Integrated skills and entrepreneurship training

Our program addresses the lack of employment and income opportunities in informal settlements. We support low-income professionals and entrepreneurs with training, mentorship, financing, and links to markets. We are creating and customizing digital tools that track performance and build reputations.

The above problems perpetuate largely due to lack of trust between people, institutions, and cultures. This leads to under-investment, particularly in low-income communities, reenforcing cycles of poverty. Our solution helps create digitally-verifiable reputations for people and companies through learning and working activities. These reputations help trust extend more easily and help people remain accountable. 

The Nairobi informal settlements we already work in are home to over 3 million people. By further developing our technology we can grow our solutions to scale across other similar urban communities across the world so that nobody lacks access to the leadership development, personal support, financing, and market access that they need.

With urbanization comes more people living in informal settlements. Existing training, work and business opportunities in these areas are lacking. Nairobi exemplifies these trends, with over 3 million people in informal settlements, striving to advance their careers and families in the face of unemployment exceeding 10%. 

Despite this, the people who live in these communities are largely excluded from helping to solve their own problems. Lack of trust between people and institutions causes short-term thinking and under-investment. Through years of experience working in low-income communities of Nairobi, we have seen a dearth of affordable capital, skills training, and accessible markets.

The industrialized world created trust through large institutions that developed over decades. Today, due to software tools and ubiquitous computing devices, millions of people could reap the same benefits without needing the same institutions. This has been proven through sharing economy (Uber, Airbnb, etc) reputation systems but has not been brought to mass markets in community-centric manners. Many of the purely technical solutions being developed, such as from the blockchain space, are not based on experience with the communities or community input. For a variety of reasons many such solutions will neither work with existing community structures nor be sustainable.

Somo is an entrepreneurship accelerator for low-income urban communities. Somo is partnering for this initiative with Tunapanda and Anapanda. Our trainees and entrepreneurs have previously been excluded from the digital economy because they lack financing, education, and networks. 

One example of an entrepreneur trained by Tunapanda and Somo is Allan, who grew up in Nairobi informal settlements. Financial constraints prevented him from finishing his formal education, but in 2014, he became one of Tunapanda’s first apprentices. While learning media production at Tunapanda, Allan conceived of an interactive storytelling startup focused on Nairobi’s informal settlements. He joined Somo’s Entrepreneurship Bootcamp and formed Portable Voices. His plan won acceptance into Somo's Acceleration Program where he got his first grant to launch production. Portable Voices now employs 7 people producing podcasts and African literature audio books. To date, they have raised $10,304 of outside equity and debt financing and have served over 250 clients while creating 6 podcast series and 11 audiobooks. 

Allan is just one of hundreds of examples who have both benefited from our initiatives and helped to iteratively improve them through his work. Our new trust-extending software platform emerged from work in these communities.

Our solution is a new initiative that integrates and streamlines work from 3 organizations over the past 6 years:

• Somo is an entrepreneurship accelerator for low-income urban communities. We invest in community-led initiatives and provide the resources to help build sustainable enterprises and create financial stability for our entrepreneurs and their communities. Our programs include long-term support in the form of training, advising, funding, and market access. 

• Tunapanda has provided 3-month intensive technology, design, and business training programs to hundreds of young people from low-income urban and rural areas. Our basic track is followed by an 8-month apprenticeship-style experience in which some graduates become trainers and specialize. Tunapanda’s model is financially sustainable since advanced team members provide paid services to clients and a percent of the revenue subsidizes training costs. 

• Anapanda is a software company which has emerged from the above work. Our human-centered processes and online platform helps create trust in teams through digital reputations. Data is generated by setting and tracking quantifiable goals, executing on projects, and accomplishing tasks. The platform is being developed for affordable use in low-bandwidth areas.

Our integrated training model starts with Tunapanda’s basic 3-month course, where trainees learn about the importance of a growth mindset, develop essential skills in communication and teamwork, and develop other tech, design, and business skills. Somo’s 12-week Entrepreneurship Bootcamp then teaches practical business skills like record-keeping, budgeting, and market research. The Bootcamp cultivates confidence and leadership abilities, and assigns a Somo mentor to each trainee. Anapanda’s digital tools manage tasks, deliverables, meetings and metrics, and provide accountability on all sides to continue developing a long-term record of growth for entrepreneurs, trainers, and mentors alike. 

Somo’s 2-year Acceleration Program provides long-term support for promising entrepreneurs, including additional coaching, funding and broader market linkages. Throughout the process, entrepreneurs and their businesses set clear and measurable goals, against which we can evaluate progress. Continued funding is based on both performance evaluation and the success metrics jointly defined by Somo entrepreneurs and team.

The initiatives, processes, and technologies we create are aimed at developing human potential through trust. Trust is developed through collaboration, and moves through time via records. Our software platform simply records commitments made and whether they are completed. We support the innovative process by organizing those commitments into several key areas, including:

• Commitments to tasks and deliverables

• Commitments to projects, processes, and meetings/training

• Commitments to goals and metrics (including financial, impact, and other organizational needs)

The tools we are building enable trust in populations that do not have strong institutions which increase the chance of people keeping their commitments to each other. 

Interestingly, our tools for entrepreneurs map to the above article’s prescription for innovative management:

• Establish the right roles and processes

• Set clear goals and relevant measures

• Review progress at every step

Thus, we are bringing the ability to manage innovation to low-income, low-trust populations via training, supporting processes, and technology. Somo is unique in our holistic approach, target demographic, and long-term commitment to entrepreneurs. While other technology training programs exist, they do not take Tunapanda’s integrated approach to technology, design and business training. Both organizations use existing resources to innovatively create positive social impact in low-income, urban communities. Building on a growth mindset, both cultivate confidence and leadership. All of this is simply developing human potential through collaboration and trust.

The combined efforts of these three organizations will develop better leaders, teachers, and team members at every step. From the start of our integrated Tunapanda/Somo training program, Anapanda’s Kummit platform provides tools to make progress smoother and easier to track. Working through Kummit, we generate verified portfolios of learning and work that facilitate trust among fellow trainees and trainers, prospective employers, and potential lenders and investors. Entrepreneurs are able to measure how their businesses are doing and make commitments driving results. Each entrepreneur has a customized profile that shows how their business is doing, tracking both the financial sustainability and impact over time.

We have developed and rolled out the initial prototype of the Kummit platform that will further develop those pathways while lowering management overhead to enable replication and scale. It can also deliver and track engagement with rich multimedia learning content that supports peer-to-peer learning in ways that are affordable and contextually-relevant in the markets where we work.

With a keen focus on protecting the data rights of our entrepreneurs and learners, we will eventually provide additional services and recommendations leveraging the datasets we generate. This will allow additional capital to flow into companies at lower cost while optimizing the learning pathways of everyone involved and helping entrepreneurs better access markets.

We expect our solutions to work because we have iteratively co-developed and tested them with our constituents for over 6 years instead of merely theorizing from afar. While Tunapanda began with a strong focus on the technology itself (setting up offline computer hubs with free software and video content), the majority of both Somo and Tunapanda’s work has focused on understanding people and building processes that fit the context. 

Through this work, we have seen firsthand the individual and team performance growth that is possible in a context of trust. We have also seen how quickly trust can break down and creates short-term thinking. The capacity of trust-creating sharing economy digital reputation systems to work in both high-income and emerging markets can reverse some of that breakdown. 

Our training, processes, and software build on a strong foundation of growth mindset, which has been proven effective in one of the world’s largest-scale research studies by Stanford professor Carol Dweck. 

Combining real-world experience, years of iteration, proven pedagogies, and cutting-edge digital reputation systems will enable our system to align high-level metrics with initiatives and day-to-day work in a way that drives provable, quantifiable change for people, families and communities.

Tunapanda has provided training to over 300 people through our 3-month training courses. Our alumni network works at top companies like M-KOPA Solar, freelance on platforms like Fiverr, and build startups at accelerators like MEST. Somo has trained over 500 entrepreneurs in basic business planning, graduated 102 from our 12-week Entrepreneurship Bootcamp, and funded 44 businesses through our intensive two-year Acceleration Program. Those businesses have created jobs for over 220 people. 

Tunapanda and Somo are in the process of scaling operations in Nairobi and expanding to Kisumu. Tunapanda will train at least 400 people over the next year. We intend to help 50% secure employment and become freelancers, while 50% will enter Somo. By 2022 Somo will have trained about 300 people through our Entrepreneurship Bootcamp. Wee plan to have at least 100 enterprises in our portfolio by next year, providing employment for at least 400 people, with the average business employing 5 people after 1 year in our Acceleration program. 

In the next five years, we will build dozens more hubs for professional and entrepreneurship training. We will graduate over 2,000 from Tunapanda’s training by 2025. About 400 entrepreneurs will enter the Acceleration phase by 2025. These businesses will provide employment for at least 2,000 individuals coming from low-income urban areas.

However, far larger impact is possible as our software will power other training organizations and companies. We intend to have the platform used by hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people in 5 years. 

We plan to expand our program across urban centers first in Kenya and then globally while turning our software platform into a SaaS product for use by organizations globally. With traditional apprenticeship as a model, our organizations have a unique ability to expand our programs by deploying our entrepreneurs as trainers and mentors, circumventing the issue of too few teachers in emerging markets. Not only does this build a culture of collaboration and shared learning, but it keeps costs low and learning high, and alleviates a potential trainer bottleneck as we scale. Our entrepreneurs are best positioned to share hands-on knowledge and relevant experiences with the next generation of aspiring entrepreneurs. 

Our three most important goals for the coming year are integrating Somo’s program with Tunapanda training through expansion, investing more into the highest-potential businesses, and using Kummit to better track impact at scale.

Over the next five years our goals are to replicate the Somo/ Tunpanada hub model globally, linking entrepreneurs to markets and graduates to employment opportunities.

As our software system adds features and we learn from the data, it will improve so that companies are able to better manage their team members and drive measurable financial and impact goals. This will open up markets for freelancers and other service providers both locally and globally to engage in commerce. 

Key financial barriers include core software development costs, organizational overhead (which will lower with software), and the variable costs of training. Tunapanda’s model is financially sustainable in theory, but challenges include business development and sales, which the software platform will simplify. 

Building the initial software platform is not a major technical challenge, but does require lots of engineer time. We expect to see deeper challenges as we start building algorithms to make recommendations to accelerate talent development. Setting up training facilities that combine coaching with video learning content requires large amounts of data. Internet is costly and slow in many parts of Africa.

Legal issues will primarily come into play as people start taking our content and curricula into schools to train younger people (as has already happened in Kibera). If not done properly, or if done at scale, there are regulatory issues around approval of curricula that could pose challenges -- for example, KICD in Kenya needs to approve any curricula used within school classes, and their certification process is slow and expensive.

Culturally, low-income areas are lower-trust and more hierarchical than high-income countries. This poses several challenges, particularly around the roles of women and youth. Using community-centric approaches can help alleviate some of these issues if done correctly.

We work with people from informal settlements (many of whom come from rural areas) who have weaker networks to access markets. Building trust for their labor, services, and products is thus more challenging. 

We are working to overcome financial barriers through a combination of grant funding and providing services. Those services include percent-of-revenue from digital services provided by Tunapanda graduates as well as consultative services to other organizations who are trying to do similar work as we are.

The Anapanda team is working tirelessly to build the software platform that suits these needs, and to engage with other people in Nairobi and beyond who need similar software so that the linkages between training and the business worlds will be strong. Tunapanda is starting to grow an open source community to create open educational resources and customize existing open source software (such as H5P) to deliver the content in low-bandwidth areas.

Legal issues will need to be tackled on a case-by-case basis in each country. However, by allowing people in their own communities to deliver our training content (such as our robotics course) as part of after-school or holiday programs instead of during school hours, we avoid the need to have each piece of content vetted.

A key component to creating trust to overcome both market and cultural barriers is by ensuring that people doing work (whether that’s training, working on a team project, handling finances, etc) will receive the due credit for the work they do. Our software platform is centered on this use case. At the team level, we use OKRs and other metrics to guide performance and minimize individualism.

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Somo: 19

Tunapanda: 23

Anapanda: 7

We have a “team of teams” with extensive experience living, working and running businesses in informal settlements. We know how to navigate difficult work environments, put out fires (sometimes literally), and learn from and grow with our trainees and entrepreneurs. Our work is fully integrated with the communities we serve. From setting up our co-working spaces within informal settlements to our hands-on approach providing entrepreneurship, career and life coaching, we provide holistic programs to serve the communities we work within.

Anapanda’s software development team combines experienced designers, engineers, and business professionals who are committed to the work and the customers we serve. 

We have an advisory team of over 60 business professionals throughout Nairobi who help our trainees and businesses grow. These individuals provide our entrepreneurs specialized, individual attention. Furthermore, our boards are a mix of investors, entrepreneurs, and professionals who give our teams a concrete foundation for growing impactful organizations.

Somo and Tunapanda together have experience working across many sectors. Somo businesses range from agricultural businesses like Verics that has built small hydroponics farms in two informal settlements in Nairobi, to recycling businesses like Re-Afric that makes shoes out of recycled fabric and tires, to training institutes like Habari Kibra, which trains low-income youth on journalism skills. 

The Tunapanda team has similar experience running training facilities in informal settlements. We have funded much of our operations through gig-style enterprises staffed by graduates of our intensive training programs, such as websites, field research, educational app usability testing, and outsourced training. 

Somo and Tunapanda jointly hold the belief that collaborations between organizations with similar missions is necessary to combat the siloed status quo and provide more opportunities for more people. We will bring on more like-minded partners as we scale. 

Somo works with pipeline partners such as iBiz Africa, Metta and Ongoza to help provide additional resources to our entrepreneurs as they grow. 

Anapanda is focused on serving other customers in the Nairobi market, including other training organizations as well as innovative startups and larger companies that can help improve our processes. We are also working with one of our advisors, Bitange Ndemo, a University of Nairobi entrepreneurship professor, to provide anonymized data for research and financial inclusion purposes. 

We have a mixed business model for different parts of the work. 

Entrepreneurs chosen for Somo’s Acceleration Program receive an initial grant of $2,000 for capital goods. We stress applying these grants to long-term investments versus operational costs in order to push our entrepreneurs to think about sustainability at the outset. Once they are cash-flow positive, they are eligible to receive loans to help them scale. 

Tunapanda Institute provides value to trainees through subsidized training with small fees. We also provide additional web development, usability testing, research, and training services to clients who are interested in digitizing their businesses or reaching local markets.

Anapanda is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) business that can also act as a marketplace platform between companies and knowledge worker service providers once we have enough data about what companies need and individual skillsets.

We will sustain our programs through a combination of grants and donations and revenue generated by providing services. Somo’s Hub Spaces and Market Access programs all help make our training sustainable. These Hubs offer Somo entrepreneurs free workspace to develop their businesses while also generating fees from outside groups to cover operational costs. Somo’s Market Access program reduces barriers to reaching customers by sharing costs for shelf space and delivery, earning a 12% commission on every sale done. Somo has begun taking equity stakes in companies, though the model going forward is still under development. Loan repayments from our entrepreneurs are recycled into more lending capital for new businesses. Somo has also secured multi-year funding through 2021 from Google, UC Berkeley, and Jochnick Foundation. 

Tunapanda has sustained itself through graduates performing paying work for clients (a percent of revenue goes to the graduates and another to subsidizing training) and job placement fees. The 3-month course currently costs $310 per trainee. Somo’s Entrepreneurship Bootcamp costs $255 per trainee. We keep this part of our program free and sustain it through grants and donations in order to ensure access to the most deserving applicants.

Anapanda’s software platform will charge subscriptions based on the number of users in the short term (SaaS model) and may move into marketplace-like transaction costs in the longer term.

We are in need of assistance with fundraising, marketing and legal strategy. With fundraising, we are looking to build a fundraising strategic plan that gives us a sustainable blueprint for growth. With marketing, we are looking to craft and refine our story for potential partners and funders. With legal, we are looking for help reviewing compliance with local, state and federal laws and regulations regarding nonprofit organizations, as well as advising on contracts and partnership agreements.

The personalized support can help us grow our businesses and also create better processes which can in turn help improve our entrepreneurship and tech/design/business training programs. Best practices that we learn can be added to Anapanda’s software platform for additional improvement. Another key barrier is helping the new entrepreneurs access markets and the new professionals access employment and freelancing opportunities. 

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• Microsoft - helping them create pipeline into their operations on the continent including Nairobi where they recently opened a new facility
• MIT Media lab - digital identity group helping to build modern digital reputations
• IBM - helping to design and deliver technology enabled workforce solutions to their customers
• IFC - building up core infrastructure in a financially sustainable manner

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We support people to design and create solutions to problems that they are seeing in their own low-income communities. We help them build portfolios and reputations that create better trust with investors, companies, and government. This helps create inclusive economic growth across geographies.

We will launch a cohort focused on women, on enterprises run by and for low-income female populations. We will seek out and mentor female entrepreneurs who have the passion to launch successful impact businesses that address issues that women face in their communities. Access to economic resources can enhance women's capacity to make meaningful choices that impact not only their own lives, but the lives of their families and their communities. 

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We support people to design and create solutions to problems that they are seeing in their own low-income communities. We help them build portfolios and reputations that create better trust with investors, companies, and government. This helps create inclusive economic growth across geographies.

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