
Building a Software Company in Rwanda, 3 Years Later - nicpottier
http://blog.textit.in/building-a-software-company-in-rwanda-3-years-later
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jacquesm
What a super project this. It's braver than anything I'd ever attempt, I try
to sweep my own street as much as possible but this is so far out of my
comfort zone (starting with the climate) that I have nothing but sheer
admiration for you.

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nicpottier
No, no, that is the wrong takeaway! It is not a brave thing at all, that is
the point I'm trying to get across. The end result may seem big, but it was
from many small steps, no bigger than you are capable of. My advice, just take
that first step, get involved in software taking place in the developing
world, see what you can do to help. It's just a matter of small steps from
there.

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jacquesm
Right. But from where I'm sitting I see the end result of all your little
steps and that end result blows me away. I know that you can do stuff like
this (Emigrated to Canada, not exactly the developing world but you'd be
surprised at the poverty there in some places, worked and lived there for 5
years to mixed effect).

The brave bit to me is to leave your comfort zone in such a decisive way. Feel
free to disagree, I'll call you modest _and_ brave ;)

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nicpottier
Just do it! I really can't imagine regretting it, even if everything goes
South.

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jacquesm
Are you entertaining visitors? If so that's something that I just might do.
Long term move is right now out of the question due to other commitments.

~~~
nicpottier
Hah, sure! shoot me an email (username @gmail) and we can talk. It isn't cheap
flying here but you can definitely crash at mine.

~~~
jacquesm
Ok, mail sent.

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heterogenic
Could you be a bit more specific when you say Kigali is "safe"?

Is it safe for me to move to as a woman? Is it safe for me to bring _my_ wife
and kids? These things are often relative.

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nicpottier
Yes and yes.

My business partner, Eric, moved his family here, two young kids and his wife.
Moving at night, even as a woman is very safe and commonplace in most parts of
Kigali. It really is ridiculously safe here by any standard.

As an example, I am much less concerned about female friends of mine walking
around alone at night in Kigali than I am my neighborhood back home in
Seattle. (granted I lived in the CD which is higher crime, but still)

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heterogenic
Sorry, I should have been more clear...

Is it safe for me, a woman, to visit there with my wife and kids? We've ruled
out most of Africa in our globe trotting, but have really missed it.

~~~
nicpottier
Ah, sorry, yes I missed that distinction. Neighboring Uganda is very much not
a great place to be for same sex couples. I do not believe Rwanda has any laws
against homosexuality, but honestly you don't see it very openly here. It is
still very conservative.

I would say if you are visiting it wouldn't be a problem, definitely wouldn't
worry from a safety point of view. If you were planning on moving here then I
honestly probably wouldn't recommend it, not because of safety, but just that
you would be going against the grain.

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cocoflunchy
I never thought I'd hear an American complain about lack of good cheese. You
guys have never tasted cheese!

Great project anyway, very inspiring!

~~~
nicpottier
To be fair I spent the first half of my childhood in France, so I beg to
differ. :)

But like I said, after years of gouda, even cheddar starts seeming like an
incredible delicacy. I even like gouda, you just need some variety!

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205guy
Lived in France half his childhood and likes good cheese != American. Pines
for cheddar != French. I can relate (except for the cheddar thing, especially
the cheddar that American audiences are thinking of). The digital nomads are
from everywhere and from nowhere, and I wonder about our children.

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krichman
And damn it, that's not a Scotsman, either!

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nicpottier
OP here, happy to answer any questions peeps have on Nyaruka and our little
journey.

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wehadfun
Do you have to worry about Hutu/Tutsi issues still?

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nicpottier
No, not at all. Rwanda is probably safer than any place in the states.. you
can walk around anywhere in the city in the middle of the night (and I do) and
there are no concerns. There is still unrest in DRC but that is very much
localized.

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gejjaxxita
I'm very surprised to hear you say that. My experience of Rwanda is that the
issue is always just below the surface. I spent three months there 3 years ago
working as a Physics teacher. The election was on when I was there and it was
rather surreal, the radio was constantly going on about genocide and there was
a lot of tension in the air.

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nicpottier
Tension and violence are different things. This is still the very recent past,
it is unrealistic to expect there to be no tension, especially during times of
election or genocide memorials. But there is no denying it is incredibly safe
and there has been so much invested in the country in the past 20 years that I
just can't imagine anything happening here.

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davidwparker
I went to Rwanda last year and it was by far one of the most beautiful
countries I've visited.

Being a "Mzungu" ("rich" person- note I'm not really rich, but am compared to
most Rwandans) was definitely something I didn't expect. For some reason, I
had no expectations about class prior to going.

It's really cool that you started this company there and are looking to help
Rwanda from the inside out. Good luck to you- if (when) I go back to Rwanda,
I'll be sure to come check out kLab.

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ak39
Mzungu means white man, surely. In Nyanja (Central Africa/Zambia) at least.

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mwcampbell
I find it sad that a company based in Rwanda, primarily targeting East Africa,
decided to use infrastructure owned by an American company and operating in
the US. Did you look for an infrastructure provider that's more local? Maybe
one of the European hosting providers, if there isn't a good one in Africa?

(Note: I happen to be American. But that doesn't mean I automatically think
that the whole world should use our products and services.)

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nicpottier
I'm ex-Amazon and believe they provide an awesome service, so no, I don't see
any problem or sadness in that in the least. The last thing the world needs is
propping up inferior systems for the sake of Nationalism, much less in the
software sector.

Amazon provides a great product and has never let us down, if an East African
competitor pops up and does the same, I'll move in a heartbeat.

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mwcampbell
For me it's not about nationalism as much as avoiding excessive
centralization. I find it appalling that so many services are concentrated in
a few buildings in northern Virginia. (Or is it one building?) Did you at
least use a region other than us-east-1? I can't tell from reverse DNS lookups
or traceroute.

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nicpottier
I'm ok with centralization. Again if a better provider pops up, I'll move
there, but until then I'm fine with commodities going to the best providers.

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wehadfun
Why did you choose Rawanda over South Africa/Nigeria/Morocco which I would
think would be easier African countries to work in

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nicpottier
I can't say that we evaluated every country before choosing Rwanda, to be
perfectly honest we didn't look at that many, we just decided that Rwanda was
'good enough' and would probably work so we went for it.

The three countries you list are very very different from Rwanda and from each
other, so it is hard to comment on that. In many ways South Africa has more in
common with California than it does with Rwanda.

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mayank
I'd be curious to hear more about this decision. I note that it lies somewhere
approximately in between the extremes of Kenya/Nigeria/SA on one end and
Central African Republic on the other.

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nicpottier
As I said we didn't do a super lengthy weighting of countries, you could drive
yourself crazy doing that. Rather we saw it was a place where we could move
the needle, Kigali is a safe, beautiful and pleasant city to live in and we
thought we had a chance of not going totally broke. We didn't spend much time
at all weighing against other countries, just decided this seemed like a place
that could use more experienced folks and would work out.

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jhull
Who needs cheese when you have an unlimited supply of matoke?[1]

Have you seen any positive changes in ICT ed from the Carnegie Mellon
program[2] that started there?

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matoke](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matoke)
[2] [http://www.cmu.edu/rwanda/](http://www.cmu.edu/rwanda/)

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nicpottier
Hah, matoke is most definitely NOT a viable substitute to cheddar!

It is early days still for CMU, they are only just starting their second year,
but I think their influence here and in the region will be huge, mostly
because there just aren't many (any?) other top tier universities here. Their
program isn't straight CS, but it does offer CS courses and the profs are top
grade, so the graduates will be head and shoulders above others in the region.

The long term impact of that could be pretty huge.

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joelhaasnoot
This is awesome! Grew up abroad and this seems like a great opportunity.

Was it easy to get a work permit / visa for Rwanda?

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enewcomer
Rwanda has a classification specifically for technology entrepreneurs. It's a
3-year visa and if you are a qualified software practitioner, I don't foresee
you having difficulty getting a permit to start a software company here. They
also pride themselves on same-day business registration.

[https://www.migration.gov.rw/services/permits/temporary-
perm...](https://www.migration.gov.rw/services/permits/temporary-
permits/w-information-technology/w2/)

~~~
notahacker
A smart move. How common are those sort of visas in developing countries?

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joelhaasnoot
My main concern in this question is that I've heard of a growing concern in
East Africa that foreigners are taking jobs/money out of the country instead
of investing. From what I've heard, Rwanda sounds perfect, though Kenya has
pretty amazing infrastructure too. Kenya is however a lot more dangerous than
Rwanda sounds.

~~~
enewcomer
I've certainly heard some of that, but I don't think it applies quite as much
to tech entrepreneurs -- and I've seen more evidence of that in say, Kenya. If
you are coming here to build a software company, I would be surprised if
Rwanda's arms weren't opened pretty wide.

At this point, Nairobi has more going on in it's tech scene and certainly a
more mature market to sell into, but you are right, it's definitely not as
safe and transparent as Kigali.

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contingencies
I have also lived in weird places (eg. China/Burma border) for extended
periods and know exactly what you mean about cheese. We also had _matoke_
equivalents (ie. multiple versions of starchier bananas, almost always tastier
than 'normal' bananas).

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jorkos
I notice that the pricing plans don't reward the middle tier as compared to
the first tier.....would have expected that middle one to offer savings per
SMS sent versus the first tier. My 2 cents feedback. Service looks very
useful, congrats!

~~~
nicpottier
Ya, that's mostly because we decided to discount the lowest plan for launch,
it will 'normally' be $49 in the future, so then things will ramp the way
you'd expect.

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brianbreslin
@nicpottier loved the post would also love to see how can we help k lab from
the us? Or help in any of the other local initiatives you are doing to foster
a community around tech.

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pekru
Off track, but I noticed the .in domain that's chosen. Any particular reason
to have the India TLD? Or just that it sounds like a phrase "text it in" ...?

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enewcomer
We'd love to have the .com, but it's not in the cards. But ya, we chose the
India TLD for exactly the reason you suspect.. text it in.

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jalayir
Are you or one of the founders native to Rwanda? What's the electricity
situation like? What's the ease of doing business for complete outsiders?

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hyung
This question might be too broad, but how would you compare the
infrastructure, English level, technical talent, etc. of Rwanda with other
African nations?

~~~
nicpottier
Africa is a huge, huge place, it is hard to even fathom how big and varied it
is. East, West, North, South are all really really different. Within East
Africa, Rwanda fares well from an infrastructure point of view, lags a bit in
English due to being Francophone until recently and on talent, I'd say most
are at similar levels. The talent is everywhere, but really the skills are far
behind the west pretty much everywhere as well.

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yitchelle
What is the biggest challenge your have found starting a software company in
Rwanda, and how did you resolve it?

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nicpottier
Rwanda is a small market, so while we tried to build a few products for the
local market it just wasn't big enough to make the numbers work out. In the
end we decided to build a product that had a global reach and in that respect
I think there is much more promise.

From a purely administrative point of view it has been very easy and
predictable, well, no harder really than the states that is.

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abhiv
What's the electricity situation like? Do you need to have diesel generators?

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nicpottier
Power is fine 95% of the time, but yes outages happen though infrequently for
long. We work on laptops so it isn't a huge issue, but you do learn to plan
around it. (aka, keep said laptop charged)

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pekru
And the broadband bandwidth and speeds? Is it very pricey to have a 10 Mbps
downlink (upto 4Mbps uplink) connection?

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enewcomer
That's not really an option at all, at least not to your house. At the kLab we
have a 15Mbps line allocated for us, but the realities of oversea (well,
undersea) bandwidth purchases means we often don't really see that.

Most people not at kLab get mobile data connections that in good areas when
it's working well can get downloads between 200KBs up to 1MBps (those are
bytes, not bits) depending on the time of day. Up oftentimes is about the same
as down. It's not heavily throttled as you see in many other countries. These
data plans are also very cheap.

Really, the biggest problem here isn't so much the speed these days, it's that
the connection occasionally just stops working altogether.

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greenbush
Your app is pretty cool. How long did it take to build? How big of a team?

