Impact entrepreneurs have one main mission – transform the world with their enterprise!

In a TV Interview with Simon Kiage – Tv host at Metropol TV Kenya, David Cheboryot – East Africa Manager of E4Impact was able to share his wealth of experience in impact entrepreneurship and how best to support impact entrepreneurs to not only transform the communities they support but to generate revenue to remain sustainable!

Here is a summary of the Interview:

An impact entrepreneur strives to achieve the triple bottom line and  there are three components that are crucial: Financial Impact, Social Impact and Environmental Impact.

As they aim to have social and environmental impact – they also need to generate revenue to remain sustainable and increase their impact.

When working with entrepreneurs, you need to support them throughout the journey. In the capacity building of entrepreneurs there are two important components: the science part of learning about the notions of entrepreneurship (what is strategy, what is business model, what is a financial model) and the artistic side of being an entrepreneur. Most of the training programs only train on the science, but they don’ model on how someone may be. The best way of modeling on success is to have a lot of interactions between successful entrepreneurs and upcoming entrepreneurs.

There are two main categories of enterprises: one of enterprises to sustainable mission (financial sustainability, sustainable model, sustainable strategy) and one that has a profit orientation (maximization of stakeholder’s revenue).

When you want to create a change, solve a problem in your own community! – David Cheboryot

Why do mostly startups fail?

• Not interacting with the market and with your potential customers (they believe that their idea is loved by everyone). You could have a great idea, a great intention, but if you don’t engage with the market side of that business you are destined to fail!
• There is lack of clarity on the sustainability of the model. You have a very nice value proposition, but no money is coming to the business. The model isn’t coherent in itself.

If you want change the world you need to be generating revenue. You don’t change the world just with good ideas or good intentions.

The environment around the entrepreneur is also key – if you are in a culture that propels you to become an entrepreneur, you have more possibility to become an entrepreneur and even thrive in it!