After a board meltdown that shook Kenya’s first cloud infrastructure startup Angani, its former CEO Phares Kariuki and CTO Brian Muita are returning with a new venture within the cloud computing space.
Dubbed Node Africa, the venture is a VMware managed service provider partnership. There is demand for local cloud hosting, as was demonstrated with Angani’s initial success. Some users migrated their hosted services, websites and data to Angani, although the scandal has since shaken user confidence.
The Angani saga, as it came to be known, brought the relationship between founders and investors to the fore. When startups take funding, they often have to cede some control and equity in their startups. While this is standard practice, the situation at Angani is an example of when founders and investors disagree.
Startups are like children, and the founders are the proud parents who aren’t too sure about whether they are ready to walk, but they still watch and clap as they take their first steps. For them to give up something so precious, they need to put safeguards in, while at the same time ensuring that investors get value for their money.
Startups need to read through the clauses in investment agreements to determine what exactly will happen to their startups once they take external funding
The demand for local hosting is still robust, and it should be interesting to see how the Kenyan tech community will respond to this new venture.
Node Africa will be launched later this month.