How does Kenya promise great opportunities for entrepreneurs in mobile gaming?

Welcome to the Silver Fox Entrepreneurs Podcast, a series of interviews to inform, inspire and support men later in life who want to start their own enterprise for profit or for pleasure. Good afternoon or good morning or wherever you are in the day. Welcome to the Den. Today I'm very excited to be talking to Jay Shapiro, who's in a warm and sunny place. And Jay and I met each other first of all back in Singapore back in 95, 96 when Jay introduced me to Google. So Jay's been an innovative and visionary guy, especially in tech. Jay, welcome to Silver Fox Entrepreneurs.

Thanks so much. Pleasure to be here.

Jay, tell us where you are now and what you're doing.

So I'm in Nairobi, Kenya, in East Africa and been here for a few years now. And I run a company called Isiku Games which is a mobile game, social impact mobile games company. And what you see behind me is what's called the Nairobi Game Development center, which I've just built and is launching this weekend actually. And so, yeah, so I'm part of the entrepreneur scene, if you will, that's burgeoning in East Africa.

That's, that's fantastic. You're originally from Canada, so and you shared earlier on about your dad being a professor in entrepreneurship. And when I met you, you were starting Blue Interactive in Singapore. So how'd you go from Canada to Singapore and now to East Africa?

I'm basically just working my way around the Commonwealth countries trying to tick them all off. Yeah, so I grew up in Canada. I left there in 95, went to Singapore where we met, spent about 13 years there and started one of the very first digital agencies which as you pointed out already at the start was called Blue Interactive. Blue Sphere Interactive. Actually it was a very.come y terrible name that then just became Blue. And I grew that from a three person, little third floor walk of apartment ad agency into today it's the fourth largest digital agency in the world. We sold at WPP in 2007. Today it's called Possible and it carries on. It was Marketing magazine's agency of the year twice. And so I left Singapore in 2008 and moved to New York and was there for about eight years where I started a couple things. One was a non profit foundation called do good as you Go, which was a network of about 500 entrepreneurs who were traveling the world for work or for pleasure and doing volunteer work on four continents as they traveled at street kid shelters and orphanages and the like doing skills transfer workshops. And at the same time I started my next venture which is a company called App Maker, which became. It was a drag and drop mobile app publishing platform, became the world's largest mobile app publisher with three and a half million apps. And then Donald Trump happened. And as you said, I'm Canadian, so I was never really at home there. We decided to leave. And so I've got two kids and I was working remotely at App Maker. We had a team of 65 people, but they were all scattered around the world. And my wife travels nonstop for her job. She runs an accelerator. And so we said, look, we can live anywhere. And we took our kids out of school and we packed one backpack each, and we spent a year traveling around the world shopping, trying to figure out where our next location should be. And we absolutely fell in love with Nairobi. And there's a real sort of entrepreneurial buzz that's happening here. There's a sense of optimism. And, Jim, I know you'll relate Nairobi to me today absolutely feels like Singapore did in the early 90s. It's a little rough around the edges, but there's just this buzz. There's this energy that you can feel that's about to pop. And they have very similar backgrounds. They both got their independence from Britain within two years of each other. And so I'm doing it all over again, if you will.

Wow. Fantastic. Actually, when we were children, I lived in West Africa, and we actually used to go to Nairobi from Nigeria because my. My relatives were surgeons out there, so my family has quite a long connection with Africa. Also have some relatives still living in Kenya. I must introduce you to them. And tell me, why do you think. I mean, you've been an entrepreneur since you were young, but now you're an entrepreneur a little bit later on in life. Not quite yet 50, but closing in. Tell us how you think it's different now, Jay, being an entrepreneur, you know, as a maturepreneur rather than when you're in your 20s.

Well, I would definitely say I may be an old preneur, but I don't think I'm a maturepreneur. I'm an immaturepreneur, just an old one yet. Look, I realized very early on in my career that I make a really shitty employee. And so I've sort of no choice but to be an entrepreneur all the way along, because when I see a problem, I want to fix it. And that doesn't always work well. When you're supposed to be meeting goal posts that people set for you or staying in your box, tell us, what.

Problem are you trying to solve? Now, you mentioned you like to go around and solve things and that's absolutely the case. Tell us about USIKU games.

Sure. So look, I came to the realization that what I'm really good at is, is not building businesses, but building industries. And so I think, Jim, you may have actually been in the room in probably 98, 97 in Singapore. We sat in a bar forming what became the iab, the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

Yeah, I do. That's right. With Duncan Ironside and you and I and a few others.

Right, that's right. The head of Yahoo was there. The head of DoubleClick was there. Seven of us. Exactly, exactly. There were seven of us in the room. Kevin Rose, who went on to be famous as well. And today, if you look in Singapore at the industry, the head of Google, the head of PayPal, the head of Airbnb are all my ex employees. And we literally built that industry. And I sold that agency in the same month that Steve Jobs launched the iPhone. So I knew that mobile was absolutely going to be the next thing. There was no app industry. And so we went and we built it and created the ecosystem. And now I'm doing that exactly again in Africa with gaming, where today in Sub Saharan Africa, there's 350 million connected smartphones. That's more than all of the US, Canada and Mexico combined.

Yeah, I was going to say it's like greater than North America, right?

Yeah, absolutely. By far. And it's growing at 20% year over year, whereas the US is growing at 20%. And the median age today in Europe is 53, but the median age here is 19. So you take all those connected devices and all that energetic youth and it's perfect for gaming. But there are no game companies here. And when you talk to some of the international game companies, they're like, oh, Africa, do people have phones? Is there Internet? The fact that there's 4G connection throughout the country with 80 gigabit connections and everything, it's much further advanced than anywhere else I've been and perfect for it. And so what we decided to do was to say, okay, how do we build that industry through gaming, but recognizing where we are, use the power of gamification to solve difficult social challenges. And so we're doing education, agriculture, climate change, women's empowerment through games to try as what you call a double bottom line, although I hate that term of doing both social impact and profit.

That sounds fantastic, Jen. So you say about, you know, you like to create industries. This goes quite a, you know, in the Steve, it Was a Jim Collins sort of big hairy ass goal style challenges. You're on what, your second third of doing this. What would be some of the behaviors or skill sets that you've noticed in yourself or in others that make that possible? Because that's really a big, big challenge to set yourself. Are there some tips or some behaviors that you do every day or every week that you'd like to share?

So I think the number one is connections connecting people. Because no one person can build an industry. Branson may claim he did, but by and large it takes a village. Right. And so constantly be seeking out other people who are not yet in the ecosystem, but could be or should be that offer some value and bring something to the table and then find a way for them to be successful because nobody will want to participate in a new industry unless there's something in it for them. And so constantly looking out for ways to help others and to make it valuable to them such that it's a symbiotic relationship and they then help with your broader mission of creating that new ecosystem.

Yeah, Tony Robbins, I think says that the more you serve, the more you earn. You know, so it seems counterintuitive, but seems to absolutely be the case. And what about on a day to day basis, Jay, in terms of you do connections, but how do you do that? Are you doing that through LinkedIn, through Facebook? You sending pigeons, bows and arrow? What are you doing in terms of getting those connections?

All of the above. Constantly through social networks, but also looking in odd places, you know, when you meet friends of friends or in a social environment, whatever, you know, within our, within our company. For example, I now have a team of rappers, hip hop rappers, that I never thought I would be hiring rappers. But if you want to create local African games, they have to have local African soundtracks. And so our first studio before we built this place was in what's called the Kibera slum. It's the largest slum in Africa here in Nairobi. And we actually built our studio in the middle of the slum because part of our social mission was to do economic opportunity, create economic opportunities through training, hiring, education in the slums. And so we found all these great ghetto boys who are rappers and they've been doing our soundtracks. So, you know, sometimes you have to look under odd rocks to find the gems. It's not necessarily LinkedIn.

Okay, that's fantastic. So it's sort of going offline, as it were as well. And then in terms of what you have built there, because it looks fascinating. Do you want to share with us what have you built? How big is it? How many stories, how many people are going to be in there? What's the business model you've got behind that?

So when we started out growing our studio in Kibera, we knew we needed a permanent home, we needed something bigger. I wanted it to be in the slum so that we could build this sort of largest game studio in all of Africa. In the slum, where innovation comes out of the slum. And unfortunately, just it wasn't practical. And so then we found this space, which is the top two floors of a building called Diamond Plaza in Nairobi. It had been abandoned for eight years. And anybody who knows my days at Blue will know that we found a series of abandoned buildings.

I was going to say you did that.

That we turned into amazing options and they often are the most incredible spaces. So this is a 6,000 square foot, two story barn basically that was built on the roof of this shopping mall. And we've created it as a community space. It's much larger than we needed for Siku. But we said, you know, because of my background and funding that we have, we have the means to go out and build a green screen studio that's behind me here and a podcasting studio that we have down downstairs and a slide and all the other fun stuff that goes with it. But, you know, a real startup, small cottage industry game developer who's maybe working out of their bedroom, needs all these things but doesn't have access to them and doesn't have the capital to build them. But at the same time, I don't need them 24 hours a day. And so we said, all right, well, let's build something bigger than what we need, put in all the resources, sprinkle a little bit of mentorship and experience on top of it, and make it more of an incubator for the gaming industry that is really just getting off the ground here.

That's fantastic. And what about the sort of the caliber of the people that you're meeting, Jay, in terms of work? I remember In Singapore in 95, there was a lot of training that needed to be done around expectations and about skills, and the government took an active program in that as well. Are you having a hard time finding people there? Are you using the Internet to find people from around the world to plug into your apps development and so on?

No. So in my last business, we had 65 people who were on literally six continents working. And we had a mantra of hiring not the best people who coincidentally live within 30 miles of some arbitrary office. But just we hired the best people wherever they were in the world. And this one, I've tied one hand behind my back because we've insisted that we only hire in Kenya and hiring Kenyans, particularly not expats, which definitely makes it more challenging at the scale that we're at at the moment. And we're only 16 people for now, it's been easy to find really great people. When we hit 200 people, I suspect it will be much harder. Yeah, but for the moment we've been good. And there's a lot of funding and effort and time that's going in at the moment from some of the international NGOs, like UK Aid and USAID that is all going into vocational training, particularly in the IT schools. So there's great developers who are coming out of those programs, but like lemmings going off a cliff, they've then got nowhere to go and they're falling into the abyss because they need a career and there's just no employers. And so that's what we're trying to then create is a soft landing for those graduates coming out. And that's why, for example, in our Game Development center Here, we give 6 months free membership to any graduates from the gaming program. One of the local colleges to say, look, if you've gone through that and know the start can be difficult, we'll give access to all the resources for free.

That's amazing. What in terms of costs then, Jay? What we've seen in Asia over the last 25 years really is a, you know, know an inflation of salaries to the extent that now Singapore is as expensive as London when it comes to hiring.

And flats and food and nights out.

Absolutely, it's as expensive as London. Now, what about the cost of living and the cost of hiring in Kenya? Is that. Can you get a sort of a. A margin, sort of arbitrage there?

Well, because the environment here is going through a period of transition. It's really bifurcated. So you have absolutely the sort of diplomat core at the top and the few expats who are here who are earning top salaries or international salaries and having their housing paid and all that. I unfortunately, am not one of those as an entrepreneur, but they absolutely do exist. At the same time, the bulk of the country are making less than $10 a day. And so those two will have to come together. I'm hoping that the bottom will come up rather than the top coming down, but I don't think we're going to see the Hyperinflation that we saw in Singapore. But it's time for this country to come up.

And then in terms of for yourself, how do you kind of stay abreast of what's going on both in Africa and around the world? Jay, because you're moving into a place that sounds like it's developing rather than developed. So in places like Singapore, there was an amazing cohort, as you've already explained, of people that all move there and all kind of fed off each other. How are you kind of staying in touch? How are you kind of building that kind of chemistry and energy around you? Because I know you feed off that too and you inject your wisdom into that group.

One of the first things I did when moving here was to find a dad's group basically, or create a dad's group. And I did the same thing when I moved to New York. I created the Geek Dads Network. It was called actually the Geek Dads Drinking Society. And I'm really trying to get that off the ground here as well. Of just finding like minded, maturepreneurs, tech people who are going through the same challenges as we are and creating a microcosm of what Silver Fox is, going out for lunches and coffees and drinks and whatever it may be, and commiserating and sharing wisdom. And that's the fastest way into the local environment because there are gentlemen here who are third generation here and they know everybody. And so that's the best way I find. And really in terms of the global news and all that, yeah, obviously we have Google and everything here, but I'm trying to disconnect myself as much as possible from the US news, which I find to be cathartic. It's just not helpful in any way to your daily process.

Yeah, no, that's right. I think we have to stay focused on also trying to control what's relevant to us in terms of sort of practical takeaways. And this could be. You've got so many experiences both around the world and as an entrepreneur. Jay, are there some sort of things that you think that are common mistakes that you've seen other entrepreneurs make? What would you say are things over the last 20 odd years either you've seen, you've made or you see other entrepreneurs where they kind of, they're failing. Because part of what we're trying to do with this group is to help people to decide what to do, but also decide what not to do. Wonder if you've got any wisdom for us on that?

Excuse me. I would definitely say over the last 20 years, the worst mistakes in my career that I've made as an entrepreneur were the right decisions that I made that I just took too long to make. Where you know what you need to do, there's a person you need to fire or downsize a company or exit a market or whatever it may be, you know, you have to do it, and you just hold off too long, and in the end, you wind up doing it anyhow, but you suffer from having delayed. And so I would say when, you know, just do it and rip the bandage off. So that's absolutely the first one I would say. And the second one, which I think is connected to that, is that of all the bad decisions that you can make and the mistakes that you can make, probably 90% of them can be undone or fixed or reversed. So the actual risk of doing them is not that bad. So just do it and try. And I'd rather make the mistake and then fix it than wait around until I have enough information to try and make the right decision. So, absolutely, I'd say that's a. That's a core element of being entrepreneur as well, because. And this is not my line, unfortunately. I wish I had said it originally, but, you know, if you're not failing at least 50% of the time, then you're not actually experimenting. And to be an entrepreneur, the foundation is compulsive optimization. Constantly trying to find problems and solve them. And in order to do that, you have to experiment. You have to be willing to get things wrong. You know, as I say, to make a souffle, you have to break some eggs and be willing to take that risk.

Yeah. And I think that's absolutely fantastic advice. And I think that for all of us that are doing that, there's always that sort of sense of, are you doing the right thing or not when the results don't come out so quickly. So what would be your piece of advice? Because people that are afraid of failing, you say, just do it. And how do they recover if they fail? What would be, how have you picked yourself up? Indeed, if you have ever failed, Joe, you've been so successful, how do you.

No, no, absolutely. Talk today about the successful businesses. There have been others that have been less successful. No, look, failure is not something to be embarrassed about. I think failure is something to be proud of. It's an absolute core element of being an entrepreneur. And if you're not failing, then you're not really an entrepreneur. You're just working in a job. But you have to be the employer. And so I think the way you pick yourself up or the way you do it is to first recognize when you have made that bad mistake. And the only way to do that is to constantly, constantly be listening and taking information and evaluating conflict. Because at least the first year or two years of any venture is fumbling in the dark trying to find the light switch. And at some point you find it, click, it comes on and great, you've got a business. But you know, for that first year, if you think you know what the business is going to be or you think you know what you're gonna do, you're full of shit. Nobody does. We're all just, you got, you gotta try and figure it out. And that requires constant using your senses to evaluate and humbly admit that what's not working.

And Jay, you're a brave man on many, many levels. Inspirational and many wisdom areas. Could you just tell us then if you want to find out more about you, Jay, where can they go to get in touch with you and find out more?

Well, sadly there's a lot of Jay Shapiro's on the Internet. So if you just google Jay Shapiro, you'll find a movie star, the dentist and a lawyer. And they're not me. So don't blame me for anything they said on Twitter. I am letter jshapiro S H A P I R O I am on Facebook and if you google Jay Shapiro and Nairobi, I guarantee you I am the only one here.

I was going to say you must be the only Jay Shapiro in Nairobi and I'll also put your details in.

I'm not the only Shapiro. I met another one last week. It's amazing. Or you can go to Sequo Games, Usiku Games, that's our website. You can contact me through there as well.

Great. Jay, thank you so much for joining us on Silver Fox Entrepreneurs podcast today. It's been an absolute pleasure to reconnect with you and to be inspired once again by you. Some 20 odd years since we first met and you inspired me back then and you inspired me today. So thank you.

Jim, I'll tell you, the only reason I was willing to do this was I listened to the previous episodes. I absolutely have been inspired by them. I listened to them in the car on my way to work and I'm happy to contribute one and thank you for putting this all together. It's a valuable resource for all of us and I'm just happy to be part of it.

Big hugs going out to you in Kenya and I look forward to seeing you.

All right. Thanks, mate.

Do subscribe or leave a rating. And for more information, please visit silverfoxentrepreneurs.life and drop me an email. I'd love to hear from you and maybe we can get you on the podcast and share what you know. Or let me know what you'd like to know. Thank you once again. Have a great day.