120 points and 67 comments later, I am still waiting to hear PG's point of view. :(
Ask PG: Why do you think Africa cannot produce global scale start ups?
71–80 of 90 posts
Re: Ask PG: Why do you think Africa cannot produce global scale start ups?
#72I certainly think it is possible, but I wouldn't trust their government at all. I would suggest building a prototype ,demonstrate some traction and then move out of the area to grow the business if that would be possible.
You don't really need to incorporate until you have paying customers, so you wouldn't have to deal with any government before that point.
Re: Ask PG: Why do you think Africa cannot produce global scale start ups?
#73[deleted]
Re: Ask PG: Why do you think Africa cannot produce global scale start ups?
#74First of all I would apologise for not responding since. I foolishly forgot to remove my noprocast setting so I was essentially locked out of hacker news while this has been up. I would like to point out that I worded my question poorly. I do not agree Nigeria/Africa cannot create world class startups. I meant to say like RobFitz pointed out below: Why does PG and others like him capable of change write off a whole c…
" We have a long rough road ahead and we will trudge on. one day we will succeed. All I ask is for people like PG (who still hasn't responded) and HN'ers to have a little faith in us. "
Sorry if this is harsh but this is honestly what I think.
"Faith" in you by other people should be earned. I deal with many people who think all Indian developers are cheap and incompetent and can't speak English (There are plenty of those around :-P) . Arguing why they shouldn't be thinking like that (or asking them to act opposite to what they believe) is (imo) futile.
Show what you can do (against the odds if required). Then people will support you. That's just the way the world is.
" I would like to believe we can produce companies that can have product market fit before deciding to scale up and probably open offices in the west. .e.g US"
If you believe this why don't you do this? Why do you need PG?
I am not being sarcastic or snarky. I live in India and hear . "If only PG & co would start a YC branch in India ..." all the time.
I think something like YC in India (or China or ...) would be great, I also suspect that people who plan to build "global scale startups" wouldn't wait for PG and co to come around to their pov first.
Re: Ask PG: Why do you think Africa cannot produce global scale start ups?
#75If we want to routinely produce global scale startups in Africa we need to concentrate first on gaining sufficient skill to routinely produce continental scale startups.
Re: Ask PG: Why do you think Africa cannot produce global scale start ups?
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
The point is that he is of South African origin.
Indeed, but his startup was not. And that's the critical point. It's unlikely the company would have had a chance at the global market when based in Africa. It's somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy, as people aware of the lack of chances pursue them elsewhere, spreading the gap even more.
Yes, he did move to Canada and then the States. He may not have looked back. At the same time, as a South African myself, I would find it hard to discount my South African heritage, or say that I was not at all influenced for the better by it: the diverse melting pot of people, the rhythmic languages, the sports, the myriad of cultures, people like Raymond Ackerman and Anton Rupert and Nelson Mandela, children dancing in the dusty township streets, vast natural beauty, the tension and miracle of pre and post 94 Elections, Rugby World Cup 95, FIFA 2010. South Africa lives and breathes hope.
Regarding not having "a chance at the global market":
Mark Shuttleworth's Thawte was based in Cape Town, South Africa yet captured almost 50% of the world's SSL certificate market, in the 90s, at a time when South Africa barely had dial-up. In South Africa we have a saying "'n boer maak 'n plan" (a hard-working man makes a plan).
But that was then. Today, I can read Hacker News from my desk in Cape Town, South Africa while looking out at Robben Island or Table Mountain. I can SSH into Amazon EC2. I can PayPal. I can send an email. I can be connected. I can ignore the hype of the Valley when I need to. I can use the distance to think. I can focus on my work and put the hours in. Sometimes, the "disadvantaged" are in fact advantaged.
Re: Ask PG: Why do you think Africa cannot produce global scale start ups?
#77[deleted]
Re: Ask PG: Why do you think Africa cannot produce global scale start ups?
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
1. Before we stopped completely, we would get two kinds of orders: a. Orders over $1000 to Fancy Sounding Expediters Co XYZ Address Nigeria b. Smaller orders to Nigeria I shipped one and only one of type a. This happened in ~2001. I took this hit as a business 101 tuition fee and stopped shipping this kind of order. I continued to ship to people on compounds working for Shell/BP/etc. During this time, I got my rough…
I believe some international freight forwarders and delivery services offer part of the service described in (2) - a US address that pays for and receives goods and an African facility to forward them onto and collect payment from the end user.
We've tried some of these services out, though not specifically to solve this issue. When you add the cost of they add, the legit customers balk, driving volume down to the point where its not worth doing for our business.
As a result of this, what we do and what I suspect others do is ship to areas with low fraud rates direct, eat any losses and call it good. Anywhere that you eat more than you make, you simply stop.
The margin on something that would provide the security and keep small businesses interest would have to be razor thin. It would be a challenging or impossible business to run.
Re: Ask PG: Why do you think Africa cannot produce global scale start ups?
#79I think the main reasons Africa hasn't produced global scale startups is that they (global scale startups) are so rare you really need everything to be in your favor AND to have a lot of luck for a startup to become a global success. What unique advantage does being from Africa give you? I'm assuming you are clever and lucky - but there are a lot of clever, lucky people around who also have access to friends with hug…
Re: "What unique advantage does being from Africa give you?" I am in Cape Town, South Africa and let me tell you it is one of the most beautiful cities in the world, with a university producing decent CS graduates (Mark Shuttleworth), beautiful weather, vineyards on our doorstep, plenty of African color and positive energy, terrific advertising talent, and the typical South African work ethic. South Africans love wor…
There's nothing uniquely African about beautiful cities. And what does that have to do with "objectivity"?
Re: Ask PG: Why do you think Africa cannot produce global scale start ups?
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Forget causation, there's not even correlation there. What about all the startups in China, India, Russia?
I think some of the other commenters addressed this well, but as for Russia, it's a terrible example and has a lot of the same problems that Nigeria appears to; Newsweek just ran an article on the subject: http://www.newsweek.com/2010/08/14/putin-s-russia-exile-busi... . As for China and India, both countries have GDPs that have been growing at 10% per year for more than two decades, and not purely from oil or other…
"I think some of the other commenters addressed this well, but as for Russia, it's a terrible example and has a lot of the same problems that Nigeria appears to; Newsweek just ran an article on the subject: http://www.newsweek.com/2010/08/14/putin-s-russia-exile-busi...
You can continue to read placed PR Newsweek articles and be an idiot (the part about the "has a lot of the same problems that Nigeria appears to" is sort of the point of using it as an example), or you can do a quick google search:
http://www.centernetworks.com/top-russian-web-sites
http://royal.pingdom.com/2010/07/27/top-20-countries-on-the-...