NOT SILICON VALLEY THREE YOUNG BUSINESS OWNERS BREAKING THE ENTREPRENEURIAL MOLD. WRITTEN AND PHOTOGRAPHED BY AMANUEL NEGUEDE
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oming from different continents, Maxwell Raymond, Julie Lecuyer and Temesgen Gebrehiwot are three young entrepreneurs who are very different from the typical image of a Silicon Valley startup. I spoke to them about how they started their businesses, the challenges they face and their hopes for the future.
Temesgen Gebrehiwot, ETTA Taxi Services, Ethiopia Sitting behind his desk, Temesgen Gebrehiwot proudly tells me about his business. “We do the same thing Uber does,” he says, “we’re just doing it in Ethiopia.” Gebrehiwot and his partner Ambaye Tesfaye launched a taxi service app in 2016 in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa. Very similar to Uber, their company grew rapidly. Today, alongside a similar service called RIDE, Gebrehiwot and Tesfaye transformed the Ethiopian transportation system. With the help of sponsors, they now control a large portion of the Ethiopian market for phone application taxi services. Their company ETTA (Ethiopian Taxi) operates the exact same way Uber does, as an application that connects taxi drivers to customers. In Ethiopia, internet services are not always guaranteed as electricity shortages or government censorship can occur — only a few months ago, the former Ethiopian prime minister declared a state of emergency and internet service was interrupted for multiple weeks. “Our company suffered a lot!” Gebrehiwot says. “As we run on a lot of ads, we lost a lot of clients.” That is why his company today also offers a call service, in order to directly call an operator who connects you to your driver over the phone. While this system might seem rudimentary, it has proven to be very effective. A graduate from the Korean University of Technology in Seoul, South Korea, Gebrehiwot studied electronic communication with a specialization in robotics, humanoid robot, brain computer interface and data analysis. His studies helped him understand the market he was getting into prior to making any investments. Unlike some entrepreneurs who come up with an idea randomly and pursue it, Gebrehiwot knew exactly what he wanted to do. In his words, “Think big, start small, act now.”
