Why we’re building DEMAA

DEMAA means “mutual support” in Soninke, a language spoken in Mali and other parts of West Africa.

The name echoes a Malian saying: one person alone cannot do much. We share that conviction. We can only go so far on our own; together, we can build more.

DEMAA began with a simple observation: we regularly spot opportunities because we already work within certain markets.

Tiimora grew out of our work with accounting firms.

Jago grew out of several experiences with African products, production and bringing them to market.

Each venture could have been launched as an independent business from day one.

But much of the work repeats: shaping an offer, building a product, creating content, finding the first customers, setting up tools and managing some of the administration or sales.

The idea behind the studio is to share that work.

The aim is to test several opportunities with the same team and method, then gradually focus resources on those showing real signals, rather than launch as many ventures as possible.

We also want to avoid building too much too soon.

A venture can be promising even when its audience, offer or business model isn’t yet clear.

So we start by testing: speaking with the people concerned, putting an initial offer in front of them, observing what they do and deciding whether it deserves more time and capital.

Depending on the venture, that decision may come quickly or take several months.

Profitability also matters a great deal in how we think about the studio.

We don’t aim to build businesses that necessarily depend on successive funding rounds. We want them to become resilient, fund their own operations and create lasting value.

We may hold some for the income they generate. Others may be sold if that makes sense.

We aren’t deciding today how each company will eventually be exited. We want to build businesses that leave us with several options.

The studio shares some strategy, marketing, sales, finance, administration and tools.

When a venture becomes a business in its own right, though, it also needs to build what makes it distinct: its team, sector expertise and operational capabilities.

We’ve also chosen to document some of the work.

We won’t share everything, and the aim isn’t to turn DEMAA into a media business.

We mainly share decisions others might find useful: why we choose an audience, how we approach go-to-market, what we test and what changes our minds.

It also pushes us to be clearer about our own hypotheses.

Ultimately, DEMAA gives structure to something we were already doing in a more scattered way: starting with problems we know, testing with discipline and investing more only when experience on the ground gives us good reasons to do so.

What’s next?

This first series has helped us set out Jago, Tiimora and Dumaan, their go-to-market strategies, their action plans and how we organise the tests behind them.

From here, we’ll mainly focus on building.

Detailed updates will be collected on the DEMAA website: progress, changes, test results and important decisions.

On LinkedIn, we’ll return when there’s something useful to share: a result, a change in our hypothesis, a need, a hire, a partner we’re looking for or a learning worth making public.