Startup Culture from North to South and back - and why I do what I do
(4-minute read)
If it's still there, alive and kicking after you've left, you might have been a part of creating something sustainable.
That's what I thought when I was beaming with pride earlier this week attending Investing and partnering with African Innovators in Helsinki, Finland. I saw my previous colleagues implement an event idea I had been a part of conceptualizing and it went brilliantly. This Slush 2019 side event, a part of the Think Africa week, was organized by Southern Africa Innovation Support Programme and Think Africa together with their partners Futurice and United Nations Technology Innovation Labs.
Continuing to connect the African diaspora and the entrepreneurship crowd in Helsinki, Finland, this community again brought together over a hundred people eager to discuss African startups, innovations and investments. They even got heavy-hitters from the African VC-space to chime in, when Zachariah George from Startupbootcamp Africa gave a talk with FCA Investments' Jukka-Pekka Kärkkäinen.
That all being incredibly fine and dandy, my pride stemmed especially from seeing the 14 startups from Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia pitch at the event, marking the finale for the event series BOOST UP.
Since I left Namibia and SAIS Programme in June 2019, the 17 Connected Hubs member organizations in five countries ran a total of over 20 events including open pitch training sessions and local pitch competitions to identify the most potential tech-enabled and impact-minded startups. The selected startups were prepped by their local coaches and Knowledge Partners over the course of two months to strengthen their businesses and to fine-tune their pitches. I was in awe of seeing the hard work the startups had put into developing their businesses and while listening to their pitches, I could sense the excitement of the local coaches cheering them on. Two thumbs up for all the amazing changemakers and the organizers contributing with mentoring awards!
To me, this is what startup culture is. It's about a community that consists of industry experts, investors, entrepreneurship support organisations, the public sector and entrepreneurs coming together and supporting each other as they did at this event. In general, this support is given pro bono. As far as I'm aware, none of the speakers at the event nor the coaches or knowledge partners was paid for their time. This is because the reciprocal interest for all stakeholders in an entrepreneurship ecosystem is the shared value of economic growth in that geographical area. Startup culture to me means a supportive environment for an early-stage startup to share their idea, get feedback on it and grow into a stronger entrepreneur and job-creating business as a result of it.
Since the startup era kickstarted about a decade ago in the Helsinki region ecosystem, all of this above is nowadays nearly taken for granted. Naturally, a lot of work has gone into making the ecosystem what it was when I entered it in 2015 (for a cool recap on how the fall of Nokia ties in with the birth of the leading tech event Slush and all that has come along with it, see this video - always timely around Slush). Many ecosystems in emerging markets such as those in Southern Africa are still developing. Networks such as Connected Hubs and event series like BOOST UP can play a massive role in accelerating ecosystem development and in fostering Startup Culture, and it has been incredibly rewarding to have been a part of the enabling of that.
Networks such as Connected Hubs and event series like BOOST UP can play a massive role in accelerating ecosystem development and in fostering Startup Culture
As I was drafting my research proposal for this PhD Programme with the Loughborough University London, I discovered to my surprise that academia didn't yet recognize this particular branch of entrepreneurship culture - the one focused on growth-minded, tech-enabled, risk-financed startups. Based on my experience this sub-culture feels different from developing an entrepreneurial mindset to build a brick-and-mortar business for a restaurant or a hair salon. I think Startup Culture should be aligned with what Steve Blank talked about when he talked about startups. It's more about building the next Airbnb or Twiga Foods. I think Startup Culture is about being lean, being global.
Startup Culture is about being lean, being global.
But to my knowledge, this type of startup culture hasn't yet been defined academically. And to be fair, it is a new phenomenon. It's only eight years since Lean Startup came out. Even if you knew about research around this particular kind of Startup Culture (and please do share if you know of something!), my guess is it's probably been done in a Western context. But not in Africa.
New companies are born in conducive environments, and my hypothesis is that where these entrepreneurship ecosystems don't exist, they can be created by design. However, the design needs to be locally co-created to suit the cultural context, that particular local startup culture. Only by doing that can we create a sustainable change.
If there is a place in the world that needs fresh perspectives to job creation and fighting youth unemployment, it's Africa. That's why I do my research. That's why I intend to design a model for culturally suitable Entrepreneurship Ecosystems.
So stay tuned.