Concurring the doubt of pursuing a different path from the majority. The entrepreneurship path
When a child is growing up, the question like “who do you want to be when you grow up?” is so common. Family are eager to know the passion of the child, for some families with means, the children are exposed to different activities that will explore their interest and know what could be their career path. All of these are done because parents want the best of their children. Most parents want to see their child graduate from school and lend to a good job.
Most of the parents would wish their children to take a prestige promising career for success, professionals like doctors, lawyers, engineers and the likes. I would bet there are very few parents who would look at their children and say “I wish him/her to be an entrepreneur one day”. And yet no parent when asked if there was a possibility of their children to be the next Bill Gates, Marc Zuckerberg or Jack Ma, would they want that for their children? No one will say no. It’s because of the achievements these people have. But most will not think of the path that they had to take.
Some of us have heard of stories of Elon Musk sleeping on his office with his brother for several years when they started their first company. We have heard of how Jack Ma with his founding team of Alibaba had to purchase their own products on their ecommerce business when people were not buying things in the early stages and other more struggles that founders of the companies that are now multinational companies had to go through when building their businesses. But looking them now, everyone would wish to get the achievements that they have or would wish that for their loved ones. The big question is, are we taking a time to understand the path that they took?
In Tanzania we have several startups founded by young people, some founded with teams and others started solo, both of these people have taken a leap of faith and believed in themselves that they can build something that can bring an impact in the society and they want to make that change. As the entrepreneurship has many challenges of its own, like proving the product to be fit for the market, cash flow management, dealing with clients, dealing with regulations etc.
The saddest thing is, the first challenge that most these entrepreneurs face on their footstep when they just step out to start the entrepreneurship journey is trust from their family and friend that the path there are taking is the right one. Am not sure if it’s because the community does not talk much of the successfully Tanzanian startups that we have or it’s just because of lack of patience. But this has led even other people with an entrepreneurship spirit bury themselves in the holes of employments. Am not saying that it’s wrong to be employed, because even in these employments entrepreneurship can be excelled when there is supporting culture in organization. What am saying is the society has somehow contributed in killing the chances of most of our future Tanzanian Elon Musk and Larry Page.
We ought to think of the future more than the present, to support our sisters, sons and daughters that want to build things that can improve our community challenges, support them mentally when they are going through hard situations, and encourage those who are starting by talking more of the successful ones present in our community, reminding them it’s not an impossible mission. Our local medias should also do something on this, hold things like TV shows talking with the ones that have already reached on the sky, sharing their experiences to give energy to those that are still on the ground want to fly. Together to build ecosystems that will enable them and hence to minimize the risks of their failure on building businesses.
Regulators /Government should make friendly environments for these startups to work on less challenging environments like talking with financial institutions so that they can provide funds for seed funding or create policies that can exempt startups to some of the taxes on their early stages. By building an ecosystem that support their businesses the risks of them failing could be minimized. I know this can not a one night change but if everyone in his/her position can think of enabling these young entrepreneurs collectively we could be making big steps from time to time.
And to you my friend, who has an idea maybe you have already started a business or you are in the team together building something to make that change to the community and facing challenges of not being understood by family and friends, I encourage you to know it’s not easy, because if it was easy everyone could do it. Walking on the path that you feel alone as most of your friends drive cars and work on high building offices while you are still in that one room office with a headache client that is willing to pay but until you deliver that feature that seems will take you longer than you expected due to the limited resources. Know you are on the right path.
Know that a lot of entrepreneurs had most of the experiences that you are having right now, maybe not exactly the same challenges but they hard their hardship and they passed through. Sure, there are some who failed but learn from their failure and see what you can do differently. Believe in yourself, believe in the cause that you are pursuing, and know that every seed in order to grow it has to be buried in the ground where there is no light. Preserving, work hard, connect with people to learn from them, support the other entrepreneurs too and you will see the light of the day and grow to provide the fruits that the community is demanding from us right now. Only the chances are you will exceed their expectations.
