Tag: Startup

Tech

Why Your African Parents Don’t Believe in Your Crazy Dream + Why You Can’t Blame Them but Should Pursue It Anyway

Post author By Wiza Jalakasi
Post date 29 November, 2016

Reading Time: 7 minutes

Being a member of Generation Y is tricky. For those who may not be in the know, Generation Y basically refers to millennials, basically, persons reaching young adulthood around the year 2000. People like me-ish (If you consider 2012–16 close enough to the year 2000 to count.

It’s extra tricky (but statistically more awesome — I’ll explain in a minute) if you’re a member of Generation Y and born African. You may find yourself frequently torn between the principles and habits that you learned from your native culture and those you may have adopted from foreign influences.

It’s difficult to describe, but those who have experienced this know exactly what I’m talking about.

Tags Africa, Hope, Millennials, Self Development, Startup

Tech

Life Sucks in Africa

Post author By Wiza Jalakasi
Post date 20 October, 2016

Reading Time: 5 minutes

… my typical day in tech on the “dark” continent.

Most days I wake up pretty late. 8am on a good day. The first thing I do is reach out for my phone. I check the time, and scroll through a series of notifications to find out whether or not a server just exploded, or more realistically, if a Russian bot finally discovered the SSH port of my production server and client emails have been down for 6 hours.

Tags Africa, Life, Satire, Startup, Tech

Tech

The Biggest Battles I Face As an African Technology Entrepreneur are in The Mirror

Post author By Wiza Jalakasi
Post date 2 September, 2016

Reading Time: 7 minutes

Sometimes I’m the biggest impediment to my own progress.

Three weeks ago, I wrote about my experiences as a tech entrepreneur in Africa. I had told my friends that I’d write a second post if I got 15+ recommends.

I didn’t really expect it to be “good enough” to go viral, but that article now has over 490 recommends and has been republished on Startup Grind. The republished article has picked up 50+ more recommends and is growing by the day. I guess I’m not doing too bad.

And yet somehow, I still d̶i̶d̶n̶’̶t̶ don’t feel confident about publishing this post. My mind has a funny way of playing tricks on me, often leading me to overestimate my ability in certain areas and underestimate them in others.

Tags Africa, Entrepreneurship, Mobile, Startup, Tech

Tech

What It’s Really Like to Be Young, Black, and an African Tech Startup Entrepreneur (in Africa)

Post author By Wiza Jalakasi
Post date 14 August, 2016

Reading Time: 11 minutes

Right then, back to the main topic. Being a startup founder anywhere in the world is incredibly hard, but in Africa, it’s a special kind of organised chaos.

It’s not pretty.

I’m nearly 24 years old, and over the last 8 years, I’ve built and launched 3 technology companies in Africa across different verticals in two countries. The first one when I was 16 years old — I didn’t even know that it was a startup at the time, and it failed.

Tags Africa, Entrepreneurship, Startup