The Growth Office, an online digital marketing agency, strongly believe that an entrepreneur’s surrounding network has the biggest potential to impact their future and for this very reason, they have partnered with Hangout Foundation to organise an annual workshop called Startit 360, focused on supporting small businesses each year that have shown high interest to grow.
The concepts of startups and entrepreneurship are similar. Entrepreneurship is simply the art or science of innovation and risk taking for profit in business while a startup is a new company or organization designed for rapid growth.
“Uganda tops the countries with the highest rate of failing businesses. As a nation, we are a highly entrepreneurial country. For the last five to seven years, we have remained among the top three in the whole world in terms of enterprise creation. However, another dismal statistic shows that we have for long been the country with the highest enterprise failure rate,” reveals Enterprise Uganda Executive director; Charles Ocici
Why then would a country that is not over populated with self-made business leaders have only a few of businesses go the whole distance? Ugandans are opportunists by nature yet many young entrepreneurs in particular have generally low growth expectations, few innovate or vary product lines making creation of additional business more common than expanding an existing one.
According to Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), 28% of adults own or co-own a new business. With all the resource endowments in the country, isn’t it high time for Uganda to move from just a promising entrepreneurial country to one that’s actually the most entrepreneurial?
If we took a closer look, it’s not an issue of resource materials but poor record keeping, mixing business capital and personal money or personalizing of company profits among others that are failing entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs across Africa often cite access to capital as the biggest barrier to growth but money alone is unlikely to produce significant results, financial discipline and mindset change.
“We will bring together a network of valuable creative minds in business, inspiring speakers, and strong strategies in business development and marketing to share strategies with start-ups, and freelancers but mostly putting emphasis on creating sustainable and relevant networks for business owners and co-owners.” – Says Daaki Joshua, Founder of Hangout Foundation.
“We believe this platform is the future of Uganda’s entrepreneurial status moving away from what it has been branded by GEM reports to new statistics; helping creative thinkers, co-founders and freelancers who are looking at developing strong brands start with a higher edge” – Joshua added
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This year’s workshop will be hosted at Forever Resort in Jinja on Saturday December 8th for not only interactive talk sessions but also interactive activities that will engage business owners, to think out of the box. Many tested and tried business models will be trained as well.
At the end of the workshop, The Growth Office and Hangout Foundation are giving a grant worth $500 to the most exciting and innovative start-up/entrepreneur. The grant will support the venture in digital marketing and establishing a strong online presence. The grant is open for all attendants to register and apply. Apply here
The workshop plans to majorly focus on three aspects
Start-ups: Learning tested strategies from experienced trainers to help you start with a higher edge.
Innovation: This event brings strategies to help you understand your product and identify how best you can innovate your idea and make it profitable.
Productivity: The success of every venture not only depends on how dedicated you are, but also on how you are able to focus of high priority resources and activities.
This is a timely and vital workshop for entrepreneurs. I encourage you to start making plans to attend the workshop. Its also worthy to note that attendance the workshop will be by invitation of the people who applied. Follow this link to apply.
