Exclusive: UpStart Africa’s Story of Success, Failure & Hope

In June 2013, TechMoran ran a story on UpStart Africa, then a new social enterprise incubator with plans to launch Kenya’s first

Then in October, the reality TV series began conducting auditions in Kisumu, Mombasa and Nairobi inviting creatives, developers and marketers before a team of judges. The very first episodes of this show was supposed to go live on NTV mid November.

With partners National Bank of Kenya, Tecno, venture capital investors among others Upstart Africa’s vision was to use the weekly episodes to inspire thousands of young people across the country then launch out to nurture the continents up and coming entrepreneurs.

The young talented individuals participating on the show were to make teams of three, with different skill sets that complement each other and then  work on ideas that use tech to solve real world problems. Mentors were to guide the teams along each step and a panel of VCs were to act as the elimination panel so that at the end of the day, the winning team takes home investment for their business.

This did happen Kenga tells TechMoran. The Kisumu and Mombasa auditions did happen. The Nairobi auditions took place at the Kenya National Theater. It was noble, it was brilliant and we loved it. The 25 successful youth to join the show were transported to Nairobi, housed, fed and offered mentorship. They were trained on product development, sales and marketing and on building companies. Upstart Africa also had mentors in and the camera crew shooting.

Earlier Kenga had told TechMoran, “We want to the youth to take up opportunities that abound around them instead of waiting for jobs  or the government to help them. Upstart Africa is an opportunity for the youths to get mentorship from professions in business development, marketing and product design.  It aims at supporting youth to start companies and become competitive across the continent.”

But months down the line, things weren’t easy.

“It immediately occurs to you that the magnanimity of the task at hand requires the fortitude of a soldier and perseverance of desert camel. Being a startup ourselves carrying out a complex project with multilevel engagements became a strenuous and extremely taxing exercise. What really compounded the pressure is the fact that everything concerning the project was time bound with a lot of expectations from various stakeholders.

Kenga  admits to the fact that the pressure to deliver the complex project on time caused a lot of strained relationships.

“Our partners especially our sponsors had a lot of expectations in regards to timelines set out in the project. We felt that we had not lived upto our partners expectations in respect to timelines. Our commitment however to deliver the show despite the challenges was unwavering,” he says.

Some of Upstart Africa employees and producers claimed they had not been paid and some claimed they had no contracts at all and everything was done informally.  Kenga in response to the allegations expressed his commitment to parties involved.

” We are very committed to our obligations and even though times have been hard everyone with a valid claim will be compensated in due course, ” Kenga asserts.

Our sources say some partners pulled out of the project, forcing the founder to look for other means of sponsorship including personal sources. According to details we managed to obtain, the founder was firm on carrying out the project despite the limitations.

One of the emails to the producers read, “At this particular moment key deadlines have been missed that are a critical lifeline to this project. The broadcasting deadlines for flighting the show on the 10th of December has not created any sense of urgency on yyyy‘s part meaning Upstart is shouldering both the weight of asserting credibility on the competence of the production team as well as managing expectations of the internal stakeholders.

Its intrinsically clear that if drastic measures are not taken immediately, this project will run aground…..but if not am afraid we shall have no option but to discontinue this relationship.I hope i have given you a critical perspective and look forward to your response.

In a document obtained by TechMoran, the new production firm says, “We were made to understand that the 35 hours of footage was digitized. It was not. Instead the tapes were delivers in raw format. Rather than HD footage (1080i digitally coded) it was shot on DV (on magnetic video tape) which is significantly lower in its visual and audio quality. So much so that it cannot be broadcast effectively. The Raw footage was not logged. There were no notes to explain what auditions were shot and where they were. This meant that essential footage could not be targeted without going through all 35 hours in real time! Furthermore the tapes were inadequately labeled.The sound and visual quality were poor by any standard e.g. hazy lighting, bad shadows, cluttered background and people walking across frames to say the least.To add to this, the sound files could not be matched to the video files because of the lack of professional file-naming conventions. We have unanimously agreed with camera, sound and editing departments that the above is true and verified. As a result we are unable to create a professional episode using the poor footage as per our mandate going forward. We cannot take any responsibility for the quality of footage that we have not created ourselves with our production crew.The above declaration has been copied to the production department as well as our legal department to ensure that the above is correct and verified in its entirety

After back and forth with the second producers, Kenga managed to have something tangible out and invited all key stakeholders for a screening of the 1st episode on Tuesday evening. He had worked very hard to restore faith and confidence with partners involved on the viability of the project and then things fell apart in December.

Speaking exclusively to TechMoran, he said, ” I believe in this project and it is ongoing.  This project was not for making money, it’s a social impact project to help build a different future for young people across the country.  and if I wanted to squander anyone’s money, I should not have gone ahead to have any filming or mentorship done after Decemeber. We spent all our financial resources including our own on the project.  We have been hosting the contestants at Hill View Park Hotel and the show will soon be out. Like other startups we experienced challenges, we had issues but we didn’t bow out of the journey, all we wanted was support, some partners  seemed to have developed cold feet when we asked to re-engage. We wonder who began this mudslinging campaign.”

The concerns from some of this parties Kenga says he believes are valid but the culture of mudslinging, dream killing and character assassination is backward and completely unnecessary.” We are discouraging young entrepreneurs from venturing out to do risky ventures for fear of failing and being stigmatized for the remainder of the lives. The word perfect only exists in the oxford english dictionary. Everything and everybody else must only try”