Moringa School Podcast

On the final episode of the Moringa School podcast, we are joined by Stella Ngugi, CEO & Founder of Jobonics, a HR software startup based in Nairobi, Kenya. Stella loves to bring ideas to life with the touch of great design, people & technology. As a Strategy Consultant, Stella helps clients rethink their talent goals, guide them through the ideation process, reimagine their role in the industry as well as show them how to leverage a digital approach to optimize and expand their core mission & workforce. Stella is passionate about boosting performance & competitiveness of individuals & organisations in Africa through talent & technology innovations that will also bring about socioeconomic change in the continent. Stella is also involved in various community driven initiatives. Listen and enjoy!

On this episode of the Moringa School podcast, we are joined by Scott Chacon, an entrepreneur, software developer, startup enthusiast and language learner. Scott is the co-founder and CEO of Chatterbug, and Co-founder and former CIO of Github. Scott and his team of co-founders built a software development platform called Github, which brings together the world's largest community of developers to discover, share and build better software. Github was sold to Microsoft for $7.5B in 2018.

Scott joined GitHub in late 2008 when Git was still a rather obscure and difficult to use version control system. From those days of the 4 co-founders working from coffee shops, Scott helped build GitHub into a global company of more than 400 employees. In that time, Scott did a little of everything as GitHub grew - backend Git infrastructure work, Ruby and frontend development, training, sales, financial forecasting, documentation, internal tools development, hiring, fundraising, office planning and buildout, internal communications, evangelization and public speaking. While at GitHub Scott also did everything he could to help Git become the dominant technology it is today. He wrote two of the very first books on Git - Git Internals published by Peepcode and Pro Git published by Apress, both now open sourced and free to read. Pro Git is in it's second edition and has been translated into more than 10 languages. Scott helped start and supported the libgit2 project, which is used by nearly every Git user interface, plugin and hosting solution today. Scott gave more than 75 talks, tutorials and workshops across the globe, from small local meetups to training the Android development team. He also registered, developed and maintained the official Git website for 8 years.

Scott went on to his current venture, Chatterbug, a language learning system that helps users to learn a new language to fluency through adaptive courses that respond to the way users learn, as well as one-on-one video sessions with native speakers from around the world. Chatterbug combines the flexibility of digital language apps with the effectiveness of in-person language schools. Listen as Scott shares his entrepreneurial journey, the software development process, the future of work and learning and so much more on the podcast. Enjoy and share.

You can find Scott on Twitter at @chacon.

Hosted by Eugene Nzioki, Leo Igane, Kevin Ahere, Melissa Malala, Michel Atieno and Victor Ireri.

We are joined by Harriet Kariuki and Tre Hunt, Harvard University graduates and founders of Afrijob.

Their goal is to catalyze global competitiveness among African companies by matching talent, both international and local, to startups looking to scale, develop better strategies and so much more. We also learn about new ways of hiring and finding jobs in Kenya and around Africa.

Give it a listen and share your thoughts in the comments section! 

On this episode we have Paul Kevin Abwonji, a software developer with 8 years experience. He gives us insight on building stuff that matters, working remotely with a diverse team of developers and dealing with clients as one navigates the market as a freelancer.

We are joined by Jimmy and Newton, who are freelancers in public relations and publishing. Their story is an authentic perspective of the freelance landscape in Nairobi , and they share tips on how to stand out in the freelance and creative marketplace. We learnt how to discern potential clients, how to stay malleable  as a freelancer, the importance of conducting research before venturing into an opportunity, how to spot new trends in the market, as well as the ups and downs of being an entrepreneur. 

Give it a listen and share your thoughts in the comments section!

This week on the podcast we had the pleasure of having Tekwane Mwendwa and Julien Brinson, who are the CEO and CTO of Asilimia respectively. Asilimia aims to make peer-to-peer M-Pesa transactions free. Having been on the market for a little over a year, Ksh 24,000,000 worth of digital transactions has been processed through their app and the team aims to do more once they relaunch the Asilimia app on the play store.
On the podcast, Tekwane shares his journey as an entrepreneur and how he navigates the ecosystem in order to ensure the success of his company.
Julien, a Stanford University graduate, also shares his engineering journey and how he ended up working at Asilimia.

Give it a listen and share your thoughts in the comment section.

This week on the podcast we had the pleasure of having Steve Odhiambo, an award-winning entrepreneur and innovator. Steve is the Founder & CEO of Ukowapi UG and also serves as the COO of Qol- MA UG. He successfully raised over €200,000 in funding for both businesses. He is also a speaker at several conferences and events round the world. Being very passionate about entrepreneurship on the African Continent and how it can be used to change lives, Steve is determined to share his experience and knowledge to create the next generation of African Investors.

Give it a listen and share your thoughts in the comments section!

This week on the podcast we had the pleasure of having Kwesi Makonnen, a psychologist and a software developer. With a foot in both these fields, he proved the perfect guest as we explored various aspects of how the interaction between our minds and technology is changing us every day. From a deep dive into social media and how it’s affecting human interaction to conquering imposter syndrome, this episode is an essential for everyone seeking a deeper understanding of how tech is affecting us as a society. Give it a listen and share your thoughts in the comments section!

On this episode, we discuss the recent terror attack that took place at the 14 Riverside complex in Nairobi, as well as our solutions on how technology can prevent and combat terror. We would like to offer our sincere condolences to the families of the lives lost, and we wish a quick recovery to those injured. 

On this episode, we are joined by Eugene Nzioki, a software developer and finance graduate, and we discuss Andela's $100m (KSh 10 billion)  Series D funding, what African startups can do to position themselves for venture capital funding and more. Enjoy!