+1 Bwana Lawi.

We can advance all theories to appear sane in a throroughly insane situation - which is what happened at Angani!

"And to make matters worse, they were willing to do the takeover at the expense of customer data and operations." - THAT IS INSANE!

On 20 November 2015 at 11:27, Bwana Lawi via skunkworks <skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke> wrote:
What makes this situation a bit hard to swallow is that no-one in their right mind would have expected board members to screw up their company over a simple chain of custody. Yet all indications show that is the source of the messy breakup. 
And calling for the other side of the story doesn't make their side valid. A thief will have his side of the story when robbing you. That still does not make his reason valid.

If you go deeper into Angani woes circles you'll be amazed at how arrogant the new management simply was. Hostile takeover of the company AND the platform. They succeeded in taking over the company, they screwed up the platform.

And to make matters worse, they were willing to do the takeover at the expense of customer data and operations. Which in the end again the screwed up. If these so-called investors just wanted to run a cloud company without the ousted management why not just start their own? If they felt the Phares and co were incompetent why not take their money elsewhere? 

On Fri, Nov 20, 2015 at 10:02 AM, kiri kish via skunkworks <skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke> wrote:
This is a wake up call to all techies methinks. I feel we need to equip ourselves not only technically but also have the business acumen and emotional intelligence that suffices to run or manage companies.

I totally agree with James where almost all the companies are IT dependent. Case in point financial institutions where all the processes are automated. HOWEVER,  if you look at the executive management teams in most of the local banks websites few will feature a CIO or IT manager and if they do most probably the Director of operations and technology will not have an Techie background. Heck, technical guys wount be sometimes part of EXCO or ALCO.

Well, i agree sometimes IT is a thankless profession and few will appreciate the effort and man hours techies put for things to run smoothly but there should be a paradigm shift and we need to be felt in this corporate ecosystem. 




On Fri, Nov 20, 2015 at 9:45 AM, James Kagwe via skunkworks <skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke> wrote:

It is not right to accept a defeatist position that techies are not the right people to run their businesses and even if that was the case it's important to appreciate they form a major component of the operations of the business. We need to exude confidence as techies to gain respect from other professionals.

Consider how our friends in finance and accounting floss with organisational money as if they are the only ones generating revenue. Yet we know they just stay in office waiting for the cheques only to dictate to us how to spend the money. We need to floss with technology as well. It is not a secret that modern companies including nontechnical cannot run without ICT's.

Rgds,
J@m3s

On Nov 20, 2015 9:32 AM, "George Irungu via skunkworks" <skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke> wrote:

It would be interesting to know how many companies here have voted with their feet and left the service.

 

From: Toilem Godwin via skunkworks [mailto:skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke]
Sent: Thursday, November 19, 2015 9:19 PM
To: Skunkworks Mailing List <skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke>; joe mwirigi <joemwirigi@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Skunkworks] angani woes

 

From the thread i have come to agree with Muya and Washington.

I was really proud of what Angani had achieved. They showed us there is a possibility of having Cloud services in kenya. None if few of us thought that would be possible.

This is a typi al example of greedy investors who were able to "ingiza box" a local in thier selfish endevour.

How can one trust Angani again after they brought hackers to "break" sstems that were secured???

I think the current management ("dire tors" ) are in for a rude shock......

On Nov 19, 2015 8:29 PM, "joe mwirigi via skunkworks" <skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke> wrote:

Now that the list is hosted at Angani, hope there is future-proof good-will from the current owners to have the forum hosted there as was without fee.

 


_______________________________________________________________
We must Keep on, We can't stop here
   
 

 

On Thu, Nov 19, 2015 at 5:43 PM, Odhiambo Washington via skunkworks <skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke> wrote:

So far it comes out (without the benefit of the knowledge of the other side of the coin so far) that Riyaz joined and screwed up Angani, right?

 

The whole story revolves around Riyaz joining Angani and seems to have his signature style of action.

 

I hope we are not afraid to name names since the equation cleary is Angani = Phares + Brian; Angani = Phares + Brian + Riyaz; Angani = Riyaz!

 

So with Riyaz having been put in charge, as the CEO after the ouster of Phares, it can only be concluded that the hackers who then came in and disregarded the handover process put forth by Brian were brought in by Riyaz, yes? And that hostility lead to the disaster the country faced? I know like eacdirectory.co.ke lost quite some business because of this and from the posts on the Whatsapp group, there must have been many others...

 

What does this tell me? A lot of things. None of which I can even put down. It just creates kizunguzungu in my small brain.

 

Riyaz has been a major player in the Kenyan ICT industry for ages now. It's inconceivable how he could work with others (investors+outsiders) to destroy what some indigenous Kenyans built from scratch. Angani was the pride of Kenyans. Is there any other country in EA that has an indigenous Cloud Service?

 

I don't know what happened/went so wrong but I suppose it could have been easier to just buyout Phares+Brian instead of the hostile takeover.

 

Riyaz is in this list. Maybe one day he will tell us the other side of the story, but for now, he takes the whole blame for the horror.

 

 

 

 

On 19 November 2015 at 17:13, m mugo via skunkworks <skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke> wrote:

I agree with listers that there might be more to this story than meets the eye.

However, a lot of advise here has been for people to go an extra mile when drawing up legal agreements with partners, investors, etc.

Of the Brenda Wambui story, what stuck out is the racism by both local non-black Kenyans and foreigners.
Young, clueless, over-eager, over-paid individuals being brought in to 'manage' locals. We experience this a lot but our rotten systems of Immigration, Labour, Legal are too busy to give a damn about it...

Mugo

 

On Thu, Nov 19, 2015 at 4:36 PM, Bwana Lawi via skunkworks <skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke> wrote:

a) Phares Kariuki is a he :)

b) I have been following the story and, unless otherwise convinced, this was a blatant show of disdain for the founders and arrogance on the part of the newcomers. And greed. So. Much. Greed

c) I believe Phares and Brian can still come up with another Angani. It may take time to gain public confidence but cloud in Kenya will not die because of Angani. 

d) I don't think the new Angani management has any experience on how to run a cloud platform. 

e) We were running 2 critical services off Angani. I wouldn't knowingly and willingly step within a mile of any service run by the so-called new management at Angani. They put us and our customers in jeopardy just to massage their ego and superiority complex.

 

On Thu, Nov 19, 2015 at 4:13 PM, Muya via skunkworks <skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke> wrote:

Having considered all the information already in the public, I wouldn't say they invested in a company which they didn't trust the founders to run! I would argue that they saw a 'beautiful' company with mad potential and thought they could have it all by ousting the people who founded it! They wanted the company, minus people who would (rightfully) determine the direction it should take. In one phrase, the investors were GREEDY!

./muya

On Nov 19, 2015 2:56 PM, "Ndungi Kyalo via skunkworks" <skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke> wrote:

I'll also ask like the blogger asked : Why invest in a company which you cannot trust the founders to run ?


--
Ndungi Kyalo

 

On 19 November 2015 at 14:35, Alvin Jason Ochieng via skunkworks <skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke> wrote:

Correct Peter !

They have always been here.

 

On Thu, Nov 19, 2015 at 2:28 PM, Peter Karunyu via skunkworks <skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke> wrote:

I stand to be corrected, but I think all four parties are members on this list. Sooner or later, I bet several other sides of the story will come up, and each of us will be left to decide which side to belief/belong.

 

 

 

On Thu, Nov 19, 2015 at 2:05 PM, Alvin Jason Ochieng via skunkworks <skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke> wrote:

Makes sense now .....

Let them move on !

 

On Thu, Nov 19, 2015 at 1:10 PM, John K. via skunkworks <skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke> wrote:

Not really sure what to say, this sounds like a normal business that suffered inter-personal issues with the founders and new 'investors'. This is pretty common in my experience.

 

Investors get weary when they start to notice slow growth, lax management etc, and so issues will eventually arise and they blaming the founders / management.


Regards,

John K.

 

On 19 November 2015 at 12:57, David Njuguna via skunkworks <skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke> wrote:

The article seems rather bias. While I sympathize with founders losing control of their company, I think they should focus their energy on doing something positive and not this propaganda war.

They could cash out and build a new start-up. Life is too short.


 

On Thu, Nov 19, 2015 at 12:42 PM, Brian Maiyo via skunkworks <skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke> wrote:

Anyone else find it weird that this list is totally mum on this issue. 

 

On Thu, Nov 19, 2015 at 8:20 AM, Brian Ngure via skunkworks <skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke> wrote:

Why invest in a company if you don't trust the founders/owners to run it?

Maybe because what you wanted from the start was to kick them out and take over?

On 19 Nov 2015 5:51 am, "Kiti Chigiri via skunkworks" <skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke> wrote:

I will just leave this here...

https://medium.com/@brendawambui/corruption-in-the-silicon-savannah-9e393a00aa0e


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