Trying to scale certain types of startups from countries like Jamaica with full reliance on locally available resources will always put you at a disadvantage...especially when well-funded foreign players arrive. Hugo had over $20M USD in funding and several hundred employees (not counting delivery personnel). All of Hugo's operations except for merchant and driver onboarding and marketing were managed by those hundreds of employees that weren't based here.
The 3 top Jamaican delivery services COMBINED have received around $1M USD in funding and between the 3 of them have less than 40 employees (not counting delivery personnel)...COMBINED.
To build a 3-sided marketplace (merchants, end-customers, drivers) that scales well takes a lot. Each side of that marketplace has its own set of apps to build and maintain, it's own relationships to manage, it's own business development requirements.
Of course, customers don't care about any of that and they shouldn't, they just want to get what they paid for and expected. Just saying that when Jamaican startups struggle to compete, it goes beyond effort and willingness.
Did you know?
The rich, beloved flavor of vanilla in your ice cream, cakes, and coffee owes a huge debt to the sharp observation of a 12-year-old boy named Edmond Albius.
In 1841, on the island of Rรฉunion in the Indian Ocean, a vanilla orchid vine had been flowering beautifully for over 20 years on the property where young Edmond worked โ yet it had never produced a single pod. One morning, his employer, Ferrรฉol Bellier-Beaumont, was astonished to discover two plump vanilla beans hanging from the vine.
When asked how it happened, 12-year-old Edmond calmly explained that he had pollinated the flowers himself.
Skeptical at first, Bellier-Beaumont watched as more pods soon appeared. He asked the boy to demonstrate โ and what Edmond revealed was pure genius.
Drawing on the basic botany his master had taught him (including hand-pollinating watermelon), Edmond had closely studied the delicate vanilla blossom. He noticed that its male and female parts were separated by a thin membrane called the rostellum. Using nothing more than a thin stick, twig, or blade of grass, he gently lifted that flap and, with a quick motion of his thumb, transferred the sticky pollen onto the stigma.
The technique was incredibly simple, fast, and reliable โ taking just seconds per flower. It worked every time.
This breakthrough unlocked commercial vanilla production far from its native Mexico, where special bees once handled pollination. Rรฉunion quickly became a major vanilla-growing region, and the flavor we all love spread around the world.
Edmond Albius (c. 1829โ1880) spent his life in horticulture on the island and passed away in Sainte-Suzanne, Rรฉunion. Today he is honored with a street, a school, and a sculpture in his memory โ a fitting tribute to the curious young mind whose discovery changed the global taste of sweetness forever.
As Jamaicans it is understandable that wi nable string (read unbilical cord) bury beside a KFC, under a mango tree...near a rumbar down di road from....a church.
I am not a morning person. Every doctor, sleep study, and my own mother will confirm this. And yet at 24, I decided this was the one thing standing between me and my best life.
It started with a podcast. Some guy with a jawline was talking about his 4:30 AM routine like it was the secret to immortality. I listened three times. I bought a sunrise alarm clock for $89.
Week one, I woke at 5 AM and told people about it. Unprompted. At dinner parties.
Week two, I was dismissing all four alarms in my sleep. My body was committing crimes without my consent.
I bought an app that made me solve math problems to turn the alarm off. I started hating math. I used to like math.
Four months later I had spent $340 on sleep equipment, read two books on circadian rhythms, and was waking up at 7:52 AM โ later than before I started.
Plot twist: I looked up my chronotype. Turns out some people are genetically wired to be night owls. Fighting it is like telling a left-handed person to just try harder.
I am a wolf. The podcast guy was probably a lion. We are different animals.
I now wake up at 8. The sunrise alarm is in a drawer. The gratitude journal is a coaster.
The lesson: sometimes the self-improvement arc is just you spending five months arguing with your own DNA.
There's an older lady that I've seen around Kingston on a motorcycle. She seems to handle herself well enough but she had a lapse this morning and I had to swerve away. Look out for her....and others. Best to avoid a collision than say motorcyclists should know better. #DoBetter