Aaah the world of business, like a labyrinth I tell you.
I want to introduce a thumb in the eye. This is when you work so hard, so smart, put in all you have, to execute something. Then someone comes from nowhere and puts his THUMB IN YOUR EYE - Oouuuuchhhh!


1. Most media stations now have digital media divisions. From Ian Fernandes in Nation, to Capital etc. Out of nowhere, a few scrappy boys invent Makmende with not even enough money to register the domain - Ouch!


2. Redykulas took Kenya Comedy by storm. Young guys with humour at Moi's expense in the media. And consume them we did to the point of them being integrated into Radio stations and all. One day they featured a wannabe going by the name of CHURCHILL. Now I say, who's Redykulas - Ouchh!


3. I have much respect for Nokia founded in Finland in 1865 and their transition from paper, gumboots, cable works and eventually today! Yes Nokia is the leader in phones in the world with almost 40% share and hundreds of phone models. But man, to imagine Apple makes almost equal profit from just one device iPhone - Ouuch!

zain claims to have invented M-mbesha transfer b4 Safcon.Look who is smiling all the way to the bank now?Safcon---ouch ouch indeed

@kyt Ouch again. @Amir your post reminded me of a day in the life of Merali.

4. That the French can be cocky is not in doubt, and when Vivendi decided to pull out of Kenya, there was not much point in consulting Merali. So he waited until the price was agreed between Vivendi and MTN.

On that one day in one deft move, he called in his pre-emptive rights at the eleventh hour and sold to Celltel at a profit by just shuffling documents/funds between parties. Ouucchh!



5. What about the unconfirmed reports I heard that Michael Joseph was considered a rebel in his early career at Vodafone. Perhaps too impatient, too rough, bolshevik character. First consigned to freezing winters in Hungary, Mr Joseph was then picked for the Kenyan job because he lacked the finishing-school polish required to be a European boss.

Michael Joseph now appears on the top 100 world's most influential people in tech and is introduced thus "Everyone talks about mobile money, meet the man who's actually doing it" Ouuchhhh!



6. That Esther Passaris is a no holds barred, take no prisoners, businesswoman is not in question. She founded and destroyed Adopt-a-Light a feat that many dream of. But that in time she would cede the leadership of outdoor advertising and many of her clients to her former prodigy who left to form Magnate Ventures is indeed painful. Ouucchhhh!

7. Few among us would argue with the Land Rover brand. After all, the Land Rover has scaled the Himalayas, traveled pole to pole, transported the Queen, the Pope, the Dalai Lama, Fidel Castro, Winston Churchill, and Idi Amin.

When news first broke in 2008 that a company from Mumbai, India, was one of the few hopes to rescue a symbol of British prestige and luxury, the snobbish UK press went amok. Taunts such as 'junkyarders', 'curry josh jaguars', 'lamb rogan rovers', did not deter TATA.

And the ex-colony came to the rescue of the imperial power by acquiring Land Rover and Jaguar - Ouucch!



8. In Jan 2009, the man who outfoxed the market was voted European businessman of the year. His name was Wiedking, Porsche's CEO. Thanks to an astute mixture of long-term strategic foresight and short-term financial wizardry, he was sitting atop $20b mountain of capital and had ochestrated a David vs Goliath takeover of Volkswagen - Germany's largest automaker.

None did it hurt more than Ferdinand Piech current chairman of Volkswagen. The CEO of Porsche made him look bad. How the hell could a small car company take over the largest car maker in Europe which he chairs? Ouch!

But only six months later, credit crisis was in full swing leaving Porsche unable to raise money to complete the takeover and in need of dire help. Ferdinand Piech quickly launched a counter takeover of Porsche by Volkswagen.

After an all-night meeting of its board of directors, Porsche said Wendelin Wiedeking, Germany's best-paid executive and its CEO for the past 16 years, along with finance chief Holger Haerter, would quit the group immediately. Double Ouuchh!


Sasa wewe, usisome ukizubaa. Chunga Jicho!

Ouch! Ouch! Ouch! tucked in the corner of Nakuru was a retail outlet, the size of yo kawaida estate mini market. it went by the name nakuru mattress. At that time, uchumi was an acronym of the word super market. Decades later nakumatt grew steadily and as they say the rest is history. ouch times 10 Roho Juu!

Young men are impressionable so as I stood there talking to Jabrail, I couldn't help but say to myself "When I grow up I want to be like this guy".

The casual discussion was about coffee in Kenya, and noting his recent interest in the subject, I thought to impress him with my knowledge of how C.Dorman's works. You see I'd come to learn C.Dorman belongs to the Block family, and was leading coffee roaster and exporter in East Africa since 1950. He listened quietly as I mused how by trading in the commodity futures in New York, it was possible to make pure profit while using lower grades to serve local market and pay for expenses - what a business.

A couple of months later, I heard he had some interest in a small shop in Adams Arcade. One Friday, I took a date by the difficult to find corner shop. We didn't like it and left as I thought to myself "...he didn't get it right, he should have consulted more, he's burnt his fingers and his whole hand...".

I didn't even note the name, but if I try looking back hard enough, I vaguely make out the sign - JAVA, yes the Java Coffee House. Ouuuucch!

Dr. John Pemberton will probably be cursed by his descendants for as long as his memory lasts.

The good doctor and his alcoholic son concocted a syrup in a three-legged brass kettle in his backyard in 1885. This princely effort cost a whooping $70 - unfortunately, the syrup was a total flop in the market coz all doc made was $50.

Smitten by the loss, Dr. Pemberton flogged the rights to the syrup to pharmacist-cum-businessman Assa Griggs Chandler for $2300.

Dude must've turned in his grave when he heard that the syrup he practically handed over to Chandler in the late 19th Century for a measly 2300 bucks (Coca-Cola) is worth $67.5 billion TODAY.

Like Ouch to the power of infinity?

OUUCHHH @msotoville, good stuff, you reminded me of another Dr


You need to see the awe in a young boy's eyes when he talks of flying - face it, boys love to fly. Dr Gary Kildall, computer scientist, was no exception. So on one fateful day, he figured he could take a joyride with his twin-engine plane and told his wife to hold fort with the 'suits' who were scheduled to come in for a meeting.

That very same day in 1980, Jack Sams, the lead negotiator from IBM, and two companions arrived. He left disappointed in a hufff! Dr Gary Kildall was too busy and the wife didn't want to execute the 'simple' NDA - to hell with it!

Sams went back to Seattle and asked Gates, who had already signed the NDA, if he could provide a 16-bit operating system - done deal. So Microsoft not only supplied BASIC but also MSDOS to IBM. The rest as they say, is...



In 1992, University of Washington invited Kildall to attend the 25th anniversary of its computer science program. He was one of its earliest and most distinguished graduates, earning a PhD, yet they had picked as keynote speaker Gates, a Harvard dropout. OOUUUCCCH!!!

All this veeeeeery funny, how fortunes can change. Anything on the political side in Kenya.........

........OOooooooouuuuCH!!!!!