# The Founder and the Relationship Channel ## Three companies in the same domain, and the customer relationships that come with them Phares Kariuki, founder and CEO. The track record is in cloud and enterprise infrastructure across Sub-Saharan Africa. | Period | Role | Stated outcome | | --- | --- | --- | | 2009–2012 | Westcon Africa / VMware | led the VMware business in East Africa, revenue from ~$100k to ~$12m | | 2013–2015 | Angani | founder and CEO of Sub-Saharan Africa's first public cloud provider | | 2015–2020 | Node Africa | migrated regulated enterprises to cloud, 21 customers in ~3 months | | 2021–now | Pure Infrastructure | managed cloud services for banks, fintechs, data centres and government | Reference signal in the deck: former VMware EVP and Arrcus CEO Shekar Ayyar describes him as technically astute, business-aware, visionary, humble and highly entrepreneurial. > [!tip] Why the fit is unusually direct here > Fifteen years of selling infrastructure to ==banks, telcos and regulated enterprises== is the same room this product sells into. The buyer, the procurement process and the compliance objections are all familiar, and the relationships are current rather than historical. The first go-to-market pillar rests on this directly: direct enterprise beachheads where trust and references already exist. ## Why it matters For an early company with a 12 to 18 month enterprise sales cycle, existing relationships are the main thing that compresses time to first revenue. That is the asset this round is buying against. The natural follow-up is how the channel transfers. The plan puts the majority of funds into enterprise sales and channel hires, so the question worth asking is what a new sales lead in Singapore or Brussels can open without the founder in the room. ## Related - [[Red Onion MOC]] - [[Go-to-Market Across Three Regions]] - [[Who Buys and Why]] - [[TelemetriX - Questions to Follow Up]] - [[Key-Person Risk in Deep Tech]]