At Facebook, I coined a term called Filipino Product Market-Fit:
Every year a product manager would observe their new product getting intense adoption in the Phillipines and proclaim their idea was working. Directors would quickly staff the team and alert their VPs of the newfound discovery—only to find out that the pattern was not reproducible in other countries.
The Philipines has one of the highest time-spent online in the world and they will try literally anything for a few days.
Over the festive period, I took some time to pen down my thoughts on the state of our business/sector and the African tech ecosystem in 2023, some critical lessons learnt, and my general outlook for 2024 and beyond.
https://t.co/womjSObz2I
Startups: The more specific you are, the lower your CAC.
'all-in-one' is not just expensive to build it's incredibly, incredibly expensive to message.
For 99% of startups you graduate to ‘all-in-one’ … on a long enough time horizon
We need to stop glorifying innovation. The bulk of success comes from the boring, monotonous, routine heavy lifting that keeps the lights on and the wheels turning. This too needs to be celebrated
“It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.”
— Charlie Munger