Driving Global Innovation
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Guhl, Fabian-Carlos
Hunter, Faruq
Wenzelmann, Victoria
In this session, the initiators of the AfricaHackTrip, GeeksGoneGlobal and the FounderBus will compare their experiences related to the synergies of travel and innovation, and discuss the role that travel-based learning initiatives have in the cross-polenization of the global innovation ecosystem.
 Yeah, so we're here today to present our initiatives and also speak about how we can foster collaboration while driving or moving around. And we just discussed earlier today during lunchtime. So how should we present this? And we were saying we don't really know each other yet. So why don't we just keep this as an open discussion? So three of us are just going to speak with each other about why we are doing what we do and what we do. And then we're also asking you to participate and ask you questions. Great. Hi. I put on high heels to be a little bit taller because I'm presenting with two tall guys. So I need to sit down. Great to see so many people. Hello. And yeah, we're the smallest and not organized organizations. So Farooq, hey, why do you do the thing you do? Yeah, it came across that I think that we all do the travel for different reasons. And sometimes you can come off the same, but I think that the power is in the intention. And I don't know why I'm going first. I like to go last. But I think maybe it helps if I just say kind of what I do or what we do in the past round. And then I'll say why we do it now. So I founded the organization called Geese Going Global. It's not an organization, it's an initiative of a bigger organization called Genes Core. But what we do is we take people around the world, other innovators, innovators, investors, people who have social conscious. We also take professionals to meet like people, other innovators inside other countries in the world. Our goal is just to kind of cross-pollinate the knowledge and increase the connections via those individuals and kind of let them come to their own conclusions once we put them together. So we do that in a form of four to six country trips that we do within two weeks. And so we bounce around like two to three days in each country. And then we have like three goals in each country. And that's just to figure out what the lay of the land is, how the hell you can do that in three days. And then also to meet with the innovative people. And then the last but not least is to have a hell of a lot of fun doing it so that they gel and they stick and the relationships last beyond our trips. And where are you doing this? Why? Where? What cities, countries? So we have the goal is we have GeeseCon Global 180 that lasts between 2013-2015 to go to 180 countries by the end of 2015. We've covered 20 and we have 27 we'll cover this year. And then 2015 we're preparing for right now is to be the year of trips. I don't think I'll see my kids the whole time. That is very impressive. So it's your turn to say what you do. Is it my turn now? Yes, it's your turn. Okay. I thought we were impressive already covering five, four countries in five weeks. I'm Vicky. I'm from Africa Hacktrip. Africa Hacktrip was just a thing that we did. It started as an idea and it materialized into something really cool. It's nine hackers, software developers and web designers. Just going to East Africa to check out what's happening there. Because we read an article by Eric Kersman from the IHUB who wrote for BBC about the tech hubs and the emerging boom. And Gregor was like, okay, cool. Who's coming? Let's check this out. A lot of people responded to that and at the end of the preparation phase, we were seven boys, two girls going to Africa and meeting loads of people and we didn't know what to expect. They didn't know what to expect of us. So we just showed up there and we hosted barcams and hackathons. And yeah, just had a really great time. One of our taglines is also that we enjoy party machen. So we party a lot as well. And yeah, John is laughing in the first row there. Yeah, we just wanted to connect. We wanted to meet people, get to know people, make friends. Because we work in Berlin, then we work in San Francisco, we go to Zurich to Amsterdam, Sydney, anything. But no one ever thought about, hey, I can also go to a co-working space. And Nairobi or Kampala and just work from there. And one of our goals was also to bring our experience back to our communities and get more people from our communities to just pack their bag and stay in Nairobi for a month. And during the last couple of days, I've been talking to so many people from so many hubs. So it's not just Nairobi. You can also go anywhere in the world and just work on your stuff there and do a lot of party machen. So yeah, that's us. So Fabian. Hey, Vicky. No, you're adding something to that. It's getting, we're getting back to the hectic bit because they are also faster than us. Right. So I'm Fabian from FaunaBus Africa. I'm from Berlin. I have a background in development cooperation, but also in entrepreneurship. So I've been working in the startup tax scene since 2010. I've been founding two companies. I've been working for an investor and I've also been working for a big corporation. And then we thought, hey, how about working on the intersection of these two worlds, development cooperation, but also entrepreneurship with a focus on ICT. And this is how we came up with the idea of FaunaBus, which is a tool to enable entrepreneurs in emerging markets to work on startups and realize their startup ideas who are ideally solving local issues. So how does that work? We select people from many applicants typically, and we put a focus on three different backgrounds, mainly hackers, so it's people who can code, but also web designers and business experts. We work on three different disciplines, healthcare, energy, but also education. So we invite these people to our kickoff, which took place last year in November in Harara and Zimbabwe, and we would take part of the opening of the first incubator back in Harara called HyperCube. So on the first day, our participants, 40 people from all over the world, mainly Africans, get on the bus, pitch their ideas, so it's 40 strangers, and one might say, hey, I'm from Zimbabwe, and I have an idea of an application, a mobile app that is fighting bribery. Or I want to work on an SMS platform connecting construction workers with companies. Or I have an idea for a company, and I want to enable teachers in rural areas to facilitate the process of giving homework to their students. So these three ideas are just three out of eight startup ideas which have been built on a bus during five days while driving 2,500 kilometers from Harari all the way down to Cape Town. We have had electricity on the bus and also internet. So we would hack all day long, brainstorm ideas, get feedback from customers, so our participants would get out of the bus at night in the evening and talk to the target group and gather feedback via landing pages on the internet. We would also, we had some companies or startups on the bus already launching their mobile apps after three days. Because if you have teams which are functioning like real world startups consisting of developers, web designers, and business experts, you can actually build stuff. And this is one of the goals we have. So we stop every day in a different city and we meet the local community. So we would go to a tech hub, invite the local community, interact with them because we also want to spread the word about entrepreneurship. And we want to stimulate and enable young people to be more risk-taking and go for the step to realize their ideas. Yeah, and this is what we do what we are doing. After five days on the bus, we typically drive to a tech conference where we have pitches taking place anyways and we just connect with them and ask, hey, can we stop by with a bus and have eight hours pitching? And they typically say, yeah, please come over. Well, and then they pitch to a couple of investors. And this is basically what we have been doing for the past three years in Europe and then last year for the first time in Africa. And as we are currently thinking of how can we adapt this model to the emerging markets, we are going to add a new initiative to the existing project which we are offering currently and this is a fellowship program. So once our participants are graduating from the bus, they have time to go back to their communities and think of what do I want to do next. And if they want to continue, they can get back to us within three months and say, hey, I want to continue to work on this idea we have been working on the bus. Or they can also say, hey, I really like the idea, but I don't think it's working. So I have a new idea and I might even have a new team. So I want to apply to become a fellow of the founder bus accelerator. And we offer three things to these people who are accepted on our fellowship program. First office space. And this is why we are so happy to be here because it's a great opportunity to meet people around innovation hubs all over Africa. Second, we want to give them mentoring and this is why we are glad that we met VC for Africa. They have a great mentoring platform online and obviously also venture capital which might be very important in the future of our startups. And then third, obviously seed capital. And we are not going to invest the seed capital directly into their startup ideas because 90% of all our participants are changing their business models constantly. And it's not about investing into a particular business model. It is more about investing into people who really want to make a change and who have the capabilities to do so. And this is why we are giving the fellowship program basically to people directly and not to companies. Because if you have people who might have a family and need to survive, we think it makes sense to help these people directly to live their lives and pivot on the startup ideas they have. Cool. Thanks. That was Fabian who was worried that half an hour is such a long time to fill. Sorry. You saw the look I was getting. So you can tell that there's lots of common ground here and some differences as well. And one thing that's, I mean, it's really, I met Farouk today in the morning. So I'm really, and we decided we don't do pre-discussion discussion. So I really want to know that. Why? Why the hell did you start this? I mean, this is so hectic. You said yourself you don't see your kids probably next year. So why? What drives you? So I'm an interesting person, period. Period. My personal, a little piece of my personal background is that I'm a geek. I'm a nerd for real. I graduated high school when I was 13. And then I went off to Africa in the Khartoum and studied at Jamia Ta'afrik, learned enough Arabic to forget it. But the thing, my why was a little different. I was traveling around the world. We started this consulting firm. And we were doing work in developing countries and everything else. And after going and setting up our company in about 65 countries and going after all the donor money and everything else and working on things, I just got irritated after a while. I started seeing things. I'd have a guy who was like the prime minister of the country put me in a car, drive us around the country to show us all the wonderful things they had. And I think I hit my frustration point in Romania, actually. And we were being driven around Romania showing all of these materials that people had. And look, we have all of this magnesium, this carbon, and blah, blah, blah. And we rode into one place. And I remember it's a very famous place. It has the largest deposit of magnesium in the world. And they were trying to convince us to go back home to the United States and bring people over to mine the magnesium. But when we drove through, there was this village of like 2,500 people. They were living rough. Their houses were very rudimentary. And I asked about the education level of the people there. And it was very low. And then when we rode after the magnesium space, and we were told about how we needed to go fish for people to cough up millions of bucks and blah, blah, blah. We rode into another place on the other side of the village, which was this whole string of manufacturing plants from the Russian times. And they'd all been shut down. But what amazed me is that they had machines that made machines. That's what was in the place. Right? So I'm like, dude, like you've got everything you need to solve any problem you can come up with. And you have the nerve to bring my behind here and ask me what I can do for you. And the guys were trying to redevelop the manufacturing plant. And I said, well, why don't you just educate the kids in the village to come to build some 3D printers, other things like that. You know, the SLS process in 3D printing that you're selective layer sithering basically uses magnesium as its base in order to fire off the carbon laser. And you can build anything from that point. I said, you've got the stuff right there. The freaking river is yellow with minerals. And they looked at me like, but we need money. And that's what kind of sparked the whole Gisco and Global thing is that we're trying to solve a problem. Right? We've kind of seen this trend amongst people who are suffering from what we call poverty. And it's because they focus too hard on money. They think money is the resolution to it. And somehow we forgot that money is only a currency that's supposed to buy resources from those who have the knowledge to produce finished goods. So the reality is, is what happened? Why did we get there? Why are some people suffering? Why are we going through that? And when you look at the capitalistic system, we said, okay, there was a process of stripping knowledge from people. And when you strip knowledge and you took knowledge away from the folks that originated from, that knowledge grew up somewhere else. So now there's this huge responsibility to take these centers of knowledge and put them back around the world and then re-collaborate so that people can do what they were doing when they were disrupted, which was solving their own problems. And so that's what the whole Gisco and Global thing is about. It's about going to every single country on the planet Earth with more than 200,000 people and reinserting that knowledge and taking back some as well. So a collaborative, a true collaborative event. That's why we don't try to overplan it. And you know what, the joke that we had earlier was, Fabian, look, we were talking about what we were going to talk about. And I told Fabian that we had this thing called Geeks on a Bus. And he looked at me like, what the hell? And I said, you know, Fabian, I was just trying to get your attention when I did it. We bit a big hoopla about it. But the idea was I wanted to work with Founder Bus to get something done because one of the things we do at Geeks on Global is we realize we don't have the solution. We instead know that there's great things happening everywhere. And our sole responsibility is just to attach those wonderful people to each other and then increase the amount of, I use the word hoopla a lot, but the amount of excitement that's around it so that more people are drawn to it. And I don't want to extend myself too long. But the most exciting thing that I have happened is that when we go into a country, we work from the angle of a lot of political type people sometimes because this is my former consulting life. But then when you bring the politicals, the traditional people, the traditional leaders, and the innovative leaders all in the same room, you force them to meet you in one place, in the hubs. They look around and say, what the hell? This has been here all this time? Farouk, how do you come from this other country? And you come tell me what's in my country. I didn't even know it was here. The beauty of it is that we're just simply making people acknowledge the value of this space that people term as innovation, but in all honesty, it's just people coming up with wonderful ways to live better, to grow, solve their problems with the knowledge that they have. So that's kind of the purpose behind Gisborne Global. That's what we're trying to achieve at this moment. So I'm not going to skip you because you're trying to wig out of it. I would really love what in the hell would motivate a couple of guys in Berlin beyond just reading some cool stories about Africa. And literally to say, I'm going in, I had one of the guys from Africa hack trip, he said, you know, dude, I wish we could have stayed another three months. What was the real motivation, the feeling internally to want to go down to Africa and mingle? And you guys are something that I don't think either one of us do. You stayed longer and you went to the pubs and stuff like that. What was the motivation behind that? I think mainly curiosity and this drive you have to go out and meet and learn and share. And I'm totally serious here. We all would have probably traveled and done something similar on our own. We do hacker beach. We do, like we are those digital nomads. And we just, it's just that it's Africa. And sometimes you're like, oh, wow, Africa. And I don't know how many of us would have gone to Rwanda on our own. And if you team up, it's like a little less work, you think. Don't know if that's true. But you team up and you find a group of people that are like-minded and you just start organizing and it develops this drive for itself and you get people excited. Like, I mean, before we left, we were really not sure how well this would work because we know that lots of corporates are coming through Africa at the moment into the tech hubs and someone said earlier they sometimes feel like they are in a museum because they are showcasing themselves every day, all the same lines, all the same questions. Yeah, and so we try to be different and we actually, I think, succeeded. And we just want to say, hey, it's possible. And we want to open up the world and put all these places that are like Romania. I've never been to Romania. And you just put that on my map. And I want to put countries- Yeah, exactly. That's how this whole thing works. And Zimbabwe, hello, tech hub innovation in Zimbabwe of all places. That is awesome. I mean, and that is what drives us. We're curious and we want to connect. And that's about it. I'd love to hear more about the barcams you're organizing when you're going to these tech hubs because I have never been to a barcam. I always wanted to go and I'd love to hear more about this. Funny. I have never been to a barcam before in Nairobi either. So it was actually funny because I talked to Nanjira on Skype before we went. And I was like, girl, I have no idea what we need. We need a board and pens. And now talk to the guys, please. I don't know. And luckily, Jan and Martin were on the Skype call too. So they could do that. But yeah, the barcamp, it's really cool. It's like an unconference. And if you Google that, you find something cool too. So a conference that's not a conference where you don't have a program in advance. You just bring the people together. Everybody very quickly introduces themselves. And then they say what they're interested in. And then you say, OK, hey, who of you wants to host a session? And then people do come up with that because it's that kind of people. It's those people that do have something they want to talk about and that they want to share. And you put it on a board. You arrange it a little bit. You sometimes put topics together. And then people spend the whole day talking about things they're interested in and teaching each other and asking each other questions. And we had a zillion topics. It's all on our blog, but it was crazy much. One of the things I really, really liked a lot was the cultural aspects of UX design. How do you have to design things differently in different cultures? What works here might not work somewhere else. And it was for many of the participants also the first bar camp that they had gone to. And I guess that they all do their own bar camps now. So many things just happened from getting those people into physical proximity into the same room. They started user groups. They will do conferences by themselves now. And it's super cool. And I mean, obviously, if you're sitting there saying, hey, guys, we were privately funded. No one backs us. And it's possible to do that. We're Africa Hectrip. Then someone will say, hey, that means I'm Euro Hectrip. And it's actually, it's happening. And we're like super excited because Euro Hectrip is coming to Germany, the Netherlands, sorry, Switzerland and France in this year in the fall. So far it's only Africans, but they're pretty open to everyone. And I just love it that we spread this attitude and that we have people who are feeling the same need to spread this kind of life. Yeah. I've got a question for you, Fabien. I think we've got two things that happen every time we set out and travel, right? So one is when you travel in a group, the people you travel with are having this huge experience together. And they get bonded in a way that's very unique. And the second is that you meet people and you bond with the people that you meet. But it seems like the founder bus focuses a lot on the bond of the people on the bus primarily. What is the magic there and how do you see the outcomes afterwards? The guys who've been on the bus, how are their interactions after the fact? Yeah. A great question. So it's a very hard challenge to sort of pick the right candidates. So last year, when we had our first bus in November, we received more than 250 applications for only 40 spots on the bus. And we received applications from hackers, 16 years old from Zimbabwe, but also from senior people, let's say the CTO of Visa Africa, who's 43 years old, but also executives from Silicon Valley who wanted to be on the bus. And we saw these applications and we thought, okay, what is our focus? We want to help young people to build companies or enable them to build companies. But these guys, like the successful entrepreneurs who have built companies and maybe even sold companies before, they also want to be on the bus. So who do we put on the bus? So let's just mix them. And we took 50% Africans and 50% rest of the world entrepreneurs. And then all teams have been not only multidisciplinary, but also multicultural. And this is a great experience because you have a global knowledge transfer, which is happening. And in the end, you have a team which might be functioning on a global level. And the fact that you have a very experienced person on board might mean for you in the future that you have a business angel, somebody with a network and a certain experience. And so it's a lot about developing people on the bus because we say we live entrepreneurship. You can't really teach it. We say, hey, we put you guys on a bus. You all have to build companies and pitch them after only five days. So it is a real life entrepreneurial experience. And there's people who have not been founding companies before they've been on the bus. So this is something we are also trying to do. We want to give these young people the first glimpse of what entrepreneurship is about. And then ideally after the bus, they say, hey, I want to quit my job now and I want to build this company with this crazy guy from this country. Yeah. So this is the outcome. And then in terms of the actual startups, we have built eight startups last year and three of them are still active. Two of them have won several awards. So that is some of the outcome, but obviously it's not only about developing people and building startups. It's also about nourishing the ecosystem. Also putting the whole topic on the media because we think that Africa is still not at its best height in terms of image. So this is why we also do a lot of PR work. So we have been covered by most of the international broadcasters, which we think is a great success because we put the ICT topic and entrepreneurship topic in Africa on the global agenda. And on top of that, we highlight the particular countries we are going to. So it is also some sort of ICT roadshow we are doing. Should we open up the panel? Yeah, I think so. So any questions from anybody? Because this half hour thing is really short and we all like to speak a lot. Sorry. Any questions? I don't see much, but yeah. Nanjir? Thanks. Hi. I have a question. I mean, mainly for Farouk, but I think all of you guys would be interested. It has to do with the fine line between surfing places and actually hunkering down and staying long enough to not only get more out of it, but do it. How do you, as a taking a strategic consultant approach, how would you look at that and maybe you say, well, we are here for a day because we are going to go to the next country, but somebody is going to come back and stay for three months. I don't know. How do you look at that? No, I got you. But that is what we are challenged with anyway. A lot of people will always ask, what am I going to get out of this? Because unlike a lot of other travel things, we force everybody to pay. One of the things that we do by forcing everybody to pay is we say, okay, look, if you want to go, then you will pay to go. That means that you have to have a specific interest. Plus I need to send a message to everybody we meet that they don't have to ask someone else permission to solve their problems. We came on our own dime. They can go and do things on their own dime. They are strong enough. But as far as giving things back, it is a very strategic thing. When you go out, if you think for the hunter-gatherer type concept, it is very much a hunter-type trip. We are looking to go in, figure out what you can figure out on a land, what is going on, search it, fill it, squeeze it. And then we leave like one of the key things we do is leave 80% of our schedule open. So the idea is that when we get there, we want to connect with the folks we couldn't find online and have them tell us what's up. And then start moving around and do that kind of thing. The idea is that the people who have come will go back themselves as well as communicate to other people why they should go back. That the real power of the trip is that the connection between those individuals, even if they never have an idea what Farooq Hunter or Gieskoan Global is and they forget that it exists, that those two people maintain a relationship. And the power of sitting down, breaking bread, looking someone in the eye, I connect with Willie online way before we started Gieskoan Global and just seeing him right here, I think we spent 20 minutes with each other. And I said, wow, that's Willie. Hey, what's up? So there's nothing that can make up that power. And if you want to say, how do you write it down on sheet of paper, and you say, okay, it's the connection that will actually take us to the next step. Any other questions? Actually, we don't have time for more questions. But you guys are around and you're available and you like to chat. So, you know, that's all you make it. Please give them a round of applause. Thank you so much. Thank you for this. Great. So we're going to have. Amazing.
 Yeah, so we're here today to present our initiatives and also speak about how we can  foster collaboration while driving or moving around.  And we just discussed earlier today during lunchtime.  So how should we present this?  And we were saying we don't really know each other yet.  So why don't we just keep this as an open discussion?  So three of us are just going to speak with each other about why we are doing what we  do and what we do.  And then we're also asking you to participate and ask you questions.  Great.  Hi.  I put on high heels to be a little bit taller because I'm presenting with two tall guys.  So I need to sit down.  Great to see so many people.  Hello.  And yeah, we're the smallest and not organized organizations.  So Farooq, hey, why do you do the thing you do?  Yeah, it came across that I think that we all do the travel for different reasons.  And sometimes you can come off the same, but I think that the power is in the intention.  And I don't know why I'm going first.  I like to go last.  But I think maybe it helps if I just say kind of what I do or what we do in the past round.  And then I'll say why we do it now.  So I founded the organization called Geese Going Global.  It's not an organization, it's an initiative of a bigger organization called Genes Core.  But what we do is we take people around the world, other innovators, innovators, investors,  people who have social conscious.  We also take professionals to meet like people, other innovators inside other countries in  the world.  Our goal is just to kind of cross-pollinate the knowledge and increase the connections  via those individuals and kind of let them come to their own conclusions once we put  them together.  So we do that in a form of four to six country trips that we do within two weeks.  And so we bounce around like two to three days in each country.  And then we have like three goals in each country.  And that's just to figure out what the lay of the land is, how the hell you can do that  in three days.  And then also to meet with the innovative people.  And then the last but not least is to have a hell of a lot of fun doing it so that they  gel and they stick and the relationships last beyond our trips.  And where are you doing this?  Why?  Where?  What cities, countries?  So we have the goal is we have GeeseCon Global 180 that lasts between 2013-2015 to go to  180 countries by the end of 2015.  We've covered 20 and we have 27 we'll cover this year.  And then 2015 we're preparing for right now is to be the year of trips.  I don't think I'll see my kids the whole time.  That is very impressive.  So it's your turn to say what you do.  Is it my turn now?  Yes, it's your turn.  Okay.  I thought we were impressive already covering five, four countries in five weeks.  I'm Vicky.  I'm from Africa Hacktrip.  Africa Hacktrip was just a thing that we did.  It started as an idea and it materialized into something really cool.  It's nine hackers, software developers and web designers.  Just going to East Africa to check out what's happening there.  Because we read an article by Eric Kersman from the IHUB who wrote for BBC about the  tech hubs and the emerging boom.  And Gregor was like, okay, cool.  Who's coming?  Let's check this out.  A lot of people responded to that and at the end of the preparation phase, we were seven  boys, two girls going to Africa and meeting loads of people and we didn't know what to  expect.  They didn't know what to expect of us.  So we just showed up there and we hosted barcams and hackathons.  And yeah, just had a really great time.  One of our taglines is also that we enjoy party machen.  So we party a lot as well.  And yeah, John is laughing in the first row there.  Yeah, we just wanted to connect.  We wanted to meet people, get to know people, make friends.  Because we work in Berlin, then we work in San Francisco, we go to Zurich to Amsterdam,  Sydney, anything.  But no one ever thought about, hey, I can also go to a co-working space.  And Nairobi or Kampala and just work from there.  And one of our goals was also to bring our experience back to our communities and get  more people from our communities to just pack their bag and stay in Nairobi for a month.  And during the last couple of days, I've been talking to so many people from so many hubs.  So it's not just Nairobi.  You can also go anywhere in the world and just work on your stuff there and do a lot  of party machen.  So yeah, that's us.  So Fabian.  Hey, Vicky.  No, you're adding something to that.  It's getting, we're getting back to the hectic bit because they are also faster than us.  Right.  So I'm Fabian from FaunaBus Africa.  I'm from Berlin.  I have a background in development cooperation, but also in entrepreneurship.  So I've been working in the startup tax scene since 2010.  I've been founding two companies.  I've been working for an investor and I've also been working for a big corporation.  And then we thought, hey, how about working on the intersection of these two worlds, development  cooperation, but also entrepreneurship with a focus on ICT.  And this is how we came up with the idea of FaunaBus, which is a tool to enable entrepreneurs  in emerging markets to work on startups and realize their startup ideas who are ideally  solving local issues.  So how does that work?  We select people from many applicants typically, and we put a focus on three different backgrounds,  mainly hackers, so it's people who can code, but also web designers and business experts.  We work on three different disciplines, healthcare, energy, but also education.  So we invite these people to our kickoff, which took place last year in November in  Harara and Zimbabwe, and we would take part of the opening of the first incubator back  in Harara called HyperCube.  So on the first day, our participants, 40 people from all over the world, mainly Africans,  get on the bus, pitch their ideas, so it's 40 strangers, and one might say, hey, I'm  from Zimbabwe, and I have an idea of an application, a mobile app that is fighting bribery.  Or I want to work on an SMS platform connecting construction workers with companies.  Or I have an idea for a company, and I want to enable teachers in rural areas to facilitate  the process of giving homework to their students.  So these three ideas are just three out of eight startup ideas which have been built  on a bus during five days while driving 2,500 kilometers from Harari all the way down to  Cape Town.  We have had electricity on the bus and also internet.  So we would hack all day long, brainstorm ideas, get feedback from customers, so our  participants would get out of the bus at night in the evening and talk to the target group  and gather feedback via landing pages on the internet.  We would also, we had some companies or startups on the bus already launching their mobile apps  after three days.  Because if you have teams which are functioning like real world startups consisting of developers,  web designers, and business experts, you can actually build stuff.  And this is one of the goals we have.  So we stop every day in a different city and we meet the local community.  So we would go to a tech hub, invite the local community, interact with them because we also  want to spread the word about entrepreneurship.  And we want to stimulate and enable young people to be more risk-taking and go for the  step to realize their ideas.  Yeah, and this is what we do what we are doing.  After five days on the bus, we typically drive to a tech conference where we have pitches  taking place anyways and we just connect with them and ask, hey, can we stop by with a bus  and have eight hours pitching?  And they typically say, yeah, please come over.  Well, and then they pitch to a couple of investors.  And this is basically what we have been doing for the past three years in Europe and then  last year for the first time in Africa.  And as we are currently thinking of how can we adapt this model to the emerging markets,  we are going to add a new initiative to the existing project which we are offering currently  and this is a fellowship program.  So once our participants are graduating from the bus, they have time to go back to their  communities and think of what do I want to do next.  And if they want to continue, they can get back to us within three months and say, hey,  I want to continue to work on this idea we have been working on the bus.  Or they can also say, hey, I really like the idea, but I don't think it's working.  So I have a new idea and I might even have a new team.  So I want to apply to become a fellow of the founder bus accelerator.  And we offer three things to these people who are accepted on our fellowship program.  First office space.  And this is why we are so happy to be here because it's a great opportunity to meet people  around innovation hubs all over Africa.  Second, we want to give them mentoring and this is why we are glad that we met VC for  Africa.  They have a great mentoring platform online and obviously also venture capital which might  be very important in the future of our startups.  And then third, obviously seed capital.  And we are not going to invest the seed capital directly into their startup ideas because 90%  of all our participants are changing their business models constantly.  And it's not about investing into a particular business model.  It is more about investing into people who really want to make a change and who have  the capabilities to do so.  And this is why we are giving the fellowship program basically to people directly and not  to companies.  Because if you have people who might have a family and need to survive, we think it makes  sense to help these people directly to live their lives and pivot on the startup ideas  they have.  Cool.  Thanks.  That was Fabian who was worried that half an hour is such a long time to fill.  Sorry.  You saw the look I was getting.  So you can tell that there's lots of common ground here and some differences as well.  And one thing that's, I mean, it's really, I met Farouk today in the morning.  So I'm really, and we decided we don't do pre-discussion discussion.  So I really want to know that.  Why?  Why the hell did you start this?  I mean, this is so hectic.  You said yourself you don't see your kids probably next year.  So why?  What drives you?  So I'm an interesting person, period.  Period.  My personal, a little piece of my personal background is that I'm a geek.  I'm a nerd for real.  I graduated high school when I was 13.  And then I went off to Africa in the Khartoum and studied at Jamia Ta'afrik, learned enough  Arabic to forget it.  But the thing, my why was a little different.  I was traveling around the world.  We started this consulting firm.  And we were doing work in developing countries and everything else.  And after going and setting up our company in about 65 countries and going after all  the donor money and everything else and working on things, I just got irritated after a while.  I started seeing things.  I'd have a guy who was like the prime minister of the country put me in a car, drive us around  the country to show us all the wonderful things they had.  And I think I hit my frustration point in Romania, actually.  And we were being driven around Romania showing all of these materials that people had.  And look, we have all of this magnesium, this carbon, and blah, blah, blah.  And we rode into one place.  And I remember it's a very famous place.  It has the largest deposit of magnesium in the world.  And they were trying to convince us to go back home to the United States and bring people  over to mine the magnesium.  But when we drove through, there was this village of like 2,500 people.  They were living rough.  Their houses were very rudimentary.  And I asked about the education level of the people there.  And it was very low.  And then when we rode after the magnesium space, and we were told about how we needed to go  fish for people to cough up millions of bucks and blah, blah, blah.  We rode into another place on the other side of the village, which was this whole string  of manufacturing plants from the Russian times.  And they'd all been shut down.  But what amazed me is that they had machines that made machines.  That's what was in the place.  Right?  So I'm like, dude, like you've got everything you need to solve any problem you can come  up with.  And you have the nerve to bring my behind here and ask me what I can do for you.  And the guys were trying to redevelop the manufacturing plant.  And I said, well, why don't you just educate the kids in the village to come to build some  3D printers, other things like that.  You know, the SLS process in 3D printing that you're selective layer sithering basically  uses magnesium as its base in order to fire off the carbon laser.  And you can build anything from that point.  I said, you've got the stuff right there.  The freaking river is yellow with minerals.  And they looked at me like, but we need money.  And that's what kind of sparked the whole Gisco and Global thing is that we're trying  to solve a problem.  Right?  We've kind of seen this trend amongst people who are suffering from what we call poverty.  And it's because they focus too hard on money.  They think money is the resolution to it.  And somehow we forgot that money is only a currency that's supposed to buy resources  from those who have the knowledge to produce finished goods.  So the reality is, is what happened?  Why did we get there?  Why are some people suffering?  Why are we going through that?  And when you look at the capitalistic system, we said, okay, there was a process of stripping  knowledge from people.  And when you strip knowledge and you took knowledge away from the folks that originated  from, that knowledge grew up somewhere else.  So now there's this huge responsibility to take these centers of knowledge and put them  back around the world and then re-collaborate so that people can do what they were doing  when they were disrupted, which was solving their own problems.  And so that's what the whole Gisco and Global thing is about.  It's about going to every single country on the planet Earth with more than 200,000 people  and reinserting that knowledge and taking back some as well.  So a collaborative, a true collaborative event.  That's why we don't try to overplan it.  And you know what, the joke that we had earlier was, Fabian, look, we were talking about what  we were going to talk about.  And I told Fabian that we had this thing called Geeks on a Bus.  And he looked at me like, what the hell?  And I said, you know, Fabian, I was just trying to get your attention when I did it.  We bit a big hoopla about it.  But the idea was I wanted to work with Founder Bus to get something done because one of the  things we do at Geeks on Global is we realize we don't have the solution.  We instead know that there's great things happening everywhere.  And our sole responsibility is just to attach those wonderful people to each other and then  increase the amount of, I use the word hoopla a lot, but the amount of excitement that's  around it so that more people are drawn to it.  And I don't want to extend myself too long.  But the most exciting thing that I have happened is that when we go into a country, we work  from the angle of a lot of political type people sometimes because this is my former  consulting life.  But then when you bring the politicals, the traditional people, the traditional leaders,  and the innovative leaders all in the same room, you force them to meet you in one place,  in the hubs.  They look around and say, what the hell?  This has been here all this time?  Farouk, how do you come from this other country?  And you come tell me what's in my country.  I didn't even know it was here.  The beauty of it is that we're just simply making people acknowledge the value of this  space that people term as innovation, but in all honesty, it's just people coming up  with wonderful ways to live better, to grow, solve their problems with the knowledge that  they have.  So that's kind of the purpose behind Gisborne Global.  That's what we're trying to achieve at this moment.  So I'm not going to skip you because you're trying to wig out of it.  I would really love what in the hell would motivate a couple of guys in Berlin beyond  just reading some cool stories about Africa.  And literally to say, I'm going in, I had one of the guys from Africa hack trip, he  said, you know, dude, I wish we could have stayed another three months.  What was the real motivation, the feeling internally to want to go down to Africa and  mingle?  And you guys are something that I don't think either one of us do.  You stayed longer and you went to the pubs and stuff like that.  What was the motivation behind that?  I think mainly curiosity and this drive you have to go out and meet and learn and share.  And I'm totally serious here.  We all would have probably traveled and done something similar on our own.  We do hacker beach.  We do, like we are those digital nomads.  And we just, it's just that it's Africa.  And sometimes you're like, oh, wow, Africa.  And I don't know how many of us would have gone to Rwanda on our own.  And if you team up, it's like a little less work, you think.  Don't know if that's true.  But you team up and you find a group of people that are like-minded and you just start organizing  and it develops this drive for itself and you get people excited.  Like, I mean, before we left, we were really not sure how well this would work because  we know that lots of corporates are coming through Africa at the moment into the tech  hubs and someone said earlier they sometimes feel like they are in a museum because they  are showcasing themselves every day, all the same lines, all the same questions.  Yeah, and so we try to be different and we actually, I think, succeeded.  And we just want to say, hey, it's possible.  And we want to open up the world and put all these places that are like Romania.  I've never been to Romania.  And you just put that on my map.  And I want to put countries- Yeah, exactly.  That's how this whole thing works.  And Zimbabwe, hello, tech hub innovation in Zimbabwe of all places.  That is awesome.  I mean, and that is what drives us.  We're curious and we want to connect.  And that's about it.  I'd love to hear more about the barcams you're organizing when you're going to these tech  hubs because I have never been to a barcam.  I always wanted to go and I'd love to hear more about this.  Funny.  I have never been to a barcam before in Nairobi either.  So it was actually funny because I talked to Nanjira on Skype before we went.  And I was like, girl, I have no idea what we need.  We need a board and pens.  And now talk to the guys, please.  I don't know.  And luckily, Jan and Martin were on the Skype call too.  So they could do that.  But yeah, the barcamp, it's really cool.  It's like an unconference.  And if you Google that, you find something cool too.  So a conference that's not a conference where you don't have a program in advance.  You just bring the people together.  Everybody very quickly introduces themselves.  And then they say what they're interested in.  And then you say, OK, hey, who of you wants to host a session?  And then people do come up with that because it's that kind of people.  It's those people that do have something they want to talk about and that they want to share.  And you put it on a board.  You arrange it a little bit.  You sometimes put topics together.  And then people spend the whole day talking about things they're interested in and teaching  each other and asking each other questions.  And we had a zillion topics.  It's all on our blog, but it was crazy much.  One of the things I really, really liked a lot was the cultural aspects of UX design.  How do you have to design things differently in different cultures?  What works here might not work somewhere else.  And it was for many of the participants also the first bar camp that they had gone to.  And I guess that they all do their own bar camps now.  So many things just happened from getting those people into physical proximity into  the same room.  They started user groups.  They will do conferences by themselves now.  And it's super cool.  And I mean, obviously, if you're sitting there saying, hey, guys, we were privately funded.  No one backs us.  And it's possible to do that.  We're Africa Hectrip.  Then someone will say, hey, that means I'm Euro Hectrip.  And it's actually, it's happening.  And we're like super excited because Euro Hectrip is coming to Germany, the Netherlands,  sorry, Switzerland and France in this year in the fall.  So far it's only Africans, but they're pretty open to everyone.  And I just love it that we spread this attitude and that we have people who are feeling the  same need to spread this kind of life.  Yeah.  I've got a question for you, Fabien.  I think we've got two things that happen every time we set out and travel, right?  So one is when you travel in a group, the people you travel with are having this huge  experience together.  And they get bonded in a way that's very unique.  And the second is that you meet people and you bond with the people that you meet.  But it seems like the founder bus focuses a lot on the bond of the people on the bus  primarily.  What is the magic there and how do you see the outcomes afterwards?  The guys who've been on the bus, how are their interactions after the fact?  Yeah.  A great question.  So it's a very hard challenge to sort of pick the right candidates.  So last year, when we had our first bus in November, we received more than 250 applications  for only 40 spots on the bus.  And we received applications from hackers, 16 years old from Zimbabwe, but also from  senior people, let's say the CTO of Visa Africa, who's 43 years old, but also executives  from Silicon Valley who wanted to be on the bus.  And we saw these applications and we thought, okay, what is our focus?  We want to help young people to build companies or enable them to build companies.  But these guys, like the successful entrepreneurs who have built companies and maybe even sold  companies before, they also want to be on the bus.  So who do we put on the bus?  So let's just mix them.  And we took 50% Africans and 50% rest of the world entrepreneurs.  And then all teams have been not only multidisciplinary, but also multicultural.  And this is a great experience because you have a global knowledge transfer, which is  happening.  And in the end, you have a team which might be functioning on a global level.  And the fact that you have a very experienced person on board might mean for you in the  future that you have a business angel, somebody with a network and a certain experience.  And so it's a lot about developing people on the bus because we say we live entrepreneurship.  You can't really teach it.  We say, hey, we put you guys on a bus.  You all have to build companies and pitch them after only five days.  So it is a real life entrepreneurial experience.  And there's people who have not been founding companies before they've been on the bus.  So this is something we are also trying to do.  We want to give these young people the first glimpse of what entrepreneurship is about.  And then ideally after the bus, they say, hey, I want to quit my job now and I want  to build this company with this crazy guy from this country.  Yeah.  So this is the outcome.  And then in terms of the actual startups, we have built eight startups last year and  three of them are still active.  Two of them have won several awards.  So that is some of the outcome, but obviously it's not only about developing people and  building startups.  It's also about nourishing the ecosystem.  Also putting the whole topic on the media because we think that Africa is still not  at its best height in terms of image.  So this is why we also do a lot of PR work.  So we have been covered by most of the international broadcasters, which we think is a great success  because we put the ICT topic and entrepreneurship topic in Africa on the global agenda.  And on top of that, we highlight the particular countries we are going to.  So it is also some sort of ICT roadshow we are doing.  Should we open up the panel?  Yeah, I think so.  So any questions from anybody?  Because this half hour thing is really short and we all like to speak a lot.  Sorry.  Any questions?  I don't see much, but yeah.  Nanjir?  Thanks.  Hi.  I have a question.  I mean, mainly for Farouk, but I think all of you guys would be interested.  It has to do with the fine line between surfing places and actually hunkering down and staying  long enough to not only get more out of it, but do it.  How do you, as a taking a strategic consultant approach, how would you look at that and maybe  you say, well, we are here for a day because we are going to go to the next country, but  somebody is going to come back and stay for three months.  I don't know.  How do you look at that?  No, I got you.  But that is what we are challenged with anyway.  A lot of people will always ask, what am I going to get out of this?  Because unlike a lot of other travel things, we force everybody to pay.  One of the things that we do by forcing everybody to pay is we say, okay, look, if you want to  go, then you will pay to go.  That means that you have to have a specific interest.  Plus I need to send a message to everybody we meet that they don't have to ask someone  else permission to solve their problems.  We came on our own dime.  They can go and do things on their own dime.  They are strong enough.  But as far as giving things back, it is a very strategic thing.  When you go out, if you think for the hunter-gatherer type concept, it is very much a hunter-type  trip.  We are looking to go in, figure out what you can figure out on a land, what is going on,  search it, fill it, squeeze it.  And then we leave like one of the key things we do is leave 80% of our schedule open.  So the idea is that when we get there, we want to connect with the folks we couldn't  find online and have them tell us what's up.  And then start moving around and do that kind of thing.  The idea is that the people who have come will go back themselves as well as communicate  to other people why they should go back.  That the real power of the trip is that the connection between those individuals, even  if they never have an idea what Farooq Hunter or Gieskoan Global is and they forget that  it exists, that those two people maintain a relationship.  And the power of sitting down, breaking bread, looking someone in the eye, I connect with  Willie online way before we started Gieskoan Global and just seeing him right here, I think  we spent 20 minutes with each other.  And I said, wow, that's Willie.  Hey, what's up?  So there's nothing that can make up that power.  And if you want to say, how do you write it down on sheet of paper, and you say, okay,  it's the connection that will actually take us to the next step.  Any other questions?  Actually, we don't have time for more questions.  But you guys are around and you're available and you like to chat.  So, you know, that's all you make it.  Please give them a round of applause.  Thank you so much.  Thank you for this.  Great.  So we're going to have.  Amazing.
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