Thus Spaketh Idd Salim

I am your best bet.

In my life and times in the Kenyan TechScene (real, tech, not tekemangumi), I have met all kinds of people. All types of naysayers and arm-chair critics. All kinds of cooks and watchmen who think they can speak intelligently about computer network security just because they have 5-year experience in handling the server room Solex keys.

But that is not the topic for this blog post. I am taking 5 minutes of your very busy lives to tell you about 5 types of people you should run away from as fast as possible, only if fleeing is not an option.

1 – The “My young brother is also a coder” crew

I have met countless members of this crew. These are people who are doing you ‘a favor’ by giving you a project. So, they expect you to accept the lowest price for the job. Instead of the 120k you ask for the job, they will want you to accept 15k and, as a bonus, baby-sit their cat for a day, just to show them how much you appreciate their kindness.

I mean, they could have given this system to their brother who is in the US and can do it in a week, but they decided to support local employment and Kazi kwa Vijana by giving you the project that you say will take 6 weeks.

2 – The “I used to code a few years back” gang

If I had a boob for every time I have heard this story, I would have my own Mount TitiManjaro. These are normally old/older people who did 14 lines of Cobol code in 1992 and some HelloWorld Pascal code in a NONAME001.pas file in 1997. Then they decided they are better cooks than coders. Now, they can stand infront of men and women and bleet, “I used to code, nikaacha. Najua Java Kiasi na C prus-prus nusu. Hata najua kuadika SQerr Statemates.”.

They will belittle every use of technology that you employ with the hope that you won’t charge alot. Or at all. #CoderSpirit. Avoid these like a plague.

3 – The “You develop it for FREE then we share on the profits” team

Ok. You know yourself. The 11+ (and counting) people who have approached me with ideas and systems. We discuss the details, discuss the workings and revenue models. Sometimes, I, Stupidly, start the project. Then the question arises, “What’s your budget for the work?”. And they look at me as if I have asked them to lick their elbow. “Salim, this is a BIG project with limitless potential. I can pay you 200k now, or give you 20% shares that will be worth millions once the system gets traction.”. Well, biatch, f**kin pay me!

I have my own dreams. Don’t involve me in yours.

Picture this. You call your landlord and tell him: “Mr Landlord. Sina rent for the next 6 months, but kuna system Noma naunda na once imeiva, then nitakulipa rent ya 5 years. Acha nikae keja for free for now.”. What will the landlord say?

4 – The “I am the genius, you are just a coder” type

This is close to the above. Only they see themselves as master thinkers and strategists. They will want you to drop all you are doing, and ‘take this golden chance join them’. Everything else makes no sense, if it is not from them.

You are just a tool to actualize their awesomeness. All you do is code. Kama si hao, your code means nothing.

Try this for a day. Take away your code, and watch all their BIG ideas turn to vapor. Just like that.

Ideas are like bar-talk about getting laid. Everyone has 1000 of them. But it is Code that changes Ideas to PRODUCTS.

5 – The “Don’t worry about money”

“Wewe chora code. Achana na stori za doo.”, they tell you. Then after work, they drop you at the Matatu stage in their BMW. You have 200 bob in the pocket. You are the coder, without who, the company/partnership will collapse. But you are a coder, right? You code for love. Not money. Clubbing ni ya idlers. Gari ni za masonko. Madem wote ni mapoko. Sio?

Don’t believe that fallacy. If you are not earning over 100k per month as a coder over 22 years, then hauko serious. Money is KEY to your peace. Your happiness. Your productivity. Get the money. I cannot overemphasize this.

Back to code.

Wazi.

Rich or Poor. You Decide.

I am sure you have all heard the saying: “The end justifies the means.”. Loosely deciphered, this means doing whatever it takes to get where you aspire to be. Changing what you can’t accept and even hurting a few people on the way, To get what you want. Chanelling positive energy. Forcing the universe to align itself to your base desires. Never taking ‘No’, ‘Maybe’ or ‘We will see’ for an answer.

At the end of the day, people will see the REASON why so many people had to be disapointed, hurt etc, for you to get where you are. Or do what you did. They will marvel at the beauty of the end-product and forget all the pain. Guys will say ‘You are good. It was all worth it’. Unless they are just typical estate dogs who scorn at anything they are not associated with.

Then comes the sister quote: “The means justifies the end”. Accepting what you can’t change. Saying all the things losers and pussies say, e.g. “That is what God planned.”, “We tried our best”, “We had no funding.”, “We blame Safaricom”, “I wish I were a Mzungu”. Then comes my favorite “Who needs money?”, “Wameiba”, “Pesa ni za Shetani”. etc. Fuck you.

But then comes the thin line. Morality vs Results. Ruthlessness vs Goodwill/Blessing/Good Karma. Allow me to Shamelessly quote James Allen’s As a Man Thinketh , one of my favorite all-time books [Best book. I highly recommend it to anyone ]:

“

A man may be honest in certain directions, yet suffer privations. A man may be dishonest in certain directions, yet acquire wealth. But the conclusion usually formed that the one man fails because of his particular honesty, and that the other prospers because of his particular dishonesty, is the result of a superficial judgment, which assumes that the dishonest man is almost totally corrupt, and honest man almost entirely virtuous.

 

In the light of a deeper knowledge and wider experience, such judgment is found to be erroneous. The dishonest man may have some admirable virtues which the other does not possess; and the honest man obnoxious vices which are absent in the other.

 

The honest man reaps the good results of his honest thoughts and acts; he also brings upon himself the sufferings which his vices produce. The dishonest man likewise garners his own suffering and happiness.It is pleasing to human vanity to believe that one suffers because of one’s virtue. But not until a man has extirpated every sickly, bitter, and impure thought from his mind, and washed every sinful stain from his soul, can he be in a position to know and declare that his sufferings are the result of his good, and not of his bad qualities. And on the way to that supreme perfection, he will have found working in his mind and life, the Great Law which is absolutely just, and which cannot give good for evil, evil for good.

 

Possessed of such knowledge, he will then know, looking back upon his past ignorance and blindness, that his life is, and always was, justly ordered, and that all his past experiences, good and bad, were the equitable outworking of his evolving, yet unevolved self.

“

I could not explain it better. You will never be rich because you love your mother, or pray to a god daily or do all the good things your pastor told you to do. Or because you wake up every day and go to work by 7am. You will become RICH or POOR based on your thoughts. Simple as.

But as Humans/Kenyans, it is always good to just sit in our $30 Sofasets hoping against hope and saying, “One day this will all change. We will be rich and happy.”. And the beat goes on. The rich become richer. The poor also prosper. In poverty.

People who try less and work less than you will always be better than you, financially. Why? Because of the power of attraction. Positive energy. You want something bad enough? It will come to you. As soon as you deserve it. You will never get what you want or work hard for. You will always get what you DESERVE.

So, the question begs. “How do you channel positive energy to achieve what you DESERVE?”. The answer is right there. You are. Right now you are getting EXACTLY what you deserve. It is not fate. Fate is for the mentally weak.

Wealth [Monetary, Health-wise, Mental] is all a product of ones thought and focus.

Focus on what is WRONG, UNFAIR and NOT WORKING in your life, and you will get exactly what you deserve. Misery. Poverty. Sadness. Focus on what you want, the picture of success, you in that Kompressor, you being in every gals to-do list, etc.. and It will happen. Very soon. Nothing happens by chance. The universe respects your deepest desires. And always makes you realize them.

It all depends on you. The rest of us are just spectators and distractions. Kazi kwako.

Back to code.

Wazi.

I was here FIRST!!

We are in the tech sector. Applications, models, methods. Every app takes time and resource. It is imperative one knows whether it will FAIL or SUCCEED. At least not 100% certain, but a little research will go a long way. It is saddening to develop something and have it not fulfilling the purpose.

Many-a-times, I have been asked one of the 3 questions below by friends/followers and ‘friends’:

1 – “Salim, to you, what is better and more fulfilling? To start your own business and make it a success or to JOIN an already existing one and improve it?”

2 – “Salim, I have a good job and I get paid well, but it is not challenging enough. I do the same-old-effking-routine everyday. When is the right time to quit and do something more fulfilling in IT?”

3 – “These people wanajiringa and they did not even develop that system. I know the developer and all they do is use and improve it. The idea was not theirs. do they deserve plaudits?”

And, so, today, as I was watching SharkTank S2E3, Daymond John, said it in one sentence: “Pioneers get slaughtered while settlers prosper“. And, this, my friends is the plain, ugly, real truth!

The Problem

We see it everyday. A person comes out bubbling with ideas. He has a killer product/idea. He develops something NO ONE envisaged before. Something unfathomable. Something unprecedented. Those who could envisage it just laughed it off in bars and elevators as a good idea. “No one would buy/use it”, they said.

But someone finally develops it. He demos it. It is beautiful. It works. It is revolutionary. This is the pioneer.

Then the same-old-story starts. “Wameniibia”. “That was our/my idea”.  ”We thought about that first!”. “I have spoken to my lawyer and they will be sued”. Yadda. Yadda. Yadda.

There are people with resources, willingness and time. They are always looking out for POORLY executed GREAT ideas. They know they have the options. This is Africa. Kenya. Bloody Nairobi. Patents don’t exist. Speak to the wrong people and you will be duplicated. Your project will be finished by someone else before YOU begin. These are the settlers.

A discussion at LinkedIn puts this into better perspective [I have edited for context].

Initial (primary) innovation is a cruel mistress, as it is an energy that must be released. And then, if your unique ‘light’ finds its way to pierce a particular darkness, as soon as it shines, unethical marketers will paint it a different color, put a bigger brand name on it and claim it as their own.

So yes, pioneers get slaughtered because further ‘improvement’ is usually only a small change to the Idea they worked day and night to bring to life.

The solution

From the same page in LinkedIn : “Timing, resources, dedication, and business planning make the difference.”.

Timing is all about releasing the critical and ‘people-magnet’ features first. The features that make people want to use your product. Make them use your app. Making haste and getting out there. But getting out there EXPOSES you. Hence the second step.

Resources. How do you evangelize your product beyond the small circles of family, friends, twitter followers. Do you have money to advertise? Can you use EXISTING social, publicity and exposure avenues cost-effectively. Do you have a budget? Ok, you have this sorted. How do you keep the users interested? How do you handle user-fatigue?

Dedication. Keep the services up and continually BUT POSITIVELY improved. Always keep your business at the top of your to-do list. If not as the ONLY thing on it. This is your baby. Feed it daily. 4 times.

Business Planning. What do you improve in version 2? What do you add. What do you drop. What do you merge? Do you need to scale-up or scale out? Do you need some partnerships to increase revenues in certain parts? What is your revenue collection model? How do you maximize revenue in all parts of your business?

The FINAL part of the solution is partnership. You are a pioneer in Business. A novice. A master programmer you may be. An IT Guy. But not necessarily a business person. Do your thing with the servers and databases and code. But PARTNER with someone to do their thing with the clients, the contracts and RA. You cannot do everything yourself, like MOST developers try to do.

Kazi kwako.

Back to code…

Wazi

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