In this episode of the Achieve Podcast, host Jesse Warner interviews Jaye Connolly, chairman and CEO of Ripple Nami, a B2G technology firm that partners with African presidents and local stakeholders to deploy e‑government platforms that aggregate and analyze national data. Connolly explains how the company started in 2014, its fluid team size (core 15, up to 150 during deployments), and its agile approach to adopting new technologies, especially AI for fuzzy data matching and analytics. The conversation covers Ripple Nami’s sales strategy—working through strong local partners and directly with heads of state—its long, variable sales cycles, and operational challenges of customizing solutions for each country. Looking ahead, Connolly highlights plans to expand into mining traceability and climate impact monitoring, leveraging the same data platform. She shares hard‑won lessons about partner selection, avoiding corruption, rapid employee assessment, and the importance of purpose‑driven leadership. The interview concludes with advice for entrepreneurs to pursue mission‑aligned ventures and a call to explore Africa’s massive, youthful market.
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Welcome to the Achieve Podcast, the show where we highlight the leaders, creators, and entrepreneurs for building meaningful businesses and shaping their industries. My name is Jesse Warner, and I'm excited to, to host Jay Connolly from Ripple Nami. She's the chairman and CEO. Jay, it's a pleasure to have you on the podcast today.
Thank you for accommodating my schedule change, and thank you for having me. I'm excited.
So our audience can get to know you a little bit better. Give us a quick backstory of your business. What do you do? How did it get started?
That's a long story, but I'll make it short. So about 11 years ago, two guys started this company called Ripple Nami, and I was brought on as a board advisor. And where we are now is we work in Africa with African presidents. We deploy technology, we aggregate all their government data. So think of e-government and solve giant problems so that they can become sovereign nations and grow their middle incomes. So that's a lot.
When did it start?
It started 11 years ago, 2014.
2014. How big is your team now?
Oh gosh, it ebbs and flows based upon what country we go into. So we can be up to 150 people when we're deploying and down to— I mean, the core team is about 15 people. Okay, well, congratulations. Thanks. Yeah. In each country we go into, we leave behind a staff and we only hire within each country.
Okay. Yeah, that's wonderful. Tell me a little bit how your business has changed as it's grown.
Well, we keep evolving and I always say we don't know what we're going to be right now, but we keep growing. So because we're in emerging markets that are very fast moving, we can be really dynamic and change on a dime. So when new technology platforms come up like AI, which we had been using AI about, about 8 years ago. But now with the generative AI, we can do things faster, quicker. So we're able to adapt to new technologies pretty quickly. So we're not stuck in this old platform, you know, SQL-based, whatever, you know, those old platforms. We can— we're really nimble.
Let's talk about AI for a minute. There's a lot of buzz around AI. A lot of it is evolving every day, changing. How are you guys using it in your business today?
Yeah, fun fact. My first turnaround company was an AI company, and that was in 2005. So it's been around a long time, and we used it in healthcare records, and I ended up selling it to UnitedHealth. It's still the core of all their healthcare records. How we're using it, if when we go to a country, you got to think they don't have a national ID. They do have national IDs, but they don't really use them. They don't have Social Security numbers. So pulling in data from like, say, 12 different mini ministries, departments, and agencies, pulling that all in and matching it to say, this is Jesse, this record is Jesse, is a feat. It is hard. Number one, a lot of people have the same name. Some, say the local government data, may have last name, first name, but it doesn't tell you that. The Minister of Water may have first name, last name, or middle name. So it's a matching, it's so hard. So with AI, that has really helped us. Be able to match and do fuzzy math matching, which we match phone numbers, emails, names, whatever data we can to get a little bit more certainty. So we really use it to bring in data, match it, and then we can start to analyze it.
So you're a business-to-government kind of organization.
We are B2G. Yes.
When you're looking at sales, marketing, outreach, what's working in the B2G space?
Okay, we figured this out. It took us a couple of years. What works for us is we have really strong local partners within each country who has an interest in making their country great. And with that, and then a president, we work with the president and then us. So that's the triangle that we go into any country. And we first, unlike the United States, think about it as If we step back just a second, Africa has 1.5 billion people and 54 countries. So I kind of look at it like it's 50 states, even though it's huge. It's huge. So the president will be over a country, maybe 2 million people up to 180 million people. It depends. The president's rule and how the presidents steer the country, so goes everything else. So we don't start at the ministry level, we start at the president level. So we work with local partners, the president and us, and we go in and set the initiative at the tone of the top, and then it trickles down.
So partners, clearly a key part of this.
100%.
President's changing all the time as well, right?
They do. They do. And these partners, they have been around a long time. A lot of them came from the telecommunications sector and laid all the fiber a long time ago. So they've been around a long time. So we see presidents sometimes come and go, sometimes they stay. But yes, we have to be fluid. And there's some countries we won't go into. We've tried. And since we're Americans, we can't take a bribe or give a bribe. And so there's some countries that doesn't work. That's okay. We just move on. There's plenty of countries.
So, Jay, you mentioned having to scale and then scale up, scale down. You've got a core team, right? What are some of the constraints you see as you try to grow your business?
We don't really have any constraints because our team is so good, and, um, and our supplementary, uh, developers, when we need them, they've worked with us now for many years. So we don't have any, any staffing or business restraints. It's just the sales cycle is rather long and ups and downs. And you never— it's not your traditional US sales cycle. So it is— it could be maddening for some. We're used to it. We've been doing 11 years. But for some investors or board members, they'd be like, show me your next, you know, 30, 60, 90-day pipeline. You're like, yeah, right. I could show it to you, but it'll change the next week. So you have to be really patient and fluid.
I imagine it's a lot more like a large enterprise kind of sales cycle where you're looking at a year, 2 years sometimes getting into this.
It could be, you know, our longest has been 3 years. Our shortest has been 1 month. So it depends. It's not your typical sales cycle. And because it is kind of like an enterprise, but really what we're doing is aggregating data so we don't have to go into each one of those departments and put our platform in. We just pull data out and data comes in all kinds of different formats. We found out sometimes it's a bunch of stack of wet paper on the ground. Sometimes we have to create the whole entire country, which we did in one country using Google Street Maps for data visualization and building imagery analysis. We had to create the whole country. So every, every country is different. We started with the oldest tax authority because that was one we wanted to start at and we just finished the brand, the most new. Tax authority. So we've gone from the two different sectors.
What an interesting challenge and use case. As you look forward into the future in your next stage, what are you most excited about?
Well, because we don't care if it's a person, place, or thing, it's big data to us. So we're looking into going into the mining traceability. You got to think with AI, there's a requirement for rare earth minerals. Where are those rare earth minerals? They're in the ground in Africa, and everybody wants them. So we're looking at trying to help the countries know what's in the ground and trace it from pit to processing, because Africa loses a lot of money. They're a raw material exporter only. They don't get any of the value. Most everything goes to China for processing, so they lose a lot of value. So we're trying to help Africa become sovereign nations in any which way we can. And then the other thing we're really conscious about is with the mining is where those rare earth minerals, where's the cobalt, all that, it's under the ground, under the ground, under trees. So then that affects climate and then affects communities. So we're really, we look at climate as well. So those are the next sectors we're going into. Again, our platform never has to change. It's just different data inputs.
Looking back on your journey, thinking about the wins and your mistakes.
Ooh.
What are some of the lessons you've learned?
Lessons I learned is to really find a good partner. We've had some really bad partners. We've had some, you know, fake titled people. You never have to pay for a visit to a president. We never would. But there's a lot of people that go out there and someone will say, hey, you know, $20,000, you can go meet the president. That's not how it works in Africa. You should never have to pay. Other lessons learned, we're really quick to let people go, and that's not a bad thing. We used to give people a long time to step up to the plate as far as employees, and we just can't do that anymore. We can tell within the first month whether it's going to work or not because it's crazy time schedules. Think about it, we're 11, 12 hours behind Africa. So we're up at 2 in the morning, 4 in the morning. So that's not for everybody. That's okay. But not to hold on to people too long.
Any thoughts or advice you want to give to other leaders or entrepreneurs who are on a similar journey?
Yeah, I would say, you know, make sure that what you're doing, it actually resonates with you and it creates a purpose because we're all about connecting unconnected people. We are a for-profit company. We're here to help and deploy technology for good. And I see a lot of tech companies out of there that I just don't know what they're purpose is. So if you are a CEO or a founder that can see an issue and be able to fix it and feel good about what legacy you're leaving behind, then go for it. If you're out there just trying to make a buck, I think it's not going to be fulfilling for you.
Any other final thoughts as we wrap up?
No. And I would tell you, anybody in the US, Africa is wide open for business. They will have the largest workforce in 2030. 50% of their 1.5 billion people are under 16 years old. So it is a great marketplace. If anybody is interested, please call me. Please reach out. We learned, you know, our lessons learned enable others to prosper.
Well, thank you, Jay, for joining today. Thank you for sharing your story. Really fascinating industry. Africa, obviously, as you mentioned, is a huge place. I've had a lot of conversations with people, various people from different parts of Africa trying to give back, do good things, and love what you're doing at the— going right to the president, right? And I imagine there's some challenges with doing that. But if you want to learn more about Jay and what she's doing, you can visit RippleNami.com and love for— she'd love to help you and however you can with as it relates to, to Africa and, and the challenges there. But that'll wrap up today's episode of the Achieve Podcast. A big thank you to our sponsor Achieve Fractional, which provides fractional executives for growing businesses. And if you enjoyed today's conversation, follow the show, share with another entrepreneur who'd also find value in it. Again, thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next episode of the Achieve Podcast.
