by Simon Turner
I often tell Founders that they should build a business around what they know, what they have domain experience in, what they have knowledge of, and what they're passionate about.
They're much more likely to recognise a problem that they relate to, much more likely to see it as a genuine problem, and far more likely to understand what the best solution is likely to be.
There are no guarantees of course, but as a rule of thumb, knowing what you're talking about is a pretty good one when it comes to founding a startup!
It's much more likely to be the one that makes a founder get out of bed what when they don't want to, push through when the going gets tough, and be endure the inevitable "no's" and rejections likely to come their way.
A few years back, I was connected to a serial Ghanaian entrepreneur based in the US, via a good friend here in Ghana.
He was working on launching (another) really cool project that was intriguing and a real game-changer in the insurance industry.
Fast forward, I'm glad to call that entrepreneur - Sam Baddoo - a good mate, and the project he was working on, an insuretech called Fleri, has gone through Techstars in Toronto, and has rolled out in Ghana and several other African nations.
Sam is a mate, an entrepreneur I look up to, and certainly one of the best sounding-boards around (never fearful of asking me "reality check" questions!) - was kind enough to join the Founder Institute Ghana team and speak to my fellow Director Akua Nyame-Mensah openly and frankly about his experience as a founder, as an immigrant, and as a leader.
He knows not simply the pressures of starting and running a business, but he knows first hand the problem he's trying to solve.
He furthermore was willing to open up and talk about the challenge he personally faced, and subsequently the business he has built to solve this problem: that being, the pressure and stress of ensuring one's family's health, which is very real, but money sent via remittances for health care isn't necessarily guaranteed to go towards the anticipated healt care.
So with a laser focus on ensuring healthcare is guaranteed, no matter where in the world or how far away one is, he's unbundled remittances and created Fleri.
Fleri enables people like him to ensure that they can have peace of mind, knowing that the money given for family to have quality health care is going directly towards quality health care via health insurance.
Thus, health care is guaranteed and second to none for his family back home, and he has peace of mind.
Founders and entrepreneurs, please watch the video as a "Startup 101" lesson in how the majority of successful startups come from a direct pain point experienced by the Founder.
If you don't understand the problem, you can't truly be the best person to create the solution.
This is "product/team fit" to use the correct "lingo", so if you're looking at setting up a business, make sure it's in a domain (and pain) you understand.
And if you know of a pain, and want to build a startup as part of the solution - this is where I give a sales pitch - check out, and enrol in the upcoming FI Ghana virtual cohort.
Applications close 21 Aug: fi.co/ghana
#fiworldwide #entrepreneur #insurance #insurtech #disruption #innovation #healthinsurance #diaspora #diasporaengagement #africa #ghana
This blog originally appeared on Medium
