Entrepreneurship Zone: 24 August 2020: Entrepreneur reflects on what went wrong at failed African media venture

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Entrepreneurship Zone: 24 August 2020: Entrepreneur reflects on what went
wrong at failed African media venture

 <mailto:info at bulls.co.zw> 

In 2015, former CNN anchor Zain Verjee and Chidi Afulezi started aKoma, a
platform that enabled its users to view, upload, and share stories about
Africa. However, the duo’s plans for the business didn’t turn out as
anticipated. In this article, Chidi Afulezi shares an honest account of the
aKoma journey.

“Chidi, we need to end aKoma. It’s time.”

I remember taking a deep breath, and then exhaling for about thirty seconds
after my business partner, Zain Verjee, said these words to me sometime late
last year. The sustained expiration of air was not in resistance to her
words, but a painful acknowledgement that our efforts to build a creative
and media business in and for Africa had failed, and needed to be put out of
its misery.

Man, another one bites the dust. Freddie Mercury was literally blaring on
the mic in my head as I chewed on aKoma’s demise.

Zain and I started our company aKoma in January 2015. I was a couple of
years out of Turner Broadcasting (owner of television assets such as CNN and
Cartoon Network; now part of AT&T’s WarnerMedia), and Zain had left her
anchor gig from Turner/CNN just the year before. I had struggled to build my
product consulting business in those two years, and a couple of companies
that I attempted to build in Atlanta had gone kaput.

I was close to pivoting (very reluctantly) back to corporate when I got a
note from my mentor Susan Grant that one of our former colleagues from CNN
was looking for product help. I took the call, planning to make a quick and
easy $3,000 or $4,000. Instead, I was head and heels in, a-freaking-gain, on
the verge of starting another company with this “rich and loaded former CNN
anchor with the Britico Kenyan Canadian accent” saddled with Ghana Must Go
bags full of cash. Or so I thought. Zain and I connected viscerally around
the problem of the narrative of the “dark continent”, and the severe
limitations that the African creative faced in crafting the stories and
platforms to counter and rewrite that narrative.

aKoma was born. We were going to become billionaires, losers.

Right.

The early days were exhilarating and energising. Zain is a powerhouse,
connected to some of the most powerful and influential people in Africa and
the world. She brought not only her Rolodex but also an insatiable desire to
learn and problem solve. I brought my product, tech and business operations
chops, and combined with our creative and media business backgrounds, we
embarked on launching a platform that would enable and unleash Africa’s
talent on the world. Our mantra was “The most important person in Africa is
the storyteller”, as Zain passionately explained in her awesome TED Talk.

We had a small and scrappy team, with the incredible Alanna Bass joining us
from the start. She created our awesome script logo and branding, and we
were rolling.

We were on a mission, with many coming along the way with us (Marie-Ange,
Mwihaki, Ama, Charles, Naledi, Shannon and more) 
 but as anyone on a big
mission will tell you, adversity was primed and ready to rock our heady
ambitions to the core.

Zain Verjee and Chidi Afulezi during the early days of aKoma in Lagos,
Nigeria 2017.

The first challenge was our difficulty getting financial support. As I
mentioned, Zain is connected. If you are a startup founder and you want to
get in front of the people who can make things happen, you want Zain as a
partner. And we talked and met with some of the names that you read in the
headlines. It quickly became clear that having the words Africa, creative,
and business in your pitch were death chimes. The business case we made was
compelling: by developing a platform that funded and showcased African
visual, written, and spoken storytelling, the continent’s soft power would
increase.

Yes?

Nada.

We got no love from African movers and shakers. Forget the Americans and
Europeans (“did you say Africa and creative economy? How does that even
work? How would they consume the content?”). Even with a business and
financial model that I constructed that would scatter Elon Musk’s brain 

eyes glazed over. We got many promises to help, but it was all talk, they
all ultimately disappeared when the rubber hit the road. Some even doubted
the veracity of our entrepreneurial plans. ‘Zain as an entrepreneur?’ one
heavy hitter wondered. ‘Why not just come anchor some of my shows?’ he said.
We even got a $500,000 commitment from a West African banker, but then we
were required to deliver dividends after six months. Wait 
 you mean
dividends like Walmart and Apple type dividends? See these people o! And oh,
we will only give you $75,000 to start until you meet the dividends
milestone. Another potential investor wanted 51% of the company for less
than $200,000 invested.

Can you imagine?

I tell you, my brothers and sisters, the mythical Ghana Must Go bags were
getting full of hot CO2 and freewheeling tumbleweeds. Deep wells of nothing.
Rejection and disappointment galore. It was an eye opener for Zain, and a
tough lesson for the both of us. But we kept pushing.

So, we spent our own money. Zain and I dug into our own pockets to fund
building the aKoma platform. And we also succeeded in securing $500,000 from
Mastercard Foundation to create and run Amplify, a talent accelerator for
African creatives where we built a community of creatives in Ghana, Nigeria,
Rwanda, Kenya and New York City, giving them a stipend of $500/month to
create content from 2016 through to 2018. Amplify has been our gem, and we
are proud of the work that we did with Amplify. GE Africa via chief
communications officer Patricia Obozuwa also supported our Amplify efforts
financially, a boost that still resonates today. We are more than proud of
the creatives who had come through the Amplify programme, proud of the
success that many of these young creatives have found at the BBC, USC Film
School, Nollywood, the Berlin Film Festival, The New York Times, founding
their own creative and media shops, and many more. Three of Rwanda’s top
filmmakers are Amplify Fellows.

“Our 2.0 canvas. We pivoted to a co-working and production space for
creatives platform from being just a digital platform for creatives, the
‘Medium for Africa’ as we called it. Yeah. I know.”

Building a content and creative business is daunting. Doing it in Africa is
maddening. Yes, I said it. Africa is no joke. We made so many content
proposals and creative partnership pitches across the continent, and over
the years we cemented our belief that the creative economy in Africa is
suffering and will continue to suffer due to a fundamental lack of
structural and financial support. Creatives and storytellers are seen as
peripheral and secondary to Africa’s global presence, a mistaken notion that
manifests in the common and nefarious offer of “exposure” as payment for
their services. This has forced many creatives to abandon their craft just
so they can keep the lights on, and Zain and I fought this fight with them.
We lost pretty much everything, and went to the brink on many occasions.

The final straw was a content creation contract with one of the most
important financial organisations in Africa that we just knew would put
aKoma on the right track. It was a five-month $350,000 gig, and we were
ready to finally do some serious work. Long story short, it dragged on for
almost 15 months, the scope and scale of the work changed, and as a small
startup with very limited working capital, we had to take loans from family
and friends and online lending platform Kabbage to fulfil the contract. It
was the darkest and most stressful time of our aKoma lives, and we knew that
aKoma was pretty much over as we haggled and struggled to get our invoices
paid. We were distraught that the creatives we hired to work with us were
suffering as the organisation delayed payment, and we decided that we were
no longer going to be in the content production business in Africa. This
project broke and bankrupted aKoma. It was a crushing realisation, but the
lack of support, the continued broken promises from people who claimed
undying support, the financial hits, and personal stress was just too much
to bear. The run was over. aKoma was dead.

The hard truth is, ultimately we had the right problem, the right target
market, but it just seemed we didn’t have the means to build the right
solution to give us traction. Product market fit was not to be for us.

I have to say this. Without serious weapons in our stress and personal lives
management arsenal, we would have shut this mother down and bolted a lot
earlier. Maybe even retreated back to corporate with our tails between our
legs. However, we knew the messy middle of building a business is something
you fight through, not run from. Humour was a weapon of choice at aKoma, as
we had no choice but to chuckle at many of our misfortunes, we even took
bets on whether that elusive $1 million from the mythical foundation would
materialise. Stoic philosophy became a crucial antidote to the craziness,
helping me (and Zain) flip the script on adversity, cultivate resilience and
perseverance, focus on the things within our control, and keeping our
perspectives on point.

So, now what?

Zain and I considered taking corporate gigs. We both are very capable of
contributing at a very high level to many gangster companies and
organisations, and have been on the radars of many executive recruiters. We
even went to an interview or two. Got the Delta SkyMiles and some nice hotel
stays out of them. However, we have been bitten by the bug. We are
entrepreneurs, we are problem solvers. And so we have reset and reloaded. In
order to keep the lights on, we have been doing a number of communications,
product, and media projects. We co-founded Rouse Media – a media and events
company for women of African descent (continental and diaspora) – with our
former CNN colleague and anchor Isha Sesay, and entrepreneur Suneeta
Olympio. Rouse was launched in Marrakech last November. Of course, Rouse got
hit by the pandemic, but there are some opportunities there to tap into.
This month, we helped launch a Covid-19 information and data platform and
campaign for Africa in partnership with our Rouse sister Julie Gichuru and
her team at Mastercard Foundation, some really awesome work by the crew if I
may say so.

Our real focus now, though, is on our new venture called The Massive
Company. Name aside, we do have big and bold ambitions for The Massive
Company. Without delving too much into details, Massive is a venture studio
for creative, communications, and learning products in Africa. There are a
number of products already in the works, including Amplify which we are
excited to revive and recalibrate. We are heads down cooking, stay tuned.
And yes, we do need help, we would love to talk to anyone who is down for
our wahala.

We have been tested, bloodied, ignored, under-estimated, and more. Zain and
I keep pushing, though. We have fought in the arena, and now we are gearing
up to go right back in. We still believe the storyteller, the creative, is
the most important person in Africa, and our work will be to continue to
play our part in levelling up Africa’s creative economy.

I hope we will have your support with Massive. You know where to find us.

Zain Verjee (middle) and Chidi Afulezi (right), co-founders of aKoma

INVESTORS DIARY 2020

Company

Event

Venue

Date & Time

RTG

AGM

Virtual

24 August 2020 | 12pm

SeedCo International

AGM

Virtual (https://eagm.creg.co.zw/eagmzim/Login.aspx#)

26 August 2020 | 9am

SeedCo

AGM

Virtual (https://eagm.creg.co.zw/eagmzim/Login.aspx#)

28 August 2020 | 9am

Companies under Cautionary

Bindura Nickel Corporation

Padenga Holdings

Delta Corporation

Meikles Limited

Invest Wisely!

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