OZÉ

A smartphone platform empowering small business owners to make data-driven decisions while democratizing access to modern management tools and capital.

OZÉ is the insights engine in the pocket of every African small business owner. It is a mobile platform that aggregates and analyzes transaction data to push context-specific recommendations and decision support dashboards direct to entrepreneurs.
Small business owners across the developing world keep their records in paper ledger books. This means they cannot turn data into insights into actions into profits. This is why they are more likely to fail than to grow. And importantly, even if their business somehow manages to survive, they cannot bring their notebooks to the bank to get and loan and so they are shut off from the formal capital markets that could fuel their growth.

This is a critical problem to solve. Small business growth drives economic growth. In particular, in emerging markets, small businesses create 99% of jobs and in Africa, account for 90% of firms. But they are not growing fast enough. Nearly 80% of small businesses in Africa don't pay a single regular salary and each year, more than 11 million young people enter the labor market in Africa and cannot find employment. This destabilizes countries and according to the World Bank is a form of social exclusion perpetuating generational cycles of poverty.

We know that data-driven decision making improves company management and growth. In developed countries, it's normal for even small businesses to use data to improve their performance, but in emerging markets the tools and the datasets simply did not exist until now.

We are a first-mover in our region and compete with behavior change rather than other companies, although companies like Numida (Uganda) and Quickbooks have some similar features. We have co-created OZÉ with users, leading to a unique feature set. Three features set OZÉ apart:
- Gamification: we help users form habits around OZÉ and recognize progress. OZÉ adds complexity as the user gains mastery.
- Access to capital: we are developing an enterprise portal that will allow users to communicate directly with financial institutions.
- Geotagged, context-specific recommendations: we use user and external data sets for recommendations provided to users.

We are a technology company seeking to create tools that help African small business owners operate more effectively. We create solutions that use mobile phones and big data analysis to scale.

Business support services built on smartphnes are lagging hardware distribution in Africa. Without modern management tools, small businesses will be left behind. Big companies, that can afford technology to improve their operations, will cut jobs forcing more young people into the informal and/or small business sectors. Empowering them with technology means that entrepreneurship can be their career instead of a last resort for subsistence.

Our goals focus on the number of weekly active users, their revenue and profit growth, and job creation:
- 22,000 users who engage with the app at least once per week (a 10x increase in weekly active users) through effective digital marketing, network effects and strategic distribution partnerships with banks and government.
- 10% monthly revenue increase and 25% profit increase for our users from the first month of use compared to the 12th.
- 10% of our users to have added 1 job in their first 12 months of usage of the app.

OZÉ will have a transformational impact on the outcomes for small business owners across Africa. In 5 years, we will serve 15 million weekly active users; 10% will grow fast enough to add one job per year. While OZÉ alone cannot solve Africa's job crisis, supporting the creation of 1.5 million jobs annually would make a huge dent.

We want to enable small businesses to be engines of job and wealth creation; eliminate the distress of chronic unemployment and replace it with the dignity of success; and become Africa's leading tech company--a magnet for Africa's brightest.

We are working on improving engagement and retention of these users before doing a big marketing push. The majority of our users saw our ad on Facebook, downloaded the app, and stuck with it. They leave us reviews such as, 'Finding this app was very unexpected. I never though anyone could think about entrepreneurs and startups like this... It has really helped me to be able to start tracking my funds.' and 'Solid app. Good for business. Forward Africa.'

At this early stage, we can only report on inputs and not outcomes. With 2 months of minimal marketing efforts, we have 200 weekly active users and the percent of users who are becoming heavy users (those who log in every day that they do business) is increasing. It is currently at 20%. From our surveys, 4.65/5 users would recommend the app to other entrepreneurs. The adoption and usage of the app by such busy people who are also sensitive to data costs suggests that we are on to something effective.

Meghan McCormick and Dave Emnett co-founded OZÉ and lead the company as CEO and COO. They have worked together since 2015, when they met through the Peace Corps. OZÉ is the second organization that they are leading together. In addition to the Peace Corps, Meghan worked as an innovation strategist and Dave led digital marketing at a Financial Services Institution in the U.S.

The OZÉ platform designed to help small businesses grow. It aggregates and analyzes transaction data to push context-specific recommendations and dashboards to help small business owners improve their performance. It adds complexity as the user gains mastery. Using the Socratic method, the app guides the business owner through their own learning journey. If you have a smartphone, you have a business advisor in your pocket.
OZÉ helps improve business performance and once a small business hits key performance indicators jointly established with the financial institution, we will pass the financial statements and contact information of the business owner to the bank with the permission of the owner. We do this for the benefit of the small business owner, but with our eyes wide open to the fact that banks will not loan money to this demographic without additional transparency and reduced costs to serve.

Finally, OZÉ will be creating a geo-tagged transaction database that we can use to create radical transparency in the market, reducing the power of local monopolies and decreasing the search costs of small businesses trying to better supply their businesses. Backed by our data, we will be strong advocates for small business owners.

Being a Solver will open the doors into the government agencies and financial institutions that we need to partner with for scale. Second, it will credential our organization for investors. As West Africa has a very nascent start-up ecosystem, credentials help attract global capital in the absence of a robust local venture community.

With financial support, we will focus on hiring and developing local technical talent and conduct a randomized-control-trial to understand the impact OZÉ has on businesses in terms of performance and also access to capital and success in repaying that capital on time.

Risks/Barriers:
-Shortage of talent in West Africa, especially for data analytics, design, and software development roles.
-Our data and app must be used in a way that engenders trust with our users and financial institution partners. If we use their data inappropriately or the security of their data is compromised, they will stop using the app.
-If users commit fraud by inputting inaccurate transactions to get a loan, we'll lose our financial institution partners. Algorithmically, we're building in fraud protection and until we have more data, we are asking banks to just use OZÉ data to supplement their existing processes.