About Jon

Jon Gosier is the founder of Appfrica Labs, a tech incubator that offers jobs, mentoring and seed capital to East African technology entrepreneurs.

In addition to running Appfrica, Jon works for a number of other international development technology projects. At Question Box, an information service for the rural poor, Jon serves as the Chief Technology Officer where he has overseen the development of products like Open Question which allows call centers to efficiently manage question and answer services. At Ushahidi, Jon currently serves as the Director of Swift River project, developing a platform that allows for the filtering and verification of news reports during a crisis.

Jon is also a TED Senior Fellow, a position that he was chosen for after presenting a short talk on his work at TEDGlobal2009.

Q & A with Jon:

Why are you interested in taking a Thrust Fund loan?

I started my venture with no experience, no real source of funding and no real mentors. A year and a half later, I have a self-sustaining, cash-positive company and I'm loving life. For me it's not really about the money. While this money would absolutely help me scale and replicate our success (havening learned from a few mistakes), what's more interesting to me is finding the person or company who shares this vision enough to support it financially. In other words, I'm as interested in the potential investor as I am the potential investment.

What would you do with the money?

Appfrica Labs Uganda is already cash-positive and self-sustaining on earned revenue. A small portion of the funds would simply be used as a ‘cushion' to help us get by in lean months. The majority of the cash would be used to replicate our success in Uganda in another African countries (likely Malawi), as I feel the same entrepreneurial spirit there from tech enthusiasts as I found in Uganda when I first arrived. The experiences I've gained from bootstrapping a successful African technology company will greatly influence any spending decisions for the better.

What do you see yourself doing in 5, 10, or 20 years?

I have a love for technology, Africa and education. It would be by dream to continue scaling Appfrica Labs to train and support Africa's future leaders. While I will still continue developing software and working in my current capacities at the companies mentioned above, I'd also like to find time to teach and support the creative minds of the continent.

What is your favorite part of starting a new enterprise?

For me it was the unknown and a certain element of defiance. I went to Silicon Valley prior to coming to Africa with a lot of the same ideas but none of the experience. A lot of people simply nodded, smiled and told me ‘good luck with that!'. The feeling was that Africa was too broken for optimism, especially in areas of technology and business. My motivation has always partly been disproving that ideology. Whether we can actually do it successfully or not, no one can ever say that there's simply nothing innovative going on here.

Besides your current venture, what are you passionate about?

Writing. People always ask me why I still maintain the Appfrica Blog even though it's time consuming and doesn't make money. Writing is in my bones, I honestly can't not do it no matter how busy I get. From the time I was a child I always wanted to write science fiction and comic books. In some ways my passion for tech journalism comes from that.