Timothy Kotin was born and bred in Ghana. He is the co-founder and chief executive of SuperFluid Labs-- an ambitious African data analytics firm which supports enterprise clients spread across multiple sectors. Superfluid has offices in Kenya, Ghana and Germany.
Kotin holds an MPhil. in Engineering for Sustainable Development from the University of Cambridge and a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Harvard University. Prior to co-founding Superfluids Labs, he worked as a research scientist at IBM as part of a team which developed financial services innovations for multinational enterprise clients in Africa. Before that, he worked for Dalberg’s New York and Nairobi offices— playing consultant to key public and private sector development actors such as the U.S. Government, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Open Society Foundations and the UN Foundation.
In this conversation with Andile Masuku, Timothy relates how he and his team at Superfluid Labs have built a sustainable business around delivering business value through developing and deploying data analytics solutions, and explains why technical founders in his line of work who fail to rope in solid business development-oriented co-founders are likely to choke when reeling in the big fish.
Today's episode is a real scream. Recorded in a haunted house, this week's host is longtime podcast friend Anil Dash, joined by Fog Creek's Jenn Schiffer, Stack Overflow engineering manager Matt Sherman, news editor Ilana Yitzhaki, and executive producer Kaitlin Pike. Special guest is Leon Young of Cogniss.
The Facebook-sponsored TechCrunch Startup Battlefield competition which took place in Nairobi recently brought together fifteen African startups for a glitzy pitch session that offered entrants the chance to win $25,000, as well as the opportunity to go on and compete for $50,000 at the Disrupt Cup, which will be held in Silicon Valley next year.
After the Kenyan logistics startup, Lori Systems, won the Nairobi event murmurings of alleged tournament rigging started doing the rounds and eventually surfaced in media reports. This palava has got Andile Masuku and Musa Kalenga wondering what, if any, value startup competitions are adding to Africa's emerging tech ecosystem, and has inspired them to interrogate the motives and modus operandi of various commercial interests who are looking to position themselves as enablers of Africa's tech industry.
Also in this African Tech Round-up podcast, Musa and Andile discuss South Africa’s recent data breach-- the largest in the country’s history, ponder the merits of Kwese's partnership with VICE, and chat about SAP's diabolical admission of guilt made to U.S. authorities-- over a $6.7 million corporate bribe paid to secure a sizeable Transnet contract in South Africa.
Music Credits:
Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Music licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
