Maximising a career break

I’ve spent the past 5 years working in the financial services, digital identity and telecommunications space in the valley. The products I have built have been mostly focused on users in emerging markets. In the process, I've learned the importance of accounting for network connectivity constraints, device storage limitations and the optimal channels for service delivery. In most emerging markets, USSD/SMS is still king, although, with zero-rating, the ability for a telco to allow traffic from your app without charging the user, digital channels are increasingly gaining adoption. However, even with zero rating, you have device storage constraints, where the majority of the users with introductory-level smartphone devices have to choose between installing Facebook/WhatsApp and your new app on their device. 

I made the decision to take a short career break a few months ago to get some headspace to recharge but also to pursue a new product in the managed home services market, gethomespace.com. We are on a mission to make it easier for the large number of informal workers to get matched with job opportunities in households and businesses and we are keen on building a trusted database of service providers for industry partners. This work has been largely done by Ian Hoffman, Paul Kaguara and myself, but we would love to get help and bring more people onboard.

We are still early in this journey and hacking away at the MVP. If this is something that you find interesting and if you have spare capacity, I would be more than happy to have you join us on this discovery and execution journey. If you are a business and you think there could be a potential partnership opportunity, please reach out to us too! Just send me a quick message at admin@sasachale.com. I hope you can find the time to reflect on your own personal learnings and create some headspace to pursue your passion projects and test your learning boundaries.