KenyaBuzz: From humble start on a dining table to top corporate partnership

Alix Grubel is a stickler for deadlines who will go to great lengths to ensure that the KenyaBuzz newsletter is out in the streets on time.

Once, when the company was suffering a power blackout, Alix carted a desktop computer, “CPU and all”, and an intern to the nearest Java cafe to get the job done.

“The intern had a great sense of humour but she was so mortified that I made her work on a desktop computer from Java. But we had to get our newsletters out on time,” says Ms Grubel.

As she tells us the story, power goes out again but KenyaBuzz is not similarly crippled.

The tap-tap of keyboards and the hum of work creeps, unabated, under the door of Ms Grubel’s office.

This anecdote is reflective of the growth story of KenyaBuzz as well as the discipline that has driven the enterprise’s success.

KenyaBuzz started 10 years ago on Ms Grubel’s dining table. From that dining table, KenyaBuzz’s website has grown to become the go-to place for Kenyans planning a weekend out or looking to buy movie tickets— KenyaBuzz had nearly 100,000 unique visitors in December last year.

Its weekly newsletter has a circulation of 10,000 copies and the company has even made a foray into Uganda.

KenyaBuzz’s 10th anniversary coincided with the Nation Media Group(NMG’s) acquisition of 51 per cent stake in the company.

Ms Grubel expects that the investment NMG has made in the company will provide KenyaBuzz with the resources it needs to scale the next level of growth. With NMG’s support, KenyaBuzz hopes to increase its newsletter’s circulation to 30,000 copies.

Looking at the success of the company, it is hard to believe that KenyaBuzz was initially a way for Ms Grubel to avoid boredom.

A former regional health advisor at the United States Agency for International Development (USAid), Ms Grubel had two young children and decided to take a year’s break from her high job when KenyaBuzz was born.

She “got bored almost immediately”, so she decided to start her own company. 

In addition to helping her spend the days, KenyaBuzz was also a response to a niggling concern of Ms Grubel’s during her decade-long stay in Kenya.

There were no viable events websites or listings. Often she would find out about interesting happenings in Nairobi only after the fact.  “You would very often read in the newspaper the next day that the Russian Ballet was in town and wasn’t it amazing? And I would think how are we supposed to find out that the Russian Ballet was in town?”

KenyaBuzz started as a low-stakes endeavour. Ms Grubel did not expect to make money and she went a year before the first advertiser came knocking.

Marta Ledgard later joined the company as a co-owner, matching Ms Grubel’s initial $15,000 (Sh1.54 million) investment in KenyaBuzz.

Even with early advertisers such as Safaricom and Qatar Airways, this initial capital ran out pretty fast.

KenyaBuzz learned to be frugal very early on and this is a lesson that is not going to be forgotten any time soon.

The company’s budget was tightly controlled, growing only gradually over the years.

When advertisers could not be found, KenyaBuzz did not print its newsletter. Ms Grubel cut the cost of labour by going for interns whom she trained in the necessary skills the company needed. There was always awareness of a rainy day in the future.

“Even though now we’re partners with the “Nation” and we imagine we’ll be making a lot more money in the future, for now we are not yet making the money and we assume that there can and will still be tough times ahead,” she says.

In addition to this strict discipline, Ms Grubel also attributes the success of KenyaBuzz to the complementary nature of her partnership with Ms Ledgard.  Describing herself as shy, Ms Grubel was more comfortable taking on the editorial responsibilities. Ms Ledgard, the more gregarious of the two, was charged with marketing and sales. 

The two adopted a laid-back management style. Ms Grubel’s policy is to assign her employees tasks, step back and let them deliver. She tries not to “breathe down” their necks. 

Employee input, she has discovered, is invaluable.

Listening to Ms Grubel, it is hard to miss that KenyaBuzz’s has also been fortuitous in that its journey has mirrored the growth of a tech-savvy middle class in Kenya.

Tellingly, Ms Grubel divides the history of the company to the time before the landing of the fibre-optic cables—when even uploading one picture to the site could take “forever”—and the era of the fibre-optic cables when the middle-class with its smartphones forms a ready market for the newsletter and the website.

Ms Ledgard’s journey with KenyaBuzz came to an end in 2012 when she moved back to Europe with her family.

She had to adjust quickly without her long-term partner and “best friend”. She could only wear both their hats for a year before she brought on board a new manager to help with the business.

To hear Ms Grubel tell it, Damaris Agweyu was just what the company needed.

So god-sent was she that Ms Grubel was comfortable enough to take a break of nearly four years from the business.

During her time off she maintained a strategic overview of the company but mostly she “mothered” her children.

“It was time for me to take a break. As an entrepreneur, once everything is built it is not as much fun,” she says.

With the NMG partnership, Ms Grubel is now stepping back into her old shoes.   There is more building to be done, grander goals to be achieved. She foresees partnerships with more companies, growth of the movie ticketing segment of the business and possibly “going public”. 

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