Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology

Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) is a NetSuite.org grantee that provides training and mentoring for aspiring African software entrepreneurs with the goal of creating wealth and jobs locally in Africa. NetSuite.org provides NetSuite software to each of the companies incubated by MEST via a social enterprise grant. Organizations Meltwater supports have been recognized by the technology press including TechCrunch, DEMO, Business Insider, and Forbes.

David Geilhufe (DG), Program Director of NetSuite.org, had the chance to sit down with Rich Tanksley (RT), the Director of Operations at the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST), to talk about the program and the challenges and opportunities their start-up software companies have.

DG: Tell us about the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST). What does your school do, and how was it started?

RT: MEST is a two-year, fully sponsored graduate program that takes Ghanaian college graduates and teaches them how to start a global software company. At the end of the two years, our students pitch us on their start-up idea. We then select the most promising ideas and provide funding and incubation to the companies. There is an incredible amount of talent in Ghana, and we receive 1,000 applications for the 20 spots in our program.

Five years ago, the organization was founded by a successful software entrepreneur, Jorn Lyseggen. After running a successful software business for six years, he realized he could be doing more good in the world. He also realized that the one thing he was really good at was starting software companies, so he decided to put these ideas together.

Since people didn’t need help starting software companies in Silicon Valley, Jorn realized he could make a big difference in Ghana. He believed that there was no reason the next Facebook or Instagram couldn’t come out of Ghana. He believes that talent is everywhere, and with the right support and guidance people can achieve great things.

DG: How are MEST start-ups using NetSuite?

RT: Most of our entrepreneurs are using NetSuite for accounting, CRM, and salesforce automation. Our graduates are bringing incoming leads from their websites into the NetSuite platform. In a country like Ghana, where most business activity is paper based, NetSuite provides an opportunity for companies to leapfrog from paper to state-of-the art business methods.

DG: As a software company incubator, how does enabling your companies to run on NetSuite for free make a difference?

RT: We are incredibly thankful for the social enterprise grant program and NetSuite.org. Our entrepreneurs could never afford this platform as they start out, and would be using Excel to keep their books. NetSuite is allowing them to scale their business from the start—and we are very appreciative for that.

The biggest value is by starting out with NetSuite, you are immediately forced into having good business principles. If you are a small company and you’re keeping your books in Excel, there aren’t any checks and balances, and you can’t be sure that you’re managing your accounts correctly. With NetSuite, the system allows you to conform to proper accounting principles (GAAP) from the beginning. I see the same value for our students around good customer interaction principles. When you have a platform like NetSuite, everything goes into the system and it makes you run your company better from the beginning.

DG: Aside from world-class software to run their businesses, what are the most important things that students need to become successful software entrepreneurs?

RT: They need a good idea, and that is actually much more difficult than it sounds. Ninety-eight percent of our students have never left Ghana and therefore aren’t exposed to the global marketplace of ideas. Our big challenge is to get our students thinking about ideas that are global and exposing them to global marketplaces.

We do this through frequent ideation brainstorm sessions. We ask each student to maintain an idea notebook, where they record ideas. Once a week we scour the web for cool ideas and share them in class.

DG: How does starting a software company in Ghana differ from starting a software company in Silicon Valley?

RT: It differs quite a bit. Ghana is a hard place to start a business—there is a lot of red tape and many challenges to get through for a start-up. The process takes much longer than it would in the US. A filing that might take hours in the US could take a month in Ghana. The good news is that there is a lot of talent in Ghana, so our start-ups have no trouble finding the best and brightest to work for them.

DG: The NetSuite customer and partner community includes over 750 software companies. If any of them reading today wanted to support Meltwater, how could they help?

RT: We use NetSuite both at the school and in our incubator companies. The school uses NetSuite pretty effectively, but our incubator companies could benefit from more support.

In fact, we have a fellowship program for individuals who want to come and help us for a longer commitment. The fellowships are a year long and we provide housing, meals, and a stipend. It’s been a life-changing experience for everyone who has participated thus far.

For those individuals who can’t commit to a year we run a short-term, open fellowship program. This program does not include a stipend and is designed for mid-career professionals who can spend from a week to a few months teaching and working with the incubator companies. We recently had a lead developer of Google Maps come out and help our students.

We are also looking for international mentors and advisors for our incubator companies. So, again, if people want to help connect the gap between Accra and Silicon Valley, please reach out.

For more information about MEST, people can contact us through our website: www.meltwater.org

Editor’s Note: A key pillar of NetSuite’s corporate citizenship is our SuiteVolunteer pro bono program where employees provide 4-20 hours of volunteer time supporting our grantees’ needs. In the future, we’ll be exploring the expansion of SuiteVolunteers beyond NetSuite employees to NetSuite partners and customers. If you would be interested in participating in this effort, please email us at giving@netsuite.com