Hello Startup curious š
Last week in African tech was quite eventful.
A few interesting stories I came across include:
Yellow Cardās interesting partnership with Coinbase to drive adoption in 20 African countries.
Seedstars Africa's new $30M war chest to invest in African tech.
An interesting resource I came across this week was Dr Ola Brownās YouTube channel š„.
She mainly teaches on venture capital, but some of her videos are relevant to founders.
Dr. Ola is incredibly brilliant and I look forward to meeting her soon š¤.
Know anyone as amazing as you who would enjoy reading Startup Dive?
Please share this with them.
It would mean the world to me ā¤ļøļø
Now letās dive into todayās article š
A lot of what I will be doing with this publication is sharing deep dives: in-depth, research-based stories on some of the most outstanding startups and operators on the African continent.
Today though, as this would be my second post. I would like to pull back the curtain on my startup,Vessel Labs. A digital product studio serving founders and forward-thinking brands on the African continent.
I initially launched Vessel Labs with 3 founding partners in the month of February 2023 as a venture studio.
The plan was to build, ship, grow and quickly sell vertical SaaS products targeting various niches around the world.
Of course, none of us had ever worked in nor built a venture studio even though we each had several years of work experience at various startups.
Vessel Labs was my brainchild. I had for a while been fascinated by the venture studio model and how it could radically transform the African startup ecosystem.
In summary, a Venture studio is a company that builds companies successively. The team, ideates, builds, finances and launches new software companies several times in a year.
Nothing could have sounded more exciting to me š¤
Check out this article for an in-depth guide on the venture studio model as well as this and this company for examples of venture studios in Africa.
I never would have anticipated how difficult it would be to run a venture studio (startups always have a way to kick us in the face).
Along the line, it became obvious we needed to pivot for a couple of reasons.
Aside the fact that I was not ready to fundraise for a concept that I was just starting to understand, it was not very easy keeping the team motivated to keep building.
I experimented a lot.
For our first product BetArbi, I decided to work with an EIR (means āentrepreneur in residenceā).
While we had a couple of ideas we wanted to build, David (our first EIR) had a way of convincing me to work on BetArbi and I also convinced the team.
It was a scrappy 5 months of working per time on the idea as a side project while trying to figure out a lot along the way.
Looking back now, all I needed was momentum for the team- to get those builder muscles working.
It was not a product I was particularly excited about but I really knew it could solve a problem.
Currently āhaltedā for various reasons including: our current focus on client projects and the inherent complexity of the product (BetArbi gives professional bettors a way to de-risk their bets,not a very easy thing to do).
BetArbi remains a reminder of what we had set out to build.
The Pivot
In May 2023, we got our first client project. A female founder was out to make it easy for families to preserve their heritage using technology.
Working with her made me realize the opportunity to help founders who had little or no technical product-building experience bring their ideas to life.
It has not been any easier.
Founders are a very interesting set of people to work with and outsourcing product development is not the easiest thing to do especially at the earliest stages.
So far, we have worked (and currently work) with three founding teams and look to take on more exciting projects this year even as we continue our journey to building a $100,000/ month service business.
Part of that revenue would come from serving enterprise clients who are looking to innovate and create digital products to serve their customers better or improve their current processes.
Nothing beats real-world experience and I am currently getting tons of it.
Building Vesse labs has shown me gaps in my own knowledge and skill that I work every day to fill. It has stretched me to the limits and given me an exciting challenge worth chasing.
Having to sell, manage people, work with founders, lead marketing has been intense to say the least and we are just getting started šŖš½.
I want to have my own battle scars so I can better support founders I work with when I become a VC.
While Iād end this post here, I promise to keep you updated on how itās going in subsequent deep-dives.
I send out a new post each week on Sunday Sunday mornings.
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See you next week builder š
-Zikora.
This is a fascinating read, thanks for sharing Zik!