First appeared in Tech Africa.

A rat race is an endless, self-defeating, or pointless pursuit. It conjures up the image of the futile efforts of a lab rat trying to escape while running around in a maze or in a wheel

— Wikipedia

Peter Druker (1964) describes an entrepreneur as someone who searches for change, responds to it and exploits opportunities using innovation. Peter Kilby (1971) also recognizes the important role of imitator-entrepreneurs who do not innovate but imitate technologies innovated by others. An appetite for risk, a healthy dissatisfaction for the status quo and an irrational addiction to value creation are common denominators of all entrepreneurs.

However, not all entrepreneurs are business-people, and not all business-people are entrepreneurs. While entrepreneurs can create value building non-profit or for-profit vehicles, the fundamental mandate of businesses and business-people is to create profits. For some entrepreneurs, their motive is to make lives better, and their ventures create value by fostering social change. Others are business people; they have the primary motive of creating profit, and their ventures morph into whatever can achieve that, whether it’s through social impact or otherwise. Both types of entrepreneurs are essential, and they should never be assessed using the same criteria.

Africa suffers from a litany of social issues, and it places a curse on techie entrepreneurs, most of whom have a profit-making motive but are oriented to believe that for their ventures to be noteworthy, they must serve to eradicate or at least ameliorate a social problem. They invest hours of development-time creating that product that will provide on-demand, mobile, offline, everything access to healthcare, or provide access to quick work, reduce poverty or expose corruption etc.

Progenitors and promoters of tech entrepreneurship are also inherently biased towards problem-solving technology and base their assessment of great ‘businesses’ on the depth of social problems they’re solving, while judging entrepreneurs with solely profit-making motives for not matching their ventures to social needs by asking the infamous question “what problem are you solving?” Tech entrepreneurs in Africa whose personal motive is to create wealth now find themselves in another rat race developing solutions to problems even if they have infinitesimal profit-making potential.

Business model > Product

For techies trying to create wealth, focus on the business model and let that define the technology and even the industry. If you think there’s an opportunity to cut or replace the middleman somewhere, create an artificial layer of need elsewhere, or offer a ‘fluffy and superfluous’ product people will get addicted to, then build a financial model around it (this could be an exit agenda with traction-loving investors), create a basic product and see if a stranger will use or pay for it at your price-point, then go crazy sophisticating the product… Or you can just get a business co-founder.

For others who are simply passionate about solving a social problem, focus on grasping the scope and design a solution to it, but don’t get frustrated when profit-inclined investors are not as enthusiastic as you are, or when adoption doesn’t translate to revenue. Examining and defining your motives as an entrepreneur will create a clearer path for your venture and reduce fatigue and frustration.