Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 3/5

Knott Craig: Tech startups should never compete against American tech giants

Alan Knott Craig · a16z Podcast | Things Come Together -- Truths about Tech in Africa · Jan 2, 2019 · at 31:11

Alan Knott Craig, South African entrepreneur and former CEO of messaging app Mixit, reflects on how Mixit was displaced by American competitors like WhatsApp once smartphones emerged.

0:00 / 0:03exact quote · 4.0s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“One of the lessons is never, ever go up against American companies.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from Alan Knott Craig

Opinion
Knott Craig: English-speaking sub-Saharan Africa is largely a homogeneous market
“From our perspective, we kind of very much kind of think, you know, at least from an English speaking perspective, sub-Saharan Africa is as close to a homogenous market as you can get.”
Alan Knott Craig Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 4:58 a16z Podcast | Things Come Together -- Truths about Tech in Africa
Assertion Contradicted
Knott Craig: Watching a 7-second 3G video in South Africa costs $20
“If you spend it, if you watch a seven second YouTube video on three G at South African data rates, it'll cost you about 20 dollars, 20 US dollars.”
Alan Knott Craig Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 7:52 a16z Podcast | Things Come Together -- Truths about Tech in Africa
Insight
Knott Craig: Google's blank search page is useless to new internet users
“You can't give people a clean Google page. It's absolutely meaningless for most of the communities we deal with.”
Alan Knott Craig Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 17:53 a16z Podcast | Things Come Together -- Truths about Tech in Africa
Insight
Knott Craig: Outside Silicon Valley, cash flow is the only startup metric
“A lot of people in South Africa and Africa and the rest of the world read those blogs and think that's the holy grail, but there's only one metric and that's cashflow. And advertising is not a business model. One day we'll sell to Google is not a business mode…”
Alan Knott Craig Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 41:00 a16z Podcast | Things Come Together -- Truths about Tech in Africa
Prediction Held up
Knott Craig: WhatsApp has permanently won the messaging market in Africa
“As soon as the smartphone kind of wave started breaking, you know, WhatsApp just won the race. It has won the race. It will win the race.”
Alan Knott Craig Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 31:23 a16z Podcast | Things Come Together -- Truths about Tech in Africa
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Knott Craig: African internet startups struggle due to low connectivity
“For the most part, any internet startup in Africa is really struggling to kind of get any traction in this local market because there's just not enough people on the internet.”
Alan Knott Craig Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 7:10 a16z Podcast | Things Come Together -- Truths about Tech in Africa
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 1,000 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.