Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship- The Founders Battlefield
By Pauline Warui
Nine years ago, I opened what I thought would be a great business having done what any entrepreneur does. I did a few sums here and there and did what in my language we call‘ Mathabu ma Kiero’. In any African setting, if you grew up in the country side, we would pick some small sticks and write on our thighs all the sums and the multiplication jargon we were learning at the time. Everything had to add up according to the multiplication table which was printed at the back of the mathematics book. With our limited English we called it‘ Maths of the thigh’ as that was our slate board then. Grownups who did not have pens and books to write on, would also do the same as they calculated their profits and margins, the African way. The numbers always balanced, but we would later on learn that in business, things are not always what they seem to appear.
Entrepreneurship is not for the weak hearted. It is a battlefield. The start game is always a bliss. You have some capital which you have romantically calculated in terms of what you want to invest and the margins look good enough to afford you an annual holiday somewhere in Hawaii. You look for a small cozy office but if you are from a corporate background, you maintain a status. After all, society expects you to maintain a certain class for customers to respect you.
The first predator in the name of the landlord has come for the kill. He can smell your entrepreneurial naivety from a mile. Rent is not a uniform figure but it’ s now delivered as Kshs 120 bob per square foot. You do your numbers again and fall into the trap, hook, line and sinker. Then the dance starts.
Rent is not just a monthly payment. You have to pay two months deposit and rent has to be paid quarterly. You look at
When the business is doing well, the bank will trap you with great loans some of which you may not use to grow your business. Financial institutions are very good as long as the business case and the plan are aligned but will come for your assets the moment conditions change and you are not in a position to pay. Be careful and only take a loan when you have reviewed the worst-case scenario.
your capital and a whole chunk has been gobbled. You soldier on, after all you are a hopeless optimist, a term which you will divorce from in the very near future.
Now you have space which needs to be furnished. Another budget comes through hardware and software costs and since you’ ve never been one to buy these items, you fill in an office with expensive things yet you do not even have an idea how you will regain the sunken costs. Predators selling office furniture, laptops, internet connectivity etc also smell blood. They convince you how you need to cable the whole office and you agree like you are bewitched.
Employees are required and you hire the best of the crop but never ask yourself why they are lingering out there and not absorbed in the corporate world. Some have bad records but you did not do due diligence. Others are so brilliant until the day you pay them then they take a week off to drown their sorrows in their poison of choice.
Being a hard worker, you work hard and business starts to pick. Now you have a big workforce and your product can be defined as your IP. Everyone wants to work with you and suddenly you are getting the investors eyeing your business. You are excited. You pinch yourself and imagine your journey from the thigh writing dry skinned character to the big boss you have become.
A company from the Far East wants to‘ put some money’ in you company. You pinch yourself again. They pitch in their dark suits and once again you sign a deal
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