Terry Duryea first started helping underserved economies 15 years ago, when he became heavily involved with microfinance organizations. He spent a great deal of time in the field, visiting communities in India, Latin America, and South Africa. But it wasn’t until he saw the call for Seed coaches that he realized he was going to be able to do the final thing on his bucket list: live in a foreign country and truly immerse himself in a community.
Duryea, who holds an MBA from Stanford GSB, and who has built and contributed to a number of venture-backed technology companies, brought to the assignment expertise in finance and in corporate and business development.
With his strong analytical skills and an ability to understand the many moving parts of an organization, he added value to each of the seven West African organizations he was involved with.
Drawing on his entrepreneurial spirit, his operational focus, and his knowledge of how to have a constructive impact on growing businesses, Duryea helped his clients position themselves to contribute to the economic well-being of their communities in bigger ways than they’d ever thought possible.
Seed recently caught up with Duryea to find out more about his work in this region of the world.
What drew you to become a Seed coach?
What was the difference you wanted to make?
I wasn’t sure what to expect going [to Africa], so I went with an open mind. My intention was simply to apply my experience with helping mentor companies and individuals in business building to the West African context.
What kind of difference do you feel you did make?
It started with getting people to have a mindset shift, getting them to realize that their horizons were much broader than they’d ever imagined. I helped them see that they could be much better, do much more, and have a bigger impact on the community than they’d ever thought possible. That was probably the most rewarding part of the whole experience. More specifically, they began to appreciate the importance of data-driven decisions, of understanding the customer, and of doing market research.
What kinds of companies or industries did you work with?
I worked with a variety of companies, seven altogether. Two were in real estate development — one in Lagos, Nigeria, and one in Accra, Ghana. The others were in five different industries. One was in technology and probably had the greatest potential to make a significant impact on sub-Saharan Africa. This company developed an application that allows money transfers on any mobile phone between financial institutions as well as between individuals.
Then I worked with a 50-year-old company that manufactured and sold pre-stressed concrete. I had an importer with two product lines: a declining food supplement line for the poultry industry, and a modular office line that had the potential to be a game changer for Ghana, and Western Africa as a whole. In Nigeria, I worked with a managing director who was empowering women by creating manufacturing jobs for women. Before I met her, she had tried a couple of different products and ended up becoming a bulk straw manufacturer who employed women close to the bottom of the pyramid. They distributed the product through another set of women in the public markets.
My last company provided high-quality education from preschool through high school in Ghana. They offered an International Baccalaureate, and about 50% of the students ended up going on to university in either Europe or the United States. But they did all of this at about half the tuition costs charged by the other pre-eminent schools in Ghana.
For me, it was very exciting to have that kind of broad exposure.
How did you get these companies on the path of transformation?
I focused on creating an environment that allowed them to decide they wanted to be transformed. I was serving as a business coach, and we all recognized that I wasn’t going to be there indefinitely and that they ultimately had to take ownership of the process, the plan, and the approach. I was a motivator, asking them a lot of questions and setting high standards. I just kept those bars moving higher and higher, not accepting less than I thought they were capable of.
Give us an example of a major change one of your companies realized they had to make.
When I first met my tech company, they had 13 mobile phone apps, but none of them was going to set the world on fire, and all of them had multiple competitors. I pointed out that having a positive cash flow at 15% or 20% growth is nice business, and that they could keep experimenting with apps, but none of it was going to have an impact on sub-Saharan Africa. I encouraged them to look at their underlying technology and the credibility they had built doing contract software development. After a few months, they set aside their 13 little children and created a business model that built on the existing technology and would truly change the way funds flow around sub-Saharan Africa and, ultimately, around the world.
What three words would you use to describe your coaching experience?
Love, impact, and appreciation. The people we all worked with were so appreciative of what we were doing. I received positive feedback almost every day and got to experience things I never would have otherwise. It was an incredible opportunity.
by Marguerite Rigoglioso