Latest updates on technology and innovation trends in Africa

Popular tags: All Tanzania Startups Innovation Mobile



What is happening inside these beasts machines, all you need to know in less than 10 minutes

if this was a joke then it was a very bad one, bad we have come a long way to be where we are today 
Prinpo graduates of Buni Internship Program has managed to secure the TANZICT seed fund for startups and promising ideas. 

 Prinpo a startup based at Buni Hub composed by students from St. Joseph College of Engineering has managed to secure a seed fund from the TANZICT innovation fund. A team of students has managed to  build an e-waste 3D printer and now they are looking forward building a business out of the knowledge they have gained from the process.


It is still not very clear if they want to continue to manufacture the printers locally or they will be importing low-cost printers. What is very clear is the fact that they want to establish a small manufacturing plant for 3D printed teaching aids for primary and secondary schools in Tanzania. Their business model will sorely based on selling those models to public and private schools in the country. 

 TechBox Africa will be following closely the progress of this startups as it seems they are solving a real problem facing the education sector in Tanzania. 
Semi-finalists of the Pivot East 2015 has been announced for different categories has been announced and we are following closely the tweets #PIVOTEast
Learnings from Alban James CEO and founder Apex Media,  event management startup and learnings from Tyler Bosmeny CEO of clever during the Y-Combinator and Stanford Entrepreneurship Program.

Day 7 of Buni Entrepreneurship Bootcamp started by watching the video by Tyler Bosmeny CEO of Clever. The video took us to the discussion on which strategies African startups should adopt for sales and marketing.
African startups usually spend a lot of time and resources building great products and spend a little time getting users feedback and strategizing on market entrance. The wrong strategies on the market entrance are what makes most of the startups (products) to die at very early stages of their life cycle. 
The value of innovation is very high for the new startup compared to the companies already existing in the market hence the need to market and push more on sales for your product become inevitable. 

 Resources
 More resources to be shared....
The Learnings from Nisha Ligon founder Ubongo Kids and learnings from Keith Rabois, PayPal  during the Y-Combinator & Stanford University entrepreneurship program. 


Founders are everyone bosses and they always get paid last - Nisha Ligon
Choose passion and drive over CV on building your Startup teams - Nisha Ligon
One of the Ubongo Kids TV segments which teach kids in primary school the basics of mathematics in Swahili language. 

Resources
More resources to be shared











Resources




The learnings from Adora Cheung co-founder Homejoy and Brian Paul co-founder Fast & Fresh, Tanzania first start up to delivery groceries by ordering online.

Day 4 of Buni Entrepreneurship Bootcamp Started by listening to Adora Cheung talk at Stanford University on "Building Products, Talking to users and Growing". The talk was about the journey of Homejoy and the key things to consider on building service delivery startups. 
3 years of going back and forth, pivoting several times and trying out different techniques is what made Homejoy to reach where they are today. 


 Understanding the process of how things work at the lowest level of operations is crucial to the startup owners and new co-founders. Brian Paul co-founder Fast & Fresh, explain the days he used to wake up at 4:00 am in the morning and go to the local market and buy groceries ready to prepare, pack them and deliver them to the customers himself. 

 Adora explains how they had to send one of their team members to work to the cleaning company and understand how the cleaning process work. 
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Happening now at Buni Hub, Dar es Salaam Technology Hub live stream of Google I/O 2015. Buni Hub in partnership with Vodacom Tanzania organizing the live stream session for developers to watch in real time what is happening at the world largest tech event happening now in San Francisco...


Google Photos App is here...

Google stunts are just getting warmed up 







Earlier Today...

Vodacom Tanzania and Buni organizing the live stream session live from the hub.


Learnings from Kevin Hale and Michael Kimollo Co- Founder Soka App, Startup which provides information about Tanzania football league. 


 Day 3 of Buni Hub Entrepreneurship Bootcamp started by listening to the talk by Kevin Hale on "How to build products that users love". Understanding the need of the users and customers is crucial in building a great products. We reflected on the role of the co-founder on building an emotional connection between their products and users. Constantly getting customer feedback while developing your product is a necessity. You are the marriage counselor of your product and your customers.

 The challenge facing most of the African products is going live with unfinished "raw" products, although there was a lot of discussion on how to balance between releasing the Beta version of your product, it was not very clear when is the right time for you to go out with your product? We all agree it is critical for your product to have a good first impression. 

 You want occasionally to ignite users conversation about your products  by releasing a new innovative feature or by coming up with a strategy to promote user engagement with the current features of your product. 
What separates good products from great ones? The first question Michael Kimollo asked to the audience. If you don't understand your product don't expect users to understand it. Create something you yourself love and appreciate, you can only do this by wearing the shoes of the users. 

 "Don't just introduce new features on your product for the sake of adding features" Michael Kimollo

 Resources:

 Michael's Presentation @micka_mwamba 






learnings from Sam Altman and Time Tickets, African digital ticketing and reservation startup.
Day 2 of Buni Entrepreneurship Bootcamp is about Teams & Execution. How to develop successful teams for African Startups. The day starts  by watching the talk given by Sam Altman during the Stanford University entrepreneurship session.

Our discussion focuses more on African perspective, our culture values and social influences, can your friend be your co-founder? if yes, what kind of measures co-founders need to put into consideration before choosing their partners. How to hire or recruit great people for your startups? Do the local universities provide enough skills for local startups to hire from them? Where to get the right people for our startups? When is the right time to drop someone who is not productive in the team? How do you measure productivity?

 The second session of the day is facilitated by TiME tickets a Tanzania Startup with their mobile application for ticketing and reservation. Their team has been together throughout the journey up to their recent success. The learnings from their team include;  the challenges of team formation, building shared vision for startups, maintaining team discipline  and how to nurture commitment among co-founders.


Execution is also an important part of the discussion, African startups are working with minimum resources possible and with unsupportive entrepreneurial ecosystem. What is like to be an African startup CEO? What are the most important qualities you should possess? What are things to consider as a CEO when you are building a new product in Africa? Product based startups VS service based startup, which is a practical option to start with for African startups?  Management of funds and resources, maintaining startup momentum and essentialism, what does this mean to African startup CEO? You can download Time Tickets app from here.


Day 2 Resources:

Samuel Masinde "Doer not A dreamer"
Sam Altman "Team & Execution"
Sam Altman Slide Deck