This startup wants to help your startup find and solve real problems

The biggest setback for many founders is a lack of knowledge and research, this is where Gritbridge comes in.

Gritbridge, Phindor, Lisa AI, Building Africa

This startup wants to help your startup find and solve the real problems that truly affect Kenyans while creating solutions that Kenyans can actually use and can also generate revenue for your startup in the long run. To help you test and refine your ideas to fit the Kenyan market.

The idea is that the customer can be your investor, but this only happens when startup founders stop being disillusioned with fancy tech, raising funds, cool features they think people want and begin to look at things from the perspective of what Kenyans really do on a daily basis and not what they would want them to do.

Meet Pheneas, the man behind this initiative, he’s had his fair share of stints with incubators, accelerators, fund raising and fancy tech, his experience being mostly negative. More than that, a good number of his friends have also had similar experiences and this is what led him to what he is working on now.

Hi Pheneas, tell us a bit about your background and career.

Hi, I am Pheneas Munene, my background majorly is in electronics and data science. I started building products in 2017 while in my first year at the Technical University of Kenya.

Due to certain circumstances I was not able to finish and it was during this period around 2019 that I joined Nailab mainly for training, this was my introduction to the tech startup world.

I later joined AfyaRekod at Adanian labs and was there for a year after which I started working on my own product Lisa, AI for business.

Working on this product has been quite the experience and it has brought a lot of learnings with it, more so as to what happens in the tech ecosystem in Kenya as far as founders, ideas, accelerator/incubator initiatives and knowledge sharing are concerned and this is what led to the birth of Gritbridge.

You could have worked on anything else, why Gritbridge?

In my journey as a founder in tech I have faced a lot of challenges mainly while trying to build something that people can use for real and while trying to raise funds. I also have people in my circle who have faced similar challenges and even failed to move forward with their startups even after being part of incubator programs.

More than anything I realized that there is a lack of access to knowledge among founders as to the things that can move startups forward positively. A lot of incubator programs do not offer the tangible knowledge & simple resources that can turn ideas into a real business.

For instance in my case, we registered a company in 2018 and assumed we were not liable to pay tax because we had not registered to get a KRA PIN as the company had no major revenue yet.

But in 2020 we were told we have tax arrears of about six hundred thousand Kenya shillings and were left in shock. Unbeknown to us, you don’t have to apply for the KRA PIN when you register a company, you get it automatically

This one thing made it hard for us to raise any funds from investors because we couldn’t get a tax clearance certificate with such arrears.

Just yesterday (11/01/2024), I went to see a Financial analyst who gave us a solution to this problem and we ended up paying only one shilling instead of 600K. There is a way to get amnesty from the government in a case such as ours and were have not been aware for years. I paid the one shilling and got the certificates.

It’s really just a lack of knowledge that prevents a lot of founders from moving forward and mine is just one of many other cases out there.

A lot of startups are failing because of things that can be avoided or solved quite easily simply by sharing knowledge and putting founders in the know, this is the foundation of Gritbridge.

How does Gritbridge work?

Gritbridge will have a simple platform where founders will be able to generate, test and validate ideas, a knowledge based system on topics such as financial literacy, research and live knowledge sharing events (We have one scheduled for the 27th).

I’ve also realized that a lot of the problems that founders have identified do actually exist, it’s only that the approach taken to solve these problem is what poses a challenge towards getting product market fit.

This is where testing and refining ideas comes in. Founders will also be required to do idea/product validation with real customers, we will also help with this process, both physically and by using our AI to help analyze that data as well to pick the best solution for the customer.

The events (Grit Sessions) will be geared towards forming a community of founders and expats from different fields who can give business development and financial advice to founders.

We want to create a mutually beneficial community for both parties so that founders and even expats can gain and receive from their interactions in the community.

We want to help the founder know who their customer is, what they want and what solution works best for their problem. To build a real business.

How are you testing this out with real founders?

Currently we are not taking any outside applications, we are working with founders who we have known and have been in similar circles with as we continue to fine tune our processes.

We will then begin to work with other founders on a rolling basis and accept external applications once things make much more sense.

What are some of the challenges that you have faced so far?

Getting the right team to work with is always a big challenge.

I have worked with a lot of people over the years, this is possibly my fifth time working with a team and only now does it feel like I have found the right fit with the people that I’m working with. They are really awesome people.

lack of knowledge in things such as managing a team, finance, legal stuff has also been a challenge. You think you know but really you don’t. These days I work knowing that I don’t know it all and I have a willingness to learn.

Are there any mistakes that you have made in your journey as founder?

I have made so many mistakes in my time, a lot.

One that stands out is that while I was starting out with Lisa the AI product, I would hire people who seemed like they knew what they were doing without really evaluating them deeply. I would also give them the freedom to be creative with their work and in the process I realized that I was hiring a lot of incompetent people.

My hiring process wasn’t that good

Any future plans for Gritbridge?

I want it to expand across Sub-Saharan Africa, to help founders across this region to build real businesses. Have a thriving ecosystem of founders and other key stakeholders on the platform that is geared towards building thriving businesses for Africa.

Any recommendations in terms of who to follow, YouTube videos to watch, a useful website or books to read?

YC startup school is one of the best places to get knowledge on what it really takes to build and grow a startup.

They also have a YouTube channel that is pretty useful.

But at the end of the day as much as you are looking at what others have done and learning from them, it is important that you also be able to maintain your individuality and be able to do things your way.

Where can people go to know more about you and your work?

Check out the resources website on gritbridge.africa.

You can also check out my handle on X @pheneasbigman where I talk a lot about what we do.

What would like to see done different in the Kenyan startup ecosystem?

I would like to see people supporting each other much more.

Startups are experiments and are not meant to work out immediately they are launched, they require a little support.

There is more negativity towards startups than support and if we can change this amongst ourselves and in turn provide more input or constructive feedback then startups founders will begin to thrive.

I would also like to see founders being intentional with building real businesses as opposed to building because of the limelight that comes with being a founder.