This piece was inspired by an activity I indulged in.  In three simple words I was asked “what’s your story?” This may sound easy but believe me a

harder question has never been asked.

 

This question set me on a path to think about my journey and how far(or near, depending on how you look at it) I have come and what are some

notable key lessons learnt.  

I will be honest; some things have made sense and others are still high up on the wall of lessons to be unraveled as time goes by. Am hoping through

documentation, they will bring some clarity to my mind.

 

I will be lying if I said I will be denoting everything notable I have done but rather I would like to focus the context of this writing to my

entrepreneurship journey, hence the title. Its not much but its my story and however much anyone would like, we cant change it.

 

Humble Beginnings

 

My first stint with entrepreneurship came at the age of 15. At the time I was in first year in high school in Ongata Rongai and we used to live on a farm.

Next to where we lived there was a line of shops, a mini shopping center of sorts, where everything was sold from small household goods to fresh

groceries.

 

Together with a friend, we set up a “Mandazi” joint where we prepared it fresh and sold to locals and neighboring shops.  From waking up at 5.30 AM

to prepare the dough to stoking the fire during cooking, this was very crucial in my journey ahead though I didn’t realize it at the time. Though we

ended up closing the venture due to mainly unprofitability, the lessons learnt stuck with me going forward and had ignited this burning thirst inside of

me that I didn’t know how to quench.

 

After high school I did several stints of what I may term as jobs. I started off by selling movies at the height of movie shops popularity. This has been

so far the best job I did. There is just something in people coming to you to recommend to them which movies to watch and you getting to do that time

to time. This taught me how to learn people, how to anticipate their next emotion and how to combat it by reading their facial expressions and body

movement. And the best part about it? The flurry of new faces I would see daily coming in.

 

  I followed by working in a cyber café which was a pure experience of learning on the job. I tend to suggest a cyber café is one of the businesses with

the most foot traffic ever. You get to interact with the people from all walks of life who need your services and expertise to achieve something else.

 

Electronics Repair

 

My second stint into entrepreneurship came right after joining university, by pure coincidence if I may say. I had been allocated a hostel room with

three other students and one of the fellows had some challenges setting up his newly bought laptop. With the confidence of Donald Trump on any

topic, I told him to give it to me I help him out. Within minutes I had managed to resolve the issue. There are two key pointers to this event though.

The first was I didn’t own a laptop of my own to know what the issue might be. If anything, this was the first laptop I was being given to fiddle it. The

second Is my backstory leading to this juncture. I have always had a passion for electronics; opening them and studying them up. I started opening up

electronics at 10 years and the resilience to see and know more persisted over the years.

 

Back to the story, my room mate was grateful and later referred me to his friends who had varying degrees of the same issue.  I realized this issue was

campus wide, and a viable business opportunity presented itself. I set up Oracle Software Firm, an electronics repair and maintenance business. I

printed a few posters and business cards, recruited George, my friend, to help and we were in business.

The business picked well I have to say, there was never a shortage of students who needed our services and skills and in return our pockets were kept

well oiled.

 

Since I was taking software engineering, I had to do a unit on Web Design which was compulsory in my classwork. I immediately fell in love with the

concept of painting the web with code and couldn’t get enough of it. Any free time I got was spent in building prototypes for the web and soon enough

opportunities presented themselves in the form of Mass Media students who had end semester projects to be done in web design.

 

A few projects down the line, I decided to upgrade to the big leagues.

 

I reached out to a graphic designer who was an acquittance I had made during my days working at the  cyber café and explained to her the direction

my business was heading to. What came from the meeting , was a new name for the business, a registered business legally operating and a website for

the newly registered business.

 

Software Development

 

Based on opportunity, I realized the repair business could scale and become bigger if I decided to grow it beyond the campus I was In. At the same

time, my web design services had been getting more and more enquiries and I saw it better to grow it by optimizing services delivery and growing the

team.  This after some thoughts morphed into Oratech Solutions Enterprises, a custom software development company. The services now included

web design, software development and mobile apps design.

 

I talked to my former employer at the cyber café and came to an agreement to use part of the cyber café location as my bootstrap office. In exchange, I

would offer free hardware maintenance all year round for the equipment since I had helped set it up initially when it was commencing.

 

I had already gotten a few software projects by this point through my growing network and back at campus I had already engaged a couple of my

friends who we used to work with on delivering the projects. I mobilized them into a team, sold to them the vision I had and the big picture where

Oratech was heading and we got to working as a fully fledged company.

 

Oratech has now progressed and now split into two factions; Oratech Software which completely focuses on software development projects for

companies and organizations and Madavi Agency; a digital agency that follows a bottom-up approach to push brands to local consumers using

indigenous means.

 

Internet Provision Services

 

During this time I was in campus, I moved out of the school provided hostels and got a studio apartment (popularly known as “bedsitter”) with a

friend just near the school. Since the web design business was picking up, there was need to have a constant connection of internet and I was

predominantly working from home during weekdays (after classes) and in “office” during weekends.

 

I got a local internet service provider to provide me with access and got to working. Another business opportunity provided itself when my neighbors

started enquiring how they could get internet access to. I evaluated the opportunity and within 3 months I had set up a new business with 20+

monthly subscription paying clients.

 

Inadvertently, the business collapsed within 2 years after I set up due to mismanagement in hiring the wrong personnel to manage ( I will delve in-

depth  into this later) and getting comfortable in the business.

 

Failed ventures?

 

From the narrative above it may seem everything has been all roses no thorns but that’s not the case. There have been many more ventures that I

engaged in that failed spectacularly over this period of time but I have no regrets. AS 50 Cent says in Hustle Hard. Hustle Smarter; focus on the

 potential not the payday and I have had my fair share of potential tested over and over again. I will be highlighting some businesses I started that

flopped in a later article and the crucial lessons I learnt them.

 

I still have a long way to go on new ventures with people who I believe in and vice versa. I am still learning daily and getting better in the

entrepreneurship journey and still striving towards impacting the masses in a wholesome positive manner