Hello Ms Hares
I agree with your writing. I am an entrepreneur from Lusaka, Zambia in Africa. I have spent the last two weeks in London and NY trying to find investors for my new social enterprise.
It has hard enough for someone like me to get a VISA for these countries. Getting funding is very difficult indeed. Yet I see so much money spent by western donors in my country on large, inefficient international organisations. I am Zambian. I know my country. I love my country. I am here to stay, unlike those who come and try and leave.
If you all believe in the future of Africa why can’t you believe in its people?
Thank you and god bless you.
Daniel
I agree with you that not all communities can afford to take on entrepreneurship in as ‘fancy-free’ a way as is promoted in the west.
However, I do think that the term and spirit of ‘fail fast, fail often’ have been misconstrued by many. The spirit of failure doesn’t mean wholesale venture failure, with its resource investments, employees and debts left hanging. It is supposed to mean the exact opposite: the road-testing of the foundational assumptions entrepreneurs make about who wants their product, in what colour, and for how much.
The mantra is supposed to get entrepreneurs to face market truths about their business models as fast as possible. It’s the faulty assumptions that are supposed to be revealed as failures as quickly as possible, so that entrepreneurs can iterate and actually build that business on solid information. As a practice, that’s supposed to make wholesale venture failure LESS likely, not more.
What may have failed, above all, is the mantra in communicating what it actually should.
COMMENTS
BY Valley Eye
ON February 27, 2015 11:11 AM
Yes Yes Yes.
But not only this. The “charitable foundations” need to scrutinize who they are funding. White entrepreneurs out to save Africa.
BY Daniel Nguna
ON March 3, 2015 01:54 AM
Hello Ms Hares
I agree with your writing. I am an entrepreneur from Lusaka, Zambia in Africa. I have spent the last two weeks in London and NY trying to find investors for my new social enterprise.
It has hard enough for someone like me to get a VISA for these countries. Getting funding is very difficult indeed. Yet I see so much money spent by western donors in my country on large, inefficient international organisations. I am Zambian. I know my country. I love my country. I am here to stay, unlike those who come and try and leave.
If you all believe in the future of Africa why can’t you believe in its people?
Thank you and god bless you.
Daniel
BY Assaf Weisz
ON March 3, 2015 05:53 PM
I agree with you that not all communities can afford to take on entrepreneurship in as ‘fancy-free’ a way as is promoted in the west.
However, I do think that the term and spirit of ‘fail fast, fail often’ have been misconstrued by many. The spirit of failure doesn’t mean wholesale venture failure, with its resource investments, employees and debts left hanging. It is supposed to mean the exact opposite: the road-testing of the foundational assumptions entrepreneurs make about who wants their product, in what colour, and for how much.
The mantra is supposed to get entrepreneurs to face market truths about their business models as fast as possible. It’s the faulty assumptions that are supposed to be revealed as failures as quickly as possible, so that entrepreneurs can iterate and actually build that business on solid information. As a practice, that’s supposed to make wholesale venture failure LESS likely, not more.
What may have failed, above all, is the mantra in communicating what it actually should.