I have seen very many businesses fail, some within the first year of operation. Supermarkets, shops, vinyozis, restaurants, nightclubs, boutiques, and other SMEs.
sa unatakaje
What i came to understand is that patience is a key ingredient
A business should have a long term plan
Managing expectations… legit businesses are not get rich quick schemes.
World over 70% of new businesses fail in the first 3 yrs. So it’s not unique to nairobi or kenya.
Surprised are asking and you always have an opinion on everything
@Unataka kujua ili?
Yeap ! ! ! In .ke the numbers might be higher than 70%
Businesses aren’t for everyone.In business there are months you’ll make losses others profit.If it’s not passion driven you are bound to give up
Even with passion, when the market fails to respond you have no option but to close. Businesses that fail are often unable to meet their operational costs and this has no solution apart from borrowing additional capital, restructuring, or closing.
Hapa kwa estate the only business naona doing well are wines and spirits. Hizo zingine kama kinyozi, butchery you see them open for 1 month and then close. I think the rent of >30k per month inawasumbua sana.
Business is not for the faint-hearted
most businesses close because they can’t pay their expenses. This means either:
- There was no market for what you were selling
- The market for what you were selling was saturated
- The market was good but you stumbled somewhere in your execution
All failing Business fail from the start… Feasibility Test and exit strategy.Two masters you should bow to…
Identify an Idea
Example :Your area has no water ,unaanza kuzunguka na lorry ya Maji supplying making 3000 a day…juu Kenyans ni Kenyans they copy,
Smart people feasibility test…Unazunguka unaona every corner Kuna mtu anasupply,so you target schools and hotels with dreams of refillable water…
Then unaweka ile distillation machine ya Milk atm ,unapiga cooler stickers and boom you’re distilling water at 4 bob per 500ml…
Before watu wakucopy ,ushabrand machupa unasupply shops supermarkets na highways…when people start doing what you’re doing,you double up iporting parts za water reffilling machines…
Exit strategy.
3 yrs down the line unafunga biz…
Count profits,sell shop,sell tankers,sell all machinery and count your money,as you spend 3 years thinking of another business.
Adaptability is the master of this generation.
Angalia ata Uhuru is confused of what will happen to him after 2022, that’s why he says he has seen Kenya’s future :D:D:D:D:D:Dif he adapts like Raila he can still remain Kikuyu kingpin even after elections
I have read extensively on this issue and the truth of the matter,is most people open businesses to sell products not to deliver value.
The only issue is,delivering value means you have to start a VERY HARD business.
Case in point,for those who used dial up modem sticks paired with your phone to get access points to the internet which was slow and a pain in the ass know what it means to have unlimited WiFi at all times.Even if you didn’t have a budget for internet 10 years ago,now you cannot go without it and it is a new line item on your monthly bills simply because the value that you derive from it is 10 times better than the previous option.
Another example,if any of you read in the newspapers a while ago,there was a story of some graduate students from some college in the US who discovered an enzyme native to Lake Naivasha that has superior selectivity for protein stains from everyday items such as tomato sauce spilling on your clothes or body sweat leaving discoloration under the armpits of your clothes and they sold this formula to Tide and other washing detergent manufacturers for roughly $15 million USD for them to improve their formulations and offer better value to their customers.
Unfortunately, the way we understand business here,most of us think of it as a side hustle to earn extra money therefore it will most likely be a very mundane idea with low barriers to entry and no defensible moats that you can use to grab and corner a market. Even worse is our insatiable appetite of copying one another, therefore we have very many businesses doing nothing but gouging each other on pricing and nothing else. Likewise,most foreign investors that I have interacted with always repeat over and over again that they cannot deploy enough capital in our markets because most of the businesses that we come up with are just too basic to ever have a competitive edge to ever scale and ultimately get acquired.
You must draw a distinction between opening a business or being an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship is like Elon Musk with SpaceX and his reusable rockets.It is such a hard thing to even conceptualize,but if you overcome the hurdles,you have a monopoly because you are the market.Business on the other hand is like boxing.If you watch the classic ‘Thriller in Manila’ fight,you are Muhammad Ali going against Joe ‘Smoking’ Frazer; you can see who your opponent is.You know how many punches you need to throw to drop him. The bell goes,he comes at you and you keep him at bay because you are high on adrenaline. Then you realize after the fifth round,this opponent is not backing down and you have to change tact.You are quickly tiring and the stamina is betraying you,but he keeps coming at you.Your punches are now sloppy and you are now just throwing fists to buy time till the next bell or until the referee calls the match.Watch that match if you haven’t to get a sense of how brutal that match was on Ali’s body.
On the other hand,the movie that best captures what it is to build a hard business,it is The Enigma.Alan Turing spent months and months trying to figure out how to decode the Morse codes they intercepted from the German bomber submarines because no one had done it before. His developments are part of what paved way for the modern computers that we have today. Just because you can import machines from China and lease a building doesn’t make you an entrepreneur. We have too many businesses chasing very little money that is why the failure rates are so high.
Don’t be a hero and try fight in competitive markets.Ask yourself how important the problem is that you are solving because if money is your immediate motivation instead of the magnitude of value that you are delivering to the market,you will be drinking from a poisoned chalice.
Solid points here, boss! Nita tafuta hiyo movie Enigma niendelee na hii masomo umetoa hapa…
Uhuru is trying to play mastermind in Kenyan politics.But we shall see
That’s why people are discouraged taking a loan to start any kind of business.kuna msee alichukua loan, kufungua whole sale, akaanza na stock ya 1.5M. After two weeks unknown people set the building on fire, stock yake ikawa jivu. jamaa kichwa ilikua inaruka…he had to be admitted kwa ward