Issue 026: The Mangrove Newsletter
News & Expert Views, Reports, Insights, Thoughts, and Perspectives on Global Resilience and Business Continuity.
Welcome to Issue 026 of the Mangrove Newsletter! We hope you enjoy reading this as much as we enjoyed putting it together for you.
1. Resilience Case Study
The rise and current operational restructuring of Twiga Foods, Kenya’s posterchild of Agri-Tech innovation, offers a fabulous lesson in the critical importance of operational resilience. While the Silicon Valley model often champions rapid scaling and disruptive technology, Twiga's journey, despite attracting over $180 million in investment, illustrates that even substantial funding cannot compensate for a lack of foundational operational robustness. For investors seeking sustainable returns and entrepreneurs aiming for long-term viability beyond the initial buzz, understanding and building operational resilience is not merely a safeguard; it is a prerequisite for success.
What is Operational Resilience? The Confidence to Deliver
Operational resilience is the confidence to say:
"I understand my company's components, what's important, and why; so when something goes wrong, I can respond effectively." - Amitty Peace
It's about designing a business that can not only grow rapidly but also absorb unexpected circumstances, adapt to change, and consistently deliver its core value propositions to customers.
For startups, the struggle to build these resilient foundations often leads to costly disruptions or outright failure. For investors, concerns about the underlying health and resilience of their portfolio companies directly impact their ROI. Operational resilience makes startups more adaptable and less fragile, ensuring that strong business processes and a deep understanding of customer journeys aren't missing pieces, but integral to success.
This focus on foundational strength leads to fewer reactive pivots in response to every market tremor, and more strategic evolution driven by a deep understanding of what truly drives the business.
The Six Pillars of Operational Resilience: A Framework for Sustainability
Building operational resilience isn't abstract; it's a structured process built upon six interconnected pillars:
Core Identification: Recognising the fundamental products and services essential to the business. What is your secret sauce and how does it truly serve your customers?
Resource Mapping: Pinpointing all resources (physical, human, digital, intangible) necessary for delivering those core offerings. This reveals the true operational dependencies.
Resilience Assessment: Evaluating the identified resources to understand their operational value, effectiveness, and vulnerability across customer, operational, financial, strategic, and risk impacts.
Prioritisation: Ranking operational resources based on their importance to core business continuity, allowing for focused effort and efficient resource allocation.
Mitigation Strategies: This isn’t about having endless or stagnant documentation on what to do and when. It’s about utilising these deep operational insights to have dynamic conversation to counter risks against core operational offerings. Many startups and investors only look at vanity metrics which cannot help you anticipating potential impacts on the company, customers, and market. Operational insights are your early warning system from what to come.
Continuous Improvement: Adopting an ongoing enhancement mindset, using data to adapt strategies and remain agile in evolving circumstances.
Twiga's Operational Faux Pas: A Case Study in Missing Pillars
Twiga's operational missteps can be directly mapped to a failure in adequately addressing these pillars.
1. Core Identification & Resource Mapping: The Burden of Over-Automation
Twiga initially sought to automate trust, logistics, payments, and the entire supply chain all at once. While ambitious, this grand vision obscured the critical need for meticulous core identification and resource mapping in a complex, informal market. The company’s attempt to own everything from farming to warehousing and last-mile delivery meant its core offerings – connecting farmers to vendors – became inextricably tied to a vast and unwieldy network of physical and human resources.
Instead of meticulously identifying and mapping the truly critical components for its core value proposition, Twiga took on too much, too fast. This led to a significant burn rate as resources were poured into building and maintaining a vertically integrated operation, much of which was ultimately inefficient and costly. The assumption that technology alone could solve the continent's broken infrastructure overlooked the indispensable human elements, relationships, and nuanced on-the-ground logistics that are crucial for successful distribution in Africa.
2. Resilience Assessment & Prioritisation: Misjudging Operational Vulnerabilities
Had Twiga rigorously assessed the resilience of its extensive operational components, it might have identified critical vulnerabilities much earlier. For instance, the heavy reliance on its own logistics fleet and warehousing facilities, while intended to ensure control, became a significant operational and financial burden. Reports of consistent losses in these departments suggest that the operational importance of these resources was misjudged relative to their cost and efficiency.
The failure to prioritise resources effectively meant that capital was potentially allocated to less impactful or unnecessarily complex operational areas, rather than doubling down on what truly strengthened the core delivery to customers. When a company tries to do everything, it often ends up doing absolutely nothing exceptionally well.
3. Mitigation Strategies & Continuous Improvement: Reactive, Not Proactive!
Twiga's current restructuring, including significant layoffs and the suspension of Nairobi operations, represents a reactive attempt at mitigation rather than a proactive strategy built on continuous improvement. The pivot to an asset-light model and reliance on third-party distributors suggests a recognition that their initial operational blueprint was unsustainable.
A truly resilient operation would have integrated small, manageable changes, a Kaizen mindset, allowing for continuous adaptation and the identification of operational weaknesses before they escalated into critical failures. Twiga's journey highlights that operational resilience isn't just about crisis management and damage control; it's about embedding adaptability into the very fabric of the business model. And how do you do that? By understanding what's important, and why; so when something goes wrong, I can respond effectively.
Optimising the Operational Recipe: A Lesson for All
Twiga's struggles underscore the importance of a crucial step after identifying core offerings and mapping resources: optimising your operational blueprint for sustainability and leanness. This involves asking:
What elements of our current operation are essential for delivering our core offerings and serving our customers?
Where are we spending resources (time, money, effort) that don't directly contribute to our core offering or customer journey?
How can understanding our operational dependencies help us streamline processes?
Where do we need to double down on investment to strengthen critical operational components and align with our user journey?
For Twiga, the answer was a drastic overhaul, compelling them to shed extensive ownership of their logistics. For other businesses, this crucial exercise might reveal less dramatic but equally impactful opportunities for streamlining, cost reduction, and focused investment in truly critical operational pathways.
This is precisely why building resilience in from day one is so important. When you start with a customer-centric understanding and view, focusing on core delivery from the outset allows your business to streamline operations and hone in on its essential services, rather than attempting to construct every component at once with zero insights. Trying to reverse-engineer resilience later proves incredibly costly, often culminating in the challenging situation Twiga is currently navigating.
Resilient Delivery for Evolving Customer Needs
Ultimately, operational resilience ensures a laser focus on delivery and continuity for whatever users want, even as customer demands evolve. Twiga's initial vision was about solving a customer problem: connecting farmers to markets. However, the operational model chosen became too rigid and costly to consistently meet that need as internal and external pressures mounted.
The six pillars provide a framework not just for existing operations, but for future adaptability. When exploring new customer demands or solutions, this framework helps:
Identify new core operational components needed.
Map the resources required for their delivery.
Assess the resilience of this new operational pathway.
Prioritise operational efforts.
Develop mitigation strategies for based on operational insights to avoid costly risks.
Ensure continuous operational adaptation.
This isn't about what new opportunities to chase, but how to ensure we can operationally deliver on them resiliently if we choose to.
People and Processes
Building resilient culture fosters open communication, breaks down silos, and aligns teams around core priorities. A resilient workforce, supported in their well-being, is fundamental to resilient operations. Twiga's significant layoffs highlight the human cost when operational foundations crumble, impacting morale and the collective capacity for adaptation.
Twiga's current restructuring is a testament to the costly lessons learned when operational resilience is an afterthought rather than a founding principle. For investors and entrepreneurs, the true insight from Twiga's journey is clear: sustainable growth and long-term viability are not just about innovative ideas or venture capital; they are built on robust, adaptable, and deeply understood operational foundations. Ignoring these foundational pillars is a risk no aspiring enterprise can afford.
2. What We're Working On
Thrive, Not Just Survive
Feeling resource-constrained and confused about how to scale your startup? You're not alone. Many founders struggle to scale due to limited budgets and expensive tools. No wahala, this bootcamp is for you.
The Scale Smart Bootcamp equips pre-seed to Series A founders with the tools to thrive, not just survive. We combine operational resilience with human resilience to address the challenges you face:
Inefficient operations draining your resources
Burnout hindering growth
Difficulty building a sustainable and scalable business model
Our unique program offers a comprehensive learning experience, including expert-led workshops and materials on operational and human resilience, valuable peer learning opportunities with other founders facing similar challenges, hands-on exercises to apply learnings directly to your business, and personalised coaching from experienced mentors.
Key Modules:
Foundations of Resilience: Define success for your business and build the capacity to adapt.
Lean Operations & Resource Optimisation: Streamline processes, leverage free tools, and build a data-driven culture.
Human Resilience & Well-being: Manage stress, build high-performing teams, and prioritise self-care.
Scaling Sustainably: Identify risks, develop a scalable model, and build a strong foundation for long-term growth.
Benefits:
Enhanced operational efficiency to free up resources and boost productivity.
Increased resilience to navigate challenges and adapt to change.
Improved team dynamics for a high-performing and supportive culture.
Sustainable growth to build a business that lasts.
Access to a valuable network of founders facing similar challenges.
Limited Spots Available! Apply now and don't let resource constraints hold you back. Scale your business smarter with the Scale Smart Bootcamp.
What is Whitespace?
We are already preparing to launch our third pilot program. We are working with eight interesting sclaeups for our July 2025 cohort but are always happy to share the love and expertise with a few more spots. Could this be you? 👀
Whitespace is our innovative approach to unlocking a business’s full potential with resilience education.
The Whitespace Pilot Program: Join the Journey
The pilot program is a three-stage journey, kicking off in June 25. Here's what you can expect:
Stage 1: Onboarding to Mangrove Foundation. We'll work with you to build your company's digital twin.
Stage 2: Includes Mangrove Analytics. We'll enhance your digital twin with powerful analytics and generate even deeper insights.
Stage 3: Get ready for the Mangrove + (Co-Pilot). This stage leverages the insights from the digital twin and analytics to empower the implementation of necessary changes and business optimisation.
Are you ready to build a more resilient startup? We are!
Applications for the Whitespace pilot program are now active. To apply, please submit a form to register your interest. If selected, we will share the next steps.
3. Work with Us
Global business, SMB, or a Startup? We understand that technology is essential for modern businesses, and we've built replicable processes for businesses that guarantee long-term scalability and sustainability.
Let’s work with you to build better and scale faster. Schedule a Demo with us here. We can’t wait to connect.
