Kenyan startup guy here. In three years, my company has developed two top Kenyan websites. In 2009, we developed the largest lyrics site in Kenya, and now we ru

Kenyan startup guy here. In three years, my company has developed two top Kenyan websites. In 2009, we developed the largest lyrics site in Kenya, and now we run the largest blog in Kenya: http://ghafla.co.ke http://ghafla.co.ke with close to 500,000 monthly uniques. On consumer-facing startups, which are my expertise, I can say that the problems currently facing Kenyans online are basic content issues(online news, classifieds, downloads etc). If you stick to the basics, it's really easy to get some traction going. Revenue-wise, HNers would love Kenya. The absolute best internet revenue model in Kenya is to charge your users one-time monthly subscriptions. Paid classifieds like cheki.co.ke and eatout.co.ke are making hundreds of thousands of dollars annually with this model. Ad-based revenue follows an extreme power-law. The digital budgets flow mainly to Google and Facebook. E-commerce is there, mainly in the tourism and daily deals spaces. Skimming commissions off the top of transactions is not very lucrative right now, haven't seen any success stories. All in all, the online space is more of a land-grab right now, than a gold-rush. On acquisitions, there are VERY few. Most big companies would rather partner or compete. Most acquisitions are done by private equity companies or high net-worth individuals, and they only buy startups that absolutely kill it on each and every front(user growth, revenue growth, profit growth, brand awareness etc). PS: My company shares the same investors with the M-Farm team.