Overview

In 2009, Canadian entrepreneur Mike Quinn packed his backpack and moved to Lusaka, Zambia on a mission to find African entrepreneurs building scalable, high-impact businesses. There he stumbled across two South African brothers who had founded a business to help unbanked smallholder farmers receive mobile payments in a market where cash was king. After convincing his retired parents to mortgage their house and lend him $100,000, Mike joined as a co-founder of Zoona and became CEO for nine of the next ten years. With his partners, Mike built a network of more than 3,000 entrepreneur agents across Zambia and Malawi that enabled millions of unbanked consumers to send and receive $2.5-billion in money transfers and remittances. Headquartered in Cape Town, Zoona raised over $35-million of venture investment and operated on the leading edge of Africa's emerging fintech ecosystem. Mike's remarkable story gives a rare and honest glimpse into the workings of a pioneering African startup through the lens of a purpose-driven entrepreneur who went all in . Zoona faced tremendous adversity along the way: currency crises, investment round collapses, ruthless pushback from the major mobile network operators, and a continuous internal struggle to discover and execute a growth strategy that matched the company's billion-dollar ambition. It was by failing to win that Mike learned what entrepreneurship - specifically entrepreneurship in Africa - is all about, and it was what motivated him to double down and try again.

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9781990956317

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You will learn so much from Mike's tale of 'failure'. - Michael Jordaan, former FNB CEO

Author Information

Mike Quinn was co-founder and CEO of Zoona. He is now CEO of Boost, which he co-founded to enable informal small businesses to thrive in Africa's emerging digital economy. Mike's entrepreneurial journey in Africa started as a volunteer in Ghana and Zambia with Engineers Without Borders Canada. He has received a Skoll Scholarship for Social Entrepreneurship from Oxford's Said Business School, the Edward W Claugus Award for Leadership and Innovation in Financial Inclusion from Accion, and a Social Entrepreneur of the Year award from the Schwab Foundation.

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