To Scale or Not To Scale? That is the question...MR ELON!

HE DID IT! With the Twitter move, Elon Musk yet again has just pulled together on the most impressive moves of business history. Whether or not you like him, as an entrepreneur, you can only admire the chess move mastery. Being able to infiltrate the system, weaken the defense mechanism and come up with a BIG irresistible offer ($44 billion) while controlling the narrative is clearly a move for the ages. To deploy such a power move, it is clearly not possible if one does not understand of SCALE.

• Coming to term with the concept of Scale

Starting a business is a very daunting task daunting task that every entrepreneur will associate with. Once you go past the euphoria of the start and the encouragement of family and friends, you very quickly realise that you need to produce to make a living, you need to produce to say that you are in business. Do we all agree with that?

Now here is the thing. This is only the first step. ?It is not enough to just sell one or products, unless the article or service itself is big enough to sustain you for sometimes. You need to sell in sufficient quantity in order to generate a substantial and regular income. You need to reach the critical regularly to keep the business afloat. In other words, you need to understand the concept of SCALE. Yes, without scaling or growing your company, your dream will soon become a distant memory!

Like many others, I’ve wrestled with this reality a little while. It took me sometimes to come up with the right business model that will take me forward. As creative as I am, I came up with multiple ideas, multiple products that I tested on the market and I found out that indeed not all of them are scalable or at least, not as fast as I needed to be.?However once, you’ve cracked the bone and come up with the right combination and the right formula, all of a sudden, everything seems to be making sense and you can now start marching towards your objectives.

• Not just any solution, but scalable solutions…

The problems the African faces are GIGANTIC and many. It is absolutely commendable to be able to lift one or two people out of poverty, to be able provide employment for a couple of young people but until we are coming up with solutions that could be scalable on a big fashion, we certainly not going to be able to see a step change.

Let’s look SDG7 for example. We looking to provide full electricity access to 500 million people between now and 2030, that is to say slightly less than 8 years now. In order words, we are looking to provide power to more than 60 million of people every year until 2030. This is equivalent to giving power to a country as big as Tanzania every year. This is the size of the real challenge that we are having. Just like getting the proper understanding of growing a business, we need to come term with the right product and the right programmes to produce the scale we need to make a noticeable and consequential difference. One that will set the momentum and completely change the game.

Sounds impossible? Remember the Elon Musk power play. It only sounds impossible you do not know how to play the game and do not understand the concept of Scale and Thinking BIG!

On my side, while I’m still on my journey, I’ve clearly made the choice to keep looking in this direction and work on solutions that I believe would scalable enough to lead me to the stratosphere! I understand that it is at this price that you’ll get the chance to achieve your dreams! Are you in for a ride with me? So jump in and let’s roll.

Tony Tiyou?is the founder and CEO of?Renewables in Africa (RiA)?is a Clean Energy Company raising Awareness about Renewable Energy in Africa and across the globe. Interested in our Awareness Program? Click?HERE?to find out more or talk with us on?Clubhouse.