Adapt. Lead. Thrive
Entrepreneurs are often taught to begin with unmet need. Find a painful problem. Identify a large group of people experiencing it. Develop a solution that is meaningfully better than the alternatives. Test whether customers will pay. If demand is strong enough, scale. This logic is central to modern entrepreneurship. And in many cases, it works. […]
Startup failure is usually discussed as a founder problem. A company runs out of cash. Investors lose money. Employees lose jobs. The founders regroup, learn from the experience and perhaps try again. That framing makes failure seem contained. But in emerging entrepreneurial ecosystems, startup failure can have consequences far beyond the venture itself. More than […]
When startups struggle in emerging markets, the founder is usually the first person blamed. Perhaps the founder misunderstood the customer. Perhaps the product-market fit was weak. Perhaps execution was poor. Perhaps the company scaled too quickly. Sometimes those explanations are correct. But they are also incomplete. Many founders are not acting irrationally. They are following […]
One of the most puzzling realities of entrepreneurship in Africa is that startups can appear to be doing everything right and still struggle to survive. They identify large markets. They attract respected investors. They raise substantial capital. They recruit experienced teams. They adopt proven technology. They build products that have succeeded elsewhere. In some cases, […]
