Good People, if the soup is watery, the elders will dent the garri before dipping it into it. The wisdom of that Igbo proverb is clear: if every business idea has AI in it, a simple way to evaluate the thesis and value proposition of ideas is to “abstract” out the AI component. In the last two weeks, more and more business plans we’ve received at Tekedia Capital have “AI” as a component.
Amazing, we admire the energy. But AI will not obfuscate inherent challenges in electricity and data systems in many African industries. Tell us what you plan to do before “AI will magically…”
At Tekedia Capital, we do not fund technologies just for the sake of having fancy things. We fund products which solve customer frictions. Sure, technologies are key components to create those products, but we are unalloyed and untethered to technology; our commitment is to products!
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In our category-king equations, there is no tech at the top level:
Great Company = Awesome Product + Superior Execution
Innovation = Invention + Commercialization
Products and innovations will win empires; let’s know what you are building. Interestingly, unless you have the data, any talk of AI in my village in Abia State is a distraction. Yes, where is the data?
To close, let me drop a famous Igbo proverb: the free range chicken will always look up when drinking water because what kills it always comes from the sky (the hawk). Many entrepreneurs have failed because they’re merely building technologies instead of solving problems which customers have! Yes, they lose focus, distracted, only to be consumed by market forces (the hawks in markets)!
ChatGPT’s success has led to a mushrooming cottage industry of AI startups. But even as some investors charge ahead to capitalize on the AI gold rush, others are starting to hold back. The sheer speed and scale with which the industry is progressing daily makes it hard to place sound bets, they say. Some also caution against what they say has become a freewheeling ecosystem, with some firms putting their money behind companies without so much as a business plan, and valuations reaching tens of millions of dollars. Read more here.
Comment on Feed
Comment 1: To avoid falling into the AI Trap of Building for NONE, businesses should begin by gaining a clear understanding of the customer problem they aim to solve. Once this is established, they can explore how AI can be utilized to address the issue effectively. However, it is crucial for businesses to remain realistic concerning the capabilities of AI, which is a powerful tool but not a one-size-fits-all solution. Moreover, AI is a complex technology that requires time and effort to develop and deploy AI-powered products or services. Therefore, patience is vital, and businesses must allow ample time for AI to mature.
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This is how you know confused people, with no mind of their own. Whatever they hear people elsewhere saying, they start parroting same.
If AI eliminates meaningless tasks and increases efficiency, then you are alluding that there’s even a task ongoing, you do not talk about efficiency from state of rest.
What exactly is the use of AI in an informal economy, beset with high unemployment and minimal production? There is excess of hands with nothing to do, the problems are enormous and glaring, but somehow parroting AI in a very disorganized system; this is both disingenuous and fraudulent.
AI draws data from existing sources, it does not come from thin air, how many people from your village need glasses to read? You have no idea, and how many hectares of land are needed for cassava whose garri will feed 10k people? You have no idea, but AI is the answer!
The price of bread has been increasing quietly by N100 per month, and AI has no answers to that. Even drinking water in an environment surrounded by water bodies, it’s still getting more expensive, but AI is the talk of the year.
Well, my people have a saying for the current malaise, loosely translated as: it’s only when you have made excess money that you get a cat as pet.
A lot of your points are based on your lack of a good grasp of the actual application capabilities of AI; but are couched as if there is insufficient understanding
of the existing challenges on the ground in the villages.
Africa and the African scenario provide the most fertile ground for the application of AI in problem-solving. All problems start with gathering the data, being the most important ingredient.