On 2 May 2015, Andrew Stockil and Shaun Slabber stepped away from corporate careers and into entrepreneurship.
There was no institutional fund behind the move.
No large investor.
No perfectly mapped venture strategy.
There was personal capital, personal risk and a belief that they could build better businesses and serve clients differently.
Over the decade that followed, NUVO businesses operated across 34 African countries.
Some grew.
Some were sold.
Some merged.
Some closed.
Some evolved into businesses very different from what was originally imagined.
Looking back, several lessons matter more than any individual company.
1. The market does not care about the original idea
Entrepreneurs can become emotionally attached to the way a business was first imagined.
Markets are less sentimental.
Customers show you what they value.
Economics show you what is sustainable.
Competition shows you where differentiation is real and where it exists only in a presentation.
Good company building requires conviction, but it also requires the willingness to change direction.
2. People matter more than structures
A perfect shareholder diagram does not create a great business.
People do.
The right founder, operator or partner can materially change an opportunity.
The wrong alignment can destroy one.
NUVO has increasingly learned to think about partnerships before percentages.
Who should lead?
Who brings market credibility?
Who has operating capability?
Who should provide capital?
Who should not be involved?
Those questions often matter more than how neatly the opportunity was initially structured.
3. Not every company should remain a company
String IoT is a useful example.
The venture developed connected-technology and IoT capability.
Over time, it made more sense for that capability to be absorbed into Nuvo Energy than to maintain another independent organisation around it.
That is not necessarily failure.
Sometimes consolidation is the best strategic outcome.
4. Being early is both an advantage and a risk
NuHome entered residential Energy-as-a-Service before subscription-style solar became as widely understood in South Africa as it is today.
Being early created opportunity.
It also created the burden of educating customers, partners and markets while the ecosystem was still developing.
NUVO eventually exited the business.
The experience remains valuable.
Being early only matters if you can survive long enough for the market to arrive.
5. Impact businesses need operating discipline too
Vigor Africa explored how entrepreneurial thinking could be applied to social challenges.
That experience reinforced a simple point.
Purpose does not replace execution.
An impact initiative still requires clear economics, capable people, measurable outcomes and a sustainable operating model.
Good intentions are not an operating system.
6. Revenue and value are different things
Revenue matters.
Cash flow matters.
But neither automatically means durable enterprise value exists.
A business that depends completely on two founders may have strong revenue and little transferable value.
A smaller company with recurring contracts, intellectual property, strong management and predictable earnings may be worth considerably more strategically.
That distinction increasingly influences the businesses NUVO wants to build.
7. Starting is easier than compounding
Entrepreneurs naturally enjoy beginnings.
New ideas create energy.
There is something addictive about turning nothing into something.
The harder discipline is deciding what deserves another decade of ownership.
What should receive more capital?
What should be sold?
What should be closed?
What should be merged?
Where should new management take over?
That is the discipline NUVO is developing now.
The first decade was entrepreneurial.
The next needs to be entrepreneurial and allocative.
We still want to build.
But increasingly, we want every successful business, partnership and investment to make NUVO itself stronger.
That is how the journey moves from creating businesses to compounding value.
Written by
NUVO