Featured Founder Note
What Building Is Teaching Me: The Cost of Growth
A 2:35 a.m. Founder Note on rain, rest, relentless building, the momentum from Tanzania, and working forward after setbacks.
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Building from Kenya
Building, learning, and telling the truth about entrepreneurship in Africa.
I'm Njuguna Hilary — a Kenyan founder building from the ground up, in real time.
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Afrifama is the first thing I'm building — this is the home of the whole journey.
From the messy middleAll Founder Notes
New here? Start here.
Explore the work.
01 / The work
Building Afrifama
See the farmer systems taking shape in Coastal Kenya.
Explore the work 02 / The writingFounder Notes
Start with why I document the honest version of building.
Read the first note 03 / The journeyWatch it unfold
Farm days, decisions, and lessons, in my own words.
Watch the journey
Meet Me
You found me. Let me introduce myself.
Founder. Builder. Storyteller.
My background is in entrepreneurship and business management.
But most of what has shaped me as a founder has come from the field: testing ideas, serving customers, making mistakes, and rebuilding.
That is where I really learned how business works: when real people, real money, and real operations are on the line. That is the unfiltered classroom of building a startup from the ground up.
I am not trying to look like I have everything figured out. I am documenting what it really takes to build something useful, owned, and lasting from here.
This website is the home of that journey: my founder story, my writing, my videos, and the bigger questions I keep asking about building, ownership, and dignity in Africa.
FounderBuilderStoryteller
The Journey
The journey so far — in chapters.
2015 – 2019
Where it started
The foundation stage. I studied Entrepreneurship and Business Management at Moi University, shaped my thinking around venture creation, and began seeing business not just as a way to make money — but as a tool to solve real problems.
2022 – Present
Afrifama — what I'm building now
Afrifama became the main battlefield and classroom — moving from ideas to real operations: poultry production, market testing, feed manufacturing, farmers, customers, capital challenges, partnerships, and the everyday reality of building from the ground up in Coastal Kenya.
At its core, Afrifama is building a practical value-chain feed system for smallholder poultry farmers: connecting farmer partnerships, production support, input access, and market pathways into a more reliable agribusiness model.
2023 – Present
Going digital
I started documenting the journey on Afrifama's YouTube. What began as simple videos became a real storytelling platform — showing the work behind entrepreneurship, agribusiness, and business growth in Coastal Kenya. It has since grown to over 6K subscribers.
Now & next
From one farm to a farmer network
Empowering farmers. Building livelihoods.
Afrifama began with a simple question: what if building one successful agribusiness could become the foundation for helping thousands of others?
Today, we are building a practical system that brings farmer financing, quality inputs, production support, technology, and market access closer to smallholder poultry farmers.
Afrifama is becoming proof that patient, practical entrepreneurship can create lasting impact when business growth and farmer success move together.
Building Now
The work, as it stands today.
Right now, most of my work revolves around three things: entrepreneurship, agriculture, and storytelling.
I am building Afrifama, an impact-driven agricultural company working to make poultry farming more productive, reliable, and commercially sustainable for smallholder farmers.
I also document what it actually takes to build—the decisions, mistakes, difficult seasons, small wins, and everything still unfinished. Along the way, I mentor other entrepreneurs and share lessons learned through building businesses of my own.
At the centre of it all is something simple: build useful things, create opportunities, and share the journey honestly.
01 / Impact-driven agriculture150+farmers supportedBuilding Afrifama
An integrated poultry startup bringing quality inputs, production, farmer support, technology, and market access into one practical system for stronger farmer livelihoods.
Explore Afrifama
02 / Creative work6,000+YouTube subscribersDocumenting the real journey
Turning the unfinished work—farm days, business decisions, setbacks, systems, and small wins—into an honest public archive for people building from the ground up.
Watch the journey
03 / Mentorship350+entrepreneurs mentoredHelping other builders move
Using practical founder experience to mentor entrepreneurs, train young people, judge startup ideas, and help others turn ambition into useful action.
See speaking work
Building With Farmers
"The future I am building is not justan Afrifama farm. It is an Afrifamafarmer network."Entrepreneurship as a force for change
Watch the Journey
Built in public, one video at a time.
May 2023Today
I posted my first YouTube video on May 1, 2023. It was raw and unedited — I didn’t know much about filming, editing, thumbnails, or storytelling. But I felt fulfilled, because I had started documenting the real journey.
Since then, the channel has grown from 1 video and 0 subscribers to 821+ videos and 6,000+ subscribers — not through perfect production, but through consistency.
It has become a public archive of farming, feeds, fundraising, mistakes, small wins, and the founder reality that rarely appears in polished success stories.
@AfrifamaYouTube channel
The working archive: farm days, feed experiments, fundraising lessons, and the founder reality behind the scenes.
6,000+subscribers
821+videos
May 2023joined
1 video0 subscribers
118 subsfirst month
1,000 subs9 months in
62 videos~1,400 subs
2,000 subs+179 that month
5,000 subs+413 in one month
6,000+ subs821+ videos
May 2023The Start
May 2023First 100
Feb 2024First 1K
May 20241st Anniversary
Sep 20242K milestone
Jan 2026Something clicked
TodayStill building
More from the channel
FarmingHow to Hatch Chicken Eggs in an Incubator
FarmingHow to Farm Broiler Chicken Successfully in Kenya
MillingHow I Made My Own Chicken Feeds — Feed Formulation
MindsetRisks as an Entrepreneur
ReflectionReflecting on Our Poultry Farming Journey in 2024
FundraisingMy Fundraising Journey to Scale the Farm
Notes from the messy middle of building.
18 Founder Notes
Founder Notes & Articles
Founder Notes · 5 min read
Founder Notes · 5 min read
Founder Notes · 4 min read
This is where I write.
This is where I write — honest Founder Notes on building, failure, and figuring it out, published here first. Medium holds the earlier essays; the new ones live here.
Founder Notes · 5 min read
In Pursuit of a Better Future
Reflections on entrepreneurship and innovation from Kigali, Rwanda. →
Founder Notes · 5 min read
What Building Is Teaching Me: The Cost of Growth
A 2:35 a.m. Founder Note on rain, rest, relentless building, the momentum from Tanzania, and working forward after setbacks. →
Founder Notes · 4 min read
What Do You Do When You Get Tired?
A 1:01 a.m. Founder Note on exhaustion, learning to recognise progress, the roads through Tanzania, and accepting that rest cannot always wait. →From the Archives — earlier essays, on Medium
- What Keeps Me Up at Night: Proof of Life
- Turning Passion into Purpose: A Year of Content Creation
- Invest in Innovation: Afrifama's Open Letter to Investors
From My Margins
A thought for your day.
Ideas that stayed with me—from the pages I write and the books I read. Draw one at random, then follow it wherever it leads.
Rest cannot always wait until everything is finished. There will always be another budget, another call, another thing to build.
What Do You Do When You Get Tired?4 min read
Read the full note → Speaking & Mentorship
Practical conversations, not motivational noise.
I speak with founders, students, entrepreneurs, businesses, and organisations about what it really takes to build from the ground up in Africa.
My conversations draw from real experience — building startups, working with smallholder farmers, mentoring entrepreneurs, navigating failure, and documenting the journey with honesty.
No hype. No shortcuts. Just practical lessons that help people build better businesses.
SpeakingFounder talks on building before things look polished, useful, or easy.
PartnershipsCollaborations around farmers, youth enterprise, systems, and impact.
StorytellingWriting and video that turn the unfinished journey into proof.
What I have learned building Afrifama from the ground up: testing ideas, serving customers, managing pressure, and staying useful.
Invite Me to Speak
Selected talks & collaborations
Work With Me
Let's build something impactful.
I work with founders, teams, organisations, and farmer-focused projects on practical entrepreneurship, agribusiness systems, storytelling, and honest founder conversations.
Based in Kenya. Building in public. Open to serious, useful work.
SpeakingTalks, panels, and founder rooms on building before things look polished.
ConsultancyFocused sessions on entrepreneurship, agribusiness, operations, and growth.
PartnershipsShared work with teams, organisations, brands, and founder-led projects.
MentorshipConversations with founders, students, and entrepreneurs finding their path.
Agribusiness SystemsFarmer models, feed production, value chains, and field-tested operations.
StorytellingWriting, video, and honest founder stories that make the work visible.