Samuel Mugisha D.C.

I started building online businesses in my second undergraduate year at university in 2010. I remember building what I had called campusbuddy; the social network for university students in Uganda. One day after the launch, I had 100 subscribers. I was excited!! I started thinking about how I was going to disrupt Mark Zuckerberg. I remember sitting on my hostel bed and planning on how I was going to enjoy the millions of money that were soon to begin cashing in. Alas!! It turned out later that 90 of the 100 subscribers were spammers from Russia!! Campusbuddy was a finalist nominee for the Annual Communications Innovations (ACIA) Awards in Uganda. I didn't make any money from this network. The thing is; "I did not have a clear business model or marketing strategy". It was my first, no worries.

Later that year, I co-founded Innovation Streams Limited. With my team at Innovation Streams Limited, we built Mbarara portal which was an online directory for businesses in South Western Uganda. Well, we made about UGX 5,000,000 (~USD1500) from local businesses that paid to be listed on the directory but again, our business model was not sustainable. You know, unless you have repeat paying customers, you have no business yet.

I later worked on hostingdoves, a webhosting reseller service. The service currently hosts more than 200 websites and makes some good money per year. There is nothing as good as waking up to notifications on your phone when a customer has renewed their web hosting package. Most of the payments are made by mobile money.

At Innovation Streams Limited, we have also built websites for more than 50 clients and I've worked on both small and large online projects. I have been involved with building online strategies for churches, NGOs, boutiques, online magazines, schools, blogs, etc. We have built other products like Stre@mline; Electronic Medical records software for Africa which we built from scratch. We also developed SACCO software for use by SACCOS in Africa.

However, despite all this experience over the years, I didn't understand what I was doing until I worked with a multi-million pound company in London, UK. Every body needs a mentor and a coach to learn from. I worked as an affiliate at MOBE and later with great marketers like John Lee. You know what? The biggest skill you can ever posses is selling. Top companies know this. My understanding of online business totally changed then. I decided to start The Climbers to share my experiences with the many entrepreneurs all over Africa that are struggling with building online businesses. Our mission at the climbers is to help 1 million African entreprenuers to start and succeed with online business. We also have a mission to pay school fees to 5000 orphans and help 1000 widows with capital support.