Tech Startups do not need money to succeed. Pt. 1

Technology startups in Africa and around the world are viewed as solutions to common problems that face people daily. Young minds have come up with solutions targeting education, agriculture and health among other lucrative industries that have highly attracted technology based solutions from mobile, internet, and machine automation.

Africa, especially Kenya has had mushrooming of start-ups in the past few years, possibly as a result of growth in the technological industry, coupled with the “global entrepreneurship uprising” and the motivation of young people to create employment rather than look for it. However, many experts have confirmed that it is not an easy path.

In 2014, the Standard reported that tech startups face financing as a major hindrance to fruition , findings which were published by GSM Association (GSMA) showing that “over 80 per cent of Kenyan technology companies in their early stages are either self-funded or rely on funds advanced by family and friends.”

The problem has not changed a bit, since most tech entrepreneurs to this day believe that funding is a big factor in the success equation of their start-ups. However, this does not have to be this way. While I fully agree that emerging tech start-ups need finances for infrastructure, skilled personnel, working space among other needs, I also believe that there is great possibility of bootstrapping a new start up by pure organic growth, using various growth hacking mechanisms. Assane Gueye, a cybersecurity expert from Senegal stated that “Usually in Africa when we talk about infrastructure we always talk about money, it’s not true.” I totally agree. There is so much more to start-up growth than hard cash financial capital.

This post is just part one of a series of articles I will write to demystify start-up organic growth and bootstrapping with very little or no funds at all. I have started tech start-ups, and been part of a number of others started by my friends and workmates, and I have come to appreciate the possibilities that exist for tech startups in Kenya and around the world.

In the coming parts of this organic growth hacking series of articles, I will show you how various methods such as leveraging acceleration programs, getting into strategic partnerships with shared market start-ups to support each other, leveraging passion, talent and self-developed skill sets to equip your start-up among others. You will be able to pinpoint how combining these hacks can take your tech start-up from a staggering establishment to a strategically growing organization.

Just to prepare you for the next part, it is important to know which areas most tech startups often require hard cash to spend on. I was reading a discussion on Quora on why start-ups require so much money and some of the expected things came in to be what most people think create this almost insatiable need for huge capital investment – skilled professional labour and associated, infrastructural scaling like for cloud computing facilities, and marketing and user acquisition costs. Office space also came up as a large factor that balloons tech start-up costs. In the next article (link to the next after being posted), we will cover the fundamentals of organic tech start-up growth hacking, starting with building a working organization and beyond. Keep it here and let’s build the next generation tech start-ups that are financial capital independent or at least to a very small extent.

#BrianNyagol