A Journey through Entrepreneurship. (Part 1)

I keep seeing a lot of posts, articles, and reviews about how, as an entrepreneur, you go through hustles and struggles or the endless ones on motivation. But even though some of them give good advice and point of view, very few to none of them actually explain how to deal with the journey itself (I came to start thinking that the Entrepreneur Journey is closer to an Epic or Mythical Adventure than today’s interpretation of the word ‘Journey’.)

This is my personal Point of View about My Entrepreneurial Journey.

Our company is Panda & Wolf Holding, based in Port-Louis, Mauritius. (For those who want to know, the Panda is the representation of Creativity and the Wolf, the Leadership representation of our company.) Within two(2) and a half years of existence in Mauritius, our sectors of activity are AdTech (Technologically driven advertisements or Solutions), Travel & Tourism with Discover Mauritius™, Real Estate with Homepanda and Education and Environment with Eco-Warrirors™. We are a Startup! (A Starting Business Scaling Fast).

First things first, Mauritius is an island country in the Indian Ocean, and despite being called a country (2000sqkm and 1.4 Million inhabitants), from a market size perspective, it's more of a ‘neighborhood’. On average, Mauritius has good standards of living, internet connectivity and it is easy to set up a business. But Mauritius suffers from a high aging population rate, which not only means that the market for technological/innovative solutions is restricted but also difficult to implement due to lack of technological education and awareness. 

Moreover, the local market is mainly owned by 4-5 big groups, and as startups, competing with any of those ‘Big 5’ is resources they don’t have or might not be able to generate. And then, the Business Culture, to buy out startups that are needful in terms of services or innovations to other companies and annex them to their businesses is not present locally, it’s more of a “Let’s Copy what they are doing.” mindset. Which often, is not implemented correctly nor understood fully and mainly reduces the likeliness of the solution or innovation provided by the startups, to be subscribed and implemented by other companies. - We get into a “We’ve tried that kind of solution, but it doesn’t work” (More of a “We’ve tried to copy it, messed up and didn’t understand it and right now we can’t afford anymore to pay for the right service but also don’t want to take your solution and having to admit we were wrong.”)

Secondly, during our two and a half years of being in business, we have won multiple awards and nominations throughout the world, ranked among the Top 500 Most Innovative Startups on the African Continent in 2018 and our accomplishments have been praised by bodies such as the UNESCO.

Knowing the above now, this is how I handled my journey.

I came back to Mauritius in December 2017, after studying and living out of the country for almost 8 years. With my wife (My Co-Founder and partner not only in life but also in Business) we decided to get an office near the amazing sandy beaches of Mauritius, a possibility you don’t often get when living in Europe or Asia (Mistake No. 1).

Offering NFC, AR, Mobile App Development or Chatbot integrations at that time in Mauritius was considered an Innovation, it still didn’t mean decision-makers understood it nor subscribed to it. For the first six(6) months the struggle was to meet decision-makers, a long and timely process in Mauritius, but also spend a considerable amount of time educating them on the technology instead of signing them. Here nobody pays for consulting Startups or a young entrepreneur perceived as to be trying to educate them on a field that they ‘have years of experience’ in (Regardless that in IT, 10 years ago, AI or Mobile Apps were nonexistent). 

Mistake no.1 was to think that traveling 5-10km for a company to meet you in an Office set up next to the beach would have been something local companies would do.

During the time we were trying to set up our client base here, my wife not being Mauritian and speaking only English at the time, brought up a concern that lead to an opportunity. How are foreigners and tourists supposed to find their way or know where to go when 

1) Everything is in French, 

2) Everything is paper-based, 

3) Everything closes at sunset.

Coming from abroad, going out for dinner at 8 pm, finding information about restaurants or shops or at least the possibility to stay home and order some food around you is kind of a reflex. Here, post-sunset, you only have access to some Supermarkets, which require mostly driving a minimum of 10-15km and no access to an online (not even mobile) directory of places that are close by, delivers to your home or even opening hours.

This is where our first brand came in, Discover Mauritius™ - A free Travel guide app about Mauritius which now evolved to a Travel & Tourism Media for Mauritius. At start, we wanted to offer a directory of service providers categorized in Restaurants, Shopping, Activities to do locally and Health care to visitors. So, I made a mobile app, working offline (So that foreigners can use it without an internet connection), geolocated (so that it rearranges the listings according to the user's position) and offering travel tips to and while being in Mauritius. - Features that were based on my wife’s personal experience as a foreigner. The app is free to download and the revenue model was based on a subscription from listed businesses (simple service). This was for me Mistake no.2.

The subscription fee was not the issue, it was completely affordable by the businesses but they mainly didn’t understand. “Why would a foreigner use an App? - People are used to asking for direction or use a paper-based map/Guide books in Mauritius. - I don’t know how to install an app on my phone, I don’t think people use apps that much” are some of the feedback we received in 2017!

We then went through 6 intensive months of preparing a communication campaign on our services before beginning the commercialization of Discover Mauritius™ in March of 2018, focussing a lot on awards and competitions in Africa, Europe or U.S, so that by winning them, the local press can explain what we do to the public and reduce our communication budget. (Which as a startup is often also nonexistent)

Maybe we were too close technically to the solution or maybe we didn’t have the right pitch for the audience we were targetting, nevertheless, the press explained what we somehow were providing.

Since then, we still had to go through the same process again with Homepanda and Eco-Warrirors™ at first, but we learn from our experiences with Discover Mauritius™ and today reduced our Go-to-Market communication drastically.

What all the articles, motivational videos, posts or comments don’t tell you when you are starting an Entrepreneur Journey is “How to live to fight another day” (Mistake no.3). 

Everyone will tell you that you need time, that your business needs time, that people will need time to understand what you do or the service you offer, which may be true, but no one explains you how are you supposed to live and wait and see if next month you will make sales, get new clients or even be able to pay the current operating overheads while waiting. A startup can begin in a garage or in the founder's room, but the founder still needs to eat, pay the bills or sustain the business needs. Saving up to start your business might be an option for some or getting financial help from friends and family for others, but how much is enough? How long can that amount last? Do you get a loan? And how do you repay it back? 

A lot of questions can arise and a lot of solutions can be found, some more adapted to the founder’s situation than others. In the end, the journey to be an Entrepreneur is grind, hustle, and struggle. 

In order to NOT reach mistake no.3, I would advise you to 

1) Double the time you think your startup will need to be sustainable (Better prepare for 12 months and it being sustainable in 6 or 9 months than the opposite - you might run out of Cash fast.) 

2) Meet and exchange with the maximum of YOUNG entrepreneurs (I focus on the ‘young’ but it’s mainly those of the same age group as you, and that is because others, even though they can have the experience, might not be able to explain you the difficulties they went through in a ‘way’ you will be able to relate and prepare yourself.)

3) Get yourself a strong team! (The team is not to do the work, but mainly to help you keep up the grind, the hustle, and the struggle. Your team is the people that will help you get your courage back when you are down, doubtful and loss. A mentor can help, but often, they don’t relate to what you are going through at the moment, whereas your team will be with you in those moments, and despite how lost they can be, their faith in you or your project is what will keep you going.)

My journey is still not done, and I will do my best to share my Point of View and experience with those looking to know “How to live to fight another day”.