Generally, startup Weekends are weekend-long, hands-on experiences where entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs can find out if startup ideas are viable. Beginning with open mic pitches on Friday, attendees bring their best ideas and inspire others to join their team. Over Saturday and Sunday teams focus on customer development, validating their ideas, practicing LEAN Startup Methodologies and building a minimal viable product. On Sunday evening teams demo their prototypes and receive valuable feedback from a panel of experts and also win prices for the overall best ideas.
Startup Weekend Nairobi started on the 24th February to 26th February at Nailab Nairobi Kenya. As an enthusiast of social enterprise and an aspiring entrepreneur, I had to leave my job on Thursday evening and travel about 380km over night from Kisumu to Nairobi with my friend in-order to be among the many participants who would pitch their ideas. Six participants and volunteers from Copenhagen, Denmark were also present and working together with the teams in Nairobi to see their ideas come to fruition. Among them was Alex Farcet of Startup Bootcamp who was the event facilitator.
The weekend began with open mic pitches on Friday evening where 56 participants who were mainly programmers, developers, marketers, designers, business mangers and startup enthusiasts pitched their ideas that evening. My friend Jayne Du whom we traveled with from Kisumu was the 11th participant and the first lady to pitch our idea of having a platform where people in informal settlement areas especially in Kisumu can interact with the NGO’s working in their areas through an online forum, both the community members and the NGO staff can interact giving feedback on the Impacts of the NGO’s activities in their area as well as the forum acting a hub where events happening in the area are communicated.
From these pitches 14 ideas were selected and teams were formed, unfortunately our ideas was number 15 only lacking 2 votes to make it to the top 14. These were the ideas the wannabe entrepreneurs worked on:
1. Cloud Matatu – A mobile application to rate matatu’s (public transport) and report bad drivers.
2. Inuka – Entrepreneurship platform to connect Kenyans entrepreneurs.
3. Pesa Rahisi – An online /mobile payment money transfer system that is cross platform and international.
4. Tusemezane – A two-way SMS platform for election communication by politicians and their electorate.
5. PayRent – A mobile system based on Mpesa to pay rent.
6. MVerify – A platform to verify documents that include certificates, references, land title deeds.
7. Christian Dating site with a difference - Dating site for Christians.
8. Masomo Moja - Making education affordable and available for teachers, students and parents.
9. Jiamulie – Traffic prevention solution with features of crime reporting and information sourcing.
10. Patahao – Easy way to build/buy/rent houses according to your needs.
11. Success solutions – Advertisement space on idle computer screens.
12. iMedic – Patient status data capture and sharing tool.
13. iBambe – Facebook/mobile web for sharing playlists.
14. Darasani – Tutor support system.
Our team Inuka Kenya being the largest team with about 22 participants immediately started working on our idea, dividing ourselves into smaller groups. The programmers creating the website, the marketers seeing on how they will promote the idea, the designers like I working on the logo and the rest of the business practitioners’ working on the site content. Over Saturday and Sunday, teams focus on customer development, validating their ideas, practicing LEAN Startup Methodologies and building a minimal viable product.
On Sunday evening teams demo their prototypes and services receiving valuable feedback from a panel of experts/Juries that included Nancy Wong from Innovation for Africa, Mbugua Njihia, Kamal Budabhati CEO of Craft Silicon, Eddy Verbeek of Florensis Kenya and Johnni Kjelsgaard of Growth Africa.
Inuka Kenya ‘inuka’ meaning ‘arising’ in Swahili was the winning idea after a long vigorous search and thanks for everyone in our team for the tireless efforts that they all put into. According to judge Kamal Budabhati there is a big need in Kenya to connect entrepreneurs and share knowledge amongst them and that is exactly what Inuka wants to achieve. “We want to offer entrepreneurs a networking platform where they can find mentors. We want to see them grow and get out of poverty”, said Jayne Du from Inuka. “Also, most platforms are really tech-focussed, but for instance agriculture is a much bigger sector here in Kenya”, she said. Her colleague Geoffrey Gitonga Wanjoi said that they will use the €500 prize to expand their operations.
