There have been questions and lamentations about what I wrote in the middle of the night about original ideas in Africa while yet reviewing another bunch of startups. I stand by it and it doesn’t also mean non original ideas can’t be successful. We have all sorts of problems.

I believe we should first look at the problem instead of adopting solutions that are looking for problems. How many iterations of the same unsuccessful models do we have to do to realize that it just doesn’t work here! If we realize trust is a fundamental problem, fix it first!

I still listen to people regardless. I have learned that the best solutions do not come from people with the best presentation skills or with all the domain knowledge. Someone can probably stumble on the lever to fix the primary problem that has been plaguing a model.

I always remind people that Google was the 24th search engine. The difference is that all the other search engines were also live and working. You shouldn’t revive dead ideas until you know why they died. I have written about Zero based startups before and why we keep doing them.

This is my old article on Zero based ventures: https://m.guardian.ng/technology/zero-based-ventures/

Also below is a tweet last year I wrote about solutions that had excellent responses.

On the issue of responses and conversations, we should never stop having conversations. The main person may not see your input but another will step up and answer as I did below to a @naval tweet yesterday to explain it better. Most of us are here to learn not give clap-backs.

At other times, the point gets amplified further so there is no need for the OP to answer further questions if you are following the conversation. I see this as the fundamental difference between us and Silicon Valley. People have conversations, we have meaningless arguments.

I try to avoid meaningless arguments at all costs. I sometimes just block obtuse people.

Great! Execute it.