Bertrand

Technology & Innovation management practitioner | MD, Swift Hailing Ltd , a Tech Solutions Co. | Co-founder @Kakbimaofficial

[Bertrand @bomuga]

@EvanoMemba Seems only interested in accumulating papers and not skills. Only academia will help this one

[Nick Huber @sweatystartup]

A few controversial things I believe:

1) A grown man with a family has no business getting on a ladder to put up Christmas lights.

2) a larger vehicle is safer than a smaller vehicle. Put your family in an SUV. Period. Crash ratings are a scam.

3) Pitbulls are a public nuisance.

4) politics is a total waste of time. Putting energy towards it is inversely correlated to happiness.

5) earning money is hard. $100k a year is a lot of money. Twitter acts like it’s easy but it isn’t.

6) sports betting is a disaster for society. Quietly destroying a lot of men’s lives.

7) waiting till 35 to think about kids is a huge mistake. These folks are all going to regret not having more, earlier.

8) SEC and Big10 schools are the new Ivy League. Wealthy families want to send their kids there, not Harvard or Stanford.

9) religion is making a comeback. And the people who get serious about it end up with better lives.

10) marrying a doctor or a lawyer is high status, but low enjoyment. These folks live stressful lives with very little flexibility.

11) vaping and weed are better for your body than alcohol, but worse for your career and life. They remove ambition and energy and make you less social.

12) giving our kids 75 vaccines is going to go down in history as a net-negative on society.

13) technology won’t actually advance a lot from here. Our physical worlds will largely be the same 20 years from now.

14) driverless cars are 20 years away. Waymo won’t make it out of the major cities with 25 mile an hour speed limits.

15) Virtual reality won’t become a thing. Nobody has any use for it.

16) 99% of people have no use for AI and it has reached 90% of its potential utility. Massive waste of electricity on the whole.

17) Web3 is a joke. Crypto is worthless. Bitcoin is a fad and is 100% speculative. Massive waste of electricity. Solves a problem that doesn’t exist.

18) electric vehicles will not become mainstream. They do more harm to the environment than good. Creating them and disposing of them is an environmental catastrophe.

19) Starlink is a miracle and ads 10x more value to society than the previous 5 things on this list combined. Elon needs a Nobel prize.

20) the fed has done a great job over the last 3 years with rates.

21) nuclear power is the only way forward. Solar and wind are not sustainable and are a total waste of money. Oil and gas is the only viable solution today and America should invest heavily in more production.

22) Silicon Valley influencers and Tech titans are out of touch with the true needs of Americans. They could benefit by spending some time in a Walmart. Most people are trying to figure out how to put food on the table. They don’t need another app for their meta glasses.

What’s something you believe that isn’t a common belief? Which one am I wrong about?

[Bertrand @bomuga]

@janetmachuka_ You bootstrap

[Bertrand @bomuga]

@markgoldbridge Glazerineos

[Bertrand @bomuga]

@moseskemibaro My issue is the mandatory permissions to 'manage and make phone calls'. A common theme among the shylock lending apps

[Nat Miletic @natmiletic]

The longer you spend in tech, the stronger the urge to buy a farm and never touch a computer again in your life

[🇵🇸 Riaz Gilani 🍉 @RiazGilani]

Sales and distribution. The stories of private sector corruption and fraud are simply amazing.

Imagine employing 10 workers to do a job. Then you find out that these workers have devised their own rotation system where they "share" their salaries and allocate each other tasks.

[Bertrand @bomuga]

Well put

[Gichuki Kahome @kahome_steve]

There are two very poor insurance products that you should NEVER buy:

1. Education policies
2. Endowment plans

Mixing wealth creation and wealth protection leaves you underinsured and gives your low ROI

Separate your wealth creation and wealth protection baskets.

[Bertrand @bomuga]

@SamProgramiz Interesting view, yes hard to crack but there are definitely some opportunities. Our market loves 'imported' so local solution quality has to be topnotch

[Bertrand @bomuga]

@PI_Kinyua Keep one for me

[Royal Eagle 🦅 @Komboray]

Great opportunity. Anyone around Kisumu, this is a great opportunity! Amazing stuff

[Nick Huber @sweatystartup]

Entrepreneurship culture in America is all messed up and it’s a shame.

TechCrunch. Product Hunt. Shark Tank.

It’s all about new ideas. Changing the world. Innovation. 0 to 1. Blue ocean. Venture capital and exits and scalability.

And IT’S ALL A LIE.

If you ask the average American who a real entrepreneur is they’ll say Jobs, Musk or Zuck. We read their books and idolize them and hang on to their every word.

So the brightest among us think they need a moat. A new idea. Something revolutionary. We're setting them up for FAILURE.

I took an entrepreneurship course at Cornell in 2011. 24 kids with new ideas. Big plans. Pitch decks looking for series As.

I was #25 with a regular old-fashioned business. When professors asked me what my differentiator was I didn’t have an answer.

"We're just going to pick up people's stuff and store it when they go home for the summer. I'll answer the phone, do things a little better and I think I can make some decent money."

I saw a company out there doing sweaty, non-scalable work. They weren't very good at it and yet they made really good money.

I started by trading my time for money. Bought a $1500 cargo van. Storage Squad was born. Used the things I had in my life to make some profit.
I wasn’t trying to educate a customer base.
I wasn’t following my passion.
I didn’t need funding or a network.
I wasn’t competing against brilliant folks from Stanford.
I want trying to prove a concept.
I wasn’t emotionally attached to anything except adding value.
My customers and my competitors existed. I could study them interacting with each other. I made decisions with my brain, not my heart. I was competing against folks with fax machines, clipboards and paper ledgers.

And the best part... WE WERE PROFITABLE FROM DAY ONE.

Not a single one of those 24 folks in my class succeeded. They all went and got jobs. Their new ideas didn’t catch on. They all had dreams of millions of users and an exit. Scalable models that could work anywhere from a computer. But 99% failed to make a single dollar.

We made enough money in a few years to build our first self storage facility. That grew into the 60+ property $100m+ portfolio we own and operate today. We sold the service business in January 2021 for $1.75 million. We had no debt and no silent partners. My business partner and I split the cash.

So who are the real entrepreneurs? Who are the wealthiest people you know? I’m not talking about money. I’m talking about the people who do what they want to do when they want to do it. Who are they?

Now here comes the hard truth. I know a lot of wealthy entrepreneurs. None of them had new ideas. Very few of them raised VC money. None of them were on shark tank. They all did common things uncommonly well. Regular old businesses just a little better.

BORING STUFF.

Most of them have a few things in common: They worked really hard doing something not fun for 5+ years. Many times 20+ yrs. They started out trading their time for money. They did things that weren’t scalable. Many of them offered services.

They all had to talk to people. Most of the time face to face. They had to sell themselves and their ideas. They didn’t take a lot of risk. Most of them hired coders but few of them were coders.

The main point:

Stop buying into the hype. The click bait. The sexy stories of overnight success and mega riches. Entrepreneurship isn’t that complicated. Do something with good odds, low risk and moderate rewards. Don’t master your craft, master leading other people.

Think with your head, not your heart. It’s not about you and what YOU love or what YOU want to be doing. And lastly.. Start SMALL.

Biz is about momentum. I started 10 yrs ago carrying boxes up spiral staircases. Now I’m buying millions worth of real estate.

And the best part. When you’re successful, experienced, wealthy and you have a killer network...

It’s time to change the world with something BIG.

[Bertrand @bomuga]

@moseskemibaro Could it have been an orchestrated reverse acquihire?

[Bertrand @bomuga]

@ntvkenya Need to get serious on what to call invention/innovation. At best, this does not even qualify for a high school science congress project

[Osaretin Victor Asemota @asemota]

Simply brilliant!! 😂

[Bertrand @bomuga]

RT @moseskemibaro: New Video & Audio Podcast] Understanding the KRA Tax Amnesty: Insights from KRA's Alfred Sikuku and Technology Entrepren…

[Marge Ntambi @margentambi]

There are 3 standard ways to describe market size:

1. TAM = Total Addressable Market
2. SAM = Service Available Market
3. SOM = Service Obtainable Market or Share of Market

Let's break each one down

1. TAM
TAM is the total possible demand for your product without limitation to geography, competition, product, resources, etc.

It's the maximum revenue a business can generate by selling to a global market

Why this metric is relevant?

It helps a business estimate a market's potential for growth

To calculate this and all other market metrics, use a bottoms-up approach

An example: you've built a food delivery smartphone app that brings in $500 per year in revenue per customer. The TAM could be people 16+ who have smartphones. Assuming a world population of 8B and 40% of them are 16+ with smartphones, the TAM could be:

8B x 40% x $500 = $1.6T

2. SAM
SAM is the market you can actually reach given the limitations of product, geography, demographics, and psychographics

Why this metric is relevant?

It helps a business estimate the portion of a market they can acquire based on specific targets

An example: you're starting operations in Uganda. The app is compatible with both iPhone and Android devices. Your SAM would take into account 16+ year-olds in Uganda with an iPhone or Android who could afford the app. Assuming that population is 3M, the SAM would be:

3M x $500 = $1.5B

3. SOM
SOM is the market share you can expect to acquire given your go-to-market strategy and competition

Assuming you've been in business for a year, your market share would be your revenue for the year divided by your industry service addressable market for that year

To forecast your SOM for next year, you'd take your revenue divided by the SAM for next year

An example: you generated $5M in revenue. If the SAM is growing to $2B next year, your SOM for next year is:

$5M / $1.5B x $2B = $6.7M

Note: the calculation of SOM here is slightly different than other approaches. SOM here focuses on current and future share of a market.

As you work through your calculations for market share and you're interested in raising venture capital, be aware of revenue expectations for venture scale returns

Also, expand on the concept laid out above. Understand what the potential of entering another market (Kenya, Tanzania, etc.) or a stronger GTM could do for your SOM (Share of Market)

Articulate your company's growth potential in a, concise, data-backed, achievable story

[Sir KELVIN🎩 @Kevoh_254]

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[MOJA Expressway Company @mojaexpressway]

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[Bertrand @bomuga]

@eajene How I wish the goal to change to “It’s a 12-month program designed to help innovative startups grow to their first $1 million in revenue”.
Fundraising ought to move from being the main metric