The Big Lie of Small Business | Vusi Thembekwayo | TEDxUniversityofNamibia
TLDRThe speaker argues that Africans need to shift their mindset and ambition to build large, philosophy-driven businesses instead of being content with small enterprises. He analyzes why African entrepreneurship struggles, citing lack of infrastructure, access to patient capital, strong institutions, and top talent. The speaker urges creating a culture focused on delayed gratification, mentorship, starting imperfectly but persevering, to unlock Africa’s potential. He advocates for faith to see the invisible, believe the impossible, and trust the unknown to uplift African entrepreneurship.
Takeaways
- 😤 African businesses need to think bigger than just small businesses
- 👥 We need to leverage our collective power more effectively, like with stokvels
- 💰 Access to patient capital is critical for startups to scale up
- 🚜 We must develop infrastructure to connect African markets
- 🧠 We need to change the narrative and mentality around African business
- ⌛️ Delaying gratification allows businesses to focus on long-term value
- 👫 We should tap into the knowledge of the African diaspora
- ☝️ Entrepreneurs should just start, even if they fail at first
- 😌 Having faith means seeing the invisible and believing the impossible
- 🔝 Africa has huge potential if we unlock entrepreneurial thinking
Q & A
What does the speaker say is the deeper problem behind why Africans are not building large businesses?
-The speaker says the deeper problem is Africans' inability to understand the ecosystem and life cycle of entrepreneurship, including access to patient capital and supporting infrastructure.
How does the speaker contrast African and Asian approaches to business?
-The speaker contrasts the fancy lifestyles and quick money focus of many African businesses to the legacy, multi-generational approach of many Asian business families.
What does the speaker say entrepreneurs need to succeed?
-The speaker says entrepreneurs need: infrastructure to access markets, patient capital, assets, access to markets, strong administration, and talented people.
What is the speaker's view on business plans?
-The speaker believes that excellent business plan writers tend to be poor entrepreneurs in the real world, saying entrepreneurs should start badly and scrappy without lengthy plans.
What personal story does the speaker share about failures and challenges?
-The speaker shares a story of his public speaking business failing badly at first, resulting in bankruptcy and hardship, before later gaining success.
What is the speaker's view on African wealth distribution?
-The speaker criticizes the wealth divide between politically-connected elites and regular citizens in many African countries.
How does the speaker define faith?
-The speaker defines faith as the ability to see the invisible, believe the impossible, and trust the unknown.
What does the speaker say about African infrastructure?
-The speaker says African infrastructure makes trade and transport across the continent challenging compared to other regions.
What does the speaker urge the next generation of Africans to have?
-The speaker urges the next generation of Africans to have more faith in their own continent and people to drive economic growth.
What examples of successful African businesses does the speaker provide?
-Examples the speaker provides are an Uber-like flower delivery app service disrupting global markets and informal savings groups demonstrating Africans' inherent capacity for large-scale banking.
Outlines
😕 The current status quo keeps Africans as mere recipients without agency to shape the world or give examples of how we've shaped it through our actions and initiatives.
The paragraph discusses how Africans have been passive recipients rather than active shapers of global developments over the past century. It challenges Africans to provide examples of major initiatives we have led globally and laments the narrative that makes it acceptable for Africans to be content with marginal economic participation as small business owners rather than leaders of industrialization and global trade.
😞African models of entrepreneurship get stuck at survivalist level and small scale compared to equivalent Western and Asian models that scale into huge corporations.
The paragraph contrasts small African businesses like roadside fruit vendors to huge Western chains like McDonald's. It gives examples of tiny African savings collectives compared to massive banks like ABSA that provide the same communal banking functions but at vastly different scales. The author argues Africans need to unlock our thinking from being satisfied with informality and small scale entrepreneurship to owning entire value chains and platforms.
😟 Africa lacks a strong ecosystem to help startups successfully scale into growth companies quickly while minimizing risk.
This paragraph discusses 6 critical elements entrepreneurs need to scale from informal startup stage to corporate growth stage quickly: infrastructure to access markets across Africa, patient risk capital, favorable regulatory conditions and strong management capacity, access to markets, and talented human capital. It also laments Africa's loss of top talent that develops other geographies rather than building at home.
😣 To build scalable world-changing companies, Africans need to change the narrative, build a culture of mentorship and knowledge transfer between generations, embrace delayed gratification rather than instant wealth, and encourage scrappy entrepreneurial action over perfect expertise.
In this paragraph, the speaker argues Africans need to shift our business culture and narrative to build ambitious world-changing companies rather than lifestyle businesses. He advocates for more mentorship between generations. He contrasts the Asian approach of building legacy family businesses over generations vs the African appetitie for quick money that spends on flashy lifestyles rather than enduring wealth creation. Finally, he argues that good entrepreneurs tend to be scrappy doers rather than expert planners.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡entrepreneurship
💡funding
💡infrastructure
💡venture capital
💡startups
💡diaspora
💡legacy business
💡delayed gratification
💡connected economy
💡faith
Highlights
It's not okay for us to be happy to be vendors on the side of the road anymore selling fruits and vegetables.
What we need to do is own the place that produces the fruit on the road infrastructure that moves the fruit on the retail infrastructure that sells the fruit and on the banking system that transacts the whole platform.
The money doesn't have to be cheap but it does have to be patient.
What is the first thing top talent does in Africa? It leaves.
There is a huge mass of knowledge in the African diaspora we need to bring them back in here.
If you build to sell you're built for value. It means you're going to live scrappy you're going to keep costs low you're going to take a long term view because you're building this thing genuinely to create enough push pressure in the market that you can sell it.
The conversation needs to be how do you build a business with a philosophy in mind?
Incumbent upon us is to create a system in our social spaces where we can access mentorship to think differently.
It's about creating a culture of delayed gratification.
How do you know somebody is a good entrepreneur? That's simple - they're very bad at writing business plans.
We need to create a culture that says start start badly start scrappy make mistakes fail start again but whatever you do just start.
Faith is the ability to see the invisible, to believe in the impossible, trust in the unknown.
I have not done it because I am particularly more able than other people I've done it purely because I've been afforded the opportunity to start.
Yours and my task is the next generation of this continent is to have a bit of faith.
You and I today need to have a bit of faith in our own continent.
Transcripts
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