This is probably the third or fourth Developer I hear saying they stopped building for the local market.

Matter of perspective, Kenyans pay for entertainment SAAS products, cloud products etc. In the Kenyan market your product MUST offer real value and to the relevant audience. What valuable problem are you solving? Some common problems in Kenya ? Mpesa and online scammers, car theft etc.

You're right though proving your point might need some success stories. I know adoption of some software products like Zoho can be thrown around but in my opinion, those are outliers.

International tech products like Odoo, Microsoft, Netflix, Google come to Kenya and get clients to pay, Kenyans subscribe to business daily, pay for Startimes etc , If thats not a success indicator or proof of market then I don’t know what is? Kenyans are not stingy, they spend, if a great product is built we will pay.

@BCherich You missed the entire point, comparing a solopreneur to a business with millions allocated for marketing…yeah its always the non-tech guys who are the know it all’s😂😂🤡

@jaybfly @BCherich 😂 and it won't be a surprise they haven't built a single Saas product

Being a solopreneur is no excuse. A lot of the greats started alone. You either take feedback from the market and roll with the punches, or step out of the ring. OP was accusing Kenyans of being stingy and unwilling to pay for SaaS products. I provided stats showing otherwise. If the market isn’t responding the way you expected, that doesn’t automatically mean people won’t pay, it may mean the product, positioning, pricing, or distribution needs work.

Most Kenyan corporates rather get a foreign SAAS product or steal your idea and develop. Also, if they get your product/service, they dont want to pay for it.

If you can't provide value at a price people are willing to pay then you can't and that's on you not them. You can go after markets with more disposable income but that doesn't make them less stingy

Let's work with examples here

We cant just generalize and say Kenyans are stingy, harsh income realities and low disposable income, not to mention kenya has not yet caught up with the fourth industrial revolution, the infrastructure is not strong enough to support it.

I knew the Kenyan(and African) market was a trap right from the get go I am not a developer though I am marketer for AI and new tech companies purely in the American market You'll need 1000 years to convince a Kenyan business owner, however much profitable they are, to invest a premium cut into a service that renews monthly This does not need to be explained, it's just the brutal truth.

Don't build for the local market - go long on the America Market

Kenyans can pay They just don't see the need to pay if it's not necessary Bars and clubs are full

Kenyan clients yoh!!! I say this everyday. You can bring all the value to their doorstep but watakunyanyasa ndio wakulipe even when you have discounted.

This is like complaining that you opened a pork kipanda in Dubai and no one is buying. People don't buy just because you are selling but because you are solving a problem they want solved.

I’ve seen terrible things. Paid in full plus support. Zero security, probably had backdoors too, credential leaks, no longterm support in reality, the ramshackle never worked. I’d rather pay 10x for a mature product, Kenyan or otherwise. It goes both ways. GIGO

Every Kenyan entrepreneur goes through this baptism of fire where you discover just how poor Kenyans actually are

Sound like a sharp boy to me, hapo kw reddit ametupiga Kasongo 😂 So you build SaaS from a small dataset of reddit threads And users will magically find your product 😂🤡

But how do we change that....by making a product worth paying for..most Kenyans live hand to mouth, you wont expect them to pay for Softwares..we can make them food instead...

That’s the reason why most musicians prefer releasing singles to dropping albums

Thanks for this

The other truth is that we build shitty products and assume people should pay for them. Every Kenyan dev building some useless mama fua app imagines he is now a “founder” with a “SaaS product”.

Shida sio kukua stingy. Shida ni income disparity. Enda uko reddit uone vile third worlders hushika moto juu ya $20 ya AI accounts, while a first worlder posts about an AI company taking $100 a month without their knowledge for 10 months. Lanes.

So true… I was building CRMs for corporates ….most of them want white owned software…one even asked..why they should buy from me and not safaricom..It was a dumb question that I couldnt even get the words to answer…and he said ‘You see.’

If tempted to believe such rubbish that Kenyans don't pay, remember that Uber, Bolt, Netflix, Glovo, etc are all selling to Kenyans. There are a bunch of local apps that are doing extensive business. Stop complaining, find a target market with a problem, figure out the pricing.

Ask whether mpesa was built for the international market. Just build something that have value in this market and you will make it

Shauri yake

Kenyans devs come with the Silicon Valley mindset, build things around fellow developers then expect non-tech Kenyans to be excited about their features. If your product interrupts their system/process/way of doing things instead of complimenting it, your chances are low.

The OG of Kenyans never pay for software

There's no such thing as a "stingy" market.

Kenya hata RPM ya Youtube is around $ 0.90 Cents..ya zimbabwe is $ 2.12..was so shocked ..we are a hyped country with little substance online...

Umeamua kuleta Naphtali huku🤣

Wacha washuke Na yeye Kidogo 😂

😂😂😂

reddit 😂

kenyan creators should stop blaming the market and make quality products. i remember when kenyan musicians were crying about sijui play kenyan music. bro, youtube is global, if your music is good you won't have to try to force it down on anyone. demand and supply 101

The way people openly use cricfy instead of paying for dstv is a clear sign

Some Kenyans have good taste because they have had access to somewhat good software. When you build a product, I believe you first have to understand what people NEED, and not what you think they WANT. Sometimes your ideas are years ahead of the current market, so you circumvent.

The Kenyan market is hell on earth People think they’re important, Like VVIP, they expect top flight service at all times, yet they have absolutely zero budget

I agree with him , exerienced it myself

Markets have a way of rewarding solutions that arrive at the right need, at the right time.

No lies detected 😂 Kenyans na monthly subscriptions? Utalala njaa ushangae