Galen Welsch: Jibu
This is a series of accounts on how entrepreneurs made the leap into the wonderful, challenging — yet fulfilling! — life of building a business in East Africa. They stuck it out in both the exciting I-have-a-brilliant-idea-that’s-going-to-earn-me-lots-of-money phase and the not so exciting no-one-will-actually-buy-my-product phase. Here is how they did it!
Galen Welsch; entrepreneur, visionary, all round miracle worker and the CEO and co-founder of Jibu. In three short years, Jibu grew from one employee on the ground to now over 45 employees and- through their franchise model- they currently provide employment to 700 people. Sorcery? Luck? Both? According to Galen, it was none of the above. I was fortunate to meet with Galen and talk about what he has learned along the winding road to Jibu’s success. Hopefully his story will inspire an entrepreneur or two!
On Starting Jibu
Jibu (Swahili for the answer or solution), is an organisation with a network of locally-owned franchise business owners, many of whom are young women in urban areas in Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya (with expansion to Tanzania and Zimbabwe in the works). They provide high-quality drinking water to communities that are unable to afford many basic needs, like water. However, they have always been very emphatic about the fact that they are more than just a water company.
“Everyone involved with Jibu, from the investors to the staff members, is very passionate about equipping entrepreneurs, through a partnership model,” Galen said, “to build successful businesses that meet people’s needs.”
After a stint with the Peace Corps and with a passion for development, Galen co-founded Jibu with his father. While they initially didn’t know much about water, they wanted a business that would meet people’s basic needs and what is more basic a need than water? They built their business model around water with a heavy focus on using a local ownership model.
Their plan was to borrow the franchising business model from a saturated developed market, bring this to an emerging market and pair it with local ownership in order to work with people that really know the area. Galen believes that this intellectual trade was one of their keys to success, as opposed to them coming up with their own ideas on how to serve the communities, a mistake made by many businesses today.
After seed financing provided by his father to pilot in Uganda, Rwanda and The Democratic Republic of Congo, Jibu took off. The beginning was all a step by step process. Everything- from the idea itself to create a business around water to the franchising model eventually adopted, was developed as they went along. They did a lot of research, as they began piecing it all together, and still continue to do so as they expand into new countries and markets. At the start, the research involved talking to the founders of other water organisations to understand what they were doing in order to borrow their best ideas. They also spoke to their local partners who shared ideas on how best they could execute their plans in the context of where they were operating.
On Building the Team
That is pretty much how they got started, just the two of them, with only one of them on the ground and big dreams of what they wanted to accomplish. From there, they grew the team to the 45 they have today. Having a few key people who share the same vision, running in the same direction helped them build momentum, especially as they started out. However, he had to figure out a way to incentivize really good talent to join the team, especially since he couldn’t pay them as much as they were previously earning. So he gave away equity to their initial hires, who therefore essentially joined as owners of the company. How’s that for incentive?! Even then, he still had to sell their vision to all prospective hires in order for them to buy into the vision and see the depth of the opportunity he was presenting them.
Very importantly, Galen was not afraid to hire people who could have been viewed as being ‘out of his league.’ He did this, not only to get the very best people to join the team or Board of Directors (who would ultimately help achieve his vision for Jibu), but also because he believed that really good talent on board would legitimize what they were doing and attract even more talent.
“A good example of this is our current CFO, Alex Paur,” Galen said, “He previously worked as a senior manager at Ernst and Young (EY), Switzerland. Through their Enterprise Growth Services program, he spent a few months with us as a volunteer working on our franchisee’s financial management systems. A couple of years later, he was willing to jump the EY ship completely and join the Jibu movement.”
With Alex on board, it felt like the lights had been turned on because they had previously been working in the dark. He currently does everything related to financial management and strategy. None of this would have happened if Galen had scurried away from selling to him the vision, intimidated by his position and experience.
To lead any team- particularly one as skilled as the one at Jibu, requires able leadership. To that end, Galen cites his father as his biggest leadership influence. His humility and general belief in and understanding of people has framed the way he views leadership and interacts with the people he leads.
On Utilizing All Resources
Regarding raising capital, Galen says they used a shotgun approach. Simply put, they identified as many funders as possible, approached them all and crossed their fingers hoping for the best.
“We got 30 negative responses for every positive one, and a good percentage of those positive responses were previously negative,” he said.
They just kept going, no matter how many doors were closed in their faces, with the hope that there would eventually be that one that would open. This eventually happened in 2014 when they received a huge grant from USAID. This was very critical for their series A fundraising.
Capital, however, was not the only resource they employed as they started out and grew Jibu. Galen is glad he made a lot of private sector connections at the start. He connected with the International Franchise Association, got partners within the social enterprises sector, law firms to mention a few. It was from these connections that he understood how franchising worked, got insight on the sector, both locally and internationally and borrowed best practice ideas from other water and social enterprise companies, among other benefits.
Galen also attributes their growth as a business to the relationships he built that resulted in a couple of talented people offering pro-bono expert services and volunteer help.
“For example, a friend designed our logo, website and brand all for free. People offered their services because they wanted to use their skill sets for something different, creative and more impactful.”
Galen is also glad they focused on their business model and on getting results, as opposed to storytelling. Focusing on their business model helped them fine tune it. This is what made for a more compelling story to funders, collaborators and possible team members.
On what has been most exciting
Everything from creating the new company, Jibu, to creating a logo for the said new company was exciting.
“The most exciting part about starting Jibu was the very idea of creating something from scratch,” he said, “And having to wear different hats, from CEO to lawyer to engineer.”
On the Challenges
Starting out was not all breezy, however. While there were a number of challenges, the very idea of everything being driven by him alone ranks high on the list.
“The fact that there was no obvious way to measure success, meant that we got to tirelessly work every day, not knowing if we were on the right track in the first place.”
On Mistakes
Because he is human, Galen made some mistakes, otherwise this would be a pretty boring and incomplete recount of events. One of the biggest mistakes he made was waiting to lay off people that were not delivering.
“An example of this was the time I held off on letting go of an employee with a bad attitude,” he said.
Because of this, the morale of the whole office was affected, negotiations with different parties suffered and they therefore wasted a lot more money as a company. When he finally let go of the employee, they saw almost immediate results. The energy in the team was positive again, they saved a lot of money with the new hire and it also turns out that the person who had been let go was relieved.
In Conclusion
Galen attributes their growth to a number of other factors including having mentors who gave him invaluable advice, having a sound strategy, good partners and a strong brand. However, above all else, they were able to maintain their focus.
“There have always been additional services we could provide or complementary products we could sell. We had to understand our story and goals and remain focused on achieving these before moving on to the next idea.”
What’s next for Jibu?
World domination. They are expanding into Zimbabwe and Tanzania and by the year 2021, plan on having 1000 franchises in about twenty countries. World. Domination.
*Sugar, Spice and Everything Nice to Galen for sharing his experience with us!
