What it takes to go all in

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Canadian entrepreneur Mike Quinn will reveal what it takes to pioneer a tech start-up in Africa with the release of Failing to Win, a candid recollection of his time spent building Zoona, a billion-dollar company on a quest to create a cashless Africa.

“Failing to Win is my honest glimpse inside the black box of pioneering a start-up in Africa and the journey I took towards connecting impact investors with purpose-driven African entrepreneurs,” says Quinn. “It’s been incredible to watch Africa’s tech start-up wave grow over the past couple of years, and I am hoping that my book can help positively influence the ecosystem to give these companies a better chance, so that my failures can help them to win.”

Quinn emigrated to Africa in 2009 with a mission to find entrepreneurs building scalable, highimpact businesses.

In Lusaka, Zambia, he met two brothers who were starting a business to help unbanked smallscale farmers receive mobile payments in a market where cash was king.

With his partners, Quinn led Zoona to build a network of 2 500 entrepreneurs across Zambia and Malawi, enabling millions of unbanked customers to send and receive $2.5 billion (R37 billion) in money transfers and remittances. By 2019, Zoona had raised over $30 million of venture investment and operated on the leading edge of Africa’s emerging fintech ecosystem.

Former Zoona board chair Charles Niehaus said: “This book is a first-hand account of how Mike and the leadership team experienced the euphoria of exponential growth, the challenges of cash burn and funding constraints, the Black Swan events that shaped business decisions, and the game theory a start-up faces when taking on the big players.”

For Quinn’s former partner and chief financial officer Keith Davis, the book is vital literature for any would-be African entrepreneur.

He said: “Mike and I worked closely together for eight of his 10 years. He has managed to capture in vivid detail the myriad challenges we faced along the way. Failing to Win is a must-read for anyone who has or will start a business in Africa.”

Failing to Win has already generated excitement on social media, with former FNB chief executive and fintech entrepreneur Michael Jordaan tweeting:

We can learn [maybe more] from failures

“Far too often we focus on start-up success stories. But we can learn just as much [or maybe more] from failures...”

Quinn has started a Thundafund page to raise the $20 000 he needs to publish.

To bring his book to light, Quinn has partnered with awardwinning storyteller and editor Rory O’Conor, who helped him shape and edit the story, and draw out his most important insights.

Failing to Win will soon be finished and published via Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing, audible and traditional printing houses.

Make a pledge at https://www. thundafund.com/project/failing_ to_win.