AFRICAN BUSINESSES OR COMMERCIAL HUSTLING ACTIVITIES: THIEL'S 7 QUESTIONS

When it’s too easy to get money, then you get a lot of noise mixed in with the real innovation and entrepreneurship…

----Sergey Brin

Peter Thiel is not a college professor of business administration and/or management. He is a college educated lawyer but better known today as an entrepreneur and venture capitalist---all of which he has rightly earned from his roles in PayPal and the host of companies he co-created. To add to these, Thiel is of greater than average brilliance; combining this with his experiential knowledge from his earlier stated roles he has become a man even the genius can listen to and learn from on the matter of starting a successful company in the internet century.

Brilliantly chronicling his experience in the 2014 published book, ZERO to ONE which he authored with Blake Masters , Thiel identified a set of questions (seven in number) which according to him ‘’every business must answer’’. Thiel did not insinuate or expressly make the point that every intending company must write out academic-type brilliant essays in response to these seven questions as its sure way-to-success business plan. If anything, Thiel’s seven questions bring out the very meaning of business which is that of creating unique value, and how the uniqueness of the created-value stacks up against others’.

In a nutshell Thiel’s seven questions not only measure the competitive strength of a company’s business model but also provide succinct explanation to the late management thinking legend, Peter Drucker’s (1909---2005) rightly authoritative definition of business purpose (‘’ to create a customer’’), and Harvard professor Michael Porter’s life-long discussions on competition and strategy (‘’The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do’’). From ZERO to ONE I hereunder reproduce (unedited)Thiel’s seven questions;

The Engineering Question

Can you create breakthrough technology instead of incremental improvements?
The Timing Question

Is now the right time to start your particular business?
The Monopoly Question

Are you starting with a big share of a small market?
The People Question

Do you have the right team?
The Distribution Question

Do you have a way to not just create but deliver your product?
The Durability Question

Will your market position be defensible 10 and 20 years into the future?
The Secret Question

Have you identified a unique opportunity that others don’t see?

According to Thiel, ‘’if you don’t have good answers to these questions, you’ll run into lots of ‘’bad luck’’ and your business will fail. If you nail all seven, you’ll master fortune and succeed. Even getting five or six correct might work’’. We know that Thiel got to this position from a wide observation of both industry leaders and laggards in the tech world. Again that the global tech community is daily providing a competitively better understanding in the thinking and practice of business—the reason for which everyone from all over the world is trying hard to play catch-up.

Can we now look, though briefly, at the thinking and practice of African businesses---businesses conceived and executed in Africa? First of a number of associations, organisations, groups, peopled by humans who undertake some business-support activities for monetary rewards do exist; a lot of which are licenced to so do. Our opening question now is the ‘’why’’ question--- why do these organisations and individuals do what they do? Put differently, what led them to doing what they are doing as business?

We don’t know the answers to our own questions, as we are not other people’s mind readers. One thing we know for sure is that there are many Africans, in Africa, who can write 30-page essays on each of Thiel’s seven questions. However, we also know, and more importantly, that the real world of business and its practice does not revolve around what business schools professors do but on the heads of great entrepreneurial minds. Our next question then is if they know that much why have they performed oppositely-differently? (not necessarily in Dollar amounts of exchanged value but in real value created for their earnings).

For instance, Dangote Cement is Africa’s major player in the business of cement production. It operates in 10+ African countries, and Alikor Dangote remains Africa’s richest man. The question, here, is is Dangote Cement’s dominance explainable from its superior performance on the seven questions over its competitors? Or are there factors particular to Africa to explain performance that Alikor Dangote is better than others at?

Again, we do not have ready answers to the questions above. However if we weigh the relative non-competitiveness of African businesses in the global business environment (which Thiel’s questions best capture) then we must come to the question of what drives African businesses or put differently why do Africans, in Africa, engage in activities loosely defined as businesses? Our one answer, from what is readily observable, is ‘’Money-tied Raw Hustling’’.

We are not ignorant of the relationship between business and money, for we know better that money is the earned value from pre-created value. When the required entrepreneurship to create competitive value is absent; when significant value ends up not created; and when competitive customer service is grossly absent what is left is a clearly defined mandate to go ‘’make money’’. We know, even further, that the underlying philosophy of money-tied hustling which primarily hinges on value-sterile expedience, which undeniably can put money in the hustler’s pocket, has never created any of earth’s most valuable companies. AFRICA, prove us wrong.