What this article has done in effect, I believe despite the writer's sincerest intentions is brand the silicon savannah racist. If you now google "racism silicon savannah" guess who's article tops the search? So what will a potential investor now think when they read the first 3 paragraphs of the article and don't have the patience to get the final thoughts (which made alot of sense btw)? Racism like tribalism is a sensitive issue in Kenya and the writer should have gotten wind of that long before putting their thoughts on paper. The race card remained a non-issue here unless ofcourse Phares and Brian came out openly and declared themselves victims. On Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 3:54 PM, Bwana Lawi via skunkworks < skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke> wrote:
Thanks Brian for the link.
I find the tone a little condescending but I that's just me. In the end though I hope it was worth it for Angani.
On Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 3:25 PM, Brian Maiyo via skunkworks < skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke> wrote:
The other side of the story, http://whiteafrican.com/2015/11/23/startup-governance-in-silicon-savannah/
On Sat, Nov 21, 2015 at 6:42 PM, Patrick Kariuki via skunkworks < skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke> wrote:
+1 Sammy Njoroge ... Elon Musk must be a motivator here. Boardroom wars never pulled him down, they only catapulted him to greater heights despite his heavy South African accent and different way of doing things.
Brian and Phares... the ball is in your court, you now have our attention, kama mtahitaji harambee mseme mapema, Christmas inakaribia :-)
On Fri, Nov 20, 2015 at 6:27 AM, Sammy Njoroge via skunkworks < skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke> wrote:
Board room / founder coups within startups are common. Investors will always insist on control of the board to keep the business in check. They are in it for the business/money.
When it is said they invest in a person it is not because of what they've done rather what they can do.
Despite founders coming up with the idea it does not imply they are best placed to lead the business (they may gain business experience later).
Simply put Rolls Royce, Google, Apple, PayPal, Cisco, yahoo, BlackBerry have gone through a similar thing. Some amicably and some as coups. Even Facebook and twitter had co-founder coups.
The way I look at it is if Musk wasn't kicked out of X.com and Peter Thiel put in control he'd probably have run it to the ground and we wouldn't have PayPal, space X, Tesla and Solar city. He went on to oust Tesla's founder and grow the company
Even Apple would probably have gone broke with steve jobs at the helm back in 1984.
Some good reads - https://hbr.org/2008/02/the-founders-dilemma
http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/31/how-to-avoid-getting-fired-from-your-own-co...
http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=The_End_Of_An_E...
If you call this greed how about reading up on preferred shares that have a liquidation preference :) I hope the founders at Angani had done their homework.
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