While your story does have some point to it, I feel it’s founded on the basis of hearsays and generalizations. Kennedy’s story is unique. Even with the assumption that he was an employee, his contributions as an early employee would warrant his equity in the company when argued well.

Now, let’s come to the issue of protecting your idea. You simply don’t apply for a patent and get one. Criteria, which have to satisfy KIPI, have to be met. It has to be new, inventive, non-obvious and useful. The non-obvious part is where it gets murky. According to KIPI, the “invention must not be obvious to someone with knowledge and experience in the technological field of the invention”. I can tell you for a fact that even prior to Safi Analytics, I knew of two friends as early as 2014 who had been working on something similar. Our Kenyan laws do very little in line with Utility Patents, which would protect the HOW. Now, assuming you qualify for all of those…there is the money involved and the waiting period. Success in any venture, I’d like to believe, aside from other factors is a function of time. When you launch matters a lot, so is the waiting time worth releasing an MVP and iterating based on market feedback?

Third..is the issue of M-Pesa. We’ve been here. M-Pesa is not a Kenyan innovation. Read about it and you’ll know the product was tested in a lot of other countries prior to it being launched in Kenya. Because someone here later thought about it, it doesn’t mean it was “stolen”. We perfected M-Pesa, we didn’t build it.

Fourth is this issue of “ideas”. Business, any business, is about a lot of things. Founder-product-market-fit for me is the most important one. Are you the right person to solve that problem? What qualifies you? How much specialized knowledge + experience do you have in that particular problem? Capital, timing, location, team, speed….and of course luck plus other things. So this idea of holding on to your “unique” idea because someone is going to “steal” it is complete hogwash.

Then there’s the issue of ownership, which to me is the biggest issue. I ask, would you rather own 100% of nothing or 10% of $1billion? I think it’s a no-brainer. Now, also, equity is structured in different ways. It’s not a simple I own 55% you own 45%. What type of share is it? Is it common stock or preferential? Do the founders have the right to the first refusal? What are the diluting options? It’s not that black and white.

Capitalism is capitalism. Whereas I agree that our eco-system has issues and a lot has to be done in fixing it, right up from government policies (especially government ), access to capital, better minority protection laws to better founder education…I also think it’s safe to say that as founders, we also need to do a lot to educate ourselves in business…and not corporate politics. Create value + capture it = revenue. Most importantly, is for us to focus on how can we start small, where we are but with a vision to grow. Realize that it will take time and that along the way you will fail. Focus on building profitable ventures because our eco-system is not yet mature for VC structure (although there has been tremendous growth) and most importantly, being factual when putting forward our arguments.

Let’s have conversations centered around growing teams, taxes, units of economics, cashflows, balance sheets and how to validate your idea and BMC. This one of ideas getting stolen doesn’t do much to grow us or the eco-system