Kenya Built for Everyone. We're Building for Subscribers.

Great systems work for everyone. Apps work for $20.

One of the first AI systems that changed how I lived didn't come from Silicon Valley. It was a text message in Nairobi.

I moved to Kenya in 2008. One afternoon at Uchumi, holding a carton of milk that had given up on being cold, the woman in front of me paid for groceries with three thumb-presses on a trusted Nokia. No app. No card. Just SMS. Beep, beep, paid.

I'm pretty sure I gasped loud enough that the cashier thought I'd stepped on something.

That was M-Pesa. Launched in 2007. Within months, everyone used it. Rent, matatu fares, school fees, everything. M-Pesa was serving millions when Venmo learned and began in 2009.

For twelve years, everything in my Kenyan life ran through a little green bubble. The guy who repaired my shoes? M-Pesa. Veggie delivery? M-Pesa. Taxi rides with Simon. M-Pesa.

The application never asked anyone to change. It slid into the chaos of daily life and worked anyway.

That's the difference between creating tools with infrastructure instead of an app mindset.

Infrastructure is what's underneath — the rails everything runs on. You don't choose it. It's just there. Working. Apps are things you download, subscribe to, eventually forget about when something shinier shows up.

It feels like the US keeps building apps while Kenya, and other countries, keep building infrastructure.

When I came back to the U.S., I kept trying to send money the way I did in Kenya. Every app — Venmo, Zelle, Cash App — felt like someone put lipstick on a filing cabinet and insisted it was "the future." Pretty interface, but the same slow rails underneath.

Kenya created universal participation. India invested in Digital Public Infrastructure. Brazil built PIX and made instant transfers a public utility. The US builds around the past. We don’t have a national payments system. Instead, we have private tools stacked on top of ACH transfers and batch processing from the days of antiquity – the 1970s.

If I'm broke — like a lot of people right now — and standing in the grocery debating if I can justify eggs, chicken, and bread, paying $20 for a "sexy version of Google" is not on my priority list.

Most of my friends have never touched ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude. Most of them don't even know what “AI” is – they just know to be afraid of it. Not because they're "behind," but because most of the apps don’t really fix anything real in their day.

The AI hype circulates in a very small circle while most people are choosing between overpriced produce and gas. Or they’re just busy cruising TikTok and can’t be bothered. The clamor over apps isn’t leading to adoption. I think it fuels frustration and the feeling that technology, once again, is passing people by as life keeps moving way too fast.

Platforms like M-Pesa completely changed how I understand technology because it never asked to be admired. It didn’t come with a bunch of sexy presentations, decks, and noise. It just worked well. Quietly. Everywhere.

Apps are great tools. They’re fun. But I would like to see Silicon Valley build for people trying to get through Tuesday without their phone dying at the wrong moment. And create space for all of us to learn how it’s relevant – because it actually is – not because a quarterly presentation ended with balloons.