Zimbabwe, six months later… I took another trip to Zimbabwe last week to meet with a number of people about a voucher programme for African Enterprise Partners’ first investee, Mobile Transactions. The difference in Zimbabwe from the last time I was here six month ago is palpable. And the country is, quite simply, beautiful. It’s [...]

I wonder what, exactly, is my job title sometimes. My card says “Partner — East Africa” but that doesn’t say much. I’m working with Mike on his pitch for SBSVC. He don’t exactly need capital, but it’d make AEP move faster, further, and achieve profitability sooner. The early-stage companies that I’m working with, has got [...]

African Branding Kampala– and much of Africa– in incredibly brand-conscious. Entire buildings and building blocks are painted (often just for the cost of the paint and labour) in UTL blue, Warid red, Zain purple-pink (a particulalry hideous shade that makes me think of a little blood mixed with Pepto-Bismol– see below), and now Orange. Bugolobi [...]

Figure out what you’re good at and be who you are. In strategy courses, we talk a lot about sustainable competitive advantage-what it is that makes your company better than others at doing what it is that you do-in some cases, you may have companies that compete in markets but don’t directly compete against each [...]

You don’t get to make the rules; deal with it. This one you hopefully learned in undergrad, but it bears some repeating. You take a top international business programme which requires several years’ experience to get in and you’re quite likely to have a lot of talented people who are used to having their way [...]

You don’t get to know the rules; deal with it. For most of my academic life, I had some idea of what the grading policy would be for my work-I always lost all the penmanship points, but got most of the rest of them. You could, of course, use this to game the system-you’d get [...]

The most important lessons are learned, not taught. You can only be taught so much in life, but most of what’s important you’ll have to learn yourself. A lot of people were frustrated in our core Financial Reporting course-the accountants were upset that the course was teaching that their science was all tricks, smoke, and [...]

What you learn at Oxford’s Business School (The most important parts of which they don’t teach you) In my final set of posts about Oxford, I take a look back, six months out, and reflect on what I learned at Oxford. I suspect that some of this applies to all business schools, though much of [...]

As an potential entrepreneur working here and looking for projects to invest in, I talk to a lot of people, and I talk over my business model with a lot of people. I often (as often as almost always) get advice, along the lines of You just be careful, you put your money where no [...]

What’s an MBA, anyway?The world, it seems, is upset and unhappy with MBAs, and for good reason. We’ve just retired our first MBA President to decidedly mixed reviews. It’s easy to forget that George Bush did lots of good things– like seriously increasing aid to Africa. Bush also did lots of things that I consider [...]