There’s an opportunity to get funding for a great innovative and entrepreneurial idea from a young IT or media firm / developer who is Kenyan. The focus is on a start ups ONLY. Kindly share this out to whom you feel has a great idea and can benefit from this opportunity when the VC’s come into town  in June.

Kindly have a brief profile of your idea/concept in the following format:

One page only – preferably a slide.
1.    Concept in brief
2.    Name of organisation
3.    Target end user
4.    Projected revenues
5.    Cash required to make idea real
6.    Contacts of the entrepreneur…I am assuming this is you
This information is required urgently by noon tomorrow – Thur 27th May 2010. Since I will forward this directly without alteration please put it in pdf format and ensure it is not more than one page!

send to – vc@symbiotic.co.ke

I have received requests from guys who want direct communication with the VC’s in question. Thing is the team is around for a 3 day fact finding mission and as such there must be a process to the whole engagement. There will be a face to face presentation opportunity for those whose concepts will rate highly.

Ushahidi, which means “testimony” in Swahili, is a website that was initially developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008. Ushahidi’s roots are in the collaboration of Kenyan citizen journalists during a time of crisis. The website was used to map incidents of violence & peace efforts throughout the country based on reports submitted via the web & mobile phone. This initial deployment of Ushahidi had 45,000 users in Kenya, & was the catalyst for us realizing there was a need for a platform based on it, which could be use by others around the world.

Since then it has grown from an ad hoc group of volunteers to a focused organization. The team is comprised of individuals with a wide span of experience ranging from human rights work to software development. They have also built a strong team of volunteer developers in primarily in Africa, but also Europe & the U.S.

Now Team Ushahidi gives back to the local dev community in Kenya where it all began by establishing the iHub, which is being billed as Nairobi’s Innovation Hub for the technology community. And it couldn’t come at a better time as the government through the ICT Board is yet to embark on its own tech facility which will be based in Athi river…though I overheard that they may be eyeing the Sameer ICT Park development along Mombasa road to Fastrack their initiative.
The iHub is an open space for the technologists, investors, tech companies and hackers in the area code 254. This space is a tech community facility with a focus on young entrepreneurs, web and mobile phone programmers and designers. It is part open community workspace (co-working), part investor and VC hub and part incubator.
There have been discussions on the need for a physical nexus for the tech community in Kenya for a couple years, so it’s great to finally be so close to uncorking the bottles and celebrating a big step forward continue reading »

There exist various opportunities for an entrepreneur to raise funds for their business. Most entrepreneur focus on a limited set of options and iterations.The fund raising opportunities available are:

Friends and Family
This option may be a first choice for many but it carries a hidden cost assuming that they are sufficiently liquid to support you. The question to ask yourself if you choose to go this way is…do you want a brother or a creditor, relationships can get tricky. continue reading »

We… entrepreneurs are a passionate lot and would like everyone to be as passionate about the products or services that we are rolling out into the market. This may however lead us to believe that someone will put money in our businesses because they are totally jazzed by our proposition. Tread carefully my friend tread carefully…it’s a capitalistic world and everyone is selfish…selfish has been cast in negative light so may be self interested puts a better spin to it….everyone is self-interested. continue reading »