Thus Spaketh Idd Salim

App vs Biz. You decide.

It is a long, tedious and demanding procedure to create a product. An App. A problem solver. Your idea finally converted to bug-less code. It compiles and runs like a hawker from Kanjo. It connects to the server 99.5% of the times of asking and always purrs. People are talking about it. 2, 000 downloads per day. Etc, yadda, yadda.

But then, slowly but surely, comes the sad reality. A Business.

You have an App. But do you have a business? How much has your app made so far? What is the daily/weekly/monthly ARPU? In the last 4 weeks. Ok, Last 4 months. Further? Ok, the last 12 months. 10, 000 USD?.. wait… 5, 000?.. no?…. ZERO? STOP CODING IMMEDIATELY! Get a job.

Unless you have rich parents and alot of pesa-ya-daddy-na-mammi, then you need to CLEARLY define your revenue points before developing an App. It is good to dream. That is what hope is made of. After hope comes faith. Then reality. Sad reality, sometimes. Happy realities, some other times.

But no one will invest in a dream. Unless it is your mother, no one will give you money unless they can see that it will have a RoI.

Before developing an App, decide. Are you doing this for fun? Can you afford to have NO SALES? Can it interest an investor, or better still, do you have Angel Funding?

That is why some no-brainer kindergarten products like DealFish will come and go. They don’t have a Kenyan-Applicable revenue model. Just alot of money to run for 3-5 years with the hope that their foreign idea will forge a niche.

That is why MXit failed in Kenya [As I said last year on my birthday] [My sentiments on some of the players mentioned might have changed since them]. As soon as the money to ‘test the waters’ runs out, the product dies. It is not sustainable. Same is the risk with some products like Mocality.

Don’t forget. The difference between the coder people see and say : “Heh! Manze huyo msee ni mnoma sana code. Hakuna kitu hawezi develop”, but takes a matt home, and the coder people see and say : “Msee fake sana. Hata system yake si kali but kina doo kaa shiiiet”, and jumps into his Kompressor after work, then calls your girlfriend, is the business mind.

And this is my challenge to iHub, NaiLab, mLab and IddLab. We need to incubate monetizable ideas, make them work and turn them into businesses. Then we can create success stories. Hopefully we can stop Ndemo from seeing Google as the Saviour. We need to demonstrate local competencies. We don’t need Google to host and digitize Government data. We need Google to Work with us to do that. The skillsets are there, but let us have some real businesses out there. Running and profitable.

Hapo vipi?

Back to code…

Wazi

Mpesa API - Finally!

I was discussing with some Banking Jamaas on the money-cycle. Take for example, I want to pay fees via my mobile phone.

Currently, I need to get money from Bank-to-mPesa (KSHS 60 charge, 45 to 78 Mins if using NIC Bank), Mpesa-to-the-school-Paybill (Kshs 30 Charge), then it is paid. Simple.

But what if we eliminated Mpesa. Bank to Bank. 10-30 bob. Immediate. Via Secure Web, MobileWeb or Java. An Open inter-bank API to kill the middleman. No. Not to kill the middleman. To SAVE money for the Kenyan. MobileMoney is still too expensive. Food for thought.

But that is not the topic for today. I was honored to be at iHub leo and saw Mike Pedersen’s Pesa API [https://github.com/pluspeople/pesaPi] and I have had the opportunity to test the code line-for-line.

I thought I should write about this.

As you all know, Symbiotic was developing this API over a year ago, but our development hit a snag when Safaricom blocked our PayBill Account and Revoked our merchant licenses because we seemed to know ‘too much’ about how mPesa works.

And that was the death of www.moca.co.ke. Shame really. One-two-maybe-three people’s insecurities and flawed RAV judgement meant the death of a life-changing technology.

But today I witnessed something from heaven. Something I have been praying daily to see. SOMEONE ELSE developing code that saw my dream come to life. A publicaly available, working, object-oriented, open-source Mpesa API. And this is not just a quick-hack ‘HelloWorld’ code. It is well written code.

Get your copy today from the link above.

Have fun.

Back to code.

Wazi.

Too much to swallow… even to blog…

OTA Goldmine

I decided to stay home today to wade off some pressure I am getting from left right and top.

I wanted to blog about how to handle programmers and how meetings-meetings-meetings KILL creativity and are the worst thing you can subject a developer to, but I will do that on Friday.

So, I started going through my old stuff in my spare (visitors’) bedroom. All stuffed, #pun, in a box labelled ‘POISON’ so that no one touches it.

One of the things that made me smile was my 2003 schematic for an OTA Server. I remember in 2003, Safaricom had a very weak Internet setup. (Mpaka leo anyways).

Sometimes I needed to demo to a client a WAP Content Portal I had created and the only two options I had was to take them to my house in Zimmer and show them from there, ama CARRY the PC to town and show the stuff.

But then came the IDEA. I bought some routers and configured a home network. Then I created an OTA Server whose purposes was to provision the settings one would need to access my HOME lan from their phone. All they needed to do was send an SMS [opensesame123] to a number and my OTA Server would send them the details. And now I could demo.

That was then.

Sasa OTA Server ni nini Salim?

Ohh. My bad. An OTA Server is a service that allows a MNO (Mobile Network Operator Kama Safcom, Zain etc) to remotely manage and configure your phone. Like when u dial sijui *445# from your Saf Line, their OTA Server sends you what they call ‘Internet Settings’. These settings are 1 of the many settings an OTA Server can provision. Some Settings can auto-install themselves while others ask you and give you a yes/no options. Another use of OTA is for remotely installing SIM applications on your phone/Sim. Kama Mpesa, Zap etc. Yeah. TechoLingo.

So, fast-forward to 2011. A friend of mine needed An OTA Server and asked me to get quoted. The best I could get astonished me. OTA goes for the following amount, Quoting a supplier I contacted last week :

Here is the pricing options for the DM Carrier Edition – The cheapest possible.

Product Packages:

Entry level (up to 200,000 devices)

No source code

Lower Server fee – $150,000

Only  Bootstrap,  Provision, FOTA, MO tree (no SCOMO, no DRMD)

Annual support – $30,000

Device activation fee – $1.00/device

Training – 1 week dev level – $15,000

Training – 1 week operations and support – $15,000

Minimal integration – $75,000

AAA Server, FOTA repository, Database integration, No API scripts, no CSS integration No device certification/IOT

My gawd!! Ngoja. Max 200 devices. No API. You depend on them. But, lemmi put things into perspective.

The above means that Kwanza on Install, as a Telco, you pay USD 150k. Then you pay them USD 30k for training and USD 75k for installation and integration. Then every 12 months, you need to pay USD 30k. This is small money and peanuts to most Telcos. But here comes the clincher! Everytime Salim dials *445#, the telco (Saf/Zain/etc) pays the DM Server Developers USD 1.  Fuck!

And this is the cheapest. The lite version.

Tukajam sote 10 M of us and we all dial *445# now, assuming Safaricom is on this model, they would incurr a bill of USD 10M immediately. And this is where most telco revenues suffer.

I am inspired.

Back to code…

Wazi.