By Claudia Mumo
Offices are usually big, ostentatious. Some are choked with deep brown wood from floor to ceiling and thick red carpets from wall to wall. Others are minimally furnished with glass and steel polished to submission. And some are even filled with soft, comfy seats and sweets in little bright-coloured bowls.
Pixels Kenya is not one such place. The seats are too few for the staff, so most work from home. There aren’t enough desks, and those that are present don’t match each other. The tiny living room that was converted into an office looks like Frankenstein’s monster with a splash of purple paint and a stack of vintage cameras in a corner.
Amos Ochieng’, the CEO and Director of the company works from his bedroom; its door is right next to the pool office that also serves as a boardroom. He invites me into his office and offers a bed in place of a seat. He has lived and worked at the Pixels since 2014.
“There’s money to be made in start-ups,” is the first sentence out of his mouth as soon as we sit. “The problem is finding the people to give it.”
“There’s money to be made in start-ups,” is the first sentence out of his mouth as soon as we sit. “The problem is finding the people to give it.”
“The work is not that hard,” Amos adds. If it isn’t, then why is he still running his company out of his living room five years after the company landed its first client?
Pixels Kenya is a digital media company. Amos and his team handle: branding, videography, photography, graphic design, and basically anything else that uses media to get to the public. In a world that is basically going the digital media way, it seems obvious that the companies without people to think about reaching the public would use Amos’ services.
“Getting clients is the difficult part. Kenyans are still stuck in the last century. They still believe that people will automatically come to you because they need your work.
“What they don’t understand is that there are so many other people offering the same services; and they need to differentiate.”
Pixels Kenya has chosen the path of excellence. They try to do the best work that they can. Amos takes pride in his company’s work. But so do many other start-ups. They all start out with the ambition of providing the best services in the industry, and somewhere along the line, they realise it takes more than just ambition to make a business take off.
According to CB Insights, an online business magazine, one of the main reasons that start-ups fail is that the team is not cohesive. David Karani, La Vie Media co-founder, a twice-failed start-up founder has learnt this lesson all too well.
His story is all about trusting the wrong people. His initial idea was to work with three friends, one for the PR side, one for the film work and he would do the design and photography.
Somewhere along the line, one of his friends left to start over with another individual who had the capital to get an office, cameras and some walking around money.
“But my buddy didn’t leave me out in the cold,” David says. “He convinced me to join him and his new partner at La Vie as a creative director.”
“But my buddy didn’t leave me out in the cold,” David says. “He convinced me to join him and his new partner at La Vie as a creative director.”
David says it went well. “For all of two days,” he laughs, “then everything went down the drain.” According to David, his friend and the silent partner had unrealistic expectations.
“They wanted so much more than could be delivered. How can a start-up, run and staffed solely by university students who worked on other projects at the same time, make enough money in three months to recoup a Kshs. 1 million initial investment and make a profit?” He wonders.
So La Vie, despite covering a number of prominent events, including the ‘swearing in ‘of Raila Amollo Odinga as the People’s president in 2018 had its doors locked three months after it started operating because of defaulting on rent.
Another media start-up, Beyond Creatives has just made its way out of David and his girlfriend’s minds. After months of job hunting, and a raft of employers looking to take advantage of young, idealistic university leavers, David and Naomi decided to branch out on their own
“I just couldn’t keep knocking on people’s doors anymore,” says David. “Tarmacking for work takes a toll on you; I almost got depressed because I was not getting any job offers. I had to create my own job.”
“I just couldn’t keep knocking on people’s doors anymore,” says David. “Tarmacking for work takes a toll on you; I almost got depressed because I was not getting any job offers. I had to create my own job.” And within a span of a few months David was part of the third start-up he was co-founding.
According to the World Bank, one in every five Kenyan youth of working age is jobless. This is why there are so many start-up companies. Parents are pushing their children away from being employed into being employers. Along the way of starting up, things go wrong as they did with La Vie media.
David insists that he has learnt something from his previous failures. “Trust the people who clearly state their best interests, even if they don’t align with yours. Everyone else has a hidden agenda; and those always go badly. Well, that and confidence will take you places,” he finishes with a laugh.
The people are the heart of a company according to Amos. “The people, from staff to investors, are the ones who make a company what it is.” He insists that it is not about the qualifications of the people or their education. According to him, it is about whether they “buy into the same vision.”
The World Bank recognises the importance of entrepreneurs in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Obiageli K. Ezekwesili, the World Bank Vice President for Africa Region, saying in a speech that Kenya must focus on creating an environment where the youth can create businesses.
These businesses need to be started and run with the support of other youth. Amos runs the most successful start-up of all the people I talked to. But all of them agreed on the fundamental reason that start-ups fail or succeed: the people.
Hundreds of thousands of university students graduate each year expecting to become the next big thing. They hear about Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg and Oprah Winfrey and all the other people who took the road less travelled and think they too will make it just as big. But life isn’t that easy. La Vie media is not the only start-up that has fallen by the wayside, to be looked at as a cautionary tale by the entrepreneurs who come later. The bottom line that differentiates all the failures from the successes, according to those who have succeeded and those who have failed, is the people.
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