Thread by @JuuChini

Ken Njoroge, Cellulant CEO, has been an entrepreneur for 19 years. Today, he's on a panel speaking about the 'Stories behind the Story'.

34 countries. 120 Million consumers in Africa. Cellulant.

On Panel..

Cellulant has 2 co-founders - Ken Njoroge, & Bolaji Akinboro.

In the beginning, Ken bootstrapped the company & survived off Bolaji's credit card for a long time before the business became sustainable.

Ken attributes growth of the business to good faith from early investors.

In the early years, Cellulant was financed off of prayers and good faith.

Prayers, understanding creditors, and good faith 😫

Ken doesn't believe in main-hustle & side-hustle. Shikilia moja.

It is difficult to be a master of your craft when you're running 2 or more things at once.

There are many other companies that can do what Cellulant can do.

The biggest difference is Cellulant has managed to study & eliminate all problems that can kill their business. If you want to run a business, quit your job and follow your passion.

People have a misconception that you need to be experienced to start a business. However, listen to the market, listen to the customer, listen to your employees, and that's all the validation you need.

By 2008, Cellulant was a $5M business selling music via text-back. This for them was rapid growth phase for the company.

When Cellulant was a young company, Ken made all the critical people-decisions.

Key is to get the right people, get them on-board, and make it your business to know what their growth & ambition plans are. That's how you keep them.

One time, the CFO at Cellulant lost the company $400K thru a tax liability. KES 40M.

The guy wasn't fired. Why? Because that to him was like school fees. The guy learnt a valuable lesson, and never lost Cellulant money again.

Ken Njoroge is also working with the African Leadership University, part of @FredSwaniker's AL Group. Cellulant has partnered with the University & is paying fees for 9 students.

Idea is to get great entry level staff for Cellulant, and will join as FullTime Staff in 2019.

The benefit of training good people is that even if they leave, you meet them in boardrooms, and you then discover that even though they're not on your payroll you're working towards the same goal.

338 people in 38 markets. More than 100 of these are women.

Regarding capital, here's how it's gone:

$1.5M in Series A - 2011, $6M in Series B - 2014 from 2 institutional investors, $47.5M in Series C - 2018 from TPG & Other season investors in the ICT space.

The last round took almost 24 months (2 years) from inception to deal close.

In Cellulant'Series C capital raise, he had 60 investors lined up and only ended up with 1 term sheet. Success rate of < 2%.

Many dropped off along the way because of bad story-telling. Ken says he lost a lot of investors & left money on the table because of poor story-telling.

Given a chance to do it again, Ken says he'd probably get 50pc more investment & 5 additional term-sheets (so 6 in total). Hindsight is always 20-20.

Parting Shot - Its great to desire growth, and from very early on. Go Big, Go Bold, or Go Home.

If we're going to solve Africa's problems, we can't be doing 'small things'. Side hustle mentality won't cut it. You face the same problems despite the size of the company.

The difference between problem-solving at a small scale & a large scale is the number of ZEROS attached to your problem. Kama ni cash flow - Year 1 its 1M cash-flow issues, Year 10 its 100M cash-flow issues. 😀

The barriers to growth in most markets is what you as the entrepreneur does with the business.

Everytime you shift your 'status', your business also grows.

Growth makes you resilient.

Grow yourself and the business follows.

Cellulant was one of the largest user of Chase Bank's credit line right before it went into receivership.

The receivership hit them hard & they had to restructure. Senior Management at Cellulant took a salary break for about 8 months to maintain cash-flows.

Ken Njoroge, the CEO, personally disposed a lot of personal assets to survive the cash crunch caused to Chase Bank Kenya receivership (& freeze) back in 2016-2017.

Basically, as the lead entrepreneur in your business, you'll have to make heavy sacrifices.

Oh, in the beginning Ken Njoroge said he was studying Pharmacy at the University. He dropped out! to pursue this thing no-one knew about back then called Technology.

He believes in consistency and that's how he knows he'll build a Billion Dollar Business in the next few years.

'There's no such things as a self-made man or self-made millionaire.'

Leaders such as him are built against the backdrop of amazing teams and great talent that believes in his vision and backs his dream.

Cellulant has approx. 1.5M monthly active users on its network. To build a BILLION DOLLAR BUSINESS, they need to get 100M customers doing $1 per day. Or is it 1M customers doing $1 per day.

(Don't get this math but.. I'll try someone here).

Trends:

The payments space is still very fragmented and this allows for multiple opportunities for everyone in the space.

All positive signs are driving digitization.

You need to be intentional about your talent acquisition. Keep the great guys, improve the not-so great ones.