African technology startups have been urged to focus their ideas internationally and not just on Africa in order for them to have a global impact at the opening of DEMO Africa 2013 in Nairobi.
Speaking during the first Fireside Chat at the event, Linda Kozlowski, vice president for international marketing at Evernote, said startups should not just think of themselves as African.
“The best way to start out is to be global right from the beginning. Create a product that’s got a global impact from the word go,” Kozlowski said.
She said startups do not need much emphasis on marketing, and that developers ought to focus on creating the best product, which will make people use it.
“Make a great product that spreads via word of mouth, so marketing does not need your focus,” she said.
She said Evernote is coming to Africa mainly interested in the continent’s development in mobile technology and infrastructure.
“Evernote is designed for all countries, not designed per region, and has developers and designers from across the globe. Evernote has 800,000 users in Africa, seeing an increase in premium small business usage and overall we want to be part of Africa,” Kozlowski said, adding Evernote was especially interested in African developers joining its third party community of 30,000 developers.
Evernote focuses on software and services designed for note taking and archiving, where a “note” can be a piece of formatted text, a full webpage or webpage excerpt, a photograph, a voice memo or a handwritten “ink” note.
Its apps and products allow users to access and edit their data across multiple machines and operating systems, and view, input and edit data when an internet connection is not available.
