Here are a few key lessons we’ve learned from our experience

🔎 Know your market

You should of course know all about regulations, potential partners, competitors, etc. But most importantly, you need to know your customers intimately. Who they are, what they want, what they need, where they live, what challenges they face…  It is essential to keep talking with them throughout the operational phase of your project. It will not only help you keep updated on what you do well and what needs improving, but it will also strengthen the bond your organization has with them. It can make a huge difference for people living in remote areas, who are not yet used to being a part of the modern economy. Eventually, this will lead to more impact and more revenue. Win-win.

🧑‍🏫 Train your team

You can't do anything if your team is not up to speed. No one is going to be ready to deliver from day one, especially in regions where classic, formal jobs are not the norm. This will take time and effort, but there is no way around training your team and creating a culture that will support your organizations goals.

🔁 Iterate fast

Nobody gets things exactly right on their first try. Every product or service in this world first started as a not-so-great first version. What is important is to keep iterating on that first version and incrementally improving it, again and again and again. It will get better. The key is to do it fast: at this point, your time horizon should be a week, not a month. Test a lot of different things and implement short feedback loops to double down on what works and get rid of the rest. Try to prove yourself wrong rather than searching for confirmation. This requires intense efforts and great discipline, but it is worth it.

📏 Track your progress

You can only improve what you measure. However, this does not mean you should measure everything all the time. If you know your market well, you already know what KPIs you should focus on. Pick the right ones, track them and communicate your targets to your team so everyone knows what to strive for.

⚙️ Optimize what works

Do not waste time marginally improving something that only kind of works. Optimization is about doing something more efficiently. If something only kind of works, you should go back to iterating, no try to do it more efficiently. Only spend time optimizing something when you know it works.

🧘 Be flexible, always

Things will break, the environment will change, priorities will shift, teammates will leave. Be ready.