The Emotional Worlds of Becoming a Start-Up

Register for online participation: https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/d4c70f1a-ff14-4e9e-bac4-e26331fa2fdf@92454335-564e-4ccf-b0b0-24445b8c03f7

Partnerships are meant to dispel notions of self-interest and competition. They can also move along the cogs of capital and are a valued entity and a symbol of cooperation and productivity, even peace. Start-ups with more than one founder have been considered less risky, with business partners occasionally verging on a deeper closeness. In this seminar, I share ethnographic observations of a three-month residential incubation program based in Kigali, Rwanda, with citizens from Rwanda, Ethiopia and Kenya who are brought together in an entrepreneurial incubator program funded by a South African philanthropic foundation that seeks to create “high impact ventures”. I demonstrate how this particular format of incubation gives way to an intimate understanding of founding a start-up and finding a business partner after living together for months. Conflict and comfort become two sides of the same coin as fellows make sense of the tools given to them to find and work with their chosen co-founders. Focusing on more than an individual’s capacity to think up a business idea, the program mobilized their emotional capacities to build partnerships with their co-founders that could withstand the trials of entrepreneurship. What emerged was a rhetoric of romantic partnership, marriage, dating, break-ups that blurred the boundaries of what can be expected between individuals looking to not only advance their own ambitions, but that of the country and continent, in pursuit of wealth creation, development and growth. I use the concepts ‘proximity’ and ‘attunement’ to understand how these boundaries, expectations, and emotions are navigated by the fellows, and what kind of expectations are built from this experience and suggest how this later becomes relevant for the administering of the business for investment.

About the speaker: Zarreen Kamalie is a Visiting Doctoral Research Fellow at HUMA and a doctoral student at Stockholm University. Zarreen studies the Kigali start-up ecosystem through the policies, laws, and development agendas that facilitates financial and social capital into the ecosystem from both public and private sector actors seeking to create 'impact' and capitalise on Rwanda's growing economy and its business environment. These actors include development agencies, philanthropic institutions, and venture capital firms. The project sits at the intersection of economic anthropology and development studies, with thematic overlap with sociolegal studies and the anthropology of policy. Zarreen completed her MA at Stockholm University after receiving her BA and Honour’s degrees at the University of Cape Town. She is also an affiliated PhD student in the Sustainable Business Development through Entrepreneurship and Innovation Platform at the Mistra Center for Sustainable Markets (Misum).

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