When interacting with potential business partners in East Africa, we eventually realized that when we told them our user/transaction numbers, they often assumed that we were lying unless the claim was endorsed by someone they had a trusted connection to.
This is confusing. Did they just think you were scammers, not a real business at all? Or did they think of you as a business that was suspiciously quick to share this information, and trying to… I don’t know, make a power play? Something else?
I’m guessing that they assumed we were exaggerating the numbers in order to make them more interested in working with us. The fact that you’re so ready to call anyone who lies about user numbers a “scammer” may itself be part of the cultural difference here :)
Oh, I see that I was confused: I was thinking of a “user number” and a “transaction number” as things related to Wave’s bank account—as though you were trying to share information for something like direct deposit and being accused of lying. The quote makes much more sense if it’s “number of users” and “number of transactions”.
This is confusing. Did they just think you were scammers, not a real business at all? Or did they think of you as a business that was suspiciously quick to share this information, and trying to… I don’t know, make a power play? Something else?
I’m guessing that they assumed we were exaggerating the numbers in order to make them more interested in working with us. The fact that you’re so ready to call anyone who lies about user numbers a “scammer” may itself be part of the cultural difference here :)
Oh, I see that I was confused: I was thinking of a “user number” and a “transaction number” as things related to Wave’s bank account—as though you were trying to share information for something like direct deposit and being accused of lying. The quote makes much more sense if it’s “number of users” and “number of transactions”.