Founder Series : Yele Oyekola, Co-Founder & CEO @ Duplo

On this episode of Chini Ya Maji podcast, CEO and Co-Founder, Pamela Muriuki, shares her entrepreneurial journey and the birth of GiftPesa. Discover how she transformed gifting from a side hustle into a game-changer. Dive into her business model, focused on appreciating the most deserving employees and service providers. Tune in to listen to this enlightening conversation. #ChiniYaMajiPodcast #Entrepreneurship #buildingstartups

On this episode of Chini Ya Maji podcast, CEO and Co-Founder, Marvin Tumbo, shares his entrepreneurial journey and the birth of Scale. Discover how he transformed procurement from a side hustle into a game-changer. Dive into his business model, focused on surfacing the best service providers, building trust and reputation and ensuring equal opportunities and access for all businesses. Tune in to listen to this enlightening conversation.#ChiniYaMajiPodcast #Entrepreneurship #buildingstartups

In this episode, delve into Kevin Mutiso's captivating journey. From his discovery of Warren Buffet to his deep dive into the world of stocks, we explore his transition from data entry to launching his own startup. Discover the invaluable lessons learned from his entrepreneurial setback and his bold vision to transform Africa into the most futuristic, modernised continent over the next 50 years, showcasing the immense potential for billion-dollar businesses to address critical societal issues. You do not want to miss out on this conversation.#AfricanInnovation #StartupJourney #africanentrepreneurs

Peter share his Journey of Innovation and hard work. An inspiring conversation that walks us through how the idea of TWIVA came about and how building a product in a new market is not easy. Enjoy the Podcast!

Title: Building Middle East and Africa's first Super API for a comprehensive payment solution Nader started out as a curious young man in the 1990s, intrigued by technology. He decided to pursue engineering in order to build and create solutions. Through his passion for understanding the tech world, he discovered that knowledge alone is not enough, but knowledge must be paired with practical solutions to have an impact on the market. With the passion of creating a more seamless payment system, he began his journey of holistic learning, which started with blockchain technology and ended with the birth of Money Hash: a cloud-based payment operating system dedicated to making payments easier.Follow him and our host as they discuss the inception of Money Hash, and the importance of creating solutions for emerging markets as the future of technology. As a startup founder, Nader also shares his views on culture and the importance of understanding employees to build the right company culture. He argues that understanding the needs of your employees is essential in creating a productive work environment. This is an eye opening discussion that most certainly requires a pen and paper.

Betting on Solar Energy to Address Climate Change and Impact Lives Samir Ibrahim grew up in Orlando, Florida. His parents always told him that the opportunities he had were not available to them back home. As a child of immigrants, Ibrahim knew that it was important to use his opportunities to help others.In this episode of our Founders series, host Mark Karake sits down with Ibrahim, Co-Founder & CEO of SunCulture and dives into his journey of how he ended up building SunCulture and involved in climate action.Listen to how his experience living in Florida and schooling at NYU shaped his worldview, how his 10 year plan actually became a 10 months plan, and how he landed on the insight that launched SunCulture along with lessons he learned as a startup founder.'In this episode, Samir shows us how taking our time building a startup isn't actually a bad thing, and he reinforces that every company has a different journey. He also speaks to how he went from being unsure of himself to building a company with 370 people. This is a must listen!

BOLDNESS CREATES OPPORTUNITY My father had plans for me but I wasn't keen on that... he wasn't very happy to support me. For a lot of young Africans this statement isn't new to them. It's not easy chattering your path against your parents' will. So many questions are already asked to us in the startup world about the description of our work and for a lot of us there's really no easy way to explain. Yele Oyekola  is most certainly not a stranger to this reality however unlike most, he isn't one to back down from his ambition and one word we can use to describe him is decisive. From financing his own studies in the UK against his father's wishes, to getting into fintech in the UN, to working at Carbon and finally co-founding Duplo a B2B buy now pay later product in Nigeria, Yele's story is one of resilience, boldness and absolutely giving zero care to what others think. "The worst that can happen is you'll get broke, but you'll be fine" Can we acquire this attitude? Join him and Mark as they delve into how Yele made money through shoe making to pay for his school and his experience learning about fintech from the ground up. Enjoy.

The Wowzi Journey: Connecting The Dots When you come up with an idea and you talk to the market and you see how it gets translated into a solution, it's magic.Brian Mogeni and his Co-Founders Mike Otieno and Hassan Bashir wanted to connect capacity and opportunity and the greatest insight that came by was that 'People trust People,' The major question was, how could they organize word of mouth? This marked the beginning of Wowzi.Wowzi is a globally leading technology company that enables SMEs, multinationals, creative agencies, research companies and NGOs push brand messages and pull consumer insights from trusted influencers shaping the trends that drive African commerce.Join us on this episode as Brian Mogeni, Co-Founder & CEO takes us back in time and gives us a glimpse into his life growing up and connects it to where he is now. Did you know he wanted to either be a professional footballer, a host on Top Gear or an entrepreneur? Get to see how he connects the dots from his passion for sports to his first job as an intern in Accenture to a critical point in his career at Easy Taxi to how they bootstrapped to build Wowzi.This story perfectly illustrates that all of our experiences serve a purpose and are instrumental in how we turn out presently and in our future!This is the Wowzi Journey, Part 1

THE 'FOUNDER-PROBLEM FIT' APPROACH The most overlooked aspect by entrepreneurs "One of my challenges was realizing I didn't need to have just technical skills... As a founder I need to know how to pitch"Idorenyin Obong or as we'd like to call him 'The Writing Techie' found himself in a situation that a lot of founders find themselves before their light bulb moment: A problem without a solution. The process of accessing payment via foreign currencies was a thorn in his flesh and so many other entrepreneurs. His intuition led him to start a company that grew from it's original mission which was to solve the problem in Nigeria but now looks to scale continentally beginning with Kenya.From its original name Aboki Africa to it's new identity Grey, Grey seeks to provide foreign accounts to people in Africa to ease transacting in foreign currencies. This is a story of the famous founder-problem fit. It takes a founder to deeply understand a problem for them to have groundbreaking answers and learn new trades as they forge ahead. Join him and our host, Mark Karake as they take a walk down memory lane through Idorenyin's founding journey.

Leveraging Tech in the African Logistics Landscape "It's going to take some time for us to stop comparing ourselves to each other and other countries... and start asking the question of why we didn't do better"Mark Mwangi was never your average student, he never settled, not from his days in high school to his days as a truck driver making ends meet for his fees in City, University of London. He is living proof that a tenacious heart will certainly get you where you want to be.Join him and Mark Karake as he takes us through a journey of resilience, taking up challenges rather than settling to co-founding Amitruck: A digital logistics marketplace that connects clients directly with transporters cutting out expensive middlemen.Get to know how he was able to make the jump from his career as a Senior Investment Manager at Pictet Asset Management in London to moving back to Nairobi to build something more meaningful.From truck driving to investment management to Amitruck, this is a story of audacious goals made possible!