Founding a Company in the Tech Space — Lessons Learnt

In June 2020, my friend and classmate from secondary school, Kweyakie Afi Blebo, and I reconnected after a few years. We shared a common interest. We were studying for the Microsoft Azure Data Science certification exams. We had a study plan and so we’d hop on Zoom calls studying and talking for hours, in anticipation for the day of the examinations. During our study times, we would talk about varying topics in the space of Technology, what it was like for women and girls like us to venture into and sustain themselves in the space, and the resources available to us.

Although there were a number of organizations in Ghana and across the world who were in the business of encouraging more women into the Tech space, we felt that there were gaps and we could do more in narrowing those gaps.

In this article, I’m going to take you on my one year journey of what it’s been like building our company. I’ll be candid with you on the highs and lows, the days — which flowed into weeks — we felt stuck, the days it all felt like a breeze, our accomplishments and our failures. Stay with me.

June — December 2020

So, from June thereabouts to December 2020, we were brainstorming on how we will go about setting it up. I can only speak more on what my personal experiences were, and I’m sure Afi would have somewhat different takes from her perspective.

Our initial thought was to register the company first and then fully commence. I spoke to someone I knew who had experience in setting up an NGO. TK, as we all call him, set up the Future of Africa NGO which was doing amazing work in changing the lives of street kids in Ghana and he was the best person I could think of to seek advice from. If you’re familiar with the bureaucratic processes within government institutions in Ghana, it shouldn’t surprise you that setting up a business at the Registrar General’s office would be any different. TK advised me to focus on building up the internal processes of the company and starting actual work instead of waiting months for the company registration certificate. This was before we decided to do any major work that would put us in the limelight. We decided to set the ball rolling immediately.

Next, we had to set up our internal process and do all our branding work for social media etc. We needed an extra hand to help us with social media. I reached out to Hillary Owusu whom I had recently connected with on Twitter over shared interest in Data Science. She was a bright girl still in the university studying Telecommunications Engineering. She was more than happy to help. I barely knew her then but with our few interactions she seemed responsible and dedicated. We brought her on board.

For our branding work, I reached out to my friend Daniel Olukoya whom I had met while in the university at Ashesi to create a logo for us. I had seen on Instagram that he was into designing logos. I always say this, and I hope to never forget, that he was one of the best things to have ever happened to our brand. Because, he was not only interested in re-designing a logo for us, but he helped us build our brand from ground up. I forgot to add that we had initially designed a logo ourselves but it wasn’t the best haha. Daniel held virtual meetings with us to help us really think through why we had decided to do this, what we were bringing differently to the market, and gave us documentation for our logos, fonts to use, colors, and paraphernalia mockups, based off what our vision for the company was.

We wanted to build our website ourselves and build our skills in the process but looking at other things we were up to, building the site from scratch and with limited skillset would take longer than we hoped for. So Afi recommended some of her friends who were highly skilled in Web development. We paid for the domain and started work on that side.

Do you realize how everyone who helped us to get on our feet were people we knew personally? We didn’t look far but instead we took note of the skills of people around us and figured out how their skills could be of help to us. You need to be objective with this though. Because it’s not easy nor smart to work with just anyone.

By December 2020, we had laid down most of the ground work but for some reason we were not launching. I can’t remember precisely why we didn’t launch earlier but if I’m being honest I’d say we were just scared of whether we’d get the reception we wished to get and if we were ready for the responsibility it would come with. I remember clearly that Hillary would periodically prompt us and ask when we were launching.

January — March 2021

Launch month! On 8th January 2021, we did a soft launch on social media. What did this mean? Prior to launch day, we shot a video announcing who we were and what we were set out to do. So, on the launch day, we sent out the video along with a write up and prompt for people to follow us on our social media pages — Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Facebook. We also shared on WhatsApp to our family and friends. We got so much encouragement and support to which I was pleased. Because She Can had been brought to life!

Because She Can is on a mission to encourage and empower women and girls to excel in technology disciplines and roles.

We sent out a link for people to join the community and we communicated with them through emails.

Our first activity as an organization was showcasing examples of women in Tech in our communities. We can easily look online and find examples of women who are making waves in the Tech space across the globe. What we wanted to do was to show girls who wished to venture into this space, that they didn’t need to look that far. There are women and girls around them, who look just like them, and are doing remarkable things in the Tech space in Ghana. We launched the ‘Celebrating women in Tech Spaces’ segment where we posted the profiles of these girls on our social media pages.

Before doing all of this, the three of us, Hillary, Afi and I, had to come up with a content plan for the upcoming weeks. We shared the responsibilities of who would come up with the content and captions, who would do the graphic design and who would reach out to stakeholders we were to profile. This required a lot of planning. Along the line, we had started our 9–5 jobs which meant that proper time management had to become part of our lives, or else we would suffer for it woefully.

April — June 2021

Our next major program was our virtual mentorship sessions. We hopped on the ClubHouse app buzz. A way in which we are bridging the digital gender divide is through mentorship sessions. At Because She Can, we believe that you don’t only need mentorship or encouragement only as a new entrant into the space. But we could all use a helping hand — no matter how ‘experienced’ you may think you are. We can’t lie to ourselves — it’s not every day you feel top-notch with the urge to conquer the world. With some research, we settled on topics from questions that people often ask in this world of Technology — ranging from career to personal development. We scouted for, starting with our friends and family in the Tech space, people who had knowledge in the topics we wished to discuss. We created forms and shared it with our panellists after they had agreed to speak on these discussions.

One thing we learned was that, some of these people are very busy and so getting them to fill a form might delay a bit of the work you are trying to do. Sometimes a simple conversation over DM or WhatsApp will do the trick in getting all their details you need. After getting the details (pictures, bio etc.) we created flyers and posted them in anticipation of the big day. We had a good number of people joining for all sessions we did.

Give me a moment to thank again the panellists for our ‘Imposter Syndrome’ session: Vanessa Vanderpuye, Author and Mental Health Advocate

Cyhana Lee Williams, Programs Manager at Microsoft

Dorcas Laryea, Software Developer at Petra

‘Landing a Job in Tech with no code knowledge’ session:

Edith Akati, Product Manager at MPharma

Emmanuel Addo Yirenkyi, Program Manager at Microsoft

Annie Nyamekye, Freelance Web Developer

‘Striving for Perfection as a Developer’ session:

Omoshola Shongule, Backend Engineer

Eyram Ami Beryl Bansah, Software Engineer

Afi and I learnt on the job, how to co-host. Something we had never done before. When I tell you how hilarious the behind the scenes were, you would be surprised at the positive feedback we received for each session. It’s been a good ride.

Also in May, we were contacted by a company to help them recruit interns to work with them. This was a paid opportunity open to both men and women. We created and sent out flyers and asked people to apply via a link, we interviewed candidates, sent out all the necessary emails. We were so excited that we failed to do our due diligence of the company and team. It was not a total scam but it was certainly not how we expected it to play out. Major lesson learned there.

July 2021

In July, Afi and I were called by our Alma Mata, Achimota School, to do a virtual mentorship session with other panellists of women in Tech. It was amazing. Our first gig. Later in the month I had another mentoring gig to speak to a 100+ secondary school girls and let me just say I would like to be doing such things forever. It’s so fulfilling.

August — September 2021

We got lost. We just weren’t doing much. No content was being pushed out. No planning of any events. Sometimes we’d get overwhelmed by activities of the past months, and other 9–5 tasks, together with our personal responsibilities which had the tendency of weighing down on us. But we always came back on our feet, after sharing with each other how we felt about all life’s headaches. Internally, we started plans of registering the business and we had to be going back and forth to the registrar general’s department because we wanted to be actively involved in registering the business ourselves without a middleman. Started the registration enquiry and process in July.

Finally got registered in September!

During these months, we were also providing our community signups with one-on-one mentorships. We’d either mentor them personally or refer them to other girls in the field who could be of help.

October — December 2021

In October, we participated in another in-person mentorship session to speak to and facilitate robotics workshops for girls aged 9–14 years. It was remarkable and so touching that we were building the interests of these girls in the field of Technology at such a young age.

At the beginning of the year we had planned to organize an event dubbed ‘December for Women who code’ to support women in Tech.

This project aimed to raise funds to procure laptops for underprivileged women in Tech which would be presented to the recipients in December. We set a target of $5000 (GHS 30,000) to buy laptops to support at least 10 of these women. We had reached more than half (54%) of our target by December.

This meant that we only had enough funds to support five women with laptops to aid them in their Tech journey. Selected women had demonstrated a deep interest in pursuing careers in Technology. Despite the barriers they faced with access to a working laptop, these women defied the odds. These women had projects on GitHub and portfolio websites that highlighted their learning progress and proper understanding of fundamental software engineering and data science concepts.

For promotion of this event, we asked our influencer friends to help us with putting the word out there through pledge campaigns. We also wanted a TV gig. I have a friend, Ama Ayenor, who works partly as a Sports critic on TV, and so I reached out to her for help. Her influence helped us land a slot on the Tech segment of one of the TV stations. In less than a year we were on TV. Who would’ve thought. We had two slots though. One was acquired when the same TV station reached out to us independently for their morning show. Looks like whatever had happened, destiny already had our names written there lmao. But our initiative bagged us two and not just one.

Although the fundraising project was undertaken in December 2021, we hope this will continue throughout each year, where we constantly support women in need. If you would like to donate to support the work of Because She Can in providing varying resources to women in need in the space of Technology, you can do so through our Gofundme page. Thank you for going on this journey with me.

Sitting down to write this has taught me that there are so many lessons I learnt even from the smallest of tasks that I can’t fit in this article. I should write an entire book for this invaluable experience I have given to myself.

Bravo Otema!