Dan Kariuki
947 posts
Dear African Founder, what are you building?
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It’s a real epic adventure! British travelers Robbie, Josh, Jasper, and Ivo (Tuk South project) bought two tuk-tuks in Kenya 🇰🇪 about five years ago and drove them all the way to Colombia 🇨🇴.
They headed south through Tanzania and across Africa, shipped the tuk-tuks across the Atlantic, then continued through South America.
The 10,000+ km journey faced rough roads, borders, deserts like Chile’s Atacama, wildlife, and breakdowns — while raising awareness and funds for Kenyan conservation (e.g., Big Life Foundation — @biglifeafrica.)
Follow their mods, challenges, and stories on Instagram (@tuksouth), TikTok, and YouTube. An impressive feat turning basic Kenyan taxis into global explorers. 🛺🌍
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Drop what you are currently building below.
Does not matter how early it is. Does not matter if it is finished.
If you are working on something right now
A project, a side thing, a tool, a smart contract, a design system.
Anything counts.
Every single one gets looked at.
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@Akintola_steve Hey Steve , if you get sometime , I’d appreciate you looking @ dropnc.com . 🙏
It’s a socio-financial platform.
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Dan Kariuki 리트윗함
If you’re building a wallet system and your source of truth is a balance column,
May the database gods be with you 😂
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@kbulychev_ We are a ‘sociable’ neobank, @ dropnc.com , literally . 😂. It’s a digital community bank.
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Neobanks guys:
What’s your product’s unique feature no other (or almost no other) project has?
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Let's get our first paying user together !
Nerva biometric is live and put in use !
I need acquisition and conversion now ! twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1…
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1 of the biggest clues about what we are building at dropnc.com is hidden behind a simple hover on the "Get Started" button.
That's the entire thesis.
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My apple tree that I planted like 6 years ago is starting to bear fruit!
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You can just do things
Like manually set the bytes being sent to a receipt printer
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i asked one of our researchers to explain his loss function and he took out goodfellow, bengio and courville 2016. chat are we “cooked”
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I once pitched on zoom and the partner spent the whole pitch throwing peanuts into the air and catching them in his mouth and crunching them.
It was weird 😅
GREG ISENBERG@gregisenberg
I was once pitching in a board room at a top 3 VC firm for a $15M Series A. 12 people in the meeting. One of the GPs fully fell asleep. Out cold for 30+ minutes. Nobody acknowledged it. Everyone just kept going. I kept presenting my Series A slides to an unconscious man in a Herman Miller chair and somehow that was considered normal. That's venture capital. You might fly across the country to perform for people who may or may not be conscious. It's a dance. And sometimes you lead and sometimes you follow and sometimes your partner is unconscious. If you're raising right now, just know: every founder has a story like this. The process is weird. The power dynamic is weird. You're not crazy for thinking it's weird. No one talks about it because they want to continue raising. But I'm happy to stick my neck out there. It is weird.
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What a journey it has been!
The MARIA_DB guy did not give me a job btw 😂
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If you get rejected by an early stage VC
It's not business, it's just personal
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Dan Kariuki 리트윗함
People always ask how long it takes before community building actually converts to customers.
For us, it was 6 months from when we started pushing into the market to when inbound started coming back.
If you think week one or even four is going to produce results, you're going to be disappointed and quit before it compounds.
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Dan Kariuki 리트윗함
LvlUp Ventures Power of the Pitch (June’s Pitch Day) 🎤
Join us on June 9th for LvlUp Ventures’ flagship Power of the Pitch, our monthly live pitch competition where top founders take the stage in front of 200+ investors, operators, and ecosystem leaders.
This month’s competition features six high-impact tracks:
🚀 Operational & Scale presented by Uber for Business
📊 Financial Infrastructure presented by Xero
🌟 Marketing & Investor Communications presented by Campaign Monitor by Marigold
🚀 Runway & Burn presented by Brex
🌍 Global Teaming presented by Zoom
🤖 Vibe-Coding & AI Agents presented by Emergent
📈 Sales Pipeline presented by Pipedrive
📣 Organic Growth presented by Semrush
Founders will pitch live with:
• 3 minutes to present
• 1 minute of live Q&A
🕒 11:00 AM – 2:00 PM EST
Our judging panel includes:
Aaron Golbin (General Partner, LvlUp Ventures)
Deepak Peschard (LvlUp Senior Dealflow Partner, HSBC Senior Executive, ex-COO at HSBC UK, Investor at VU Venture Partners)
J.D. Smith (LvlUp Principal Dealflow Partner, GP at Cross Equity Group, Investor at Expert Dojo)
Benny Manasherov (LvlUp Dealflow Partner, Managing Director at A&B Invests)
Christine Nady Boushra (LvlUp Dealflow Partner, Included VC, Scout for 20+ VC's)
Hundreds of family offices, angels, venture firms, and operators will be in attendance — creating real opportunities for visibility, connections, and capital.
👉 Apply here to be invited to watch: form.typeform.com/to/oqTJWwiy
We can’t wait to see the next generation of standout founders take the stage.
#LvlUpVentures #PowerOfThePitch #StartupPitch #VentureCapital #Founders #Startups
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@buttonupd Yep it's a hard way but it's also the path to freedom !
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solo founder morning:
>convinced i'm 6 months from $10k MRR.
solo founder night:
> convinced i should crawl back to a 9-to-5.
same day. same product. same brain.
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