What's the difference between believing in an idea and knowing how to build it?

The founder of Braiding Nairobi found out the hard way. A journalist by training, she came to Nairobi for a National Geographic storytelling fellowship, noticed how many skilled braiders struggled to find clients in a city where nearly every woman pays regularly for her hair, and decided to stay and solve it. Then she spent two years learning that most of her first instincts were wrong.

In this conversation she's refreshingly honest about the parts founders usually hide: launching to silence, the survey that proved demand, and the tiny WhatsApp button that ended up driving most of her orders. She talks through her decision to go to business school a year in, why she's grown disillusioned with VC funding, and the reality of running a business she can pay he ...