“Man Godaddy has been in business several years. Angani is growing steadily and it just starting 2 or 3 years ago.”
Isn’t that the foreign advantage we are talking about? Like someone said earlier, the whole point we are trying to make is that it is irresponsible of a government to let its children get into the ring with full grown, well trained athletes. It should protect us as we grow. Maybe when we are both mature then we can go toe to toe
Go on… keep complaining. 
Oh wow! A lot has happened and we’ve indeed come full circle:
From
to
We even got ‘advantage’
But the best…is beef! Now you’re talking…we need the rest of the ‘meat’!
BTW, where’s @Ubarab? You’ve been very quiet for a post you started. No worries, I’m sure you will share the thesis that you’re researching…
That’s it…my radar quota used for the month all used up on one post! 
Another very great quote that clarifies what we’ve been trying to express. Please preach on. What’s getting to me and burning me is that those that are lying know that they are lying. You know that you are losing and yet you keep on lying. You know that you are suffering and smiling. Just keep it real and call a spade a spade.
Clever snides. Well taken out of context.
Actually caught myself laughing at the beef one. 
The post could do without the one about “advantage”. Lost me!
At the end of the day, i believe we all want the one thing; a successful tech ecosystem. The appeal is for the state to play its part in protecting local entrepreneurs, we are to make sure we keep build businesses worth protecting.
Most replies on Radar
Why did @bobolatech edit @MistaMajani 's comment and remove the part about @onyeka ? This is something I dislike about radar, it is upholding a pseudo hierarchy of users. Very bad for healthy discussion.
It’s not a pseudo-hierarchy. It’s a hierarchy. @bobolatech is a mod, and mods, well, moderate. Mods aren’t supposed to edit other people’s comments though. We’re looking into this.
Not referring to @bobolatech. I’m referring to mods placing some regular users on a pedestal above others.
Talking about this here would be veering way off topic. If you like, you can start this conversation in the meta category. However, I will say that Radar mods, all of whom are either volunteers or TC staff, put no one on pedestals. We follow defined our own set of moderator rules that permit us to intervene only when people flout community guidelines. We can’t ban people for being snide or grouchy. But when they attack other members, post spam or are clearly being trolls, we take swift action.
I am of a mind to make Radar’s moderator handbook public, so we can see how we’re thinking about the responsibility to keep this an open platform for civlised and intelligent conversation. We could make said document open to annotation in fact, so we can get feedback from the community.
If you’re implying I’m held on some sort of pedestal then lol. I wish. Really, this thread is a chore that I stopped reading a while ago, so not only do I not know or care what comment about me was removed, I’m not too interested in getting notifications about this general discussion’s existence.
See Russia protecting their own as we speak
Yeah, right you stopped reading. Lmao.
Thank you Radar mods for restoring the comment.
This topic has the most posts ever of all time on radar.techcabal.com. It comes to show you that people have strong opinions about this which they believe true.
What’s funny? Chances are she came to check what you were talking about after your mention triggered a mail notification.
Thanks, you should know what happened.
Chances are…
This topic is beyond me. And most topics topping radar is simply an iteration of it. What I keep hearing people talk about, especially the ban-the-foreigner team is how big startups come to dominate the local ones.
First, Who says all the best ideas are taken?! As we speak, someone is somewhere building another billion $ business from scratch. You’ll only get to know about this opportunity in another 5 years?
So please stop the whinning that are all the big fishes are taken. I think the problem is most people, and forgive me please, do not think very rigorously.
Also Should anyone be punished for your bad clone executions of Instagram, Facebook and uber because they are powerful?
The rule of the internet is the same. Build a great product. Have a great team. Sell your products. Avoid competition the Peter Thiel way.As easy as that may sound, we fail to figure that out yet as a people. We fail to understand our need to essentially unite forces to build great stuff. It’s obviously ‘rocket surgery’ for us.
Look at the PayPal Mafia. Reid Hoffman, Elon Musk, Max Levchin, The Yammer guy. The Yelp guy. Peter Thiel. That’s a classic case of great guys uniting efforts to build something great. Individually they are all great (look at what they all did after), but as a team together, they were a monster. So with most big important companies when you look at the early engineers and business people.
Until we realize 5 great companies >>> 100 mediocre combined. In fact, Google+Apple+Facebook+Microsoft >>>All the unicorns combined. A unicorn>>>100 mediocre/good companies.
What is at play is the power law. Our Internet is still very nascent. What we should be doing is focusing our efforts to build very few, great companies, and move on from there. Join Paga. Join Konga. Join Delivery science. Join Andela. Help the guys there build. And when these guys exit, they hopefully become investors to the next generation. (BTW, I’m looking to start/join something new).
Complain about Uber all you want. Where is African version of Stripe or anything remotely close?! Everyone knows we need that. Rather than come together and build something truly great, everyone is forming founder/CEO coding prayer request startups, 50th Konga clone, 100th business listing site.
Again compounded by the fact that founders of hopefully-would-be great companies having unfair/unattractive compensation for early joiners. I bet most don’t have equity give out until they mature and start giving to execs that probably weren’t there from day-one.
This is what I think, just in case no one is telling it:
We are lazy, we are mediocre, we are not ambitious enough, we don’t cooperate enough and try to build something great together(founder mentality is really hurting), and yes, we don’t think deeply enough…gra gra everytime on everything.
The quality of great talents around might just be enough to combine to build say 5 fantastic companies going after a major needs. But no, we will rather build badly executed clones of foreign startups or even local ones and then cry like a baby when things don’t go our way.
The gods will only bless the hands that work. Our products suck. Simple and blank. Our execution is horrible. That’s the truth. Startups around don’t have great teams(everybody is a CEO). We don’t help one another. Critics are labelled haters.
Until we fix our house, we will keep building shitty products. And keep claiming we are not getting attention. Your product is shit. Don’t you get it. And when we see someone doing great, rather go round to help build with the person, we open a new shop to copy. And the person we intend to join is perhaps trying to use the joiners, and not reward accordingly. Take all the glory, and play god.
I can go on and on. This topic started with how uber is killing bus, oya et al. Can the OP honestly compare the execution quality of both companies?
Besides why bother fighting a war you’ll never win. Again to the same topic that, we like gra-gra too much and our tendency to wanting to be called founder/ceo causes us to rush into bad ideas, that will probably lead no where and pushing out shit too early. What we have at the moment are startups at the intersection of bad idea and bad execution from an obviously not-so-great team. How worse can it go again? Are you going to blaim Travis(of Uber) or the Collison brothers(of Stripe) for your bad thinking?
The other day we were talking about why there is no unicorn in Africa and why it is hard to build value. I guess we should sit some day and talk the matter and be as brutally honest as we can all be.
One more thing, we’re not as smart as like to think we are actually. And after all. Forget all these machine learning hackathons here and there. Like killing a cockcroach with an atom bomb. Too much of intellectual dishonesty with ego, greed and quick chase for fame(oh I was featured on BBC!) and fortune.
“Banning” foreign apps is definitely out of the question. Restriction might be a better term, but even then I don’t think that’s the solution we need.
Look, it all comes down to quality as some other folks have said. App production is actually pretty straightforward. Not saying its easy, but its a straightforward process. An Art Director, a Designer, a Programmer (all at the top of their game) and 6 - 12 months are all you need to build a solid, polished app.
I’ve talked about this before, but sometimes I feel like we have this mentality to copy trends and push products out (much like our movie industry) for quick returns. Why are we so lazy? It took Uber over year from the company’s founding to release their beta, and then a year after that for their full release. That’s why they are “killing our local startups”. They have invested the time. That kind of quality cannot be produced in a few weeks.
People are naturally drawn to polished design. It’s the little things that count. Have your buttons squiggle when pressed. Have clean, animated UI transitions. Have pleasing sound effects. It’s that extra 20% that puts you a step above the rest, but it cannot be attained by rushing to market to make quick buck.
So while I agree that there might be benefits to foreign app restriction, I think what we really need is a mentality shift in how we do things.