The Strive Masiyiwa Story: Some lessons from the beginning ( Part 4-5)

By Strive Masiyiwa

Excellence Will Always Get You Noticed

It had been quite a while since I sold my car to fund our working capital. My partner and I spent all our time just focused on our business. We worked long hours and drove around in a battered old pick up truck.

We were totally consummate about our business. When I was not working, I was reading every book or article I could find on business, and business management; It was my passion.

Although my partner and I were both engineers, I had retreated from the engineering side to finance. The only numbers that interested me, then and now are financial numbers. I had come to realise that the most important thing in running a business effectively is through financial reports. This is when I started using the motto:

“It’s all in the numbers. Show me the numbers”

One day, I went to see a leading bank. Two years had lapsed since my first attempt at raising a loan. I submitted to them my proposal. The following day they summoned me. The head of the bank was present with his most senior deputy. They were both looking at my document. “Did you prepare this?” He was totally shocked by my presentation. He openly said to me, that he had never seen anything like it, and wished every manager in his bank would see it. “You have literally taught yourself banking, just to get a loan!” He begged me not to show it to another bank.

All that preparatory work had finally paid off: I got my loan….but I was already thinking beyond local banks…why not the World Bank?!

Lessons From The Early Days: Raising Money From The World Bank (Part 5)

I told you that I read a newspaper with a pen in my hand, and I always have a notebook. So there it was, in the newspaper: the International Finance Corporation (IFC), an arm of the World Bank, was creating a small fund to help, small businesses in Africa!

We had no emails in those days. Using the principles I have already taught you, I set about on my deep research: I read about the World Bank and the IFC; I tried to get as much information as I could, in the days when there was no Internet; I spoke to friends in the business community, to get advice. Finally, I wrote them a letter, and surely enough within two weeks, I got a phone call.

Dr. Lawrence Clarke, was a young banker, from Guyana, working at the World Bank office in Washington. He had been assigned to the IFC, to find ways to help develop the African private sector. “I am coming to see you, in Harare”, he said in his booming West Indian accent…..This was my break, and I grasped it with both hands!!! Before he arrived, I was like a student preparing for exams. I crammed figures, statistics…. I knew my business.

Lawrence Clarke arrived alone, with just his computer, and he parked himself in my office for weeks. He went to see my customers and he visited my projects. He created models. I can still see him, a mountain of a man, who often worked in his shirt sleeves. I had never met such a consummate professional.

I got my facility of $250,000, in debt and equity….. From the World Bank’s private sector arm, called the IFC! It was like receiving millions of dollars in today’s money, and I was just turning 30 years old! That was 1990.Today, there are literally scores of funds similar to the one that the IFC had set up. These funds have hundreds of millions of dollars. The funds are looking for young people like some of you. It is my hope that some of you, have extracted some deep principles from what I have been saying, that will open the way to access these kind of funds.

Remember these three things that I have said to you before:

1. Attitude sets the altitude.

2. Every game, has its own rules, and its own language… Learn the rules, and language of the money game!

3. Yes you can!!!

There is one, final part to this discussion…

Lessons from the Early Days: One More Thing…

It was 1990, in just four short years I had gone from cobbling together $75 from friends and a relative to start a small electrical contracting business, to a burgeoning multimillion dollar, national business with almost 500 employees. I had learnt the art of raising money from banks, and had now secured an investment from The International Finance Corporation, an arm of the World Bank.

I had been named both Business Man of the Year and Industrialist of the Year. I was now sole owner of the business, as my partner had cashed out, and gone to establish his own business, before the IFC investment. We remain good friends to this day.

I began to think for the first time that I could tackle work in neighbouring countries, I chose Mozambique. So one morning, as part of my research into the opportunities in the country I visited their local embassy and spent several constructive hours with officials. When I left the Mozambique Embassy Building, I decided to walk back to my office rather than be driven. As I walked, I noticed a vehicle that appeared to be driving slowly behind me, but being deep in thought, I paid it no real attention. When I finally got into my office, two men rushed behind me, and abducted me at gun point!

I was taken to a secret detention centre by my abductors. Time and choice (today) constraints stop me from going into must detail about this incident. But let me say what is important; as I was in the place where I was being held and my abductors were outside, I did something I had not done since I was a child, I got on my knees and prayed earnestly to God, with tears in my eyes begging him to rescue me… He heard me! …. I was rescued from my ordeal that night!….

And now I had learnt the most important lesson of all… GOD ANSWERS PRAYER!

I came remarkably close to losing my life. We shall return to this issue again, my relationship with Jesus Christ, that is…..

God Bless You.