By Tony Mautsu, Founder and Managing Director, SocialLight

In 2012, I volunteered to run social media for the Diacore marathon. Two years later, I registered SocialLight. Today, we track more than 1,300 publications and 158 broadcast stations across Southern Africa.

This is what happened in between, and what I would tell any founder building in Botswana right now.

Most founder stories skip the middle. You see the award, the Forbes 30 Under 30 Africa list, the conference stage. You don’t see the unanswered calls, the deals that collapsed at the last minute, or the products we built before the market was ready for them.

Botswana is a special place to build. It is a market of under 2.5 million people, where everyone knows everyone and your reputation arrives before you do. That makes it unforgiving, but it also makes it one of the best training grounds on the continent.

Here are 12 lessons from 12 years. None of them are theory. Each one cost me something to learn.

1. Start Moving Before People Understand What You’re Doing

I didn’t plan to start a social media business. In 2012, I stumbled into it by volunteering to run social media for the Diacore marathon.

At the time, “social media manager” was not a job most people in Botswana took seriously. Relatives asked what I actually did all day. By 2014, I had registered SocialLight.

Looking back, that marathon was my proof of concept. I was testing an idea in public, with real stakes, before anyone was paying me.

It also taught me something I have relied on ever since: sometimes you are early, and the only answer to being early is to keep adding value until people notice.

The nugget: Treat free work as a pilot, not a favour. Keep the screenshots, the reach numbers and the thank-you messages. That record becomes your first sales deck.

2. A Closed Mouth Doesn’t Get Fed

The marathon didn’t send me clients. I had to go and get them.

I picked up the phone and called people I had never met. The only thing that opened those conversations was that they had seen the Diacore work.

When one of them finally agreed to meet, I didn’t have money for transport. So I walked several kilometres to get there, and then I waited for over an hour before the meeting started.

I wasn’t going to let a closed mouth, or an empty pocket, cost me that chance.

Many young founders in Botswana wait to be discovered. They post, they hope, and they wait for someone to call.

Business doesn’t work that way here or anywhere else. The person who asks is the person who gets the meeting.

The nugget: Let your work introduce you, then make the call. Lead with something they’ve already seen. Every “no” tells you something about your pitch, your price or your timing.

3. Take Every Opportunity, and Take the Money When It’s Offered

One of my early breaks came from walking into the Botswana Innovation Hub to pitch our social media management services.

They didn’t buy what I was selling. Instead, they told me about a programme I had never heard of: the First Steps Venture Programme. I would never have found it if I hadn’t shown up.

Many entrepreneurs dismiss programmes like these because they need to be seen as self-made.

Some will confidently tell you the Innovation Hub’s answer is “no” while sipping a cold drink under a tree, without ever having visited. Many have never set foot in half the offices they criticise, whether that’s CEDA, LEA or the Hub itself.

We don’t all start from the same place. Some founders have family capital or networks, and many don’t. If a programme exists to help you grow, walk through the door and find out what it can do.

The same goes for funding. Bootstrapping taught me discipline, and I’m proud of it. But bootstrapping is a circumstance, not a badge of honour. If someone credible is willing to fund your growth on fair terms, use it.

The nugget: Visit the office before you judge it. When money is on the table, read the terms carefully, understand what you’re giving up, and say yes to the right deal.

4. Find Your Tribe

Your tribe is the small group of people who keep you focused on the vision.

Mine includes people who are far better than me at things I’m not built for. Some founders are natural operators and some aren’t, and pretending otherwise slows the whole business down.

The moment I stopped trying to do everything myself, I had more time for the work only I could do: building relationships, shaping the product and selling the vision.

The nugget: Write down the three tasks that drain you most. Then find a person, partner or freelancer for each one, and give your best hours to your strengths.

5. An Office Address Is Not a Business

There is a trap many Botswana founders fall into, and I call it the CBD trap.

You land a contract or two, and suddenly a glass-fronted office in Gaborone’s CBD feels like the next step. The address looks good on a business card. Then the lease runs for three years and your revenue doesn’t.

Ask yourself who the office is really for.

SocialLight’s clients care about the quality of our intelligence and how fast we alert them, not the view from our window. Location matters only when customers have to walk in to buy from you.

The nugget: Pay for location only when customers come to you. If the rent would come out of savings instead of revenue, you can’t afford the office yet.

6. Get Help With People

Few entrepreneurs are natural people managers, and I’m not ashamed to say I needed help.

Hiring the wrong person is expensive. Keeping the wrong person is more expensive still.

Managing people properly also means understanding Botswana’s labour laws, contracts, probation and fair processes.

The right HR support, even part-time, is one of the smartest investments a growing business can make.

The nugget: Write the job description before you hire, not after. Hire slowly, use probation honestly, and get professional HR advice before your first difficult conversation, not during it.

7. Look After Yourself, Because You Are the Business’s Biggest Asset

There is a hustle culture that tells founders sleep is optional and burnout is proof of commitment. I disagree.

Taking care of yourself goes beyond surviving on magwenya and mokwetjepe between meetings.

Exercise, or find any activity that lets you disconnect from the daily grind. Make real time for family and relationships. Travel when you can afford to, because seeing how other places work will sharpen your thinking.

The nugget: Put your health in your calendar the same way you put client meetings there. A tired founder makes expensive decisions.

8. Learn Contracts, and Get Legal Advice

One of the best things I ever did for myself was learn how contracts work.

Retainers changed SocialLight. Moving from once-off projects to monthly retainers gave us predictable income, which let us hire, plan and invest with confidence.

Contracts protect relationships too. When both sides know the scope, the price and the exit from day one, difficult conversations become much easier later.

The nugget: Before you sign anything, know four things: the scope, the payment terms, how either side can exit, and who owns the work. If you can’t answer all four, get a lawyer to read it.

9. Stay Focused, But Move With the Pulse of the World

Our journey has not been a straight line.

We started with social media management, moved into livestreaming, then holograms, and finally media monitoring, which is where we have stayed the longest.

Every move was in the digital space, and every move followed where the market was going.

We made mistakes. Sometimes we held on to projects for too long. But we also won big by trying things the market didn’t fully understand yet.

The lesson is not to chase everything. It’s to keep one core that you’re known for, and let the rest serve it.

There are no shortcuts. We have watched people take them, and we know how those stories end. In a small market like ours, your integrity is what holds you up, especially once you start working beyond the border.

The nugget: Intensify before you diversify. Before you add a new business line, make sure the structure and people are in place to run the one you already have.

10. Find Advisors for Every Area of Your Life

The right advisor can save you five years of a bad decision made out of ego.

I lean on advisors for finance, law, strategy and life in general, and their honesty has saved me from more than one costly mistake.

Twelve years in, I still invest in my own growth as seriously as I invest in the business.

I read constantly. I make time to sit with peers who are better than me, and I ask for their advice instead of trying to impress them. I learn from virtual mentors whose books, talks and interviews have shaped how I think.

And I go to therapy, because a founder’s mind needs maintenance just like any other asset.

The nugget: Build a personal board of three to five people who aren’t afraid to tell you the truth. Ask them before big decisions, not after.

11. Don’t Be Afraid to Close a Project and Start Again

Business brings moments nobody plans for.

COVID-19 shut down entire industries overnight. Deals that looked certain fell through. Botswana’s first change of government since independence, in 2024, reshaped priorities across the public and private sectors.

We have closed projects of our own along the way, and each time, letting go made room for what came next.

Closing a project is not the same as failing. Holding on to a dying project out of pride is how good businesses become bad ones.

The nugget: Before you start any new project, decide what would make you stop. Write those conditions down while you’re still objective.

12. Dream Bigger Than the Border

Botswana exists by exporting itself to the world.

Our diamonds built a nation because they were never meant only for the local market. Founders should think the same way.

SocialLight started in Gaborone. Since then, we have done business across SADC and grown our reach to most countries on the continent.

Every time we have crossed a border, collaboration has shown us perspectives far bigger than we could have imagined on our own.

The nugget: Design your business so it can travel. Partner with people outside your market early, because they will see opportunities in your work that you can’t.

The Work Is the Shortcut

If I could hand one thing to the founder reading this, it would be this: nobody will understand your vision before you’ve built enough of it for them to see.

That’s not a reason to stop. It’s simply the price of going first.

In 2014, I registered a company with little more than a phone, a marathon portfolio and an idea.

Everything since has been built one call, one contract and one lesson at a time.

Start where you are, ask for what you need, and keep going.

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About Tony Mautsu

Tony Mautsu is the Founder and Managing Director of SocialLight, a Botswana-headquartered media monitoring and market intelligence company that has done business across SADC and the wider continent.

He is a Forbes 30 Under 30 Africa honouree and was named one of the Top 10 Men in PR in Botswana in 2026.

Learn more at SocialLight.africa.