Thanks a lot! I also always love seeing your perspective on the forum as someone else in East Africa.
I actually did a back of the enveleope calculation like that (several months after joining Kapu - so I definitely had an incenteive to rationalize my own choice) and ended up with something like “this looks better than working at an impactful US company, and comprable to earning to give but I am really excited by the work here and not at all by earning to give so I have rationalized my decision to work here”. Happy to DM on some of the startups I was less impressed with too.
On funding, Kapu had good timing in that 2021 was a big year for startups in Africa generally. Investors excited by the success of companies like Wave and Jumia (which has gone downhill a bit since), a lot of hype from impact investors about Africa having untapped potential. This year has been a lot harder, like everywhere.
The other top two “finalists” in terms of companies I looked at were Farmworks and Powergen. Powergen I ended up downgrading based on deciding that working at an earlier-stage, faster-moving company was important to me. And Farmworks is a company I have a lot of admiration for—I was just a bit more excited by Kapu (again, a big factor being the sense when I joined Kapu that it had tons of momentum and was going to go fast).
It’s a good point—on average our customers are richer than rural poor so direct comparison to givedirectly isn’t quite fair. shooting from the hip though I don’t think the impact of giving a dollar to a poor Nairobian is much less than half of the impact of giving a dollar to a poor person in a village (note: probably about half of our customers actually don’t have smartphones—you can order without one). And I think there are strong systemic benefits from that dollar coming from an economically sustainable business rather than from donations.
So good man nice to hear. Love the “shooting from the hip” always a big fan of that ;).
Also I agree instinctively with this and am keen to hear more “And I think there are strong systemic benefits from that dollar coming from an economically sustainable business rather than from donations.”, but not at all sure of the extent of it or why this might be. OneDay Health centers all run basically as close-to-self-sustaining small businesses, and apart from the sustainability and scalability potential of an economically, I feel there might be other systemic benefits too, but find it hard to put my finger on it
What do you think those systemic benefits might be?
I too am finding it hard to articulate. Maybe it’s just captured in the impact I talked about in the original post about creating jobs, helping the startup ecosystem, giving me money I can then donate, etc. So I shouldn’t pretend that in addition to all that there is some other nebulous “benefit of a company vs nonprofit” just to increase the warm fuzzies I feel.
But there’s also a mathematical sense in which a shilling saved (the way Kapu has impact) is better than a shilling earned.
Imagine someone makes and eans exactly 500 shillings per day. You can either cut their cost of living to 250, or give them 250.
It’s better to cut their costs to 250. That way now they earn 200% of their cost or living! If instead you give them 250, they only have 150% of their cost or living
The other benefit compared to giving cash is you avoid the sense of unfairness from people who don’t get given money. I think the new documentary in Givedirectly—Free Money—illustrates this downside well (though I don’t share the overall tone of the documentary which I feel is unnecessarily down on GiveDirectly).
I also have an intuition that it just feels better psychologically for a person to save a shilling vs to be given a shilling for free at random. Maybe mistaken.
Thanks a lot! I also always love seeing your perspective on the forum as someone else in East Africa.
I actually did a back of the enveleope calculation like that (several months after joining Kapu - so I definitely had an incenteive to rationalize my own choice) and ended up with something like “this looks better than working at an impactful US company, and comprable to earning to give but I am really excited by the work here and not at all by earning to give so I have rationalized my decision to work here”. Happy to DM on some of the startups I was less impressed with too.
On funding, Kapu had good timing in that 2021 was a big year for startups in Africa generally. Investors excited by the success of companies like Wave and Jumia (which has gone downhill a bit since), a lot of hype from impact investors about Africa having untapped potential. This year has been a lot harder, like everywhere.
The other top two “finalists” in terms of companies I looked at were Farmworks and Powergen. Powergen I ended up downgrading based on deciding that working at an earlier-stage, faster-moving company was important to me. And Farmworks is a company I have a lot of admiration for—I was just a bit more excited by Kapu (again, a big factor being the sense when I joined Kapu that it had tons of momentum and was going to go fast).
It’s a good point—on average our customers are richer than rural poor so direct comparison to givedirectly isn’t quite fair. shooting from the hip though I don’t think the impact of giving a dollar to a poor Nairobian is much less than half of the impact of giving a dollar to a poor person in a village (note: probably about half of our customers actually don’t have smartphones—you can order without one). And I think there are strong systemic benefits from that dollar coming from an economically sustainable business rather than from donations.
So good man nice to hear. Love the “shooting from the hip” always a big fan of that ;).
Also I agree instinctively with this and am keen to hear more “And I think there are strong systemic benefits from that dollar coming from an economically sustainable business rather than from donations.”, but not at all sure of the extent of it or why this might be. OneDay Health centers all run basically as close-to-self-sustaining small businesses, and apart from the sustainability and scalability potential of an economically, I feel there might be other systemic benefits too, but find it hard to put my finger on it
What do you think those systemic benefits might be?
I too am finding it hard to articulate. Maybe it’s just captured in the impact I talked about in the original post about creating jobs, helping the startup ecosystem, giving me money I can then donate, etc. So I shouldn’t pretend that in addition to all that there is some other nebulous “benefit of a company vs nonprofit” just to increase the warm fuzzies I feel.
But there’s also a mathematical sense in which a shilling saved (the way Kapu has impact) is better than a shilling earned.
Imagine someone makes and eans exactly 500 shillings per day. You can either cut their cost of living to 250, or give them 250.
It’s better to cut their costs to 250. That way now they earn 200% of their cost or living! If instead you give them 250, they only have 150% of their cost or living
The other benefit compared to giving cash is you avoid the sense of unfairness from people who don’t get given money. I think the new documentary in Givedirectly—Free Money—illustrates this downside well (though I don’t share the overall tone of the documentary which I feel is unnecessarily down on GiveDirectly).
I also have an intuition that it just feels better psychologically for a person to save a shilling vs to be given a shilling for free at random. Maybe mistaken.