Growing up watching his father build their family home, Wisani developed a curiosity for how ideas can (literally) transform and come to life. His first venture proved to be too capital intensive for a student, and after exploring a few ideas from co-workspace solutions to teaching cryptocurrency trading, to e-commerce for informal traders, Wisani settled on a microtasking platform built to help StartUps.
“As an early stage founder, the line between working on and in the business is one that's pretty fine. Many times I find myself working on tasks that do not actually move the needle, doing things that must be done but are not necessarily things that will help the business go further. This is a constant challenge and hence the idea for a microtasking solution”.
Wisani’s vision is a powerful one: to pioneer the future of work for Africa. Our region is fortunate to have this youthful entrepreneur who is determined to play a part in the good and necessary change this continent needs. He recognises the missed opportunities when we are too focussed on day to day tasks and his solution is aimed at helping a generation of entrepreneurs resolve this challenge head on.
Wisani acknowledges that this solution goes hand in hand with the ability to bring ‘A players’ into one’s business in an effort to shift challenge resolution to a higher, more strategic level. Typically no Founder journey is ventured alone and he speaks to his co-founder, his team and his board of advisors as his accomplices on his mission to get where he is headed. Advisors can play a crucial role in helping Founders avoid making unnecessary mistakes and Wisani talks to their knowledge and advice as critical in navigating his next steps, to cushion the missteps likely in the journey. Wisani has his feet firmly on the ground, very aware of the immediate challenge his venture is tackling: customer growth. Resisting the temptation many Founders have to stay stuck in the product, Wisani understands the need to focus on sales in order to reach breakpoint in terms of value creation.
“Everything has been a building block to where I am today, from character building, to learning to spot ideas that are more likely to work, to how to strategize and pitch for investment, and the slow build up of courage needed to continue to go forth and apply the learnings.”
Wisani’s beginning to entrepreneurial life has been a whirlwind commonly seen with Founders like himself who have a flux of ideas to work through. Importantly, he is very aware of what to draw on in terms of lessons learnt from each avenue he has pursued till settling on one that really has the ability to scale and transcend local borders into global markets.
“I love life and I think of myself as a force of nature. Exploring life and nature as it is around me, is my constant source of inspiration, this is my everyday fuel, to reach my zenith, to get to my peak potential. I want to be a good representative of life in all that I do”.
Wisani speaks with a smile that lights up the room, we can feel the motivation just being in conversation with him, an invaluable trait for any Founder to exhibit. Wisani explains how Founders need to be ‘built to last’ meaning that they find a way to flourish in the treacherous adventure of entrepreneurship. He believes such Founders have a strong and positive spirit from within that can withstand all discouragement they may experience along the way. He works towards being a ‘rational optimist’, being relentlessly positive while still keeping his feet firmly on the ground. He pushes us to really think about bringing our typical Founder optimism into reality. That we can create our own luck when we are open enough to see opportunities, optimistic enough to believe we can make them real, and then to put the wheels in motion to do just that (no matter what!). On the subject of luck, many times it may feel there are lucky Founders but, we certainly realise that many are hard at work creating their own luck, Wisani being one of them.
“Solving niche challenges Founders face”.
Illustrator: Lisa Williams (Instagram: @artist_llw)