Sleeping in a house powered by technology I played a key role in building is a surreal experience. I’ve just returned from a couple weeks in Nigeria, a country in massive need of electrification and a core focus for Okra, and I’m realizing how important this trip was to not only to propel my work forward with new customer and product insights, but also to re-spark my connection to our mission and throw myself into a new place fearlessly and eagerly again. I felt the hope of looking into the future, seeing where we are headed and how far we’ve come, and simultaneously got to glance into our past, seeing the foundation of how and why we built this company in the first place.
#1 Don’t forget why we started – serving the community first
This is our first company value for a reason. And this value is at the core of why I made this trip. In the early days, whether it was learning from early installs, fixing/updating the products as we were building them, or spending time understanding our customers, we have always insisted on putting in the field time to build a first-hand connection to communities. And now years later, continuing to foster this intuition and empathy, in all layers of the company, is how we can ensure decisions are being made with this perspective firmly at the center. Nothing can replace staying in the communities; partaking in daily life; listening, learning and overall absorbing the context of our work far beyond the tech. Being in the field is where the climate, infrastructure, connectivity, education, and culture all come together. Plus, even when it’s hot and tiring and the roads are terrible, it’s the most uplifting. And in this case, the spicy local catfish was also delicious. The whole trip I kept thinking just how grateful I am that my life and my work has opened so much of the world to me.
#2 Don’t let failure get to your heart – learn from it and share the knowledge
Yes, it’s always inspiring and affirming to hear the positive impact stories. When shopkeepers told us that their monthly spend with our meshgrids is 5 times lower than it was with diesel and we saw diesel generators laying around unused and gathering dust, my mind was blown. But being in the field is also about seeing where we haven’t (yet) succeeded.
My eyes were glued to every small interaction as the field team used our app or the Pods. For me, experiencing firsthand a misleading light on the Pod or the app getting stuck loading in poor-connectivity or a product qr code unable to be scanned helps bring meaningful context and urgency back to the engineers. And hearing the pressure customers experience to lower upfront costs, their desire for higher power appliances, and their perceptions and comparisons to other technologies all reveal ways we still have gaps, or maybe have discovered new gaps, in our product-to-market-fit.
Outside of the scenarios that we build and test for, every time I’ve gone to the field I see our products being used in ways we couldn’t predict. Sometimes it showcases an exciting new idea we can leverage, but sometimes it causes substantial problems. We’re currently navigating some of these extreme events in a different project, and I initially felt so consumed by the stress of these failures. But when I see the team come together, determined to find solutions, I am reminded of and reenergized by this collective perseverance, even when things feel like they are, temporarily, falling apart.
#3 We’re an idea meritocracy – we encourage debates and choose paths based on numbers, believability and data
#5 (R,G,B,0) We encourage diversity and learn from different perspectives
#6 Be humble, triangulate by asking other experts their opinion
These three values built on each other as I spoke with our customers, heard their opinions and concerns, and aimed to understand where they’re coming from, especially when they said things that seemed to go against what we know or believe. Relishing the diverse mix of their expertise from tech, financing, regulation, and community, I seized the opportunity to get feedback on future or experimental product ideas. Especially now that we have customers who cover a broader range of expertise and have overlapping as well as differing motivations and goals, their opinions paint a much more complete picture. But still, everyone says they need lower cost, higher power, and longer reliability and their demands and perspectives easily pull in a zillion directions or result in contradicting requirements. Defining the roadmap is not as simple as asking for the customer’s needs, but what they tell us and what we can observe are still key data points and slowly the most pressing issues surface to the top.
#4 Surround ourselves with people that will bring us up
This has always been one of my favorite values. From day zero, trust, respect, and care for each other is how we have problem-solved our way through every step of this journey. And even though our lives have changed a lot since our startup-house days in Cambodia, this foundation of having each others’ backs is rooted in the culture. And when on the road, in an unfamiliar environment, I felt this support stronger than ever.
For almost two years, I have seen a few of our team start from scratch and get their bearings in a country that is notoriously challenging (i.e. accessing money or finding internet) but also fall in love with the people and culture. They’ve built relationships and set up entire lives for themselves, but also opened their arms to people like me to come in, soak in as much as possible, and feel their support and guidance the entire time. I’m endlessly thankful to have such meaningful relationships within our team that not only give me joy on a daily basis but also translate to adventures and exploration in more and more parts of the world. From organizing government meetings and running a field visit with several customers simultaneously, to befriending a tailor, making clothes from beautiful local fabrics, and working my way through a long list of amazing foods to try, getting to do all these things with people who push me out of my comfort zone and build me up with belief and self-confidence along the way is truly special.
#7 We build for 10x scale
Walking around near our project in Bassa, we listened to the rest of the community tell us over and over that they also want access to the meshgrid. It’s hard not to think about scale when you’re surrounded by so much more work still to be done. One customer even joked that if there are any systems sitting unused with anyone else, we should send them to him because he would be ready to install them tomorrow to get electricity to the rest of this village. And then beyond Bassa, what about the 80 million people in Nigeria alone who don’t have electricity. How can we ensure our product, processes, and project development are ready for this scale? These are the challenges that are both terrifying but also thrilling.
I spoke with GIZ to feed their nationwide, off-grid community data through our network planning tool to automatically design these sites in bulk, reduce friction and showcase where meshgrids are more viable than minigrids. And on the maintenance side, one of my big focuses during the trip was to understand how our customers manage their field teams to ensure our product is built with that structure in mind. We’ve seen a lot of variation in how customers operate and in pilot phases it’s difficult to separate the short-term practices from what will be needed at scale. Seeing the smaller scale operations first hand and speaking directly with our newer customers who are well-versed in large scale operations was a good start on clarifying how the products can and need to support the customer throughout.
#8 Radical transparency – we trust each other with all parts of the company
As we fight through another hectic and challenging phase in Okra’s growth, this last value holds so much weight. One particularly memorable day of my trip consisted of product-related emergencies and disappointing news and risks on several other sides of the company, all between running around for multiple in-person presentations in Abuja. The emotions of everything combined hit like a tidal wave. But I never felt like I was going through it alone. I had several very honest conversations that were a chance to acknowledge the situation and expel frustration, regroup with a plan and fresh mindset, and decide how to share this whole narrative with the team in a way that showed accountability for the concerns along with trust in the actions going forward. Communicating so openly with each other, especially through the tougher times, makes me particularly proud of this team.
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It felt fitting to use our company values to reflect on this trip as they not only shaped this particular experience but also have been a constant undercurrent in my life for the past 5 years amidst so many changes. This year’s big change involved rebasing the company to Porto, and finally unpacking our lives from the suitcases they’ve been carried around in for years has been a new form of adventure. For now I’ll just say, having a home and loved ones in my life after so long apart and on my own has played such an important role in giving me the mental space to soak in a trip like I’ve just had.
First and foremost, photos from Nigeria. Most of the photos are from the time I spent in Nasarawa state, at our site in Bassa, the last 3 are from Abuja, which was much greener than expected. The food was spicy and delicious. The electricity and internet cut out at least 5 times a day. The people are outspokenly friendly. It’s a 10 step process to try pay for anything as a foreigner. The culture is diverse with art, dance, fabrics, and so much more. And overall, a comfortingly familiar amount of chaos.
Some photos from Porto and nearby in the Douro valley! Beautiful views aside, Natasha’s visit was such a highlight. It had been 4 years since she’s been able to visit me (what a milestone to finally be able to host loved ones in my own home!) and ages since we’d celebrated a birthday together. It’s safe to say their trip was meaningful on so many counts.
And finally, some much overdue photos from a trip to the incredible island Maderia! The diversity of views and incredible lushness were continually jaw-dropping. Definitely looking forward to more trips back here!
