“Hello,
It has been awhile since I last sent you an update. Hope all is well! Lots of news to share…
Galen moved to Kampala, Uganda in February and is overseeing on-the-ground operations there and in Kigali, Rwanda and Lubumbashi, Congo. The sites are doing well, but he certainly is up to his eyeballs tackling new challenges every day.
For instance, we recently bought the business from our Rwandan partner and we (i.e., Galen) now remotely manages a ‘company-owned’ store in Kigali. The great advantage of Jibu owning this store is that it gives us more control, better feedback loops, and allows us to perfect our processes more quickly to prove value as a franchisor. And we just hired a great local supervisor who can earn ownership of the store based on a performance-based vesting schedule over a short period of time. On the other hand, even though Kigali is just a 40 minute plane ride from Kampala, owning and overseeing the management of a store ourselves is harder in most ways than having a partner on the ground with full responsibility as we have in our other countries.
Then after Galen gets done with his African day, everyone in America is waking up and bugging him (I am usually first in line) so he then has hours of phone calls and emails most of his evenings. We try to divide up the responsibilities and offload each other, but it seems the harder we work, the more complex work is generated that we must manage together. A little too busy sometimes for both of us.
Many of you helped Galen and our Ugandan partner Alfred (pictured below) earn their spots in the prestigious Unreasonable Institute. This month long intensive business accelerator begins the last week of June in Kampala. Galen will eventually report on his experience there as it wraps up. Since my last email, Galen also got accepted into another similar high-profile accelerator, Global Social Benefit Institute (GSBI) based in the Silicon Valley, which is an online/conference-call-based weekly mentorship program that began in April. Quite amazing.
Amidst the many challenges, there are too many blessings that come our way to mention them all. Here are just a few:
- We hired a CFO, Ian Howes, who has been a fantastic asset to our team. He lives in Chapel Hill, NC and brings top-notch financial experience to us. He has kept his British accent (though has lived in the US for almost 30 years) and cuts a figure like Bond- the Daniel Craig one- so how can that be wrong?
- We just hired two interns to be our eyes and ears on the ground in Rwanda (Hayden) and Congo (Stuart) until August. They are both business students at the U of North Carolina. Stuart is Ian’s son whose French is serving him well in Congo. Both are rising to the challenge and providing invaluable help as we are perfecting our franchise business model preparing to scale.
- I was invited to the White House representing the Toniic investors network to participate in a brainstorming session with about 40 other leaders related to President Obama’s Power Africa initiative. Incredibly honored to be included in this strategic group and it has led to many ongoing conversations.
- Jibu is in the final stages of negotiating a substantial matching grant from USAID, the lead US Government agency that provides foreign aid. PACE is an innovative program under USAID that seeks innovative business solutions to address systemic poverty. We were incredibly honored to be selected as one of 12 potential awardees from among hundreds of applicants, thanks to Galen’s amazing hustle and writing skills to whip out a winning proposal very quickly. We also are in line for a similar but smaller award by the government of The Netherlands.
In the emerging world, they virtually stopped laying new phone lines many years ago and instead installed cell towers almost everywhere. So now even the poorest person usually has a cell phone and can get a signal most places in the world. Our transformative vision for lasting, universal drinking water access for every person parallels how cell towers changed the game for communications: blanket underserved populations with drinking water depots about 2km (1.2 miles) apart so everyone has convenient, affordable access to drinkable water. If you want to learn more, attached is a quick one-pager which gives a snapshot of what we are up to.
Based on our vision, our near-term growth plans are quite ambitious. We plan to scale the equivalent of one new business per month per country in 2015: 12 x 3 = 36 new locally-owned franchise businesses! And double that pace in 2016. We will not be successful in the end if we cannot massively scale and provide a new paradigm for drinking water delivery. Now is the time to see if we have our cookie-cutter franchise model figured out well enough to organically reproduce itself. We also are stretched too thin and also need to hire more staff to continue our momentum.
We have just begun the process of raising $3.5M for this expansion in the next two years. We anticipate that our funders will be a combination of private investors, foundation investors/grantors and individual donors. Jibu is organized as an L3C, a new type of hybrid LLC for-profit company that seeks to align charitable impact with profit-making. An L3C is designed to make it easier for foundations to invest in for-profit companies among other things. We also have a 501(c)3 option that enables individual donors to enjoy typical US tax-deducible benefits. If you are thinking about partnering with us financially in any way, now would be a great time to ping me!
There are few things more exhilarating than skiing fast down a steep hill in Colorado. But you are always on the edge of disaster. That is how Jibu often feels: a thrilling ride while dodging formidable perils every day. But we absolutely could not be moving forward without the support and encouragement of our many friends like you. Thanks so much!
Randy “
