UNIT 1 : ENTREPRENEURIAL JOURNEY

Key Unit competence: 

To be able to judge different ways of being entrepreneurs and create their own
journey for successful businesses

Starting a business is exciting and active experience. However, it requires one to
work hard, in return of rewards and enjoyment. There are some seven specific
steps/experiences you should think about before you start the business.

 • Step 1: Inspiration – What is your motivation for becoming an entrepreneur?
 • Step 2: Preparation – Do you have what it takes to be an entrepreneur?
 • Step 3: Assessment – What idea do you plan to offer through your business?
 • Step 4: Exploring resources – What resources and characteristics do you
need to start a business?
 • Step 5: Business plan – What type of business structure and business
model will your business have?
 • Step 6: Navigation – In what direction will you take your business? Where
will you go for guidance?
 • Step 7: Launch – When and how will you launch your business?

The decision to become an entrepreneur is an act of courage. It is estimated
that 50-70% of entrepreneurial startups fail in the first five years. 90% of all new
businesses do not survive beyond the tenth year. And only three out of 100
companies are still prosperous after 40 years.

While it is true that entrepreneurs are driven to make a difference in the world, the
entrepreneurial journey has five distinct stages namely:
• Survival
• Success
• Sustainability
• Significance
• Succession
Each of these stages has distinct characteristics: 

1. Survival:

The first stage is primarily focused on survival. The challenge is to find a success
pattern that will allow the business to survive and, ideally, prosper. This stage is
characterized by a lot of experimentation. It is a period of trial and error.

2. Success:

In this stage, the entrepreneur has identified a success pattern that allows
the business to grow in a more consistent manner. Often, this stage is initially
characterized by explosive growth. The ones that prosper are able to adapt and
move to the third stage.

3. Sustainability:

Successful businesses continually redefine themselves. In a constantly changing
and ever more complex environment, sustainability of the enterprise becomes the
challenge. For entrepreneurs, finding the right pattern of growth in work and life is
the key to sustainability. At this stage, refining the systems and processes in your
business is key. When the business is sustainable, it allows entrepreneurs to focus
on what is important to them.

4. Significance:

Entrepreneurs are driven to make a difference in the world. Their business becomes
the means by which they can express what is important to them. it is only when
you have mastered the process of growing your business that you are able to fully
express what is significant or meaningful in your work.

5. Succession:

At a point in time, the entrepreneur must plan for the transfer of the business to
others. This may involve the sale of the business to a third party or the transition
to family members or associates. The earlier an entrepreneur puts a succession
plan in place, the more likely the business will continue beyond the entrepreneur’s
involvement.

Your business stage says a lot about where your focus should be as an owner.
Understanding the business phase will help you identify how to act in order to
propel to the next stage though there is no universal guide to being a successful
Entrepreneur’s actions at each stage are discussed as below:

Stage 1: Hustler

When you first start your business, you’re a hustler. At this point, you’re managing
all aspects of the business, so it can be hard to pinpoint what should take priority
to elevate your business to the next phase.
Challenges: Nothing happens without you. It can feel like you’re constantly putting
out fires and you still haven’t identified a steady lead funnel.

Challenges: Nothing happens without you. It can feel like you’re constantly putting
out fires and you still haven’t identified a steady lead funnel.

Opportunity: Mastering sales is crucial. By aligning your time and goals with your
revenue needs, you will become more productive and generate more revenue to
gain the resources needed to scale.

Stage 3: Visionary

As a visionary, you have grown your business organically which opens up the space
to allow you to start working on the business. You’re starting to delegate the sales
to someone else in your organization and instead you’re turning your attention to
hiring top talent to fill your organization.

Challenges: It can be uncomfortable as you continue to give up control because
when you have your hands in all aspects of the business, you prevent your team
from doing their job and create unnecessary bottlenecks.
Opportunity: Your leadership skills and ability to attract top talent will define your
success in this stage. Invest in yourself and invest in the people to help you lead the
company you have built.

Stage 4: Systemizer

As a systemizer, you are starting to build a leadership team that will enable you to
peel away from areas of the business. You will continue to grow the team but will
need to have protective measures in place to support the continued scale.

Challenges: With a desire to repeat your success, you will find it difficult to provide
the same product or experience at scale without turn-key systems in place.

Opportunity:  As you navigate interim roles within the organization to support
the growth of the leadership team, you must build the systems with your newly
assigned leaders.

Stage 5: Influencer

As an influencer, you have got the right people, systems, and product/service in
place. You have accomplished so much, but the road ahead has new challenges.
You will see bigger growth opportunities through external expansion tactics while
you continue to mitigate risks and threats.

Challenges:  To continue pushing the limits of your people while driving to a
performance culture.

Opportunity: To give your trusted leadership team the freedom to lead your people
and business to success.

In nutshell, entrepreneurial stages with respective actions are summarized as
below:

In this unit, we are going to learn about entrepreneurial pathways of some of the
successful and impactful entrepreneurs in Rwanda.

i. SINA Gerard: A hard road to success

The following story is extracted and adapted from Hope magazine as posted on
13th November, 2012.

SINA Gerard is widely known as Rwanda’s foremost agri-business entrepreneur.
His interests are diverse spanning restaurants, bakeries, a juice and wine factory, a
school and extensive land holdings. Having started with practically nothing, his rise
to the top is a typical rag to riches story in Rwanda.  Sina Gerard’s moving story is
the best example that opportunities in Rwanda’s agri-business sector can give real
entrepreneurs.
Started with a small bakery in 1983. His parents were farmers and he baked
products from the farm”, Sina recalls. After a while Sina Gerard ventured into
higher forms of  value addition by making juices. “Agashya” is perhaps the best
known amongst the family of drinks by the entrepreneur while the “Akabanga”
hot sauce a very popular item is now set to break  into export markets.
 “With time my products become popular and that enabled my businesses  to grow”,
he recalled during interview with Hope magazine. Once Sina Gerard’s company
known as Enterprise Urwibwutso was placed on a sound footing, he diversified his
portfolio to include new ones like manufacture of banana wines which he named
“Akarusho”. Sina Gerard is a true business visionary. One way of ascertaining
such a claim is his firm belief in what education can do to the sustainability of his
rapidly growing business. He believes that proper education for his employees is a
key driver of taking his growing empire to the next level.  Sina Gerard Educational
Centre which is a modern educational institution that includes nursery, primary and
secondary sections should be seen in this light.
During his interview, he also revealed: “I finally thought it worthwhile to support the
school project since I saw the need to be responsible for my employees and their
families. They work for my company and I make a profit out of their work. The least
I can do for them is to give back something to them. That is what I am doing with
the school project. The schooling is free and the children can attend from nursery
to high school”. He added; “It benefits the children and parents but in a way it also
benefits me. Because, I would rather have educated staff than uneducated ones”.
If anything education is at the forefront of propelling Enteprise Urubwitso since
offering extension services to farmers that enables them to produce more for
less is a corner stone of the company’s success so far. Gerard continued saying
that there is increased capacity over time that gives room for exports something 

they never thought of initially. But that is now very possible since they brought in
experiences from other countries that have enabled them to achieve the best results.
This makes him very proud. His dream is that Rwandan farmers should aspire to
deliver the best quality just the way others are doing it in the first world countries.
SINA said that the increased capacity of his contracted framers places them at a
vantage position of looking beyond his company for sustaining their livelihoods.
Enterprise Urubwitso has state of the art plant production capacity. The sky is the
limit for Enteprise Urubwitso. As a leader in the sector the deep reforms in Rwanda
are likely to give SINA and his company an added boost.

ii. Story of Mukarubega: The woman who built a business empire with just
Rwf 5000

Hajati Zulfat Mukarubega, the founder and legal representative of Rwanda
University Tourism College (RTUC), in Kicukiro District. She is one of the remarkable
entrepreneurs in education sector. Read and learn from her told story during an
interview she had with The New times, and published on July 21, 2012

Her journey is a fairy tale characterised by perseverance and patience. Zulfat
Mukarubega the founder of Rwanda Tourism University College (RTUC) has
changed the face of the hospitality industry. As the brain behind the first and only
tourism university in the country, her story is not only inspiring but extra-ordinary.
She has touched the lives of many who have had a chance to pass through her
gifted hands of entrepreneurship.

At a time when women had limited opportunities and were confined to the kitchen,
Mukarubega defied the odds and ventured into entrepreneurship; with only Rwf
5000 she opened up a restaurant which later opened doors for success.

The 56-year-old established RTUC in 2006 and though the journey wasn’t a bed
of roses, she managed to build it from scratch into a recognized and prestigious
institute it is today.

“Starting a business is full of ups and downs; things were tough in the beginning.
Friends discouraged me not to start up something which has never even existed in
the country but because I saw the need of what I intended to start, I never gave up.
I started with twelve students of which seven dropped out and I remained with five.
Getting lecturers wasn’t easy and making people understand the need to embrace
the importance of hospitality was the hardest thing then,” Mukarubega says.

She travelled to South Africa and Kenya where she identified the customer care gap
that existed within hotels and restaurants in comparison to Rwanda. This instantly 

sparked off her need to enhance hotel management and with all the challenges
she faced, which of course being a woman and a mother was part of, Mukarubega
never gave up, but rather strived for excellence.

Starting a business at the tender age of 19 was what shaped her into a powerful
and extremely ambitious woman.

In January 2012, Mukarubega was honoured as the woman entrepreneur of the year
by Rwanda Development Board (RDB). In addition, her business was recognised
as the best Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) in the tourism sector. Since its
inception, RTUC has blossomed into a successful college with over 3000 students
and now has a second branch in Gisenyi which attracts students from as far as
the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi and Uganda. The college has had
graduations, and most of the graduates are employed while others have started
their own businesses.

The love for her country is what drives her to give back to society. “Most young girls
finish secondary school and fail to continue to university. Out of desperation they
end up into prostitution. As a mother, I saw the need to save our children from such
misfortunes by equipping them with skills that will enable them survive,” she says.

Besides RTUC, Mukarubega plans to open up a home care training centre where
house maids will be trained on how to raise children.

“Women should believe in themselves; they should be innovative and think about
the future because in Rwanda women have a high potential to realise their dreams
and excel. The government has opened doors for us, we should use the opportunity,”
she says.

For further information about other successful and hustling Rwandan entrepreneurs’
pathways, watch the following videos:

1. Dr. Nyirinkwaya Jean, Owner of La Croix du sud Hospital:

2. Origène IGIRANEZA, O’Genius Priority Ltd: https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=liTmWLPJlFg/
3. Marc Rugenera, founder and owner of Insurance company: https://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=IPQ8c8t6k3o/
4. Charles MPORANYI, former owner of SORAS: https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=0dl5GjthII4/

Inspirational characteristics of local successful entrepreneurs