What’s the Buzz on Distil?
At this year’s Internet Summit, Crossroads PR caught up with entrepreneur Rami Essaid, Founder & CEO of Distil, a company providing enterprise class protection against malicious bots for anyone that operates modern websites. He shared more about Distil, some challenges he’s facing as an entrepreneur, and the importance of social media to startups.
This week at NYCEDC:
- We cheered at Facebook’s opening of a new engineering office in NYC
- We broke ground on the first phase of Willets Point in Queens
- We listened as Golden Krust’s Lowell Hawthorne shared his immigrant entrepreneurship story
- We applauded Pixable’s demo at the…
Silicon Valley VCs talk openly about their bias toward young entrepreneurs. Someargue that Internet entrepreneurs peak at the age of 25.
Vinod Khosla and those who think like him are wrong.
Countless institutions, organizations, business pundits and media have posed the following questions: What makes an entrepreneur an entrepreneur? What traits and characteristics best describe that unique person who successfully starts and grows a business enterprise?
There have been as many…
Fred Swaniker, African Leadership Academy
“Ultimately my dream is to see these leaders that we create go on to have transformative impact on the continent over the next 50 years.”
It’s Wednesday October 20 2010 and in this special podcast we speak with Fred Swaniker, he’s the 33-year-old Ghanaian, who founded the African Leadership Academy in September 2008. I guess if anybody knows how leadership should be working in Africa it’s Fred. Just to go back a little Fred, the interest that you have in leadership where was that engendered?
Well, I started really at a very early age. I grew up in different countries across the continent and I remember very vividly at the age of four living in the Gambia when there was a military coup and having to sleep under our beds because of bullets flying through the windows and everything. I was just wondering why our leaders were fighting at that early age and whether that was in the best interests of the country. So, as I moved and lived in different countries in Africa, I realised wherever I went that really we have tremendous potential on the continent but the one thing that was holding us back was the quality of our leaders and I came to believe that if we don’t find ways of improving our leaders in Africa, we’ll never really be able to stand on our feet and to rise to the full potential of the continent. So, that’s where the interest in leadership and its impact on Africa really came from.
You’ve certainly gone the right route yourself, working at McKinsey and then a graduate of Stanford Business School but your decision wasn’t to make it in the high life in business or elsewhere of the world but in fact to launch the African Leadership Academy for 100 students in Johannesburg. That was the intention. That was in 2008, how has it been going?
Well, it’s been going great so far. It’s really exceeded my expectations in most regards. We actually have close to 200 students now from about 36 countries in Africa and we’ve just graduated our first class. They’ve gone off to university and I’m in the process of selecting a fourth class of young leaders. So, it’s really wonderful seeing the caliber of young leaders that we have on the campus, selected from all across the continent. Meeting them you really get hope for the future of Africa because the ideas that they have, the passion that they have, values that they have gives me hope that if we can nurture and grow this next generation of leaders and instill good values, we can really transform Africa. So, the journey began about seven years ago, as you mentioned, and when I left McKinsey to really pursue this passion and for me the academy is about helping to address this big leadership vacuum that I mentioned earlier. Instead of just sitting back and hoping that we get good leaders, we thought that we could actually proactively develop the leaders that we need for the continent. The vision is to create 6000 leaders for Africa over the next 50 years. So far the journey has really been an exciting one and when I look at the caliber of leaders that we have on our campus I’m really inspired by the future of Africa.
Eric Ries
This guy is literally a genius. My friend recommended me a book he wrote and I watched a few youtube videos of his views. He makes amazing points.
