Tenders not included

Pip: Shrimp is the black man’s lobster! (Mike pretended to be sick from eating shrimp and Pip is angry because he threw it out)
Mike: (looking perplexed) Why isn’t lobster the black man’s lobster?

This is dailogue from a series called The Job which had a short run in the early noughties, with Denis Leary as Mike and Bill Nunn as Pip. This exchange resonated with me because it conveys the sense that havenots must be/ and are satisified with settling for less.

I’m currently at a ICT conference in Pretoria organized by SAFIPA. A recurrent theme of the conference or the first day at least,  is the penetration of mobile phones in Africa,  South Africa in particular and how the ubuiquity of these devices can be used as internet connection device. An ICT in education break-away session discussed the progress being made in mobile learning. Now I understand the impetus to do this, and wholehearty endorse the mlearnign movement and usage of tools that extend the internet using mobile phones right NOW. What I  do object too, however,  is a tendency to think of mobile phone penetration and solutions using this penetration as an end in itself i.e that the mobile phone is Africa’s PC or put another way  - African relationship with the internet will be mobile phone based. Now to me this was clearly “shrimp is the blackman’s lobster” thinking with the consensus being Pips perspective. I will definitely concur with Mike in this debate and declare my opposition with a question-

“Why can’t PC’s/Laptops be Africa’s PC’s/Laptops?

There are as many answers to that questions, about as many as there are people willing to give them to me. I’m going to take aim on three obstacles to making laptops or netbooks as pervasive as mobile phones. My calculations are of the “back of the napkin” variety, so shouldn’t be considered gospel but are intended as food for thought.

• The device costs are too high: This is where we need to borrow from the mobile phone business model where the device cost has come down because of amount of users and the hybrid revenue model.  The prepaid revenue model where the service and the device costs are decoupled and the postpaid contract where the device and service are coupled with the initial device costs spread over the life of the contract. To illustrate the device price decrease I’ll present some data from America. In 1984 mobile phone cost $4000, and according to “Life Styles and Past Times” by Jenny Tesar  40000 americans used mobile phones. Fast forward to 2002 and the mobile phone cost dropped to $300 (and this was a premium phone) and there were over 180 million americans using mobile phones. Over a 18 year period this is a order of magnitude drop in the price, for a four order of magnitude increase in usage (even more if you consider worldwide usage). Since them of course the usage has increased more and prices have dropped even further, where you can pick up a decent device for about $30. A typical netbook costs around $400 dollars today.
• Demand: The conjecture here is that africans (or the masses or grassroots as called by the baby kissers) don’t need laptops or PC’s. This was probably the thinking of most people when Mr. Craig-Knott sought funding for his little cellphone venture,  and also arrogant and niave. African hunger for technology is grossly underestimated and the imperative for connected citizenry in africa is widely accepted with Rwandan President Paul Kagame being a notable advocate.
• Infrastructure: This is mostly around the available infrastructure to providing broadband service. Although Telco liberalization in Africa has been exceeding slow,  one of the biggest impediments has been the supply side scarcity i.e the fact that the undersea pipes where low bandwidth and monopolized. With the advent of WACS and Seacom ( I just heard of these in a Steve Song presentation yesterday), the supply side constraints will ease by 2011. The mobile phone network is probably the most expansive network and could also be leveraged to cater for last mile access.

A general theme of this conference has been the way in which ICT and Technology as a whole can play a central role in transforming an economy from a resource base toward a more information base, with Finland being a prime example. Some of the specific developmental challenges in South Africa are the uneven distribution of network  infrastructure, education and ultimately economic participation. Its my opinion that the only way that the resource to information economy shift makes sense if it increases the participation (economic and social) of people who don’t currently participate, and this what profileration of netbooks/laptops/pc’s can do.

The research and technology from the OLPC which has contributed to the commercial netbook developments and the Open Hardware movement are also convergent themes that would allow african entrepeneurs to participate in making “lobster the blackman’s lobster”.

Don’t you hate when you’ve spent the longest time procrastinating about doing something, because you think its going to hard to do…and then when you eventually get around to doing it it is really easy and you loath your sluggishness about stepping up to the plate (i love cheesy sports cliches). I had one such moment last night. As usual for a wednesday night, or any other night for that matter I struggled to sleep, so again as usual I dragged myself to the lounge. Now for the not so usual part…instead of switching on the TV and watching ETV’s annoying but addictive phone in game show, or MANU TV, which normally centers on some really old manu player giving some totally biased opinions why manu is the greatest side ever… i decided drumroll please…that i was going to solve a problem that i’d been putting off tackling for about a month now.

So i’m on the couch, with the remote well out of reach, i fire up my ancient laptop and there i am alone in the dark with the warm glow of a laptop screen, like a male adolescent building up his porn warchest (out of this nostalgia - I did add just a little to my stash before i started with the problemsolving). The problem involved a simple mashup that I’d created to deliver translations to a cellphone via sms. The easy part had been done, about a year ago already - I’d bought a premium sms keyword (translate) on a relatively reliable sms number through my logicsms subscription and pointed it to a script on my domain. The script was simple enough and parsed the sms input (msg=”translate x text_to_translate” where x is the target language-the origin is english). The script then extracted destination language and text_to_translate does is pass the text to an online translation service (i.e. google translate) and pass the response back to logicsms, who in turn pass the response back to the user. My problem in one word - formatting- cellphone sms interfaces can’t handle utf8. I played around with the php iconv() and the conversions sometime gave me garbage like -

“translate f hello mother” from a sms gives me “bonjour mère” (notice the kappie - thats what as my afrikaans teacher taught us) from google translate, but gives me “bonjour m?re” after using iconv.

At the witching hour i was pulling my hair out, after learning way too much about the 7 and 8-bit formats. I even contemplated developing my own conversion function to give me what i needed, but my inherent laziness over-ruled that silly notion. Then i stumbled upon a very simple function called unaccent(), which basically takes the translated string as an input and returns a string minus kappies. I then use string sans kappies to perform the iconv….hoooray.

I suppose this post does therefore have a point (every post must have a least one lesson to take away - too much walker texas ranger as child)…laziness is good when forcing you innovate but bad when preventing doing. For more on the importance of the cult of done see here. To check out the smstranslation service sms using the format - translate f texttotranslate - to 36242 or get more information here

Keeping an eye on the blogosphere over the last couple of months has introduced me to a world of important thinkers that share my interests. Two themes that constantly pop-up and resonate with me are the importance of doing work that matters, and becoming good at something. These two themes are obviously interlinked, and I’m sure as many entrepreneurs can attest that doing important work requires becoming a real expert in some discipline.

When I say important work it is a subjective term and refers to doing work that matters to YOU more than money. Now this is something that requires a lot of courage (as explained by Richard Hamming) to do and can be nicely encapsulated as a Big Hairy Audacious Goal.

• Microsoft: “A computer on every desk and in every home”
• Google: “Organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”

This should become you raison d’être, and something that you aim to spend the most of your time doing. Obviously you need to reconcile this with your life constraints, most commonly paying the mortgage and feeding the kids and you probably won’t able to spend most of your time it initially, but you need to progress to it being the bulk of your business day.

Being good at something is normally a side product of striving for your goal and will not only make you sought after (if you let the world know about your success) but also increase the rate at which you progress to you goal.

These are now my founding principles and here is my Audacious Goal -

• Webeyed: “allow social connections to put ‘their money where their mouth is’ about events”

Pretty hairy - I’ll let you know how it goes?

My company is a tenant at a small business incubator thats getting off the ground a startup in a startup -very fabergé). I was recently asked in a strategy session for the incubator about my motivations for getting into business. It’s a question that stuck with me based on the variety of responses that were given by other companies in the incubator.

The majority of responses (okay mine particularly)was scattered and incoherent. The major reason for our collective fuzziness is not because we don’t know why we got into business, or that we are terrible communicators (although I suppose this is a contributor), but rather that, well frankly …our motivations are our own. My take on motivation is that there are two kinds private and the public. The private kind is what you really think, your personal vision of success. And the public kind is what youconvey in taglines and put on business plans, websites what you say when you’re explaining your business to interested parties (i love that phrase) or when you’re bluntly asked… without any ceremony may i add … “what is you motivation” in a strategy session. Now I don’t mean to say that we are all always lying, because oft times these two motivations are identical or fairly similar but other times these motivations are like the night and day, fire and ice, zille and zuma.-

The reasons for having private and public motivations depend on the situation but can be quite varied including:

• money - hansie (the devil made me do it)
• just plain evil - ala dick cheney(friend shooting - he never laughs at my jokes)
• stupidity - george bush (i’m just reading what’s on the paper)
• drunkness - of course i ‘ll call you tomorrow
• horniness - but i love you babes
• embarrasment - your actual motivation is too bizarre to share

Here are a few anecdotes and senarios that I’d like to share which will explain why it is justifiable and sometimes imperative that you have two sets of motivations.

• You’re seventeen and pick up your date at her house when her mother/father/parent asks you…”so what are your intentions toward my daughter”, which is a another guise for “what is you motivation for taking my daughter out”. The public response is awkward and involves words like “nice, church, get to know, girlfriend”, while your private response is “i’m seventeen dude”, and involves sex or a least some “heavy petting” (who invented that phrase?)
• George Bush on the Iraq invasion before it started. “They have WMD”…”It’s a pre-emptive strike”(my fav). When the actual motivation will never be known although i suspect it’s a faction fight dating back to the mid-1600’s, or a squabble over child support
• You’re in a job interview and a panel member( normally the annoyingly cheerful, but earnest HR representative) asks you the proverbial - “so why should we hire you for this job”. And you say things about putting your skills to good use , effort level (110%),  depth of your experience and what the hiring company means to you. You don’t tell them about the Nigerian gentleman in downtown Johannesburg who would like the money that you owe him…for the week longer bender that cost you your last job.
• Cigarette companies stance before 1990’s - “there is no conclusive proof that smoking causes cancer”.

The point of this post (yes there is one) is firstly that for starting a company the private and public motivations should not be too dissimilar, and the secondly the public motivation should be practiced and top of mind (this is your consultant speaking).

If i was too tell you that my main motivation for getting into business was that i ultimately wanted to take over the world like a true bond villian. That I have a recurring dream, that goes as follows….

The scene - South african parliament. The minister of finance is reciting his budget…” And defense will be given an  additional R 200 billion to offset the escalating internationally payable maintenance costs for those weapons we never use.” And the gallery sounds their approval. The minister acknowledges their approval  and continues. “Peter Ogle will be given an additional R 700 trillion”. The gallery erupts from the benches in an uproar, where the following phrases can be heard “Not again”, “I thought we were done”, “Why”. And from above the  furor the head of the opposition voices the sense of reason, with a sigh of inevitability - “But we really do need him”.

Now if i were to tell you that that would you give me any any finance, business etc…I don’t think so, you probably have me on the first train to the redroof in Pietermaritzburg.

Below is a brief public motivation, in priority order, of why i’ve got into business.

• Anti-job -Prevent barrynose (to be explained in a later post)
• Usefulness - Create tools (internet software) that is used by people - it improves their lives, makes their business more productive etc.
• Excellence - Create tools that are recognizedby my peers for their awesomeness
• Money - Create a sustainable company that rakes in the dough
• Culture - Create a place that employees want to come too everyday, and gives them a sense of allisrightwiththeuniverseness (like people who shop at hilton weiner)

There are some private additions to the list and they are just that…private .

Okay, so I quit my job about 6 months ago and have been in stealth mode of my startup business since then. And the biggest lesson i’ve learnt so far…Stealth mode should have been done while I was still employed. Seriously there is tons of preparation that I should have done before I left the corporate realm.

Okay I’m getting ahead of myself with the lessons learnt schpeel…lets stick to the blog title. I was supposed to start this blog at the beginning of this journey but I was so eager I just started stepping( one foot infront of the other) with a sketch for a map, just striving for forward momentum, that the blog introspection never really took. But now that I’m crawling I decided to stand up (this metaphor has gone to far) and step more methodically. This blog is my pledge to do just that…look a bit more carefully before I leap. So lets start at the beginning by resurrecting what was supposed to be my first post:

3.30am - 17 October 2008

Okay its 3:30 in morning and brain refuses to switch off. I’m 2 weeks into my 4 week notice period, don’t yet have another income source so maybe I’m a little stressed, anxious, fucked…whatever. No, I wasn’t fired it was a voluntary move, actual dare I say, I think my employers quite like me (some of hem anyway…i think…okay one). Why? Well the reason for resignation comes down to a couple of factors, firstly I have kids and the prospect of raising ( hell - I’d hardly know hem) them in Johannesburg doesn’t really match up to the Cosby-like (I’m a child of the previous millennium- what can I say) vision of family life I had for my family. Secondly I’ve been bitten once again by the entrepreneurial bug that bit me after varsity and this time I think I can make it work. Thirdly I’ve recently turned 30 and that’s a kak age at which to have no real money, and maybe midlife crisis’ are coming earlier because of the hyper-accelerated 21^st century live we’re all now living in. Fourthly and probably most importantly (or at least for the sake of decent storyline for this blog genesis) its barrynose, cryptic I know but my own personal euphemism on the pitfalls of corporate life (which I saw myself becoming accustomed too). Now this diatribe is no judgment (maybe a small one) on barry, I just don’t see that life for me. So essentially I want to prevent petersnose. I will illuminate on the full meaning of barrynose because I think it warrants its own post when I am far enough from barry not to feel overly guilty.

This is blog is mostly gonna be about starting and hopefully running a successful software business in South Africa, but apart from that i’m going to write about politics - ZUMA(love him, hope he annexes Swaziland), sport - SHARKS. Okay to paraphrase the wisest man to die in an apartheid jail cell – “I’m going write what I like.” – and hope like hell the Zuma Government is not as sen-a-tive as the Nats circa 1960 <check>.  The main tone of these posts will be dripping sarcasm with an over-arching theme of social satire, and if I offend any readers (move to Swaziland…no really I’m not joking). I will sometimes, but if you are re-pulsed then you have a pulse so rejoice – yah you survived FranenMantu, and Nqakula. I really want David Bullard and Stanley Bing, to stand-up and say –“Damn that blogger is sarcastic”, I want to put a smile on Patricia De Lille face (if you see it happen send pictures - I wanna make t-shirts).

For sake of transparency let me also say, that this ain’t no coincidence, this blog has also just now morphed into my first entrepreneurial experiment at micro-publishing. So I’m gonna get Google Adsense, and hustle other ads if I can. So click on the ads for fucksake readers…cos’ baby needs new shoes, and your 10c might be the only cash I see in a while.