Good African

The inspirational story of how Andrew Rugasira and his partners built the Good African Coffee company in Uganda.

The Wal-Mart Way

Reading The Wal-Mart Way: The Inside Story of the Success of the World's Largest Company by Don Soderquist:

Investing in African Prosperity

Alternative Finance

The BBC's Evan Davis recently interviewed the co-founders of three technology-based services that are disrupting conventional banking and financial services: M-Pesa (mobile money), Zopa (peer-to-peer lending for individuals) and MartketInvoice (auction-based online marketplace for unpaid business invoices).

Instant: The Story of Polaroid

The African Investment Story

This short interview with Larry Seruma published in the The Wall Street Transcript back in 2010 does a great job of telling the African investment story (well, part of it anyway) in a clear, concise and compelling way.

Who's The Master?

2013 will see a battle royal for supremacy of the global smartphone and tablet markets. Should be interesting.

Apple 4.0

Just published: Bloomberg BusinessWeek interview with Tim Cook, Apple's CEO in the fourth major phase of Apple's life.

How Mo Ibrahim built Celtel

From the October 2012 issue of Harvard Business Review:

How Mo Ibrahim built Celtel from scratch into one of the largest mobile operators in Africa.

The best way to become a millionaire

The best way to become a millionaire is to start off as a billionaire and start an airline.

- Sir Richard Branson

Bond, Zambian Bond

Zambia sold its first ever dollar-denominated bond to international investors last week. It was a stunning debut.

NVCA 2012

Video highlights of 2012 sessions, including Arthur Rock's conversation with Mike Markkula.

The Puritan Gift

On my book wishlist:






















Update (24 May 2012): Peter F. Drucker's comments on a very early draft of The Puritan Gift.

Out of this world

Literally: Planetary Resources

Strategy Vs. Tactics from a Venture Capitalist

A classic article by the legendary Silicon Valley venture capitalist Arthur Rock on what makes entrepreneurial ventures succeed: Is it strategy or tactics?

Steer it like Steve-O

I know, I know: very corny. But the tempatation to "Bend It Like Beckham" was simply irresistible.

I refer to "The Real Leadership Lessons of Steve Jobs" by Walter Isaacson published in the April 2012 issue of Harvard Business Review.

Interesting Funding Model

Kickstarter (via Alex Dalmady)

Another landmark case

On 24 January 2012, Mr. Justice M. L. Shuaibu of the Federal High Court of Nigeria in Kaduna handed down his judgement in a corporate law case that has rumbled on for the best part of eight years. I don't think it's too much of an exaggeration to describe the judgement as seismic in its potential ramifications.

The (Real) Pixar Story

Dr. Alvy Ray Smith's documented correction of some of the myths about the history of Pixar.

Top 5 reminiscences of Steve Jobs

Following the death of Steve Jobs earlier this month, the Internet has been flooded with reminiscences of the man, very many of them with vanishingly small signal-to-noise ratios. There are a few exceptions though, and in this post I present the best five that I have come across. It's worth noting that not all of the following accounts were written in response to Steve Jobs's death (specifically, Vic Gundotra's wasn't), but in a certain sense none of them were. They were all written in response to Steve Jobs's remarkable life:

1. Steve Jobs, 1955 – 2011 by Steven Levy
   
Steven Levy first met Steve Jobs in November 1983, when he conducted the first of his many interviews of Jobs over the years. I get the disctinct impression that the two men were friends, or least friendly, so this is probably not the most objective obituary. Still, it is the best one I've read.




2. Icon Ambulance by Vic Gundotra
   
This anecdote by Vic Gundotra, Google's Senior Vice President, Social, illustrates Steve Jobs's legendary attention to detail as well as his sense of aesthetics and design.




3. Steve Jobs: A Few Memories by Stephen Wolfram
   
Stephen Wolfram, like Steve Jobs, was something of a wunderkind. Here he shares some memories of his personal and business interactions with Jobs. WolframAlpha, Wolfram's "computational knowledge engine" is integrated into Siri on Apple's latest iPhone 4S.




4. What I Learned From Steve Jobs by Guy Kawasaki
   
Guy Kawasaki had two stints at Apple, in the 1980s as a software evangelist and in the 1990s as an Apple Fellow. Here he distils the 12 most important lessons he learnt from working directly with Steve Jobs.




5. Memories of Steve by Ben Rosen
   
Ben Rosen first met Steve Jobs in late 1977. Rosen was 44 at the time, Steve Jobs, at 22, was exactly half Rosen's age. Rosen's piece is by far the best of these five reminiscences of Steve Jobs. It presents a delicate and tender portrait of the extremely complicated and contradictory man that was Steve Jobs. Rosen writes beautifully. Although he's now 78, judging by his very accomplished and varied career and the virtuosity of this piece, Rosen can readily achieve new success as a writer.

One more thing:
Overall, all of the above reminiscences are extremely positive about Steve Jobs, and with some justification. However, much of the posthumous commentary on Steve Jobs has been little more than unthinking, regurgitated, platitudinous idol worship. (I heard one star-struck fan refer to Steve Jobs as are our present-day Thomas Jefferson. I think he meant Thomas Edison.) This, I am quite certain, is something Steve Jobs himself would deeply disapprove of. After all, if he was anything, Steve Jobs was an iconolast. And it would be entirely inappropriate for the world, after his death, to turn him into an icon (or iCon). So in that spirit, I offer this slightly less flattering appraisal of Steve Jobs's contribution to one of his most celebrated products, the Macintosh:

• Holes in the Histories by Jef Raskin