When I turned 35: I gave a small speech that I now think it was almost resignatory speech (it there is a word like that) among a few friends. And it was centered on making impact and being able to create a decent garage for our kids!
Startups and business is generally tough and almost like some sort of a lottery (market fit, team, f$unds, economy etc). Yet it’s the Safest bet especially for us here in Africa.
In many Silicon Valley stories, you always hear of @BillGates beginning from a Garrage. And Jeff Bezoz and on and on stricking our of Garage. What’s seldom talked about is that Garage is a great startup seed fund, almost like @ycombinator by / @paulg @jesslivingston et al
Garage= Psychological safety + A place to rebound back to. Forget the fact that rent is also paid. In this day and age that rent may not be as important. What is is the certainly that you have room to fail and can land again.
Founders of #Startups in Kenya Africa today will be off to an amazing start with a simple $50K cheque. For $100K, they may have a 3 year runway and some of them may just take off and onto exciting start.
And so I certainly hope I will do better than be able to provide a garage for the kids. That garrage today will require average parent to own a good home and hopefully accumulate some $200K/Kid in non retirements savings for garrage and a small seed fund
Thankfully, with remote work ( you don’t need to buy a $200K. House in Nairobi). You can work on the investments that can hopefully down the line provide a line of funding or seed capital.
And so a goal of say $200K cheque for our kids (if they choose to) is modest and of course I aspire to do more ..work around our student housing real estate, Renewable energy (solar), consulting at @QuestworksKenya, more educational platform work at @mentorthon, tech etc
I think a lot about a micro fund for scaleups to help firms with say 2 -10 staff scale and grow
Student Housing:
What other Garages should we be building for the Westy generations? What skills should we (they) be learning?
