The Power of Traction: An African Founder's Perspective

Why African Founders Can't Just Sell Vision.

Author

Joe Kinvi
March 09, 2025

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Earlier this week, I reposted an article about what I’m building, Fintech in Africa, and the challenges of being an African founder. A few founders liked it and the traction section resonated with them. Here’s what I said:

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"Sadly, American founders can pitch vision, while African founders must pitch traction. I advise founders to gain as much traction as possible and demonstrate that their idea can become a reality. Don't wait for funding before you start building. Get something out there, even imperfect, and keep moving forward. You’d be surprised how many people watch and pay attention to your product. Traction helps.

If you achieve traction, money will follow in the form of revenue for your company, and that’s still money. The cheapest way to access funding is through your customers. This is pivotal. While VC or external money is good, it's very expensive because you have to pay it back. When customers pay you, you don't have to repay them. You deliver the product or service. Customers pay for value, and people will pay for it as long as you can provide that value."

Check out the full article here.

My Journey with Traction

I first deeply understood traction when we started HoaQ in 2020. I had worked at startups before, but the concept never stuck with me as an operator. When developing our thesis for the collective, traction became essential. We wanted to see that founders had built something real, with paying customers. We were investing in high-risk ventures, often in markets far from where we were based (Dublin), and in the middle of a global pandemic.

I vividly remember downloading the Bamboo app before investing just to confirm its existence. That was traction - evidence that the product was real and I could buy stocks.

What is Traction?

Traction means different things in different contexts, but my favourite definition is:

Traction is the support needed for something to succeed.

In the startup world, traction is vital to attract funding. It can be measured differently depending on your company’s stage.

Borderless: Traction from Day One

In case you missed it, I’m building Borderless - the infrastructure for the African Diaspora to invest back home. When I started this journey two years ago, we raised a small friends-and-family round. Even at that early stage, we had some form of traction.

HoaQ had already been operating for three years, investing over $3 million across 7–8 African countries, with a community of 500+ investors. This was traction - proof that we understood the problem we were solving and had real experience, albeit manually.

We released our V1 in October 2023 to gather feedback from HoaQ members. The product was clunky, but it worked, and the feedback was invaluable. From there, we started selling the product to other collectives, quickly realising that end users and collective managers had very different needs. That insight forced us to refine the product further.

We needed to prove that Borderless could support multiple asset classes. To do that, we launched a new collective internally, focused on real estate. That is now Diaspora House. That validation strengthened our pitch, proving we could expand beyond a single asset class. This was yet another form of traction that significantly increased our chances of securing the pre-seed round we’re now closing.

A Message to African Founders

Traction can take many forms, including your product, technology, revenue, or even securing a license. But the key takeaway is this: Traction is the most important thing.

Get your product out. Get customers. Get feedback. Iterate. Keep going.

The more traction you generate, the more options you create - whether that’s revenue, investment, or simply proving to yourself that you’re on the right path.

Are you an African founder who just finished reading this? If so, please let me know in the comments how you managed to get traction.

I’m currently building Borderless, the infrastructure for diaspora investment collective, for which I’m closing a pre-seed. I also co-founded HoaQ, the largest network of African diaspora angel investors, and helped launch Diaspora House, a community of diaspora real estate investors. I’m active on LinkedIn, so let’s connect there.