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Being a non-technical founder seems like a huge disadvantage. You literally are unable to develop and maintain your product without paying other people or givin

by mruts 8y ago

Being a non-technical founder seems like a huge disadvantage. You literally are unable to develop and maintain your product without paying other people or giving out equity. The number one most important thing with a fledgling startup is self-sufficiency. You need to be willing to do it all: development, marketing, sales, etc. Maybe I’m being harsh, but the founder didn’t really seem to bring any tangible skills to the table besides his “revolutionary” idea. I live in Tanzania and integrating with mobile payment networks is absolutely critical. If there was one thing you needed to succeed in this business in Africa is integration with Mpesa, Airtel Money, Tigo Money, Zantel Money, etc. Without this integration, your business is dead in the water. His line about how they could never figure it out is borderline ridiculous. Imagine if Amazon never figured out how to charge credit cards: that is the magnitude of the problem he decided not to solve.

festivilia 8y ago
Hi! Thank you for your comment. first of all, well it's easy to say I didn't bring any tangible skill to the table because I wasn't a developer. lol. Considering the fact that I was performing the all-suficiency role aside being the developer obviously. My number 1 job was to get contents which is technically the most important drive of the platform. I remember my CTO agreed to join me and work for free only if I could get him 100 premium short films in 2 weeks. You can imagine the level of convincing I had to do to fellow filmmakers to give a simmingly unknown video platform their precious contents for free! I met the target and 12 days and like they say, the rest is history.. lol I was also the marketing guy, making pitches and going for startup competitions, exhibitions, film festivals and every other thing you can think of for us to grow. When I had spent all my savings, I had to convince an investor to fund a startup that didn't have the desired traction and making zero profit. I was a desperate young entrepreneur.. Alas, it was a bad decision eventually but it was a life saver at that time. About the mobile payment integration angle. Am sure you will understand how difficult it is to partner with a telco without the required numbers they want to see. Mobile money is popular in eastern Africa but not in the west where most of our customers were and a few from USA. our best bet was carrier billing but like I mentioned earlier, you don't just contact a telco and ask for partnership! I know a few friends whose startups are very successful and it had taken them almost a year to get a meeting with the right person in the telco company!!! we eventually found fortumo but we closed shop before we could implement. It's really easy for you to criticize but you have no idea how hard it was for us to run a startup with less than 0.1 percent chance of survival for 2 years. lol. Thanks for the comment again.

by mruts 8y ago

festivilia 8y ago

Hi! Thank you for your comment. first of all, well it's easy to say I didn't bring any tangible skill to the table because I wasn't a developer. lol. Considering the fact that I was performing the all-suficiency role aside being the developer obviously. My number 1 job was to get contents which is technically the most important drive of the platform. I remember my CTO agreed to join me and work for free only if I could get him 100 premium short films in 2 weeks. You can imagine the level of convincing I had to do to fellow filmmakers to give a simmingly unknown video platform their precious contents for free! I met the target and 12 days and like they say, the rest is history.. lol I was also the marketing guy, making pitches and going for startup competitions, exhibitions, film festivals and every other thing you can think of for us to grow. When I had spent all my savings, I had to convince an investor to fund a startup that didn't have the desired traction and making zero profit. I was a desperate young entrepreneur.. Alas, it was a bad decision eventually but it was a life saver at that time. About the mobile payment integration angle. Am sure you will understand how difficult it is to partner with a telco without the required numbers they want to see. Mobile money is popular in eastern Africa but not in the west where most of our customers were and a few from USA. our best bet was carrier billing but like I mentioned earlier, you don't just contact a telco and ask for partnership! I know a few friends whose startups are very successful and it had taken them almost a year to get a meeting with the right person in the telco company!!! we eventually found fortumo but we closed shop before we could implement. It's really easy for you to criticize but you have no idea how hard it was for us to run a startup with less than 0.1 percent chance of survival for 2 years. lol. Thanks for the comment again.