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b'Sam Gikandi is the CEO and co-founder of Africa\\u2019s Talking, a pan-African mobile technology company empowering developers across the continent. Prior to Africa\\u2019s Talking, Sam worked for Morgan Stanley, the investment bank, in the US and Hong Kong. In the Asia office, he helped build the high frequency trading platform and led a team trading hundreds of millions of dollars per day. In 2010, intrigued by the burgeoning tech scene in his home country of Kenya, he set up with a co-founder Africa\\u2019s Talking. While it started as a side hustle, two years later, Sam took on a full-time COO/CTO role in the company, developing the software developer-facing part of the business. As demand for business APIs in Kenya exploded with the strong growth of tech startups and mobile money payment solutions, Africa\\u2019s Talking software developer business took off. The company turned profitable after only 1 year of operations. Africa\\u2019s Talking helps the growing software developer community across the continent integrate into the telecoms infrastructure by simplifying the required processes and technologies. It offers APIs for short codes, payments, and communications, including bulk SMS, USSD, and voice. Africa\\u2019s Talking is in seven African markets with its hub based in Nairobi, Kenya. Last April, Sam and his team closed a $8.6mn fundraising round that was led by the IFC\\u2019s venture capital arm which Africa\\u2019s Talking will use to further its expansion, especially into Francophone West Africa. I thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with Sam who\\u2019s a real thought leader in Africa\\u2019s tech space. Make sure you listen to our entire chat. He explains why he\\u2019s bullish on Ethiopia, why capital is overrated in the early stages of a startup, and why he advocates sharpening your toolkit before diving headfirst into entrepreneurship. Without further ado, here\\u2019s my conversation with Sam Gikandi.'