In East Africa, our experience has been that startup founders need support with operations, rather than strategy. For startup founders, control is difficult. Internal and external volatility lead to a day-to-day focus, rather than a long-term horizon. This requires higher founders being involved in operations longer. Founders having less time for - and trust in - planning for the long-term; e.g. organizational design, operational excellence (repeatability, reliability, quality). With TES we support organizations to move towards more predictable, repeatable & reliable operations to support the pathway to sustainable growth.
This process involved three key aspects;
Operational Excellence
Adaptive strategy frameworks, supported by diligent standard operating procedures and digital feedback structure partnerships would help.
Value-Chain Approach
Strong partnerships support an operational excellent supply-chain. Often, there is high resistance to change. Stakeholders indicate that a low-trust environment due to negative, previous experiences are the main reason to refrain from actively pursuing partnerships. Over the years, TES has successfully created ecosystems through a thorough understanding of aligning incentives. Through collaboration across the quadruple-helix, we accelerate markets.
Sustainable Growth
TES believes impact investment should focus less on pushing for a few unicorns. Whether the journey towards a unicorn is successful or not, they always create inequality and are highly destructive to their environment. Rather, impact investment and DFIs should support a large number of mature companies focused on sustainable growth. Here, it is critical to involve stakeholders with a long-term commitment to the triple bottom line. Some call such startups Camels, Zebra or, Turtoise.
Firstly, being a founder or working in a startup is not very visible. Promotion of successful operators and a support network would help facilitate the next generation of founders. Secondly, growing a startup is a process. Access to this playbook and easy to use templates which are adapted to East African (prospected) founders is a major enabler for success.
As TES, we aim to leverage our experience and our network with East African operators. People who have built and grown a company with a stable, repeatable org design/culture. We will create an East African Operator Playbook, together with a podcast series, to promote & facilitate founders across East Africa. In addition, we are preparing to publish open-source legal documents, such as SHA, ESOP, NDAs etc
Keen to follow our progress? Get in touch via EASY: East African Startup Operator Initiative