The Story of Iteration
I stumbled into this wonderful opportunity when we first met in which we were able to obtain a good amount of modularized PCs for Kenya from a technology company called Kano (actually through the help of a V1 alumn Dar Sleeper).
I was incredibly excited about this and the gravity of introducing such technology in a developing country that is being infiltrated with technology and venture money like Kenya. Kenya has the perfect infrastructure (or rather lack of infrastructure) for something like this because it is so phenomenally needed. Imagine you give a computer to someone, sounds like a great deed because you are giving them the “power to compute”. It sounds great until you realize that in 4-5 years (or less due to the environment) these computers break down, and there is no way that they can afford to fix them. Even if they could, the network for fixing computers in Nairobi (the major hub of all of Kenya) is extremely poor and corrupt. So, the idea of introducing a modular computer that Kenyans can build themselves, understand, and fix themselves was so exciting to me.
The skinny metal box of mystery worked for the western world, but it took a ton of infrastructure to build that network of resources that exists around that, and just throwing it into an environment without that is naive.
I knew that I was not going to be able to create that network and the entire computing landscape (I am ambitious but I am not stupid), but a modular PC was a good place to start.
Then, I got to thinking a little bit more - where the heck am I supposed to take these? Give them to most schools and they will get stolen from the kids and/ or the school. Give them to the poor and they will sell them off for money to buy food. For those who don’t know, throwing gifts at people is just a band-aid IF all goes right- normally it is a failed attempt.
But anyway, I thought of what else we could do with this, and I started talking to every person imaginable about this idea. At first, I was asking where I could give these computers, then I was asking what entrepreneur could I give this blueprint of technology to and have them run with this idea. I went far down that rabbit hole, thinking of potential engineering students and employees of some cool Mechatronic companies in the city.
Then, iteration number five later, I realized I was on the outskirts of a very big idea. What if you could take this modular concept of building your own computer like it is a lego set, and give that to people on a large scale? That would set up a large-scale computing landscape of what I like to call “open-sourcing computer manufacturing”.
I talked to more people and found out that not a single computer is assembled here in Kenya. Worse, every assembled computer has heavy taxes that are at the lowest 16% of the value of the computer. To add to that, getting most Macs and high-end Microsoft computers requires you to ship your computer to another continent. No wonder people have no computers, and most university students use raspberry pis their entire education.
There is this incredibly large hole that needs to be filled, and it has not been traversed because it is so hard for a company to do that on its own. They would need to set up the entire ecosystem of computing here, all for a population that has little to no disposable income. Unsurprisingly, most companies want to make money.
So, PCs and Pieces was born. A platform that provides all of the knowledge and resources necessary to build your own computers. Think about open-source coding- it accelerates at a fast rate because everyone gets to contribute. This is how the computer economy will work. You are giving people blueprints to make computers for themselves or make ones to sell on PCs and Pieces. Result - low-cost computers and Kenyas making a business for themselves. It is the definition of kickstarting the local economy because it has nothing to do with me, myself, and I making money and everything to do with giving some power in resources to the people themselves.
We built this in our engineering vacuum, knowing that this was just going to be the framework of a platform.
At this point what we had: A good IDEA, but that is all it was- just an idea that we had built something up for.
So, then I went out to a ton of universities in the area and started pitching the idea to them. I told them that “this was not my project, this was not about me” and that it was something that I wanted them to play a vital role in.
This idea was created for not the students that I was working with, but for those who don’t have the opportunity to go to a university. It was created for those people who desperately want to build themselves a way out, but don’t have any capital to spend on a very expensive computer. It was created as a way for people to learn and start making a future for their own country. Rather than just importing in computers from China for very cheap to sell, the people would be building up Kenya in making them and people would be investing in Kenya in buying them.
After talking to students I discovered this extra layer of added value, where we were providing students with the first real-life building experience. So many students have no way to get jobs after graduation due to the antiquated syllabuses and lack of real world experience, but now they have an official project under their belt - that in itself is huge.
So, now students are helping in one of three ways based on their interest and skills