PART 4C: CLEARING THE TABLE ROUND III

Clearing the table. A simple yet necessary act that occurs at several points during a meal to restore order and structure. Beginning with clearing the crockery, continuing with paying the bill, and concluding with the departure of guests as the final turn down and deep cleaning commences, the ultimate act of clearing signifies that (at least for that moment in time), no other activities will follow. A true end-point and a clean slate.

I don’t regret the decision to join Eden. I don’t regret the decision to take a hard step back and resign when the time came. I don’t regret the decision to disengage fully from work and go on a sabbatical. I truly believe that all things we experience are for the enrichment of what comes next. The decision to blog and publish was deliberate…a space to document and share, but even more, a way to acknowledge, process, and accept. I believed that to move forward, I also needed to look back to create more capacity to dream, explore, and rebuild. Now that I’m at the endpoint, and as I’ve rehashed and reframed, I also appreciate that the outcomes of this journey aren’t binary. My viewpoint broadens as I continue to gain more perspective. First being that disengaging fully was necessary not just to decompress, but to think more objectively about the past, the present, and now the future. Second, the process of learning and retrospecting is continuous…it will carry on long and far into my career. Third, clearing my brain fog has unlocked a desire to slowly start re-engaging in professional capacities…I’m craving more and more opportunities to acquire and apply myself. And lastly, even though the destination is still unknown, I’ve gained more confidence in trusting the process and even more, myself. I’m more certain of who I am and what I want (identity), I believe in my ability to find the people, places, and spaces that align with my purpose (identity), and I’m eager and optimistic about exploring and narrowing down options (simplify), and, I’m certain that I can apply myself and contribute in accordance (amplify). Hello world, I’m quickly coming out of “hiding”…

My experiences across VC-funded tech startups have been strikingly similar. So similar in fact that the approaches aren’t just comparable, but the takeaways are equally parallel. My experiences aren’t unique. Anyone who worked in the space can attest to the fact that it’s all just a case of swings and roundabouts. But despite a lot of overlap, we continue to fall into the same loops and traps. We still don’t have a startup playbook to guide us. We don’t even have the luxury of learning from or leveraging from other VC-funded tech giants in Sub-Saharan Africa….we are too young, too new, too early on. So how can we move forward in logical and strategic ways that pull from our past and present? Is it possible to not only share but document our learnings in ways that allow others to accelerate from wisdom before experience? How can we share our wins and failures, especially with more openness and transparency?

While the learn-and-share series has primarily centred on my journey, I’ve tried to share relevant perspectives for young professionals throughout. As I conclude this chapter, I want to be even more intentional about imparting lessons that connect back to the overarching theme of these blogs - rebuilding. To summarise the top lessons in a coherent and relatable way, I’ve drawn on my experiences to question and postulate what could have been done better. Think of these takeaways as considerations for navigating early-stage setup and growth….a mini-guide for young businesses and professionals looking for better outcomes.

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If I had to summarise the most potent lessons from rebuilding, they’d be classified into 4 parts;

1. Identity: Know Your Story & Tell It

2. Identify: Assess What Customers Want & What is Market is Saying

3. Simplify: Do Less & Focus More

4. Amplify: Hire Smart

Know Your Story Then Tell It Clearly Over and Over

When we entered the market we explicitly kept things under wraps. We wanted to buy ourselves sufficient time to AB test without the pressure or backlash of bringing something new to the market. But even after the acquisition was formally announced, we didn’t ride the wave. We’d taken too long to figure out what type of story we wanted to tell, who we wanted to share it with and bring on board the right people to make it possible. While some of this was related to limited budget and capacity constraints, a large part was also attributed to not understanding who we were. Similar to Lynk’s identity tragedy, Eden was a different company to its diverse stakeholders. And though not inherently problematic, when it came to selling a unified product and experience, different understandings made it much more complex to sell. Are we selling our services (i.e. food, laundry, cleaning, beauty), our product (i.e. subscription tech), or both? Is Eden solving the same problem in each vertical? Do food, laundry, cleaning and beauty customers look and act alike? Will they trust that our brand can do it all?

Selling isn’t just about understanding your product, it's also about being consistent about telling and sharing your story again and again and again. A well-told story is one where the; i) problem is identified and emphasised; ii) solutions built are relevant and easily attainable; iii) the message is targeted and tailored for the audience; and, iv) beneficiary stories are showcased frequently for impact. It’s a constant process. For a company like Eden (selling a novel service in a market where subscription culture is new), we struggled to find focus and consistency in the stories we were telling. Where the focus should have been on the ease and convenience of repeat services (powered by our app), we were fixated on selling individual services and offerings. We needed to do a better job of educating customers first, determining and targeting specific customer profiles, and focusing our messaging on ease and convenience via testimonials.

Lean Into the Market

At all stages of a business’ growth, Knowing Your Customers (KYC) is critical. Understanding who your users are (demographics), how they found you (word-of-mouth, social media, job ad etc), where they’re located (geography), and why they chose your services (price, value, popularity) etc, allows you to gain deeper insights into what they want. When Eden started, it envisioned providing subscription services to individuals only. As the entity grew, customers pushed for services to be extended to businesses. Eden rolled out corporate offerings soon after. Before long, corporates dominated the bulk of Eden’s orders, contributing significantly to increased revenue on the platform. As orders continued to increase and the nature of work shifted for many companies (e.g. hybrid work, flexi-hours etc), corporate clients also needed more flexibility in placing orders on a one-off basis. To meet demand, Eden would need to build and roll out a more versatile system to handle on-demand orders. It would be a drastic operational shift from the backbone (subscription tech) Eden was built on. Product and tech teams went into overdrive building and iterating a system that would work. Before long the Nigerian entity had implemented the new structures to the platform. Though pick-up was slow, there was steady traction of the new ordering system.

Evolving to what the market needs is usually smart. But just because you can, doesn’t mean you should…at least not immediately. While Nigeria was quick to address emerging market needs, given Lynk’s experience with on-demand services, Kenya was less eager to hop on board. For starters, we’d only begun to build traction and hadn’t yet ascertained how far we could drive growth in the existing subscription model. Second, to overhaul our offerings, we’d need more staff, more logistics partners, more techies, more everything. Lastly and most importantly, competitors in our market were already providing similar offerings at prices and within timeframes that we’d struggle to compete with. If we didn’t have a competitive or compelling value prop, we’d continuously lose out. We needed to be smarter about this decision.

Is it advisable to introduce a secondary revenue stream when the one in existence hasn’t been optimised? Should you adapt to every demand your customers make? When do you know you’ve deviated too far from your core business? Leaning into the market doesn’t only require you to have an understanding of what customers want at all stages, but also to determine if you are the best one to deliver it now or ever. Understanding the risks, the impact on the business, the confidence level to make it possible, and the expected results are pertinent when addressing customer shifts. While I firmly believe the subscription is where Eden should continue to invest its energies (esp. on the B2B end), diversifying revenue streams is always a bonus, especially when building financial resilience. It’s not a factor of if Eden embraces on-demand services, but more of why, when and how. Being intentional and strategic about the process matters.

Simplicity Above All

We had good intentions when bringing Eden’s services to the market and knew what would set us apart. Although there was a real push to penetrate the market as soon as possible, we should have taken more time to focus. Even if not from the onset, we should have paused earlier to assess the burden of doing everything at the same time…

Eden’s entire philosophy and business model is built around being a service delivery engine — a hub where multiple products and services can exist. Despite this, in both cases of Kenya and Nigeria, food has continued to be the major drive (85-90%) of all business growth. When Eden kicked off in Nigeria, they never intended to be directly involved in food production. They outsourced all production of food to independent contractors and service providers. After having several costly mishaps with delivery times, food quality, spoilage etc, Eden Nigeria decided to in-house the production of food (much like Lynk and the Academy). While this was the right move at the time (better quality control, improved customer satisfaction, ability to increase cost and margins, etc.), it also required much more capital and labour investment. As the company continues to grow, more efforts and resources are fuelled into optimising the food product for scale. This has naturally resulted in less effort and time spent developing other verticals.

Is Eden interested in reverting to a distributed model? At what point will food production be sustainable and profitable? Should Eden ditch all other verticals and focus solely on food? After being on both ends, I can affirm that the answer isn’t obvious. Even though the identity of a company should be shaped by the company itself, customers play a HUGE role in informing how this identity changes over time. Keeping things simple is easier once you’ve gone through the process of doing everything. You can narrow it down to a better and more informed place. Focus is important. Doing less allows you to have greater bandwidth to become excellent while creating a clearer path to success.

Hire Senior First

Venture capital is a gamble. Investing in any early-stage business is a risk. You need to provide some startup capital for the business to get off the ground, while also hoping that tangible progress towards growth is materialised soon. It’s why early-stage businesses tend to be so lean…you need to able to do a lot with a little. As we established the Kenyan entity we explored various methods of remaining lean. From optimising our operations (e.g. streamlined budgets, cost-cutting, credit terms etc.) to investing heavily in strategic partnerships (e.g. only partnering with a business that could sign up for Eden services), to combining roles and functions, and reallocating tasks across teams, we worked diligently to operate without our constraints. Though we’d done a decent job of utilising funds wisely, when it came down to hiring, we made many repeated mistakes, the biggest of which was failing to hire seniors first.

We’d become so accustomed to operating in a resource-deprived state, and even more conditioned to assume multiple functions, that when it came to unlocking efficiency, our mindset was fixed on transformation from the bottom up. We didn’t think it was worth our time or the company’s resources to bring on board junior or senior managers at such an early stage. They’d be uninspired, have little to no work, and cost a lot to find and bring on board. So we hustled and continued taking on too much. By the time we finally came to our senses and focused on hiring managers and team leads, not only were we already on the verge of burnout, but the prospective ended up not being technically sound, unable to manage a team, lacking in drive and vision, and/or were just not a good cultural fit. What were we doing wrong? For starters and for the sake of remaining lean, we managed the entirety of the recruitment process. From JDs, to job ads, to shortlisting, to work assessments, to interviews, to practicals, we were extremely involved and stretched too thin. It was nearly impossible to meaningfully invest in the recruitment process while also delivering on our respective commitments. There just wasn’t enough time. Secondly, we weren’t experts when it came to recruiting for technical roles, especially in food. We relied heavily on the Nigeria team for support as well as wider HR networks to find candidates that would be a great fit. As a result, we were often at the mercy of other people’s schedules and timelines, taking even longer to close out the process. Thirdly due to the complex nature of our operations, longer periods of onboarding were required. This made it even harder to ascertain reasonable grace periods when assessing probationary performance. Lastly, and most importantly, when we did outsource part of the recruitment process to other agencies, we often found that the profile of candidates shortlisted wasn’t up to par…even after lots of tweaking.

It took us many rounds of hiring, iterating our recruitment process, letting go, and hiring again for us to bring on board more solid people. It took us even longer to strengthen our policies to ensure that the environment and culture new candidates were entering allowed them to thrive. Even though finding great talent is costly and takes time, unlocking the potential for growth to become exponential from the onset is a worthy investment. It means you can spend time focusing on growth vs. focusing on daily operations. We needed much more support and should have demanded it much earlier.

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More than having the right answers, the 4 takeaways above showcase the importance of asking the right questions. Depending on the startup, the sector, the investors, and the mission, what’s right for one, may not be right for the other. Yet, if you think actively, test and participate actively, you’re far more likely to make better decisions…even if just by the process of elimination. Even after coming full circle, and having more insights into what to do better this time round, rebuilding is still hard. What was true then wasn’t necessarily true when we got down to it. It required more openness to question over, testing anew and moving accordingly. Similar to my revelations of self, of searching with more intent, of doing less, and of becoming smarter through the process, rebuilding for the collective requires a lot of time, thought, intent and effort…it’s a constant process of reinvention. My dearest and most sincere hope is that by sharing my experiences and thoughts I not only open up windows for continued discourse and potential partnership but that inspire, encourage and motivate others to do the same...to pause, to ponder, to move with more conviction and remember that you aren’t alone in the process.

I’m still very much a work in progress. We all are. I don’t come out of this sabbatical a fundamentally different person. The bad attitudes and behaviours I’ve habitually fed into over the years (e.g. poor sleep hygiene, deep focus and obsession with what’s going wrong, taking on too much etc), don’t suddenly self-correct because of my awareness of them or the marginal steps I take over these period. My operating system will continue to default to what it’s become accustomed to. Nonetheless, I’ve gone from being incredibly burned out, tired, and overwhelmed to a new space where I exist with more balance and energy and where I can critically self-assess. For instance, even though the nature of my work has always been quite chaotic and taxing (e.g. long hours, overtime, little to no breaks etc.), my relationship with work also isn’t healthy, to begin with )e.g. overcompensating, filling up my days etc.). Being aware of this is the first step. The second is working towards self-correcting…a long-term process that cannot realistically be resolved within this sabbatical period, but can be tested in the short-term(e.g. guarded/blocked work times, structured break, no weekend work etc.). Taking a sabbatical isn’t a fix-all. It’s a small step towards more proactively prioritising myself now, and working towards building better habits and more resilience as I work towards re-integration.

As I near the halfway point of my sabbatical, I’ve been modifying and redesigning my plans. With more emphasis and focus on self-improvement, I’m not only prioritising sharpening and strengthening my toolkit, but also re-instilling a sense of adventure, curiosity, and gratification back into my day-to-day. From how, whom, and where I want to spend my time, to the defined goals and metrics of success, and accountability measures to keep me on track, the next 7 months are truly a gearing-up period. Although the outcome of my sabbatical should naturally lead me back into the workplace, I’m still uncertain if this will be on my terms fully, or in partnership and collaboration. For now, I’m, granting myself grace to continue going through the process and being open to opportunities that energize me, spark my curiosity, and challenge me to expand. There’s a lot to be done and seemingly less time to do it, but I am ready to step in, step out and step up.