would see some neighborhoods that you know I was seeing.
9:10
SPEAKER_00: Starting to just rise up.
9:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was it was just you know, you like entire blocks would be completely transformed because we're sitting in today.
9:17
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
9:17
SPEAKER_00: Probably I mean the expressway, a lot of things just pop up.
9:21
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so uh it definitely was an exciting, I knew it was an exciting place uh to be moving into.
9:28
SPEAKER_00: I mean, but then being very close to it or in it, it's it's been even it's delivered even more excitement than I anticipated.
9:35
SPEAKER_01: But tell me more about the cultural differences then between an Ethiopian and a Kenyan when you're actually on the ground working with investors and founders and um It's an Ethiopian and a Kenyan.
9:47
SPEAKER_00: Um so uh the Ethiopian perspective towards Kenyans be nice to them.
9:55
SPEAKER_00: I have to work with them.
9:57
SPEAKER_00: It's very easy to be nice to them because it's our favorite neighbor.
9:59
SPEAKER_00: Okay, um it's peace-loving, um, coexisting with every one kind of neighbor.
10:04
SPEAKER_00: Um whereas uh you know Ethiopia has had some you know frictional existence in the ecosystem.
10:10
SPEAKER_00: Um so the you know, uh very good uh neighbors.
10:13
SPEAKER_00: Um in terms of how uh the society or cultures are organized, Ethiopia tends to lead with um government-driven growth.
10:24
SPEAKER_00: So the government top-down.
10:27
SPEAKER_00: So if growth is driven by, you know, if the government decides that infrastructure is going to be built.
10:32
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
10:32
SPEAKER_00: Um and so you'll see a lot of it's very funny, you know, a lot of Kenyans will look at Ethiopia and say, Oh, it's it's amazing what your government is doing, and so on.
10:39
SPEAKER_00: And a lot of Ethiopians would be looking at Kenya and saying, Oh my god, your private sector is uh is phenomenal.
10:45
SPEAKER_00: Uh and you know, we're having a hard time getting our private sector.
10:48
SPEAKER_00: So I always say if Ethiopia and Kenya, which are culturally very different, you know, became one country, they would be a superpower because whatever weaknesses that Kenya has, Ethiopia has covered, and whatever um, you know, Ethiopia is um struggling as Kenya has covered.
11:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
11:02
SPEAKER_01: I like that because it would also do you think that if innovation is driven more bottom up, that it leads to more opportunistic, you know, founders, more how do you say, more grit to kind of figure out a problem on your own?
11:15
SPEAKER_01: If you don't have to wait for the government to tell you, hey, we're gonna do this innovation program.
11:20
SPEAKER_00: So you put the um yeah, in some sense, yes.
11:25
SPEAKER_00: But but I do think both need to happen.
11:27
SPEAKER_00: You need the structure, you need the structure, you need you know regulatory clarity, but at the same time, you know, if um regulatory um over-exertion can also be the reason why um you know the private sector cannot function.
11:42
SPEAKER_00: Um it remains to be seen.
11:43
SPEAKER_00: Both Ethiopia and Kenya have been growing in very different approaches, but growing in different ways.
11:48
SPEAKER_00: And at some point, um, you know, whether both of them are going to step into each other's specialty or one is going to very obviously um take off um further than the other, it remains to be seen.
12:02
SPEAKER_00: Um the yeah, and I I think both are working in each other's spaces a little bit, but not very comfortable in it.
12:11
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
12:11
SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah.
12:11
SPEAKER_01: I think if the approach is fundamentally also different, then it it's hard to marry.
12:16
SPEAKER_01: But I think culturally wise it does work out.
12:18
SPEAKER_01: I think that's an experience I've had so far with Kenyans.
12:21
SPEAKER_01: Like, oh my god, you're all so nice.
12:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
12:24
SPEAKER_01: The only thing is the um, so as a Dutch person, like I I said earlier, like we're very kind of direct, but we can get to the point a little too quickly.
12:32
SPEAKER_01: And I've learned very quickly here that we first say, Hey, how are you?
12:36
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
12:36
SPEAKER_01: When we wait for the answer, and only then do we talk about what we need.
12:40
SPEAKER_01: So I think sometimes I can come in here with a bit of an American approach too, or or a Dutch one.
12:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
12:46
SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, anyway.
12:48
SPEAKER_01: Um I I would really like to know a little bit more about the early stage tech investing sectors that are booming here.
12:54
SPEAKER_01: So since you've started in 2019, uh, what are certain sectors that you've really seen take off?
13:00
SPEAKER_01: And which ones do you think are going to be driving growth over the next five to ten years?
13:05
SPEAKER_00: Um I think since 2019 and even before, a very obvious runaway sector that has taken a good portion of the funding as well as fintech.
13:17
SPEAKER_00: 100%.
13:18
SPEAKER_00: Um it is very disproportionate winner.
13:22
SPEAKER_00: And that's pretty typical, actually.
13:23
SPEAKER_00: If you um look at um other emerging markets like India and so on, they also have led with FinTech.
13:30
SPEAKER_00: Um that's because it's not you know a sector by its own, it actually impacts everything.
13:34
SPEAKER_00: It's an infrastructure based flow of payments.
13:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
13:36
SPEAKER_00: And if you don't have that, it would be very difficult for any other sector to grow.
13:40
SPEAKER_00: So that makes perfect sense.
13:41
SPEAKER_00: Um, and that has to be strengthened.
13:43
SPEAKER_00: Um, in recent years, um uh a sector that has been growing has been climate.
13:50
SPEAKER_00: Um climate tech, climate.
13:52
SPEAKER_00: Hardware, software.
13:53
SPEAKER_00: Um it's hardware.
13:57
SPEAKER_00: Actually, you know what's funny is it's uh it's technically fintech, um, but uh for uh green products.
14:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
14:05
SPEAKER_00: So you see a lot of um asset um based financing, um as you go um uh uh uh plants and so on, um, into a lot of um climate startups that are doing quite well.
14:18
SPEAKER_00: And if you don't diversify into tech, it becomes a little bit harder, I think, for um climate tech um startups to take off or or become sustainable.
14:27
SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot of um yeah, green.
14:30
SPEAKER_00: So technically, because it's asset-based, you can see it's say it's hardware, yeah, but it's hardware backed by embedded finance, um, is um a lot of what we're seeing um in the ecosystem.
14:40
SPEAKER_00: And that has taken up about I think 30 per to 30 to 40 percent of the uh you know VC funding um in 2025.
14:48
SPEAKER_00: Okay, in Kenya specifically or across the continent?
14:51
SPEAKER_00: I think across the continent.
14:52
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
14:52
SPEAKER_00: Um, but Kenya would definitely um would remain big um uh on on the climate space.
14:59
SPEAKER_00: And I think it has also grown, like it has almost doubled from the last year, maybe 70% or something like that has been the growth um in climate tech.
15:07
SPEAKER_01: Because it's interesting, because I read a report the other day as well that said that in other African countries um there's still a very high proportion amount of money going into fintech solutions, whereas in Kenya, uh this has shifted more towards infrastructural uh innovation as well.
15:22
SPEAKER_01: So we can say maybe the hardware of climate tech, uh maybe stepping away a little bit from you know financing solutions.
15:28
SPEAKER_01: Um but I thought that was also very interesting because um one of the things, of course, that is very much talked about in VC and in investment space right now is AI and investments um often as well on a platform or uh application level of uh what you can do with AI, um, whereas infrastructure innovation, sorry, investing in the you know the hardcore of what climate tech is, is just as important to, at least in my opinion, but to get um economies off the ground.
16:01
SPEAKER_01: Uh and I think that it's interesting.
16:04
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you would agree with me, but what maybe we could say that because of um the fact that Kenya has already gone through this growth phase when it comes to fintech, of course, and and mobile money, which has basically set up a good payment system in the country and and more people are bankable, that therefore um now there's a shift taking place to say, okay, we can direct our investments into uh into more hardware uh and more infrastructural uh things that we might need.
16:34
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you would agree with me, but um I think that would be an ideal natural evolution.
16:41
SPEAKER_00: Um as to whether well, if you want to do um a lot of hardware innovation, then you should have the infrastructure for being able to do that.
16:53
SPEAKER_00: And a lot of the hardware I would say that so far has been driving uh climate may not necessarily be originating from Africa, although it's customized to an African um application.
17:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah um and so whether the next you know um hardware is going to be developed, you know, in African universities, you know, if you have the depth of talent and so on, that's something that is to be seen.
17:17
SPEAKER_00: And maybe the presence of you know um existing startups, maybe the presence of quite frankly, a lot of funding that is becoming available in climate can drive that.
17:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
17:26
SPEAKER_00: Um, but it is, you know, a thesis that um will be tested.
17:30
SPEAKER_00: Um, I do think there's probably a lot more RD going on in the rest of the world than there is, and the rest of the world might be outspending Africa.
17:40
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
17:41
SPEAKER_00: Um and so, but you know, yeah, that will remain to be seen how the next stage of climate tech um will be evolving.
17:49
SPEAKER_00: But there is definitely um a very high percentage of um you know capital that is interesting in in um climate tech ideas in Africa.
17:58
SPEAKER_01: And what is your opinion on um AI investments in physical versus uh application-based is that happening a lot here as well?
18:10
SPEAKER_00: Um I think uh so I I actually think AI will play some infrastructure um roles in Africa.
18:21
SPEAKER_00: I think the AI application in the rest of the world is an interesting in the sense of you're optimizing systems that already exist.
18:28
SPEAKER_00: That's where AI is good.
18:30
SPEAKER_00: Whereas in Africa, it can be a way of looking at gaps that exist in the ecosystem for problems that have never been solved, markets that are highly fragmented, um, problems that uh, you know, have been VC unscalable because the human in the loop has been too much, um, and either it was too costly to have too many humans there, or you simply couldn't, you know, and you couldn't afford it, or a specialty talent that was required to make something uh possible.
18:56
SPEAKER_00: The talent wasn't there.
18:58
SPEAKER_00: So uh AI is going to play a different role of making things that didn't exist exist.
19:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah um and it might be part of building infrastructure um in Africa that would be essential for applications to be possible in sectors that have so far been extremely challenging, like education, healthcare, logistics.
19:19
SPEAKER_00: Those have been very hard to build, even though quite uh a significant amount of funding has gone into them.
19:25
SPEAKER_00: Um but they've also had e-commerce has been another one.
19:28
SPEAKER_00: Um there has been a disproportionate um amount of um failure in um in those sectors as well.
19:36
SPEAKER_00: Unit economics did not make sense.
19:38
SPEAKER_00: So AI will play some role in um filling gaps in some of these systems, which to me are almost infrastructural, not at the hardware level, but uh in the systems level, um to make you know systems, uh underlying systems more functional so that more applications can be built on top of them.
19:55
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
19:56
SPEAKER_01: Um if if we if we look at um you know the amount of computing power that you need to run AI applications, is is that something that uh Kenya is is heavily investing in as well to create uh do you know that?
20:10
SPEAKER_01: If if this this infrastructure for AI innovation is being put in place so that uh researchers and universities can also have access to uh data centers to to run new applications and to kind of deepen their research in that field?
20:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um as of now, I I guess there are two two two two things that um uh African countries, Kenya included, need to think about, which is power and uh data centers, both of which are going to be constrained.
20:36
SPEAKER_00: Very connected.
20:37
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
20:38
SPEAKER_00: Um are going to be constrained.
20:39
SPEAKER_00: Um a lot of um African um energy that is upcoming tends to be clean energy, um, more some of it out of necessity and some of it out of policy and you know um funding direction.
20:51
SPEAKER_00: Um so um that's something that Africa is perpetually working on.
20:55
SPEAKER_00: Um maybe the scale needs to be increased if you know AI is going to come into play.
21:01
SPEAKER_00: There is a growing um conversation around you know, growing you know, data centers uh and potentially even having more compute um in this um ecosystem simply because Africa has been coming more and more online.
21:13
SPEAKER_00: A lot of things actually happen um less online in African ecosystems, um, and that that conversation has been happening because of data privacy, actually.
21:22
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
21:22
SPEAKER_00: So from the other side, right?
21:25
SPEAKER_00: Right.
21:25
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so um I think AI might be the catalyst for accelerating that.
21:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
21:31
SPEAKER_00: Um but it is the conversations are happening.
21:34
SPEAKER_00: Some initiatives are already in place for different reasons, but AI would be an accelerator.
21:39
SPEAKER_01: That could be nice because if you're saying also that there's more investment going into this asset based financing for uh climate tech, so that's also gonna be access to energy and power solutions, probably.
21:49
SPEAKER_00: Uh there has been some money put into that as well, and you know, generally, yeah, to see uh development in the space.
21:55
SPEAKER_01: Because it's nice.
21:55
SPEAKER_01: I think uh so at the end of today, we also have another guest joining from uh NITIO.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: Who uh do credit-based financing for um energy projects, uh including including solar power and off-grid and industrial.
22:08
SPEAKER_01: So I think that's a good uh connectory uh part of it.
22:12
SPEAKER_01: I found the I found the right people to speak to on the podcast.
22:14
SPEAKER_01: I can see.
22:15
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
22:16
SPEAKER_01: So um one of the things also is that you so you've been a you've been a very early stage investor for a while.
22:23
SPEAKER_01: Um but we're seeing that there is uh so there's a recent Part Tech report that also came out, and the Africa report came out, I think, last week, uh saying that there is more and more funding going into later stage when it comes to investing into uh uh into Africa and into Kenya as well.
22:41
SPEAKER_01: So there's more and more Series B and growth stage, right?
22:44
SPEAKER_01: Um, which of course says there's less going into pre-seed and seed.
22:50
SPEAKER_01: Um do you think there's a specific reason for that?
22:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um so I I I did see the um that Partec report and um for for seed, for example, the there was a a small but you know um um noteworthy contraction of about four percent.
23:11
SPEAKER_00: Um which if you look at it in by itself is not as relevant, but when you look at you know the downstream investments are going up by up 13 cent over 20 percent growth, then you're wondering why is the pipeline contracting um uh while the rest is growing.
23:29
SPEAKER_00: Um so that is definitely uh not worthy.
23:32
SPEAKER_00: If if we were to zoom out and look at the global perspective, um by the end of 2025, seed sage investment in the United States contracted by 25% in terms of deal count.
23:46
SPEAKER_00: Um but that's a lot.
23:48
SPEAKER_00: That is a lot, and so 4% to 25%, um not as um as as uh scary sounding.
23:56
SPEAKER_00: Um however, if you look at the amount of capital that was deployed in America at the seed stage, um the capital didn't shrink.
24:03
SPEAKER_00: It's just fewer startups got more money.
24:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
24:07
SPEAKER_00: Um and the reason is because you know, AI is full force in the US, and I think the earlier stage it has become more apparent that if you aren't able to leverage it, um the bar has risen for what it means to be a good stage company, and so money is going to be more constrained concentrated on the ones that people are going to think are yeah, um, and they have you know runaway power law, yeah.
24:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, runaway uh performance that you know AI has already accelerated and so on.
24:35
SPEAKER_00: And so I think that's probably what's driving that contraction and concentration of capital.
24:38
SPEAKER_00: So if you look at uh back in Africa, um if we look at the seed stage um capital that has been deployed, the average seed stage um um uh investment has been 1.7, which is a record amount um for a seed stage.
24:58
SPEAKER_00: Wait, come again.
24:59
SPEAKER_00: The average amount of money invested into uh seed stage.
25:02
SPEAKER_00: Seed stage companies is 1.7 million uh per company.
25:05
SPEAKER_00: Shillings, euros, dollars, dollars.
25:07
SPEAKER_00: Dollars.
25:07
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
25:08
SPEAKER_00: Just to be sure about the uh conversion amount.
25:10
SPEAKER_00: Yes, it's in dollars, uh 1.7 million dollars per company, which is a record.
25:16
SPEAKER_00: Well, it is high definitely for Africa.
25:19
SPEAKER_00: If we look at the United States, it's about 4.5.
25:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
25:22
SPEAKER_00: So average-wise lower than you know, global, especially um highly developed ecosystems, but still pretty good.
25:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and so uh, and this is higher than last year by about you know five, six percent or something like that.
25:34
SPEAKER_00: So the numbers are um uh declining a little bit, but um, the number of deals uh maybe declining a little bit, but um overall capital uh still increasing.
25:44
SPEAKER_00: Um are we likely to see similar, uh more pronounced but similar trend as the United States?
25:51
SPEAKER_00: That's actually quite possible because Africa has always been about a few quarters behind trends that happen globally.
25:57
SPEAKER_00: Um and the United States is probably the first one to experience whatever shifts are happening when technology is changing, when capital is shrinking or expanding or whatever.
26:06
SPEAKER_00: And then we see it here um a few quarters later.
26:10
SPEAKER_00: So maybe what we're seeing that you know Partec is noting is the beginning of a similar um deal size contraction, but concentration of capital, which is quite possible as AI becomes a determinant for what is considered um a successful startup as a C stage.
26:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
26:27
SPEAKER_01: What do you think a um what is it what is a pre-seed or a seed stage startup really need in Nairobi to uh to lift off to be able to have the best possible conditions?
26:38
SPEAKER_00: So as just mentioned, um the amount of money that you're going to raise at each one of the stages is um going to be lower, uh maybe by series B.
26:49
SPEAKER_00: Um sometimes you know capital uh can be um a bit more because you have actually international investors dominate series B and onward.
26:58
SPEAKER_00: So at that point it starts equalizing at least per sector.
27:02
SPEAKER_00: But in the earlier stages, the amount of capital that is available to you as a founder is going to be significantly less than what other similar startups and other ecosystems experience, which means you have to be extremely capital efficient if you're going to be a survivor.
27:14
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
27:14
SPEAKER_00: Um and so um if you are an applications type um startup that is directly customer-facing, um, you would want to get traction as early as possible.
27:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
27:25
SPEAKER_00: Um that you're launching customers in.
27:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
27:27
SPEAKER_00: And um, whatever money you're not able to get from equity, you better be making revenues so that you can you know co-subsidize or prove uh your you know business model um so that later on investors have confidence that um you have your strategy right.
27:42
SPEAKER_00: Um you uh you want to have a very deep understanding of how you're going to carry out your distribution because distribution is very hard.
27:50
SPEAKER_00: Marketing doesn't necessarily function in the way that um it's globally expected, relationships, partnerships you know take time.
27:58
SPEAKER_00: So you want to have a very clear strategy of diverse distribution um channels that you're going to try out, that you're going to measure, and uh double down on the ones that are waiting very, very early on.
28:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah um the the space for experimentation is not as high.
28:14
SPEAKER_00: Again, back to the amount of capital you have for experimentation is lower.
28:17
SPEAKER_00: So um you want to really, really be focused in distribution.
28:22
SPEAKER_01: But that's also nice that if you have a venture-building program, then you have you have these three months to figure that out, to find uh to validate your problem, your solution, see where your launching customers come from, and then once you get your first investment in, to then be able to say, okay, now we're starting a distribution strategy or a go-to-market.
28:42
SPEAKER_00: You at least have a good hypothesis of everything that is possible that you start out with.
28:47
SPEAKER_00: Um, I do think within the first year, you probably have to keep iterating because you can have a hypothesis that you're gonna have a partnership with a certain corporate or you know, whatever it is.
28:57
SPEAKER_00: But it's after the three months you're going to try to make that happen.
28:59
SPEAKER_00: And you might find that either the partnership is taking long or B2B CLS is taking long.
29:03
SPEAKER_00: And in that case, then ideally you should have a few other hypotheses that you also switch to and say, okay, if that doesn't work, I'm gonna test this and so on.
29:10
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's what a very well, whether you are in a venture building program or you are you know a good experienced founder, another way actually to you hammer out like a lot of the um the things that um that can be challenging is if you're uh a founder that has come from having been another um startup that has tried to scale or has scaled, or if you are a repeat founder, um some of these things also become obvious to you because you know what things would just take too long or what things are very difficult, or you come with a very strong network of whatever you built from the previous startup, including um talents of you know employees that you can draw from and so on.
29:49
SPEAKER_00: So all of these um can't help between venture building and you know having the experience um towards being a more successful founder.
29:57
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
29:57
SPEAKER_01: And I think one of the uh it's an interesting thing, right?
30:00
SPEAKER_01: Because a lot of these startups that I um checked out are uh when they communicate, um, there's always the word Africa.
30:08
SPEAKER_01: So Africa's newest or Africa's largest or Africa's best.
30:12
SPEAKER_01: Um but like we said we talked about Ethiopia and Nairobi, the business-enabling environments are very different.
30:18
SPEAKER_01: So uh is it fair for a startup or a young startup to say uh, you know, Africa's best?
30:25
SPEAKER_01: Because once you're able to validate your model in in country A, which would probably, for example, be here, uh, how do you then get it into country B and scale efficiently, right?
30:36
SPEAKER_01: I think you probably uh is it true that you can really underestimate the amount of investment that there is needed to actually get your solution across a border once you've validated it here?
30:46
SPEAKER_00: I I think a good number of startups experienced that between 2018 to 2022, and there was a good deal of um funding going in for Pan-African expansion, and um um there were some hard lessons learned.
31:04
SPEAKER_00: Um I I f what I personally kind of experienced talking founders um when we started in 2019 versus now is in the beginning I think there was a lot more focus in focusing on a pain point that was very local, and that's very important actually, because you have to start something from a lived experience and then solving for that and then thinking about going to the next country.
31:25
SPEAKER_00: But now I think there's a lot more understanding of you can pinpoint at a problem, but then you have to also very early on think about what does a variation of that problem look like in markets that you may want to expand to.
31:38
SPEAKER_00: I don't think most African founders, when they talk about Africa, are thinking about expanding to every African country, but most of the major markets.
31:46
SPEAKER_00: And that is not simply a desire, but it's actually a necessity because most of these markets on their own are not sufficient for a VC-backed startup to get sufficient scalability to be successful.
31:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
32:00
SPEAKER_00: Um, Nigeria probably is one ecosystem that sometimes has sufficient market for a startup to stay in Nigeria for a long enough period.
32:10
SPEAKER_00: Why is that?
32:11
SPEAKER_00: Because it's just a huge because of the size of the market.
32:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
32:13
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
32:14
SPEAKER_00: Um the market is huge.
32:15
SPEAKER_00: Uh the largest.
32:17
SPEAKER_00: Um and but for other uh I think South Africa is also very interesting in in in terms of uh market size.
32:25
SPEAKER_00: But you in Kenya, which is which would be the next um markets, Kenya and Egypt, um you have to think about expansion very quickly.
32:33
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
32:33
SPEAKER_00: So the concept of looking at Africa is very important if you're going to think about how you're going to be a VC backable business, if that's the direction you want to take, which isn't a requirement, but uh you know, since we're talking about VC.
32:46
SPEAKER_00: And so it it is important for them to it is important for them to think about, you know, how do we become the best solution uh across Africa.
32:57
SPEAKER_00: But it's also very important to refine the problem statement early architecture so that when you next move to the next country, you are not completely building new infrastructure, yeah, um, or you're not changing your problem statement.
33:11
SPEAKER_00: So and we're seeing a lot more of that being refined um from 2019 to now.
33:17
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
33:18
SPEAKER_01: And a large part must also be the regulatory environment or the enabling environment.
33:22
SPEAKER_00: Right.
33:23
SPEAKER_00: And all of that I think needs to be considered very early on.
33:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
33:26
SPEAKER_00: Um, what you know, an early stage deck ideally as a hypothesis should have is you know, we're going to start in Kenya.
33:33
SPEAKER_00: This is our problem, this is our target segment.
33:35
SPEAKER_00: Next countries we're going to go to will be XYZ, maybe I don't know, the top five markets or something like that.
33:40
SPEAKER_00: And uh comparison of what is the uh what does the competitive environment for that particular solution look like, um, regulatory environment and so on and so forth.
33:48
SPEAKER_00: Um, of course, you can have all the hypothesis that you want on paper, yeah.
33:52
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but when you hit the ground, that's different.
33:55
SPEAKER_00: That's what VC money and experimentation is for.
33:58
SPEAKER_00: Um, but at least uh there should be a clear understanding as much as research allows before you get started.
34:06
SPEAKER_00: Before you go.
34:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
34:08
SPEAKER_01: So when you were um uh when you raised the first uh fund when you were with Antler, where did the money come from?
34:14
SPEAKER_01: That you was that from foreign investors?
34:17
SPEAKER_00: Uh a lot of um African VC money is for Antler as well as other investors, is coming from external investors.
34:27
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
34:27
SPEAKER_00: Um there has been some um family offices that have experimented in the in the VC space, but for the most part, local capital has been kind of sitting it out and working on you know more traditional businesses um and networks of businesses that quite frankly have you know provided good returns for um family offices across the board.
34:51
SPEAKER_00: Um one of the things that you know I hope will happen um as the ecosystem matures, um, and I think we have seen one of the the more interesting signals in this last um year where MA acquisitions on the continent grew from a small base by but by about 70% between you know, that's quite big, even if it's from a small number, that's a big increase.
35:14
SPEAKER_01: So it's a good uh yeah.
35:15
SPEAKER_00: And if you and if you look at it globally, I mean, although we hear a lot more about IPOs um for VCs, you know, 75-80% of VC exists even in the Western world are coming from MA.
35:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
35:26
SPEAKER_00: And unicorns and IPOs are more of a you know, once in a blue moon um event.
35:32
SPEAKER_00: So what you really want to see is a strong MA ecosystem evolving.
35:37
SPEAKER_00: And when you start seeing that, then um local enterprises and family offices, when they understand, okay, this is the cycle of when I put my money versus I get it out, yeah, they will start participating in this ecosystem.
35:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
35:50
SPEAKER_00: Um, hopefully that's something that we'll see in the next five years.
35:53
SPEAKER_00: Um and having family offices and enterprises take more interest in startups will also solve some of the problems startups have, which is around um B2B cycles, um partnerships, distribution, and so on.
36:05
SPEAKER_00: Operators started, yeah, they'll start opening because it's it is existing enterprises that can make that happen because they have the networks.
36:12
SPEAKER_00: But they need to see the value of what a tech startup can bring to their ecosystem and yeah, to be good to see that.
36:17
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so we'll talk again in a year when it has gone up another 70%?
36:22
SPEAKER_01: I hope so.
36:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that would be great.
36:24
SPEAKER_01: But how does it um what has kind of been the uh uh what do you think a lot of people get wrong when you start deploying capital into into uh into Kenya or into Africa?
36:34
SPEAKER_01: What is what is different?
36:36
SPEAKER_01: Uh you said something about relationships, how you know it takes more time is are there certain things that that that you just have to keep in mind before deploying your capital here?
36:47
SPEAKER_00: So I guess um there's a bit of a play here between being international money or an international investor and being a local investor.
36:58
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
36:58
SPEAKER_00: And I think one of the things that you know drew me to to Antler and um and also um you know that I respect within the VEC ecosystem here is there is a significant amount of value to being a local investor that has a hands-on understanding of what the context is.
37:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, having said that, um, some of the most successful startups and the most you know uh useful cap tables have been a fixer, a mix of international and local investors coming together because there's something that everybody is bringing to the table.
37:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
37:26
SPEAKER_00: Um, beyond the fact that you know a lot of capital is just coming from outside.
37:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
37:31
SPEAKER_00: Um so um if we were to look at uh a foreign-only VC, not necessarily the fact that LPs are coming from outside, that is basically LPs saying you want exposure to Africa, and you know, please go ahead and you do it.
37:46
SPEAKER_00: Um and you know, um they will follow it um as limited partners.
37:49
SPEAKER_00: Um but if you look at it uh as an international investor investing in Africa, there are some things that um historically, and I think the international investors are also learning a lot more about Africa as we're learning about um uh our own um ecosystems, is there are some things that have been um maybe undermined or overlooked.
38:08
SPEAKER_00: Um, one is I already mentioned um the thing about distribution, that sometimes um for you know what will be a successful startup to take off the ground might take a little bit longer than what investors would expect in their own ecosystems.
38:23
SPEAKER_00: Um and so you know, distribution and you know what it would take to make that happen or how important it is, as much as the product is, yeah um, that might be a little bit overlooked.
38:35
SPEAKER_01: Um still have to find demand sometimes because of access, bankability, right, uh regulatory changes, yeah.
38:44
SPEAKER_01: Rather than just assuming you have this whole market that you can tap into available and everyone's on Facebook or something exactly, exactly.
38:52
SPEAKER_00: It's showing that the market is there isn't the end of the conversation or that the product is great.
38:57
SPEAKER_00: And it's like, but how do you get to that specific customer?
39:00
SPEAKER_00: And you have in a uh and how do you get to that specific customer in in a capital efficient way?
39:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
39:06
SPEAKER_00: Because again, you know, as we discussed earlier, the capital is also going to be lower.
39:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
39:10
SPEAKER_00: Um, which brings us on to a second thing that I think confuses international investors, which is that um, you know, I've had some founders who've told me that they they went to pitch on an internal international investor and they were told um that they don't quite fit the profile of a VC backable startup that the VC is willing to invest in because the amount of money that they're asking seems lower than what they expect to be the ambition of a VC backable startup.
39:35
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
39:35
SPEAKER_00: But if we exist in an ecosystem where the average ticket that you end up getting is most likely going to be 1.7 at the C stage and not 4.5, you're not going to walk in and ask for five.
39:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
39:46
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you look crazy for investors.
39:50
SPEAKER_00: And so um, I think there is uh uh a little bit of uh lack of or confusion about what's happening with the amount of money that people are investing.
39:59
SPEAKER_00: But this is coming from an ecosystem where capital efficiency has been drilled down into every founder and every startup.
40:05
SPEAKER_00: And so it's it's not uh it's not a uh I mean, obviously, most founders would be happy having more capital to experiment with, you know, when they walk in and ask for less it's a necessity and not a desire.
40:17
SPEAKER_00: Um so I think that confuses um people a bit.
40:20
SPEAKER_00: And then maybe one last thing I would like to say, which kind of comes up um here and there, it's discussed, but um maybe not also obvious for international investors, is being able to pitch convincingly to an international investor does not translate to being able to pitch to a local customer.
40:39
unknown: Yeah.
40:39
SPEAKER_00: Neither sell nor scale.
40:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
40:41
SPEAKER_00: And so um so I mean, it's excellent to have a great pitch um and to be convinced that the problem and the solution is going to solve it.
40:49
SPEAKER_00: But uh the second step question should be uh, you know, is this founder able to articulate the value add in a more bigger relevance?
40:57
SPEAKER_00: Or no, just understanding how the systems work, um, how to open doors.
41:02
SPEAKER_00: Do you have the right networks?
41:04
SPEAKER_00: Do you understand the culture?
41:05
SPEAKER_00: Can you code switch?
41:06
SPEAKER_00: Um, or do you have a team member and not an employee, but a core team member, ideally a co-founder, that's going to be, you know, that is excellent at um navigating the ecosystem.
41:17
SPEAKER_00: Because I think it's very important for founding teams to be able to fundraise.
41:20
SPEAKER_00: That's selling to investors, a very important skill.
41:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
41:23
SPEAKER_00: And then selling to your customers, yeah.
41:26
SPEAKER_00: Um, and you know, having the the right networks or or cultural um context is a completely different um um uh you know skill set.
41:35
SPEAKER_00: And so uh matching those two is a little less obvious for somebody sitting on the outside looking in, being like, that's a very excellent pitch.
41:45
SPEAKER_00: They are solving a real problem.
41:46
SPEAKER_00: The solution sounds solid.
41:47
SPEAKER_00: We've seen it in our ecosystem.
41:49
SPEAKER_00: At least, you know, uh if you have had some experience, or it could even be an entirely non-African person just pitching really, really well.
41:57
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so there have you know, there have been instances where a lot more capital has been allocated, and then the execution sometimes is is lacking.
42:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
42:05
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so yeah.
42:07
SPEAKER_01: So you've probably learned that from evaluating all these startups that come into the venture building program where well we we bring in the venture building program, we would bring four founders.
42:17
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
42:17
SPEAKER_00: Um and they're all local, right?
42:20
SPEAKER_00: Because you notice them here or not?
42:21
SPEAKER_00: Do people also fly in?
42:22
SPEAKER_00: I am uh some people do.
42:24
SPEAKER_00: Okay, interesting.
42:25
SPEAKER_00: Some people do, but I think a question that we also always have.
42:29
SPEAKER_00: I'm actually a big um, I I really don't think it makes sense to say the only thing that we want is local talent.
42:35
SPEAKER_00: Having said that, if I just randomly flew into you know Silicon Valley by myself um and just wanted to do something, I also, even for Silicon Valley where things may be, systems may be already well developed and um you know conversation is more direct and so on, I still will struggle.
42:51
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
42:51
SPEAKER_00: And so in that context, I think having a mix of international talent and local talent is important, but you should fully understand what each talent is bringing to the table and any one of them separately may not um be the best type of team.
43:06
SPEAKER_00: So a lot of mixed teams, whether it's and and this is true everywhere, whether it's you know a gender balance, um, cultural balance, and so on.
43:14
SPEAKER_00: And that plays exactly the same kind of dynamics here in Africa as it does in the rest of the world.
43:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
43:20
SPEAKER_00: Do you think Kenya is good at attracting international talent?
43:23
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
43:24
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah?
43:24
SPEAKER_00: Why?
43:25
SPEAKER_00: I do.
43:25
SPEAKER_00: Um, I mean, it's well, first of all, it's just a lovely place.
43:29
SPEAKER_00: Um, you mentioned um earlier um that people are um very, you know, open and and welcoming.
43:36
SPEAKER_00: I think Kenya has something unique um that no other place that I've lived in Africa has that is just inherent in the culture, which is the live and let live attitude, which is hey, if you can if you dream it and you can find capital for it, you know, go ahead and do it.
43:52
SPEAKER_00: You know, no one is I love that.
43:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
43:54
SPEAKER_00: That's very good.
43:55
SPEAKER_00: Um uh and I've been around a few other African countries, and I think Kenya is very very unique in that.
44:01
SPEAKER_00: And so because of that, when people land in Nairobi, they can feel the optimism, they can feel the openness, and the the can-do attitude is to feel, yeah.
44:09
SPEAKER_00: I feel that right.
44:10
SPEAKER_00: I I can 10 out of 10.
44:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
44:12
SPEAKER_00: So I yeah, so I think uh yeah, I think uh Kenya does attract and can attract international talent.
44:20
SPEAKER_00: Um, its policy in retaining, uh promoting it and so on probably is not there.
44:25
SPEAKER_00: But I think the harder problem is quite frankly attracting the talent.
44:29
SPEAKER_00: The rest will follow when you know the ecosystem is and and governance is ready for it.
44:34
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I think that's a unique advantage that this ecosystem has.
44:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
44:39
SPEAKER_01: So um, you know, we've been talking uh a lot about Kenya and Africa, and uh this podcast, of course, is also a lot about narrative and and how we think something might be, but it's not necessarily true, which is also of course why I'm here.
44:53
SPEAKER_01: So as we kind of wrap up, I'd like to ask you to describe in one word what Kenya isn't, and then perhaps in one word what Kenya is.
45:06
SPEAKER_00: Um okay, so um repeating myself a little bit, I think what Kenya is is open.
45:14
SPEAKER_00: Kenya is open.
45:15
SPEAKER_00: Um and this is from you know the mindset I think the um um people have to a willingness to um work with with the global um ecosystem, um, willingness to adopt and try new ideas and so on.
45:29
SPEAKER_00: I think it's uh is a very open ecosystem for VC and non-VC businesses.
45:33
SPEAKER_00: Um I think it's um it's very exciting in that sense.
45:36
SPEAKER_00: Um what Kenya isn't is um is maybe it's not a pushover.
45:44
SPEAKER_00: Um and I mean by that, yeah, exactly.
45:48
SPEAKER_00: I don't think Kenya gets enough credit for how well it manages relationships um with the West and the East, for example, and it just manages to do its own thing without not particularly pissing anybody off, but you know, with also um not doing everything that it's but everybody expects it to do.
46:12
SPEAKER_00: Um and I think that's a beautiful thing.
46:14
SPEAKER_00: It is a very beautiful thing.
46:16
SPEAKER_00: So you said two nice things.
46:17
SPEAKER_00: So now Kenya is it is open and it isn't a pushover.
46:20
SPEAKER_00: No, I like that um and and and there are some things that Kenya does as well.
46:24
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's open, but it's not too open.
46:26
SPEAKER_00: Um so for example, we say you know, the thing about international talent.
46:28
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there are some things that might frustrate people.
46:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, of course.
46:31
SPEAKER_00: But regulation will move when it moves and when it wants to move.
46:35
SPEAKER_00: On Kenyan time.
46:36
SPEAKER_00: On Kenyan time and when Kenya has figured out its strategy.
46:39
SPEAKER_00: So it's it has I think it's it manages, you know, its balance of things it wants to do and uh relationships it wants to keep and and so on.
46:47
SPEAKER_00: So I think that's um a very interesting talent.
46:51
SPEAKER_00: I really enjoyed it.
46:52
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
46:52
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.