“Most of the developers in Uganda and solving Ugandan problems, not realizing there’s something bigger. Where are you deploying it, what’s you addressable market, when can you get it out, are you thinking about 37 million in Uganda or 150 million in East Africa?”
-Teddy Ruge, Founder of Raintree Farms, Co-founder of Remit.ug and Hive Colab
Having a vision for your company can do a lot of different things. It can make sure your team is aligned around a single goal, it can be something you sell in order to get grants or build trust with customers. It can even help you learn how to be wrong.
Here’s how three African entrepreneurs came to understand the importance of vision in building their businesses.
##Vision to Admit Mistakes
“Selling that vision is important in understanding that that person is building something for themselves.”
-Teddy Ruge, Founder of Raintree Farms, Co-founder of Remit.ug and Hive Colab
For Teddy Ruge, having a vision for his businesses wasn’t just about attracting good partners, it was something to ground him in what he was doing. Once he had a team of people backing him and a vision to inspire them, getting his products exactly right wasn’t as important.
How is that possible? Because with a vision, even if one product failed, that just meant he needed a new product to achieve his vision. So having that vision made it easier to fail, easier to pivot, and easier to focus on what was actually important.
But the benefits of having the right vision don’t end there.
##Vision for Grants
“The vision for total health was laid at the beginning of 2012, for a whole year we were saying there must be something we can do to help more mother give birth safely”
-Felix Kimaru, Co-founder of Totohealth, Africa Prize shortlist
For Totohealth, having a vision for making births in rural Africa safer through an SMS system made an enormous difference. Before they had that vision their attempts to build a business were unsuccessful. But having each team member know exactly why they were building this new business meant their message was clear.
Every time they spoke to the media they knew what message they had to get across. This made their media presence much more effective. It also made it easier for them to apply to grants. They had a clear story, message, and goal.
##Vision for Team Alignment
“It’s difficult to build a team around a product unless those team members already trust in your vision and ability to deliver on that product.”
-Teddy Ruge, Founder of Raintree Farms, Co-founder of Remit.ug and Hive Colab
Joseph and Teddy learned that you need to bring people onto your team who have the same vision you do. Not building this kind of core agreement into a team from the start led to later conflict.
“Most entrepreneurs are envisioned, what happens is they fail to take the people they bring on board through their envisioning process.”
-Joseph Kajerero, Cofounder, Sanitation Africa
Having a core vision on a team also helps Teddy make sure everyone is motivated and willing to put in the effort necessary for success.
“My biggest challenge is building a team, getting cofounders, sharing my vision, having them put in as much effort as I do.”
-Teddy Ruge, Founder of Raintree Farms, Co-founder of Remit.ug and Hive Colab
Overall, each of these entrepreneurs learned that to pivot, get grants, and build a team, you need a clear vision of what you’re trying to accomplish.