A "Failed" Startup
"Congratulate Paschal for 3 years at SafariBomba." A close friend of mine recently shared a screenshot from his LinkedIn account with this message on it. This message spiked me for two reasons: First, it was a gentle reminder that I needed to update my LinkedIn profile and second I was shocked that it has been three years already since I jumped the entrepreneurship train which has rode me through a lot of ups and downs.
After I had a chance to spend a semester at New York University Shanghai in 2018 I was surprised how much technology can be used to simplify humans' daily activities. In my day to day movements in China I had to interact with several apps. Some of the apps which I interacted with daily and inspired me are Wechat, Didi and AliPay. When I came back home that summer, I decided to jump into techpreneurship by creating a platform which will make bus ticketing easier and accessible for everyone even to those who uses feature phones via SMS. This was an attempt to bring convenience to passengers who had to physically go to the bus station to buy their tickets several days earlier before the travel day. This journey wasn't easy because everything I was doing was doing it for the first time --forming a team to start a startup, coding and running a registered company.
The friend who shared the LinkedIn post asked, how does it feel partying from an idea which you once believed in and invested your time and money?
Reflecting back, I learned a lot.. I built life-time friendships as well as networked with government officials and other professionals who were working on the field.
Apart from that, working on this startup gave me a platform to demonstrate my skills especially public speaking. For example, when I launched the startup, I was invited for several TV and radio interviews including conducting an interview with the National Television. These interviews helped me to improve tremendously how to explain complex ideas your simple terminologies . In addition, when working on this project I was mostly dealing with bus owners and ticketing agents whose education level varies from primary education to university level. Therefore, whenever I met a new client I had to quickly adjust my pitch depending on their education level and interests and also had to make sure that I only give details about the product which I was sure they will be interested to hear and be able to comprehend them.
In addition, I improved my leadership skills. Despite the fact that I was mostly spending the time coding, I also had to manage a small team to develop a business logic, marketing strategies and partnership formation. I promise, I wasn't bossy but I made sure that everyone was fulfilling their duties
The Legal work. Running a company has a lot of paper work and legal terminologies involved. At first my colleagues and I were trying to manage everything ourselves before we found it so had and decided to seek for legal help from a lawyer. I learned that most of the time it in inefficient to try to do everything yourself. Sometimes outsourcing makes things smooth.
To conclude, safaribomba was the first but as long as I live I am also not sure it isn't going to be the last startup I start and fails. This startup failing doesn't mean I lost all the money and the time I invested in it. I actually harvest a skills, network of people and professionals who I still communicate with today. In addition, I didn't lose the majority of my team. We are now stronger than ever, still innovating and generating new ideas everyday at HudumaBomba.