Interview with Sam Majani the founder and CEO of Ghafla

Sam Majani, Founder & CEO of Ghafla

Cool and gloomy weather couldn’t keep us off the balcony. We settled there, both Majani and I, summoned by the view overlooking the lush, carefully manicured gardens of his family residence. The conversation started off slow, discussing how small the world seemed because of all the acquaintances we shared and then dipped a toe in geo-politics and business. We discussed past mistakes and laughed at them but made sure to underscore the lessons learnt. Ghafla was is steadily growing and is currently present in 6 countries across Africa; Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda and South Africa. This is an impressive feat given all that the company has been through.

When the laughter peaked and started to fizzle into silence, the entire mood shifted and I fired the first question at him:

Who is Sam Majani?

A man doing his best to make a small dent in this world.

Tell us more about your background; What was your childhood like? Did you enjoy it? Who were your role models?

I feel like I should just say Ben Carson like every otherKenyan kid but mine was an obscure programmer calledHideo Kojima whose work I came across early in life.

b. Looking back were there any personality traits in your early life that signaled a career in Media and business?

No, I was forced into this life by circumstances. Theentrepreneur life chose me �

c. Do you feel that education has adequately equipped you for your career?

I do believe my time at Strathmore School was key ininstilling principles of self-discipline that are key tosucceeding in life. If there's one thing that school isgood for, it's that teaching of discipline.

You had the idea of a Kenyan lyrics site before you started Ghafla. How did that go?

It was a success for what it was, but the market forKenyan lyrics is just not that big at the end of the dayand I had to grow past it.

What was the vision you had when starting out Ghafla in your bedroom?

My vision was to make the Kenyan entertainmentindustry a part of everyday mainstream discussions, andI think that has happened. Back in the day you wouldn'thave people discussing celebrity lives daily like you donow, and I think Ghafla was a big part of driving thatshift, since we were the first to do daily entertainmentnews in Kenya.

Sam Majani

What qualities do you look for in the team that you work with?

We are now a remote company, hence self-drive is crucialto our operation. That is the key quality I look for inhiring nowadays.

What do you say back to those who call Ghafla a ‘fakenews’ outlet?

Originally we were hyper focused on quantity of content,since we were the first to do daily entertainment newsin Kenya. That was our competitive advantage but itmeant that quality was compromised. Now that all mediacompanies have a daily entertainment news arm, theshift is now on quality as a competitive advantage.

How do you come up with new ideas?

The trends online inform most of my decisionseditorially. The internet is a constantly shifting landscapethat will sweep you off if you don't adapt yourself to thetimes.

When building a career, how should one choose which company to work with?

In this Kenyan economy is there room for being superchoosy? I’d sat take any good offer that comes! :D

Are there any missed opportunities that you wish you leveraged?

Not really. I always take a stab at opportunities that I seeas lucrative. If it succeeds, well and good, and if it fails, atleast I tried.

Have you invested in any companies or start-ups? If so, what qualities do you/would you look for in companies that are potential investments?

I have invested but not in the way people imagine. I mostlyhelp friends and family who I know are good for it. Thepoint isn’t to get a return on that investment but to helpmore companies succeed.

What is the greatest challenge you’ve faced while building your career?

My main challenges are mostly personal and psychological.I have a predisposition to addiction, hence typically whenI find something I like to do, I go for it 200%. Before Istarted Ghafla, I was out of the house for the first time, andI went wild with the taste of freedom and tried everything.This is where I discovered my predisposition to addiction. Iwent hard into drinking and partying and ended up beingdiscontinued from school. I hit rock bottom! It was verydifficult. This is where I learnt that I have to consciouslyreign myself back to normalcy when I find myself going todeep into any particular thing.

As hard as this period was it taught me how turn myweaknesses into strengths and I focused my addictivepersonality onto ghafla, from my bedroom and the rest, asthe say, was history.

What turbulence was present at the beginning of your partnership with Ringier?

I’ll have to pass on this. I said enough on the techweezinterview.

How should the average start-up prepare for share sale or a buyout?

Honestly, the best time to be bought out is when youdon’t need to be bought out. All the technicalities aside,a buyout is basically just a negotiation and you want to bethe party that can afford to be somewhat belligerent andunreasonable, because they need you more than you needthem. In my situation this wasn’t the case but I tried tonavigate it best I could. However a good example of what Imean is Facebook’s acquisition of what’s app. They spentabout 19 Billion to purchase whats-app, while the companywas only generating tens of millions per year. Facebook’sneed to stay relevant made them spend a lot more thanthey needed to.

What was it like re-inventing yourself and your company?

I thought that selling would solve all my problems. But aftertrying to sell and it not working out I realized that the bestthing would be to re-jig it in a way that works. A few thingswere making it difficult to run the business one of whichwas the aggressive style of writing. A style of writing whereno line was too far to cross and you’ll write anything aslong as it’s facts. It really wore me down. So one of my firstmoves was to soften the editorial.

The point has always been to inspire an emotional reaction,and looking at things in hindsight, and especially throughthe lens of analytics, articles with a more positive sentimentget more hits. We’ve focused on this way of doing thingsthat can be described as ‘lovey-dovey’ or cute but it’s easyeven just for me. We found out that we don’t have to leanon shock value and that comes with a lot of ease for me,because there are no more threats of lawsuits, no moreangry phone-calls demanding that I take down articles andso on. Hehe.

Also making the business work-from home made thingseasier, because you were decentralizing operations. In case

Sam Majani

of anything like power outages at one home, the rest are still delivering on their services.

It also spared the expense of rent and office utilities, meaning I had a bit more profit to play around with.

How do you define and measure success?

Before I started all this I had two big dreams in my life; creating software that would be widely used globally and playing a role in helping local Kenyan artists make an impression globally. See, I’m a hardcore fan of Kenyan music, like Hard core. I went to Strathmore School where local music was seen as shady, and so the only real fans of local music were me and a friend of mine called Martin Maina. And that’s all we’d talk about, the music and how they moved on the local radio station charts.

I felt that, and still do, it’s a point of pride to celebrate local content and I envisioned something where we would constantly discuss local music and the local music Industry. I have seen the role that these music channels like, MTV Africa and Channel O, played in building the hype and credibility of Nigerian and South Africa Music. For me success would be using my platform to do the same thing for local music that these channels did for Nigerian and South African music.

In your own words, what can be done to allow for African start-ups to compete globally?

I feel like that there are some that do. The issue is‘prophets’ don’t get any recognition in their home town. But

we have start-ups like Ushahidi which is one of the leadingin terms of disaster management.

Another Kenyan company that has surprised me is SportPesa. Despite them being in a moral grey area they aredoing amazing things. It is one of the most searched termswhen you start to rank Betting companies, even globally.

We also have this company, Africa is talking. This companyis leading the charge when it comes to bulk SMS APIs.Recently they raised over a Billion shillings. They form thefoundation where other companies can build on, and theyare consolidating their base by building a network acrossAfrican Telcos.

Do you feel that your career has made you a better person?

Yes, definitely yes. Coming from the rock bottom that Ipreviously described, the career going well does wondersfor esteem. And even as a man, having a good career givesyou even more courage and you can start to experimentand risk even more. It’s a great motivator.

What’s next for Sam Majani?

I’m still all about my hustle. I want to scale Ghafla. The planhas always been to go global. ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊