Dickson is a tall man who wears a very broad smile. As you move around Kampala today, you cannot fail but recognise his face on Airtel billboards. He is their ambassador for the Uganda Needs More of You campaign. That is just the icing on the cake but beneath that is a very strong and determined innovator.
Dickson is the brains behind Hostalite, a renowned and reputable web designing and hosting company that has been running for the last 12 years. However, the last four years have been quite a piece of work for him. The techie in him is restless and relentless when it comes to solving problems.
In 2017, he was a treasurer of an investment club. Like all other treasurers, this was a voluntary role that had a lot of work to do. Having realised the work was consuming a lot of his time since it was manual, he decided to automate the process which resulted into the birth of Cinnamon.
Cinnamon is a software that helps investment clubs and SACCOS automate their financial records. Groups whose membership is below 100 pay between UGX 35,000 – 90,000 while those with 100 to 500 members pay between UGX 60,000 and 200,000 to use the software.
When the platform was created, it solved his problem but was too good that he decided to have other investment clubs give it a try. However, it was a rushed idea that hadn’t been designed to carry all the many clubs there were. By 2019, it was working against him. It crashed.
But he was not.
March 2020 happened. The country was in the Covid-19 lockdown, and everyone was at home. A sense of panic had swept around the world, and no one knew how long it would last. Many people went into panic shopping. A few weeks later a photo of rotting foodstuffs discarded at a dumpster that had not been touched that made rounds on social media triggered Dickson to do something.
At the look of the dumped foodstuffs, they could have cost about UGX 100,000. Dickson decided to come up with a platform that could help people with more than enough to give to those who had next to nothing. That is how the Dolphin Fund was born.
“Dolphins are known to be caring species of animals. They are always looking out for other animals in need including human beings who are their biggest threat. The idea of the Dolphin Fund was for communities to come together to help those in need.”
Dolphin Fund was designed to be a crowdfunding platform where people in need would register campaigns that could be donated to. On the other hand, people would choose which campaign to be part of. A phone call would be made to the people for due diligence.
Largely people used the platform banking on Dickson the individual, especially the receivers. They trusted that they would get the money.
The fund was a good tool in helping Ugandans who were crowdfunding given the different issues they were experiencing.
In a space of a year, about UGX 40 million was collected from about 234 campaigns that run on the platform.
Like Cinnamon, the idea was lacking. It had gaps. People would donate money and it would bounce back to them. Something was not adding up. He had to abandon it for a while.
The good thing is that its impact had been registered. Patients had fundraised for hospital bills. Others had been able to get wheelchairs. A church had been roofed. And some people had collected tuition.
In all this, according to Dickson, “Success through a crowdfund is about other people walking the mile with you. It is not about having all the amounts covered, it is about knowing that someone out there, cares. Every little coin is registered as a success. The money you get, you did not have it.”
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Bouncing Back
After taking some time off to know what had gone wrong for both Cinnamon and Dolphin, Dickson decided to go back to the drawing board and fix the gaps.
He built a stronger platform for Cinnamon that could accommodate enormous investment clubs with all their weight without crashing. He made it more user-friendly and better automated.
The Dolphin Fund was also given a facelift and redesigned to help people crowdfund for their personal campaigns.
In all this the Hostalite CEO has learnt that failure is part of the journey and that it is okay to admit that you have failed. However, giving up is not an option.
He has also learnt that asking for money is not easy. “There was a guy who came up with a campaign after seeing his friend raise UGX 10,000,000. He was frustrated that his campaign only raised UGX 20,000.”
Dolphin Fund was popularised on social media for awareness, collections and accountability. Doing all the work was such a challenge during the pandemic.
Many people did not know how to put up their stories on the Dolphin platform. It was hard. “There was a campaign of a mother who needed UGX 100 million for her son’s surgery. It took her forever to put up the campaign. When she did, a university student donated UGX 1,000 and this motivated others to take part. In the end she was able to raise UGX 14 million.
Dolphin Fund is about walking a mile in one’s shoes. The fund charges a handling fee of 5% per campaign.
For Cinnamon, it has been bettered to help as many clubs as possible. As a developer, Dickson advises fellow developers not to be shy telling the clients that the system has failed. He had to let go of the first clients. “Few satisfied clients are better than a thousand complaining,” he says.
Also, for Dickson, giving up is not part of the game. He is now considering taking Cinnamon to other countries. In the future, he hopes to build a virtual bank. Today, there are 400 clubs and SACCOS signed up on the platform with close to 10,000 members.
He has learnt that it is okay to fail. It is okay to tell the clients that things are not working out as planned. It is okay to have one satisfied client than 1000 complaining clients. And when you fail, it is not the end, there is hope to bounce back.
Both Dolphin Fund and Cinnamon are now two independent brands.
In 2015, Mushabe published a book I Am Not Sorry For My Mistakes, where he shares about his business journey. The book went on to sell 10,000 copies. He is currently finalising his second book.
When he is not tinkering with the techie side of things, Dickson plays as a public speaker. He believes there is need for people to share their stories to motivate other people along the way. He urges young entrepreneurs and budding techies to be vigilant when choosing who they follow. Some people are reading scripts of experiences they have not lived. “Find people whose story you identify with,” he concludes.
