I build in the economy people leave, and I write about what keeps a company alive past year three.

From advertising to information science to law to founding.

I started in advertising. The useful part of that education was watching how many businesses arrived asking for a campaign when what they actually needed was a decision they had been avoiding for two years.

Then an MSc in Information Science. It sounds like a detour and it was not one. The discipline is concerned with how information gets structured, stored, and retrieved, and nearly every operating failure I have seen since has been a version of the same problem: the number existed, somebody in the building had it, and it did not reach the person making the decision in time.

Then an LLB. Law gave me a habit I did not expect to value as much as I do, which is reading the document everybody else skims. Most of the expensive mistakes I have watched founders make were sitting in a clause somebody signed without finishing.

Then an MBA, which gave me the vocabulary to argue with financiers on their own terms. In a market where capital is scarce and expensive, that matters more than I would like it to.

Then founding, which is where the theory stopped being free. I have built ventures that worked and ventures that quietly did not, and the difference was rarely the idea. It was usually whether I had the discipline to keep going after the interesting part was over.

The writing came last, and it came out of frustration. Nearly every founder book I read was written from the far side of a successful exit, in a market with functioning credit, a predictable currency, and courts that move. I was operating in Harare and Sandton, where none of that is guaranteed. So I started writing the version I needed.

The book.

Beyond Inception is about the difference between starting a company and sustaining one. Almost all the available advice addresses the first skill; the book is about the second, the stay-up rather than the start-up. It sets out the frameworks I actually use, including the Sprouting Curve (why founders should build knowledge capital before they optimise earnings), Emotional Genius (logic for systems, emotion for people), and Beyond Your Sympathy Market (the point at which strangers, rather than friends, begin to pay). It is written for founders past the first eighteen months, when the encouragement runs out and the operating problems start. Read it on Amazon.

What I’m running now.

Kose is a ride-hailing super-app, launched in Harare in May 2026 and now operating through both a Zimbabwean and a South African entity. Workzuite is B2B software for African SMEs, with more than 500 companies using it in South Africa and a Zimbabwe rollout starting from zero. TBGA Consulting Group is the advisory practice, senior work with founders and boards. Cafe Oldrock is a restaurant and dark kitchen I co-founded with my partner Jay. HYPR is the fifth.

Each is at a different stage, and each one teaches a different lesson. I write about all of them when the lesson travels past my own situation.

Why this site.

This is where the work gets written down while it is still in progress. Seventy essays so far, organised into four pillars: the stay-up philosophy, founder execution, African capital, and teams and governance.

I write from inside the constraint rather than above it. That means the essays include the things that did not work, the numbers that embarrassed me, and the decisions I came to late. If you want the tidy version of building in Africa, there are better sites.

I am 38, I work between Harare and Sandton, and most of what I know I learned expensively.

Where to start.

If you are new here, the four pillars are the fastest way in.

• The Stay-Up Philosophy, on what it takes to carry a venture past year five.
• Founder Execution, on the distance between deciding and doing.
• African Capital, on cap tables and term sheets read from inside African markets.
• Teams and Governance, on hiring and governing under real constraint.