#12: Innovation Hubs (CcHub, iHub & others) - How African incubators, accelerators & co-working spaces are nurturing entrepreneurship and building the tech ecosystem

Sep 21, 2020

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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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