A DAY IN THE LIFE
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On the lighter side of things , we ask the industryexperts what makes them tick …
Phares Kariuki , Founder and CEO of Nairobi based Node Africa
East Africa ’ s cloud champion
After his early years of professional experience in a VMware and virtualisation environment , and grounding himself in the hard realities of business and economic fundamentals , it is not surprising that Phares Kariuki believes East African businesses should embrace the benefits of cloud computing .
Phares Kariuki is the founder and CEO of Nairobi based Node Africa , an IT infrastructure and cloud consulting company . The business objective of Node Africa is to help large and medium companies move their workloads to a cloud hosting environment . As the CEO he is responsible for driving sales , marketing , business development , talent management and public relations . “ We are making significant progress in helping large enterprise companies cut down their operating costs and improve their agility .”
On a day to day basis Kariuki wrestles with creating innovative and stand out products for Node Africa ’ s customers . Motivating the team , driving sales revenue and raising debt and capital for the company are also his to do ’ s .
Prior to Node Africa , Kariuki also set up a cloud computing company Angani in Kenya , with which he was associated till October 2015 . He describes it as , “ the first fully automated cloud computing company in Sub-Saharan Africa .” He was responsible for strategy , finance , budgeting , fundraising , talent management , business development and sales .
Kariuki grew the Angani business from inception to the point where they had over tens of thousands of dollars in mostly recurring revenue . He also led evangelisation to get the technology and business community aware of the possibility of using cloud infrastructure instead of making heavy capital investments . He also changed how media companies worked in Kenya , allowing them to roll out stations without making any capital investments .
So what is Kariuki ’ s forte and how is he able to successfully create sustainable born in the cloud startups . Kariuki puts it down to his ten years of exposure to VMware and virtualisation . Across 2009 to 2011 , Kariuki went through courseware and certifications for VMware , technical and sales , which gave him visibility on both the technical and commercial applications of virtualization technology .
Back to the present , Kariuki describes himself as a curious person who spends a lot of time learning . He is fascinated by finance and economics and the work of Hernando de Soto Polar , as it goes into challenges entrepreneurs go through while starting companies in the emerging markets . Kariuki completes the loop to socially contribute by working on various community evangelization and empowerment projects including stints with the World Bank .
How does he de-stress ? At work Kariuki switches off by listening to music and having chats with his team . Off-work he goes for long drives , walks a lot and reads .
Any weaknesses ? Coffee – he collects coffee beans from different geographies and currently has seven different coffee machines at home .
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