I used to sleep on the floor at my uncle’s house when we first moved to the capital. Then I’d visit his clients – people with houses that seemed impossible, wealth that rewrote what I thought was achievable. The pattern was obvious: family businesses, running for two or three generations. You’d meet the grandfather in his seventies or eighties, the one who started it all, watching his children and grandchildren harvest what he planted.
For years, this was my only model for building serious wealth. Every big business I saw had family at its core. When I asked one uncle how his family got so far ahead, he gave me the answer I already knew: “The difference between my family and yours is we are united, and yours isn’t.”
Unity. That was the secret ingredient I didn’t have.
I’ve been trying to build businesses since I was seventeen. I’ve had moments where things worked. But I tried with family and learned we don’t see life through the same lens. I tried with friends and hit the same wall. For a long time, this felt like a death sentence. If family businesses win because of unity, and I don’t have family unity, what chance do I have?
Then I saw something that changed everything.
Two people in my network, both in their mid-thirties, both building startups. Not family businesses grinding toward steady profits startups taking exponential risks for exponential rewards. One is about to IPO in his sixth year. Six years. I know a family business that took 85 years to go public, started by the current CEO’s father. Two generations. Impressive, certainly. But six years versus 85 years that’s not just faster, it’s a different game entirely.
I have friends my age running businesses making $20k, $30k, $40k a month. I’m genuinely happy for them. But these two founders building startups showed me a different path. The unity I thought only came from family can come from somewhere else: VCs who want you to win, angels who believe in your vision, advisors who’ve walked the path, early team members who bet their careers on you.
This is the insight that matters: the first generation of every family business struggled too. They all made it work without a blueprint. The difference now is that in the startup world, I’m not racing toward generational wealth over fifty years. I’m racing against a ten-year clock. Maybe less.
I’m 28. By 35 or 36, I want to be where my two friends are where money is abundant, where the impossible became possible. I’ve seen balance sheets showing a billion Kenyan shillings in annual revenue from a single privately owned shop. That’s roughly $70M ARR. Impressive for Kenya, but honestly? Not that impressive for a global business. We can aim higher.
Here’s what I know: I’m the only African founder I’m aware of who’s building for a global market right now. That’s either foolish or exactly the kind of non-obvious bet that creates outsize returns. I don’t have the family support that built every successful business I saw growing up. I don’t have friends who share this vision.
But I have something else. I have a decade of trying and failing and learning. I have a clear view of what’s possible because I’ve watched it happen up close. And I have access to a different kind of unity, one built with strangers who become partners, investors who become believers, team members who become co-owners of something meaningful.
The question isn’t whether I can win with the cards I’ve been dealt. The question is whether I’m bold enough to play them. The first-generation founders who built those family empires didn’t have a roadmap either. They had unity, yes, but they had to create it.
I’m creating mine differently. With people I haven’t met yet. With investors who’ll see what I see. With a team that will build something that matters. The path is different, but the destination is the same: building something big, something lasting, something that proves you don’t need to be born into the right family to create generational wealth.
You just need to be willing to build your own unity from scratch.
Time is moving. The shot is worth taking. And I’m taking it.