#12: Innovation Hubs (CcHub, iHub & others) - How African incubators, accelerators & co-working spaces are nurturing entrepreneurship and building the tech ecosystem
Afrobility: Africa Tech and BusinessPlay episode
Show notes
Overview: Today, we discuss how African innovation hubs are nurturing entrepreneurship, the history of CCHub / iHub & end with our views on the future outlook of African innovation hubs
Companies discussed: CcHub, iHub, Entrepreneur First, Y Combinator (YC), TechStars & Station F
Business concepts discussed: Innovation Hubs, sustainable business models & Entrepreneurial support/financing
Conversation highlights:
(01:07) - Why innovation hubs / entrepreneur support organizations are important (02:45) - What are innovation hubs (04:37) - Different types of innovation hubs (15:24) - Private vs Government innovation hubs (18:15) - Challenges faced by innovation hubs (19:58) - Problems that African innovation hubs solve (27:10) - iHub, Kenya - founder, history, incubated startups (31:11) - CcHub - founder, history, incubated startups (40:30) - CcHub acquisition of iHub (43:30) - Trends across Africa’s innovation hubs (48:50) - Bankole’s overall thoughts and outlook (53:52) - Olumide’s overall thoughts and outlook (58:15) - Bankole and Olumide’s recommendations, small wins & open questions
Olumide’s recommendations & small wins:
Recommendation: The Psychology of Money (by Morgan Housel): Great book about finance & decision making Recommendation: Reddit summary post about book: Great group focused on financial independence Recommendation: Personal Information Management Assistants: Proposes idea of PIMAs - summarizers + curators of high quality content (e.g., podcasts, articles & books) Small win: Played Stadia games: Spiritfarer & The Turing test Open question: What successful business models have you seen work well for corporate & government innovation hubs in Africa?
Bankole’s recommendations & small wins:
Recommendations: Anatomy of a Swipe by Ahmed Siddiqui - A book about how payment systems work Small win: The weather got much better and I was able to resume going out on walks. Open question: What kind of innovation hubs would you like to see? Something like Entrepreneur First, or “traditional” hubs like ccHub? Other content: Invest Like the Best episode with founder of Entrepreneur First, Matt Clifford - link Other content: Afrilabs and Briter: Tech Hubs Report Q4 2019 - link
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