This is the story of Tinypesa as narrated by It’s CTO, Dennis Kariuki.
Dennis and his team built a simple tool for themselves to solve an online payments problem that had plagued them for a few years because of the processes and time constraints involved when trying to go live with the M-pesa daraja platform, only for the tool to become a life saver & a sensation for many other developers in Kenya. Read the story below.
Hi Dennis, what’s your background, and what has been your career?
My name is Dennis Kariuki, I’m a software engineer by profession and I have been working with different web development technologies for about ten years now. I started the grind in high school.
What are you working on currently and how did the idea come up?
I am currently working on Tinypesa which is a selling and marketing tool for small and medium-sized businesses. It allows businesses to receive payments for free online, carry out digital marketing with a free website, send bulk emails, sms and manage their business financials.
It all started out as a simple idea though, we were simply trying to find a way to sign up multiple merchants onto a platform we were working on at the time and have them all be able to receive payments directly to their M-pesa Till numbers or bank accounts whenever a customer made a purchase on the platform. We shared the tool with other friends who were working on their own products and it became an instant hit.
How did you build it? (tools and resources used)
The problem itself had been around for a few years without us having a solution but once we managed to scratch that itch, it took about a month to build out the very first version and put it out there, after that it has been constant building and iteration.
Being a web-based tool, a lot of web-based technologies are used, among them JavaScript, Vue JS, and Python.
How did you get your first customers/users?(marketing strategies)
Tinypesa got its first users from people we knew directly who were either developers and friends working on their own products as well as clients we had served in the past, being in the software industry I knew a number of people who had also encountered challenges with integrating payments as far as mobile money payments and banks are concerned. Once we rolled out the first version of the tool, the first users were people we knew directly and clients we had served previously and they fell in love with it instantly.
What are some challenges that you have faced and how did you overcome them?
Building software needs a competent and committed team(especially for startups). Trying to do too much by taking up other roles and tasks such as operations while still also being the main software developer was not practical.
Bringing in like-minded professionals to off load some of the responsibilities off the founders’ shoulders has been of great help.
Financially/user acquisition wise how is the product doing (mention numbers)?
Tinypesa currently boasts over Ksh. 200m transacted. The product has been free to use but the impact we have seen it have has been the main motivator of getting more billable features on it. However, transactions will still remain free.
What are some of the mistakes you made & some disadvantages of working on the product?
As a technical founder, I would avoid incurring any technical debt. We have had to do a lot of refactoring to match up the scalability aspect of the platform. The prototype is not the product and reliability and availability is key for financial tools.
What are some of your future plans?
Our main aim is to change how small businesses and the informal sector transacts. A lot of wealth and value is overlooked in these sectors and a lot of growth can be realized.
If you had the chance to do things differently, what would you do?
I would first put together most of the professionals I need before building. This will prevent some mistakes made due to a lack of knowledge in the other key fields required in running such a startup.
Any recommendations in terms of who to follow, YouTube videos to watch, a useful website or books to read (learning resources)?
This is one that I would highly recommend, Cleaning the Airwaves podcast with Kenyan entrepreneurs
Where can people go to know more about you and your work?
I’m not a social bird but I always share what we are working on linked in
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