Thread by @JasonNjoku

Reading Golden Tap about hyper-funded Indian startups is amazing amazon.com/Golden-Tap-Ins…. More so because it was driven largely by Tiger Global (one of my investors). Anyone building companies in Africa must read this book. We have largely taken the US model of building startups

Wrongly I believe. We all built 1-dimensional co's. In India (more like Africa then any other country in my mind) and Russian and China and Africa* they are all essentially investment holding companies. Examples LSE listed $7.5B Mail RU Group = 30+ co's

NYSE listed $468B Alibaba Group = 50+ co's, JSE Naspers $104B = 30+, HK listed $868B Tencent = 50+ co's. MakeMyTrip $3.7B = 20+ co's, JPY listed Softbank is the most extreme example.

Most of the biggest US internet cos are investment holding. Match Group, PayPal Holdings, Booking Holdings, Alphabet Holdings (Google), Facebook is a holding co in all but name. Their biggest hits were acquisitions @instagram & @whatsapp Imagine Fb without them?

I'm sure some will say a number of these US co's were successful first. Yes, perhaps. But in Russian & China & India & Naspers* management & investors backed a roll em up strategy, they saw the strength in a strong deck.

We have somehow discouraged ourselves from being adventurous in this regard. We have drunk the SV stay focused mantra. We have somehow decided to build business' the opposite way to how others are building them in emerging markets.

When I started creating new non-digital related businesses at Iroko. Board resistance was fiercely opposed. But in the end we demonstrated with deals and performance and they all became super supportive. Iroko has actually tried to acquire business' to grow non-digital revenues

In FY17 @irokotv represented <30% of total Iroko revenue. If we had focused just on 'the core business' then as I have said many times over the years we wouldn't have been in business. We should have died in 2015. The other business' pulled us through. @iroktv is strategically

stronger now than at any stage it its history because of this lack of focus. So. Anyway. Go ahead and buy this book and understand we are early and founders should build businesses they feel makes sense. And refer to this anytime someone (incl me) tells you to focus.