THREAD | Not all your ideas will work some will fail, actually most will fail. The most important thing is to take a lesson from those failures. It’s okay to fail, fail fast, fail cheap and fail wisely. The story of @TechBOXtz might inspire you how to approach failure.

It’s 2013/2014 we saw an opportunity in mainstream media. Nobody was doing anything related to technology. The existing TV tech shows were very boring to watch. We saw the rise of internet adoption, wanted to create a show that will capitalize both digital and mainstream media.

We wanted to bring a new experience on how TV show are created in Tanzania. We were highly inspired by @BBCClick We wanted to create Swanglish tech show. The idea was to promote tech and build a chain of media and tech related businesses something like @TechCrunch for Africa.

@TechBOXtz was supposed to open the door for this dream. We started to learn the hard way from the beginning. Change management was a serious issue to most of the local mainstream media. They would rather copy a show from a competitor than create a new one of their own.

By the time we were approaching them we had a bit of a traction since. I converted my existing blog to @TechBOXtz blog with almost 200K viewership. We were not that strong on social media platforms but we had a strategy to address that.

We knew by the time @TechBOXtz goes live in the mainstream media these numbers will rise tremendously and we will be able to build our business model based on the traction we got through the TV show. Eventually we wanted to have a YouTube channel and Android App.

This is how the @TechBOXtz show was segmented —the talkBox interviews with founders and experts—gadgetBox innovation and gadget reviews—WebBox—web watch and reviews —TipsBox, tips and tricks—TrendsBox and VoiceBox —Street interviews.

We had a team of 4 Cofounders. 2 presenters @Afruturist and @mgonja_maryam, the Director @musakamata and Producer #MosesLondo We were so passionate about the idea. I remember we contributed 150K TZS each to record our first episode from @studio19tz by the it was just @samajahn

I know there is a lot of complaining about lack of funds but we knew the concept of bootstrapping. We literally started this company with 600K TZS less than 300 dollars from our pockets. If you love something enough you will find a way to start.

Even when we went ahead and produce the episodes at our own costs still the guys from the mainstream media were not ready to accept our work. The most irritating part was their feedback. “This work is of the highest quality but we are not sure how the audience will receive it”

We didn’t stop, we continued. I had to push to my friends in the media to accept the show but even for them it was too much to convince their management because everyone was afraid of changes. Sometimes it is not you. It is a timing of your product that is letting you down.

We knew our market because we researched on it. The challenge was the guys in the media didn’t care much about the facts it was more of umeletwa na nani rather than una nini. It was so unfortunate but we were learning.

We did a call for partnership to fundraise to get money to pay for our own airtime. It didn’t go so well since it was a chicken and egg thing. The sponsors wanted a confirmation of partnership with a TV and TVs wanted a confirmation of partnership with a sponsor.

We had clear plans on how we want to generate money but nobody understood us. Finally, we realized it is not working and we need to fail quick and cheap. We dropped the idea & moved on. We started to play around with the idea of tech events and that was the birth of @SparkSahara

BL

Sometimes things don’t work out because your idea is bad or because you have a bad team. Timing and context can be a big obstacle to achieve your dream.

Pray and work hard that the dots connect and things turn out as you planned. I always believed @TechBOXtz was the idea