Reflections for 2022 — why everyday is about understanding people
By Rose Goslinga — Co-CEO and Co-Founder, Pula Advisors
Every year at Pula, I realise my job is to convince people. To convince people to join me in starting a company, to convince people to hire our services, and to convince people that our dreams and vision can become a reality.
In 2015, I was on my own, trying to convince my co-founders to join. They said yes, more out of sympathy rather than based on the thought that we could build an insurtech. I’m pretty sure we didn’t even know what an insurtech was in 2015.
One of our first projects was a consulting assignment for KCB, a bank in Kenya, where we helped the bank identify farmers in their database. We applied for and wrote proposals for everything remotely insurance-related. We had one insurance transaction client: One Acre Fund. Both KCB and One Acre Fund had hired us based on trust, friendship and the sheer belief that we could make something extraordinary happen.
We employed no one; all we could afford was one consultant in the west of Kenya to do some field monitoring. My husband let me sit at an empty desk in his office. I knew every penny coming in and out.
By 2016, there were two consultants, two desks, and a new client: the World Food Programme (WFP). We hadn’t succeeded with our first tender with them but they were keen to work with us. We tried again for the next WFP bid — this time, we got it. I remember deliberately setting out a low budget, and the WFP then calling me to check if I had made a mistake with the quote. We needed the job badly and I believed that once we were in, we would be in. The WFP is now one of our largest customers.
At the end of 2016, we got our first seed company pilot: we signed-up to work with the world’s largest seed company in Malawi. We got the deal through sheer persistence. They liked our bid and their new Head of Marketing gave in when I showed up at Nairobi Airport ‘to visit a client in Malawi’. She was also on her way to Malawi. We had had a contract stuck on her desk for a month but now she ‘agreed to sit down with us and the Malawi team’ a few days later. Shortly after the trip, the contract was signed.
The seed company loved our pilot concept. Within no time, their India office wanted a pilot too. For a company that could barely afford office space, it seemed unbelievable that we were suddenly about to launch in India.
We also got into an accelerator programme in 2016. That week-long experience in Sri Lanka changed the course of the business, because the accelerator team single-mindedly talked Thomas (Njeru) into coming on board full time. For the next six months, the team helped us raise our first investment round. Investors lined up and we raised $1.8 million as seed capital.
We now had pilots in Malawi and India, and a few paying blue-chip clients. We also had a functioning financial model that Thomas had built, which helped us understand how much money we needed and used. This made for an irresistible value proposition.
By mid-2017, it was clear that to grow we needed to do our own crop cutting experiments (yield measurements). When we started, reinsurers didn’t think it was possible to carry out field operations. Everyone else was using satellite data. But this didn’t deter us. Around this time, I remember being able to afford another senior manager. She built capacity within the business, which has left its legacy to this day.
In the first few years, the most difficult thing was to convince people to join the business. We had no brand and no website — I figured my TED talk was more reliable branding than any website. I’m convinced I was right on that front when it came to clients, but I didn’t realise that no one wanted to work for a company without a website!
Those early years formed me as a person. I still suffer from the thought of not having more than three months’ runway at any point in time for two years. But they also shaped me to listen to people, and read their instincts and body language carefully enough to figure out a way to appeal to them.
As I look ahead to 2022, every day is still about understanding people. But no one ever tells you how hard this is. Understanding how to align and motivate people is key to keep the ship sailing. That said, it’s a journey and a lifestyle that I chose — one that I don’t regret at all. It’s a life lived in the present and lived fully.
