Shamte

I'm so bullish on social commerce in Africa.

[Shamte @ShamteDaudi]

I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us — don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

— By Emily Dickinson.

[Brian Armstrong @brian_armstrong]

If you think of Coinbase like a bank, we now hold about $0.42T in assets for our customers, which would make us 21st largest bank in the US by total assets, and growing.

If you think of us more like a brokerage, we'd be the 8th largest brokerage today by AUM.

If you think of us like a payments company…TBH i'm not sure where we rank on that list. There are various ways to measure it, but there were about $30T in total stablecoin payments last year (not all of those were goods and services though).

The point is, with crypto the line between these categories is blurring. There are many legacy reasons these are separate in the traditional financial system - and not all of them are good reasons. Why does the money you spend lose value instead of growing in value like an investment? Why does your checking account not earn yield like a savings account (or better yet, like short term treasuries)? Many people use Coinbase to invest, but also to spend, get a loan, etc.

In the updated financial system, you will have a single primary financial account which serves all these functions. A greater % of global GDP will run on more efficient crypto rails over time. We'll have sound money, lower friction transactions, and greater economic freedom for all.

[Shamte @ShamteDaudi]

Google NotebookLM is next-level awesome. Absolutely loving it! 🚀🔥

[Benjamin Fernandes 🇹🇿 @Benji_Fernandes]

Thrilled to announce today we went live with direct integrations of the largest bank in Tanzania, @CRDBBankPlc .

The Tanzanian Ambassador to the UK, Hon. @MbelwaK and a few others were with us today to celebrate this milestone.

These integrations enhance our reliability, speed of transfers, treasury, and float management.

Payments in Africa are #1PercentBuilt and building this work will help our customers on both @rafiki_api and @NALAmoney access more reliable payments.

[Shamte @ShamteDaudi]

@Benji_Fernandes Fernandez 😅

[Patrick Collison @patrickc]

We hit 99.99988% availability for Stripe's payments APIs in April (and at record scale). Just a hair more than one error for every million payments.

[Todd Jackson @tjack]

Big @firstround news today!

We’re launching Product-Market Fit Method (a free intensive 14-week experience for early founders building epic B2B SaaS companies) and publishing the first session on our internal framework for all to read (with benchmarks, Looker's real data, and tactical advice from iconic enterprise founders).

Even though finding product-market fit is the single most important thing for a startup, it’s still underexplored and seen as more art than science. We wanted to change that.

I’ve personally talked to hundreds of founders about this topic, digging into what they did in the first 6-9 months of company building. (We’ve published dozens of those interviews on The Review in our “Paths to PMF” series.) This video previews some of what we learned — thanks to @christinacaci, @zachperret, @lloydtabb, @jboehmig, & @jaltma for sharing their lessons!

In addition to that research, we’ve also drawn from our own 20 years of data and 500+ pre-PMF investments. What emerged was a very consistent set of patterns for sales-led B2B companies — the basis for our new framework and PMF Method’s 8 tactical sessions.

In the program, we help early founders discover what customers really want, build the right v1 product, and close their first enterprise sales. We ran a beta version late last year with a tight-knit group of founders (ex Stripe, Plaid, Airbnb, Twitter, Greenhouse, Grammarly) and the feedback was great — my personal favorite was: "I feel like I shaved 12 months off the time it would take us to get to PMF.”

Here are a few key dates and details:

- The Summer 2024 session of PMF Method runs 5/29 - 8/28.
- Application deadline is 11:59 PDT May 7th.
- Any early founder working on a new B2B SaaS company is welcome to apply. Bonus points if you’re technical, have a clear product idea but haven’t raised yet and are <12 months into working full time on your idea.
- PMF Method is 100% free. It costs you $0 and we own 0% of your company.

Like with The First Round Review and Angel Track, our mindset is to openly share knowledge that we’ve put hundreds of hours of work into curating with the broader startup community, and give it away for free. That’s why we’ve also published our framework, so every builder can use this resource, even if they don’t do the program (it’s linked in the next post).

Check out the links below for more details. Can’t wait to read applications!

[TechCrunch @TechCrunch]

Nala set out to offer remittance services, it’s building a B2B payment platform too https://t.co/x4HSuh1btr

[Benjamin Fernandes 🇹🇿 @Benji_Fernandes]

Today we made our first test transaction to South Africa 🇿🇦🚀🩵

[Shamte @ShamteDaudi]

@Benji_Fernandes @browsercompany Halafu sio nala ni NALA 😅😅

Hizi huwa tuna post kila mwaka, TBT hii

[Shamte @ShamteDaudi]

Mmoja akifika wote tumefika, mmoja akishangilia wote tunashangilia.

NALA imefanikiwa kufikisha miaka 2 nasi sote hatuna budi kuishangilia. 🎊🎉

[Shamte @ShamteDaudi]

There are web browsers, and then there's Arc by @browsercompany. Once I installed it, I never switched back.
Happy 1-year anniversary with my browser of choice!

[Shamte @ShamteDaudi]

At @NALAmoney, we are building "Payments for the Next Billion"

[Shamte @ShamteDaudi]

Ideas don't matter; what matters is execution—building the actual product and the business.

[Benjamin Fernandes 🇹🇿 @Benji_Fernandes]

How it started: Dar es Salaam 2017

How it’s going: 2023

#1PercentBuilt

[millardayo @millardayo]

Benki kuu ya Rwanda imeipa leseni kampuni ya NALA inayomilikiwa na Mtanzania Benjamin Fernandes ili kuanza kutoa huduma zake za kifedha nchini humo ikiwa ni miezi michache tangu @AyoTV_ iliporipoti kuwa Benki kuu ya Tanzania imeipa Kampuni ya NALA leseni ya kutoa huduma za kifedha nchini Tanzania (PSP Licence).

Leseni hii mpya kwa Rwanda inaiwezesha NALA kushirikiana moja kwa moja na Benki mbalimbali pamoja na mitandao ya simu nchini Rwanda kutoa huduma za kifedha kama vile kupokea fedha kutoka Marekani, Uingereza na Ulaya lakini pia kuwawezesha Wanyarwandwa walioko Ughaibuni kulipa malipo ya Serikali na bili mbalimbali za Rwanda kwa gharama nafuu.

@Benji_Fernandes ameiambia AyoTV yafuatayo “Tunaishukuru sana Serikali ya Rwanda na Benki kuu ya Rwanda kutupatia leseni hii, hii inatuwezesha NALA kutoa huduma nzuri na za uhakika za kifedha hapa nchini Rwanda na itachangia kuongeza fedha za kigeni pamoja na uwekezaji hapa nchini Rwanda”

APP ya NALA inayopatikana kwenye GOOGLE STORE na APP STORE tayari inafanya kazi kwa kuwawezesha Watu walioko Nchi zote za Bara la Ulaya, Marekani na Uingereza kutuma pesa wakati wowote kuja kwenye Nchi tisa za Afrika ambazo ni Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, Cameroon na Cote d'ivoire. #MillardAyoUPDATES

[Terrence Rohan @tmrohan]

I was lucky enough to work at Google ‘05-10.

We were in the office, 9a-8p, Mon-Thurs; Friday 9a-5p.

Saturday people took off (kinda).

Back online Sunday most of the day.

I think you miss something profound if you don’t have this work environment early in your career.

[Jason Marshall @__JasonMarshall]

Sending money to Africa and sending money around Africa should be free and fast. Not there yet but that is one of our goals.

[Benjamin Fernandes 🇹🇿 @Benji_Fernandes]

Last night we hosted 60+ African Tech Founders and builders in San Francisco.

I love seeing the community come together, let’s #BuildOurAfrica.

Shoutout to @prajitn who offered the office space to host this meet up 🙏🏽🔥

[Economist Intelligence: EIU @TheEIU]

Indonesia and Bangladesh are among the top most attractive destinations for market expansion investment for Chinese firms going global. https://t.co/sQUSvlscD6

[Des Traynor @destraynor]

We launched a *huge* Tickets upgrade, shipping feature requests from as far back as 2016

→ https://t.co/aXsraSWXg5 ←

* 3 Ticket types (Back-office, Tracker & bulk replies, and User-facing)
* Omni-channel (great in Messenger & Email)
* Company portals (let users see all their company's tickets)
* Custom states, custom ~everything

[Pearl Li @pearlli98]

Excited to share what @maggieqzhang, @rainsyy28, and I have been working on!

Follow for more updates on @useglaze, try https://t.co/KsMcesy8N5, and let us know your thoughts!