Public transport and farming: Nairobi Entrepreneurs started putting their ideas into action !

It is always a surprise who will attend our meetings twice a month. Sometimes we are few, sometimes many, sometimes there are new faces, sometimes we all know each other already.

The last meeting was rather familiar and a small but fun round. The beauty of it was to hear peoples’ progress. While we started out with many attendees still in idea stage with their enterprises, it is now that things are starting to take shape.

There are plans for farms, cheese production, apps and venturing into public transport. Entrepreneur Café is also a great place to make contacts, and not only exchange ideas, but actually to come up with collaboration plans – which happened at our last session when some people played with the idea of a combined venture for double benefits.

That is one of two key lessons from that last meeting: partnerships are vital and helpful and work
best, if the partners know and trust each other – for instance, because they have met several times
before at Entrepreneur Café.

The second lesson was: Just start. Before you worry about certification and the City Council, you should actually buy that vehicle for public transport and then try to make your way forward. Instead of doubting how you will handle things on a farm, get that piece of land first. Everything else will fall in place and you will know by then what to do.

But Entrepreneur Café Nairobi is not always as laid back as it was last session. Next time we might
change the venue to a new restaurant in town and listen to the resourceful story of the entrepreneur behind it. Also, we will get the opportunity to meet new people and do some serious networking, because we are teaming up with the Young African Leadership Initiative (YALI) for a casual exchange of contacts and ideas.