5 things I have learnt while running a start up in Uganda.
Two years as lead for Teheca, a patient care service start up in Uganda has taught me alot in the entrepreneurship world.
It goes with out saying no one can teach you how to be an enterprener nor can you say you know how a business works if you have never ran one.
Reading articles on line on how to get up and running, how to make you first million dollar blah blah, all these are good for motivation and as guidelines to follow but just like when you embark on a jouney into the unknown you reach a point and have to put the theory a side and adapt to the situation at hand and this is one of the lessons that i have learnt since starting to run Teheca.
So here are 5 things that those running or planning to run a startup in Uganda should buckle up for.
- Age is not just a number.
In attempt to make partnership with established organisation both NGO and Private ones, we came across a hundle of the team being young both in age and physically aswell as the company being young with only two year of registration under its belt.
Established organisations want to deal with companies that have made a name and the people in the orgnaisation want to deal with fellow old guys
2. Where are you located?
As soon as you mention that you have a company that does a, b, and c to anyone in Uganda the next question to you will be, where are you located? This is a very expensive question to answer especially with the cost of renting office space within the urban areas.
Because of this question, we had to put our startup on 7 months pause without doing marketing as we looked around for affordable office space, by the way regardless of the fact that your business may not need office space, having an address is a major of seriousness to some people.
Lucky today there are options of incubation hubs and co-working spaces, however some people have not grapsed the whole shared working space and may not feel very contented that they will find you at the place next time they need you.
3. Keep your cheque & LPOs come when you have cash
Equally small business like yours will not take your company cheque or LPO because they also need the cash to stay in business or not confident if that cheque will not bounce.
We all know getting goods and services on debt is a good way to ensure you have stock but this works well for established business but your start up may not benefit.
4. About online Marketing and Social Media.
Depending on your business, the 120k followers and likes on facebook may not convert to direct sales, as 3/4 of those are high schoolers whose purchasing power is almost zero.
Online visbility is a confirmation of existance and validating your business and occassional customer feedback channel.
5. Angel Investors hmmmm!!!
It is said that having angel investors for your startup is a good validation of trust and belief in your business and will inturn help drive other investors to your company.
Probably no one in your family or circles has enough liquid capital to invest in your business and the best investment they can offer you is prayers and occassionaly part on the back while telling you how greate it is to try & challenge the status quo and starting “your own thing”.
Bring it all together, you will meet people who are going to tell you how best to turn your start up into the a profitable business with all those ideas that they have read about online but untill they can run in your shoes they can never know how running a business is like entering into the jungle …Survival for the fitest with alot of challenges unlike how blogs and online articles make it seem like, do a, b & c, your in the clear.
And some challenges you will face have no immediate solution other than being patient, trying to create solutions immediately would come with a great budget cost that you may not have.
