Nicisms

Traveling is an important part of an entrepreneurs growth. I learned that over the past 3 weeks that I spent abroad.

As my readers will know I am South African. This means I have grown up, developed and exist within a very specific context, a uniquely South African one. This has proven to be an amazing advantage and has opened my eyes in so many ways.

I have traveled my whole life, I’ve been to many different countries around the world and lived in many different places. I like traveling. But this trip was different. This trip changed me and defined a lot of what I will be doing moving forward.

Some quick-shot lessons I learned:

1. South African entrepreneurs understand the value of a dollar.
2. We work really hard and really smart.
3. South African startups are solving real problems.
4. The copycats will make a quick buck, the innovators will make it big.
5. The rest of the world does not know better.
6. Getting in to major tech blogs will NOT make your startup a success.
7. Networking is more important than listening to a speaker.
8. Charity work is imperative to your business and your life.

Let’s get in to some depth.

It was a very interesting and difficult trip that Vincent Maher and I went on. We are the founders of Motribe.com. Our startup is doing OK in the markets that we are playing in. We have nice revenue and growth and are feeling good about what we’re doing. So going overseas was an interesting decision that we made. We went over mainly to attend the SXSW conference and network. In the process we met with New York VCs, we met with Agencies in London, New York and Austin and we met some big tech names.

Starting at the beginning: London

London is a difficult place to get any work done. People only emerge in to the real world at about 9:30am. Shops stay closed, people don’t do meetings early and no one is interested. It’s a very cocky place. I didn’t enjoy my experiences there at all. We met with a couple of agencies who blatantly had no interest in hearing what we had to say or learning about our experiences in the emerging markets.

This was the first taste of disinterest that we experienced. Some people just have no interest in hearing about other options, alternative theories and different (albeit successful) experiences. And that’s the end of it. We experienced more of this in New York.

With that said, we did also have a few good meetings with some interested and smart agencies. However these were agencies with strong South African roots and connections so it wasn’t surprising.

I was also blown off from a few meetings, people just didn’t get back to me or weren’t interested in making the effort. So be it. Vincent and I did attend an Opencoffee event which worked out OK. Nothing Earth-shattering but OK. I also did a bad thing and missed an event that I was confirmed to attend. However I did so for another meeting. So it’s kind of OK.

I left London after 2 days of work hoping not to return any time soon.

The buzz of the Big Apple

New York is the complete opposite of London. It is buzzing. People are up as early as you want to meet with them. We had back to back to back meetings for 5 days in a row. We met with agencies, individuals, VCs and anyone else who we could meet with.

There is a palpable electricity in New York. It feels to me like the excitement that once hummed around Silicon Valley is now drifting and gravitating towards New York. There are startups starting up, Investors hustling and agencies spending in New York. It’s all happening.

I have never dealt with a more aggressive group of businesspeople than those I met with in NY. Moving to Austin and the SXSW conference I still ended up meeting NY businesspeople, founders and marketing folk.

We did run in to more resistance though. Madison Avenue agencies aren’t interested in the mobile web and definitely aren’t interested in the emerging markets. It’s not really their fault either, they are doing their clients bidding. I’m learning very quickly that the mark of a great agency is the ability to balance what the client requests and the best possible decision for your client as the agency in the know.

I could definitely see myself doing more business in New York and working that city hard. It’s a place that I love and can relate to. It’s Johannesburg in 50 years.

South by South West: Interactive music film

I have had my rants and recoveries about SXSW. Read them for my thoughts on the conference.

Next year I might attend SXSW. I wont be buying a ticket to attend the interactive conference. I will go to network, to catch up with people I met this year and to socialise with the people I want to connect with. I found very little value in the actual conference.

Someone summed up the entire experience for me: SXSW is Spring Break for geeks. Definitely. It’s a reason for the responsible, the successful and the desperate-to-be to party their asses off with zero expectations. If you are a geek rockstar then you want to be at SXSW because you are treated like royalty.

I did not enjoy the ass-kissing. I don’t participate in ass-kissing and never have. I hate seeing people who have become successful worshipped. I don’t worship people like this. I don’t queue to get in to the cool-kids party. I’d rather have a dinner with some cool-kids.

Founders together

If you think you have founded your business with someone you trust, understand and will never fight with, do yourself and your business a favour – go on a three week work trip with them.

I can promise you this: You will fight at some point.

The fight you have will definitely be rough, will definitely be agro but it will definitely sort out many issues you might have. There are definitely issues that every startup will go through and the founders will argue and fight. It’s imperative that you fight them out and deal with them. If you don’t then you have passive-agressive behaviour that will not benefit the company.

The final thought

Being a South African entrepreneur is difficult. In fact, being an entrepreneur anywhere in the world is difficult. Having investment or not, it’s still tough to be an entrepreneur.

However what I have learned after seeing the other side is that in South Africa we know how to build profitable businesses and we have the bottom line in mind all the time. That bottom line isn’t red either.

I am not a financially experiences or smart person when it comes to analysing markets but to me it feels like there is a bubble in the US. It might not be a financial bubble but it is a bubble that is going to hinder their market growth. It’s a bubble that is going to put them at a disadvantage very soon (if it hasn’t already done so). So what I can say from this is that we are on the right path. We are plugging real holes, solving real problems and creating real businesses based on revenue and product.

We are better in many ways than many of the people I met, spoke to and did business with. What we need to do is realise our value and potential.

The 2011 SXSW interactive conference is over. The iPads and geek backpacks have quickly been replaced with tattoos (woohoo!) and guitar cases. The change in vibe is palpable, things feel a bit more crazy and slightly unhinged which is great.

Here is my final review of the SXSW 2011 interactive conference:

If you want to meet the best people, talk the most business or have the most fun – STAY ON THE SHUTTLES. Let me explain: SXSW has become so big that people stay all over Austin. To help these people get in to town SXSW has organised a series of shuttle busses to run between the hotels and the conference.

I met some of the most amazing people on these shuttles at all hours of the night and day. My advice if you want to pitch to as many people as possible is become a shuttle driver for the 2012 SXSW.

Things turned around for me and the event but unfortunately that had little to do with the panels or speakers, save for Blake Mycoskie, the founder of Toms.com (but I’ll get to that more in a bit).

I have made many good connections, met many potential business partners and many more possible friends. All of this is due to the very well attended Panel I participated in thanks to Justin Arenstein. This panel was the best thing to happen to my conference. Word spread about Motribe, people began contacting me and I have set up many meetings with many businesses from around the world. Brilliant.

The only problem with this is that I missed almost 2 full days of the actual conference due to newly booked work arrangements. But hey, that’s the price one must pay I suppose.

But now on to the final day of the conference. I first attended a talk on rebranding Islam. That was dogshit because the speakers thought the audience were idiots and even, at one point, said “Muslims are people too” at the end of some long-winded and irrelevant story about some other rubbish.

But fortunately my conference and my day were saved by Blake from Toms.com. The man is an amazing speaker. He didn’t use any slides, he didn’t pull out any gimmicks or tricks but he still managed to blow everyone away with his amazing story.

His accomplishments with tom.com are amazing. He has given away more than 1million shoes to children in need and has managed to build an incredibly profitable and functional charitable business. His message is that we can all be charitable and that we can all make money. Incase you don’t know what toms.com is, here’s the elevator pitch: For every pair of shoes that you buy from toms.com they will give a pair away to a child in need. One for one. That is there motto. I was almost in tears listening to his amazing story and then in the next moment bursting with laughter.

I left that talk feeling rejuvenated and ready to build my business. I also left with a new approach to many ideas I had in my head. If only all the other speakers had Blake’s brilliant delivery.

The next massive improvement to the SXSW experience was, of course, the Foo Fighters. I stood in queue for 3 hours even though I had the right passes and paid through my you-know-what to attend the conference but it was worth it in the end.

The Foos took the stage 15 minutes after I had entered the venue and started to drink my first Vodka. They did not leave the stage for over 2 hours. The played their hearts out, I rocked mine and I left feeling hazed by their brilliant live performance. What a way to end the interactive conference. If the only thing I paid for was to see them live at the SXSW interactive closing party then it was money well spent.

So I left contented but more seeking the contentment than finding it.

I still stand by my previous post. I was seeking genius on the trip and fortunately I did not find it. What that has helped me realise (and I think I am not getting to the nitty-gritty point) is that a good idea is a good idea irrespective of the location of said idea. Being in the US or UK or anywhere else doesn’t make you better or worse as a leader, a company or a team. There are very good reasons that companies do well in the US and/or Europe but that is another post altogether.

What I am saying is that deep down at the bottom of Africa we sit and we admire those across the shore. We need to stop. For every Mark Zuckerberg who Zucks with your privacy there are literally millions of people who are failing or trying to make ends meat in the US. In South Africa we have class, quality and the will to succeed.

Now, on to the music for me.

Charl Norman, the man behind Bandwidth blog, Blueworld Communities and many, many more local online success interviewed Vincent Maher and I recently about our company, Motribe.

Here’s the full interview (I suggest unclicking “HD” if you want the video to load faster).

On August 1st, 2010 Vincent Maher and I Co-Founded Motribe; a mobile-web start-up. We launched the product on September 14th 2010. We received a seed round of venture capital from 4DI Capital and below are a few thoughts on my experiences with Motribe and what we went through to get our company off the ground with a Venture Capital partner.

The people

Some say that business partners are like married couples. I don’t think so. Marriages are very easy to exit out of, divorce is rife. Getting out of a business relationship is exceptionally difficult and should be so for various reasons. I also think that the marriages are entered into after a lot of flailing about and stumbling. The business relationship that I’ve entered in to with Vincent is a very carefully considered, rehearsed and tested one. There are contracts in place, there are plans for the future and there are defined roles. We have worked together for about 3 years in various companies and in various roles. We know that we work well together in high-pressure situations and we know that we can make it work. How do we know this? Because we’ve done it before.

The level of trust and work experience that Vincent and I have makes us a trustworthy and reliable partnership. It’s hard enough to build a business, try building a business while trying to build a partnership. That’s difficult.

The business plan

Our business plan grew and moulded and changed over a period of 4 months. The best thing to happen to our business plan and revenue models was pitching to Venture Capitalists (VC). Through the pitch process and a very humble approach on our side we managed to weed out the bad parts, the unnecessary parts and the long and boring parts. In the end we were left with a business plan no longer than 10 pages in total that outlined our business idea, our revenue streams, our first 18 months of expenses and potential and projected revenue.

It’s about the jockey, not the horse

Ideas are everywhere. If you’ve got an idea I can promise you there are many other people with the exact idea or at the very least something very, very similar. Do not hedge your bets on a good idea. Truly great, unique and new ideas are come around once in a generation and no offense but you probably don’t have it (I sure as hell didn’t).

So what you need is a good jockey to build the idea. You need to be an executer, a builder or someone with more than just an idea. You need to know how you are going to make money from your idea, how you are going to grow and you also need to prove that you have the skills, the experience and the potential to get it all done.

Timing, timing, timing

I actually cannot express enough the importance of timing. Sometimes good ideas emerge, launch and fail for one reason: Bad timing. Sometimes an average idea with average people behind it in an average market will make it big because the timing was right. We’ve had a hefty dose of good timing and better luck. We built our business plan over a holiday, the very first VC we met with was the right one, the other VCs who turned us away (and yes there were many of those) did so for the right reasons, we resigned from our jobs, moved to Cape Town, had the right experience, met the right people, tipped in to right market from the right country with the right relationships all the almost perfect time. Everyone says mobile is booming right now and we’re riding that wave. People need what we have right now, not 6 months ago or in 6 months time, right now. It’s about timing.

Domain Expertise

Once you think you have an idea that might become profitable, you have a business partner (or are going it alone) that can’t help you travel down this path, the next thing you need is domain expertise. Don’t go to a VC coming from a street-sweeping background and tell them that you have this idea to build the next space station close to Venus. You don’t have the domain expertise to do this and they will point that out. If you are pitching a mobile company then you need to prove that you are an expert in the field of mobile and that you have a track record that reflects this.

No one is investing on a hope and prayer, no one is going to give you money because you ask them to politely. You need to be one of the very few people in the industry, country or perhaps even the world who can execute the idea you have.

A Non Disclosure Agreement is NOT a dealbreaker

If the VC, investor, advisor or loan manager wont sign an NDA, who gives a shit? As I’ve said and will say again, you’re idea is not new. The best advice that we received regarding NDAs was this: If you force a VC to sign an NDA you are showing weakness and lack of faith in your idea, you are also showing a lack of trust in the VC and yourself. If you back your idea and yourself, if you have an execution plan and are ready to roll with it then who cares if someone else builds it, you need to know that when you build it, it will be the best, the first and the only.

There are obviously exceptions to this, if you have a unique, once in a lifetime, groundbreaking, revolutionary idea and there is a reason that you believe someone could take your idea, then defend it, but not so violently that you lose sight of reality (If you think you have one of those ideas, contact me).

Shop around

Don’t be naive enough to think that the first person you go to will look over your business plan, look you in the eye and hand you a cheque for a bazillion dollars. This will not happen, ever. In fact it probably hasn’t ever happened. The process is long, arduous and treacherous. There are risks involved so try and mitigate that risk. Take your business plan to various investors, VC firms, angel investors, wealthy people you know and see what they say, get responses, learn and wait. But please, don’t think that the one VC you got to owes you anything, they don’t and nor does the second or third VC firm. But if you shop around and plug away at it hard enough, one of them will start to take you seriously.

Go with your gut

We did shop around for various offers, as I have stated above. But in the end we went with the firm that we met with at the very beggining. We partnered with the guys who were the most honest, the closest fit to our culture and the most open and transparent.

4Di Capital told us to shop around, they told us to use lawyers of our own to check through contracts, they offered us a deal that we felt was fair and they gave us terms that we understood and we felt comfortable with. In the end, we went with our guts.

Risk it

I resigned from my job well before we knew that VC was coming our way. It wasn’t about the VC. We were going ahead with our business whether we had a financial backer or not. If you don’t have this level of belief in your business, business partner and skills then don’t bother asking for VC.

Keep at it but listen

People will tell you that you are stupid, that the idea is old, outdated, lame, can’t monetize and wont work. But listen to me when I say this: If you have domain expertise, experience, a track record, the right idea, the right partner, the right timing and a pure unadulterated faith keep at it. However when people tell you that there is a problem or a hole somewhere, mend it, fix it and mould it. There are people out there, many of them, who know better than you or I. Learn, listen and keep at it.

Venture capital is not for everyone

Erik Hersman wrote a good post on the experience that African people are treated like second-class humans merely because we live in Africa. And let me just say; Erik has a point, a very valid point and an incredibly frustrating point. But his point leaves us with a massive gap in the market that no developed world companies or global corporates are willing to push in to. Africa is our playground and while the rest of the world avoids us and punishes us, we need to make inroads to block them out and own this market.

Basically we’re seen as untrustworthy by the rest of the world and are punished for that. The perception is definitely greater than the crime here. Africans appear to be untrustworthy but are by no means the biggest offenders when it comes to internet crimes as Erik showed in his post.

Erik suggests two solutions:

Too true, and there are only two ways that this might change:

First, we in Africa come up with our own payment and business solutions that work here first, and then interact with other global systems.

Second, the global corporates wake up and realize that there is quite a bit of spending power and money to be made in Africa, just like the mobile operators found out in the 90′s.

I’d like to pitch a third and more challenge-orientated solution; screw them. Forget those who punish us for being African. There are many, many business models that don’t have to include Paypal or the multitude of global corporates that punish us for where we live. Mobile is booming and Africa is at the cusp of this movement. We are setting the trends and defining the direction of where truly mobile products are going and should be going. We are the ones in control.

Yet the problem exists that we, as Africans have a persecution complex and insist on needing validation from certain places, companies and organisations to justify our success and movement forward. This is absurd.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand that there are viable reasons which make us need validation from Paypal and require us not to be banned by Google and blah blah. But there are many, many flourishing startups in South Africa and Africa that are not running off the back of these giants. I can name 5 off the top of my head.

We need to start setting the trends, bucking the trends and developing the roads instead of deciding that the roads aren’t tared with gold for us as Africans. We need to stop settling for mediocrity and start striving for cutting edge excellence that we define, as Africans on our continent.

The very outdated notion that there is not enough money in Africa to create a viable business model or revenue stream is long dead. There is money on this continent, there are users on this land that we occupy and there is massive, massive potential and hunger for new products and creation of wealth.

What we need to do now is stop leaning on the developed world, toss them to the curb and take control of our continent, businesses and business models. It might be a hard road to travel but in the long term it will be the most profitable in my opinion.