That Podcast Malawi clip had me in stitches 😂. They said Malawian female artists once created a WhatsApp group and it didn’t survive 24 hours. The funny part? It’s true! 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Thread 🧵
1/ Malawi doesn’t have a tech problem.
Malawi has a market problem.
Too many founders are building products first and looking for customers later.
2/ Every month there’s a new app, new platform, new startup, new “Uber for X” or “Airbnb for Y.”
The problem?
Nobody asked whether people actually need it.
3/ A product is not a business.
Downloads are not revenue.
A website is not a company.
A fancy pitch deck is not market validation.
4/ The first question shouldn’t be:
“Can we build it?”
The first question should be:
“Who is paying for this problem to be solved?”
5/ Most successful businesses didn’t start with technology.
They started with a painful problem.
Technology was simply the tool used to solve it.
6/ Many founders spend 12 months building software.
Meanwhile they spend 0 months talking to potential customers.
That’s backwards.
7/ If nobody is willing to pay for your solution before it’s built, technology won’t magically create demand after launch.
8/ Malawi has thousands of problems worth solving:
Poor inventory management
Manual accounting
Supply chain inefficiencies
Procurement challenges
Customer service issues
Business compliance headaches
Yet many startups are busy copying Silicon Valley trends.
9/ The biggest opportunity in Malawian tech isn’t creating the next social media app.
It’s helping businesses make more money, save money or operate more efficiently.
10/ Before writing a single line of code:
Talk to 50 potential customers.
Find out what keeps them awake at night.
Ask what they’re already spending money on.
That’s where the opportunity is.
11/ The best startup advice I can give:
Fall in love with the problem.
Not your solution.
Because the market doesn’t care how clever your product is.
The market only cares whether it solves a problem worth paying for.
12/ Tech founders need fewer coding sessions and more customer conversations.
A validated problem is worth more than a perfectly built product with no users.
Build for a market. Not for your portfolio.
Great Presentation by Francis Mukosa on Data-driven marketing and performance analytics!
Key takeaway: Stop being a figure-phobic marketer. Your best work is always going to be based on data-backed decisions!
#Update
National Registration Bureau (NRB) is expected to roll out the Nzika Wallet mobile application in September, allowing Malawians to access digital versions of their non-expiring National Identity Cards.