Hey — Angela here 👋
Let’s lean into a little thought experiment before we dive in:
If you look back one year from now, what will be true about your SaaS business? More customers? Higher retention? Hitting that hard ceiling you’ve been bumping into?
That “what will be true” question is powerful — because that’s not wishful thinking. That’s your next playbook.
Today, I want to unpack two founder stories from Africa. Not unicorn fairy tales. Real journeys with fractures, pivots, and lessons you can apply this quarter.
Let’s get into it.
1. Mawingu: Electrifying the last-mile internet gap
Mawingu’s Executive Committee
“Connect the unconnected” sounds like a lofty mission, but Mawingu has made it a reality — one village at a time.
Today, more than 120,000 Kenyans have internet through their infrastructure.
They recently raised a $20M Series C led by Pembani Remgro to reach 1 million East Africans by 2028.
What’s behind their growth? Let’s break it down.
1.1 Community-driven deployment, not top-down infrastructure
Mawingu doesn’t just drop a tower and vanish. They embed themselves in communities: recruiting locals, training them, and ensuring local ownership of infrastructure.
That community buy-in reduces theft, misuse, and friction. It also converts users into evangelists.
Because these are places ignored by big ISPs, they face less competition — if they do the trust work well.
What you can do: Wherever your SaaS is underserved, think local-first. Could a micro-partnership with a community org, co-op, or local influencer help you break in? Your “beachhead” might not be the wealthiest city — it might be the forgotten town.
1.2 Leaning into solar / alternative energy
One of Mawingu’s standout decisions: power their infrastructure with solar and hybrid energy, reducing dependency on fragile grids.
This gives two advantages:
Operational stability in regions with unreliable power
Cost savings in the long run, which they can pass through to end users
What you can do: If your SaaS has hardware, infrastructure, or IoT components — consider off-grid or alternative power strategies as part of your competitive moat. It’s not just “cool tech” — sometimes it’s the only way to deliver reliably.
1.3 Fundraising in a tough climate
Raising $20M in 2025 in Africa is no small feat. Here’s what likely helped them:
A proven track record of deployment (120K users)
Clear unit economics for rural internet
A vision to scale in multiple countries (e.g. their acquisition of Habari in Tanzania)
Conviction investors see: infrastructure + inclusion = high upside
What you can do: Don’t pitch your vision first — pitch your traction. Show how your product works today (even if small scale). Then show how that embeds into a scalable model across regions.
✅ Takeaways you can use this week
Identify “underserved” segments in your market — towns, niches, sectors where incumbents don’t bother.
Run a community pilot: recruit 5–10 “local champions” in those segments and test product adoption with them.
Model your cost structure with contingencies for unreliable infrastructure (power, connectivity) — build that buffer in.
2. Luc Okalobe & Yamify: From Big Tech to Africa’s AI “app store”
Luc Okalobe, Yamify’s Co-founder
Luc’s story is one I deeply admire. He came to the U.S. with $50, a software engineering resume, and a dream. He worked at Apple, Salesforce, Yahoo, TikTok — everything engineers dream of.
Yet he left the comfort of Big Tech to build something for Africa — Yamify, an AI tools marketplace made for African businesses.
In August 2025, he closed a $100K pre-seed (led by Felix Anane, an early Paystack backer). Yamify is now shipping features like Managed Cloud Prototypes, helping founders build AI Assistants with less engineering lift, and cutting setup costs by up to 60%.
Let’s dig deeper.
2.1 Why leave Big Tech? Because the context is missing
In the U.S., Luc saw countless AI tooling companies, but few were built for constrained infrastructure, cost-sensitivity, and fragmented markets.
He realized Africa needed AI “plumbing” — not flashy demos. Startups here don’t need just models; they need deployment, support, scaling, tooling that respects latency, bandwidth, cost, and regulation.
That context shift is the seed of his startup insight.
What you can do: When you look at a problem you want to solve, ask: How is Africa different? The answers — constraints, regulation, payment friction — can become your moat.
2.2 Fundraising & investor readiness
Raising $100K in Africa’s AI space is competitive, especially at pre-seed. But Luc’s edge: credibility, domain knowledge, and a clear MVP.
He likely leaned on his Big Tech resume to build trust, while showing a lean pilot with paying users or prototypes.
His pitch probably focused on unit economics — how Yamify can be margin-generative at scale, even considering cloud costs, support, and localization.
What you can do: Engineer a lean MVP with just enough value to attract early adopters. Use that to validate your hypothesis. Fundraising doesn’t come first — validation does.
2.3 Choosing “Africa-first” AI opportunities
Yamify isn’t trying to compete with OpenAI or AI-native infrastructure globally. It’s positioning as a tool aggregator and deployment engine for Africa.
Their model might combine SaaS + marketplace + managed services — blending business models to manage risk.
Luc’s smart: pick features that serve use cases with high willingness to pay (customer support bots, conversational agents, internal assistants) before going “cool AI.”
What you can do: Don’t chase every AI trend. Pick one narrow use case (even one per industry). Build that well. Let your users help you expand from there.
✅ Takeaways you can use this week
Map out 2–3 friction points in your market where “global tools” fail because of local constraints (cost, latency, regulation, support).
Design a “minimum viable vertical” — pick one industry, one need (e.g. customer support AI) — and build for that.
Use your network & credibility (past work, side projects, expert signals) to reassure early users and investors.
What this means for you, the ambitious SaaS founder
Scaling past $1M ARR is rarely a straight line. It’s full of micro-pivots, bet sizing, and figuring out where to play.
These stories aren’t just inspiration — they are tactical case studies. You can steal elements of their playbooks.
The best founders don’t just consume stories — they map them onto their own constraints and smash together a new, better version for their market.
What Smarter SaaS Growth is doing this month
Webinar with Anthony Ndolo — he unpacks how operational excellence creates freedom, not bureaucracy, and how true exit-readiness starts long before an investor call or acquisition offer (register this week, spots limited)
Advisory office hours — this month I’m booking 1-on-1 spots for up to three founders (pricing, GTM, scaling ops). Book with me here
LinkedIn storytelling — if you want weekly reflection, playbook posts, and raw founder journeys, I publish every single day. Do not miss a single post by following my personal page here
Catch you next week — and knock out those experiments.
Angela
Founder, Smarter SaaS Growth.