We’re
1888EC

Founded in 2020 by Solomon Kassa (TV Personality, tech consultant, strategist, author, and public speaker), 1888EC is a unique & innovative startup studio that will be the-first-of-its-kind in Ethiopia. 1888EC aspires to create disruptive innovators and change-makers in Ethiopia and beyond that will champion digital transformation, venture building, and job creation.

As a place to support the next generation of entrepreneurs and tech startups, our company name, 1888EC, refers to the date of the victorious Battle of Adwa on the Ethiopian Calendar (or EC).

In addition to representing a pivotal part of Ethiopia’s independence history, the letters “EC” also stand for ‘Enterprise Central’. With dual representations of our past victory as well as our fundamental work in building Ethiopia’s future entrepreneurs, our company’s creation originates from the idea of symbolizing the victory we want to re-imagine against poverty by empowering young entrepreneurs to innovate.

To solve society’s grand challenges by creating venture-based solutions.

To be the premier African startup studio that champions a prosperous African future.

We commit to creating ventures that are people-centered, impact-driven, and grit-based.

Building a great startup is challenging. Really challenging. It requires expertise, top talent, great execution, great timing, funding, and a little luck. Our studio has an approach on how to rapidly validate, build, and grow new startups.

We do our due diligence if ideas is potentially fit to be turned into products that are problem-solving, loved by customers, and able to scale by conducting market scanning, augmenting vision and strategy, and identifying quick wins.

Every idea sounds good at first. We put an idea through validation to assess demand, technical feasibility, business model, unit economics, market dynamics, investor interest, and more.

Once we determine that an idea is a good one, it is time to create. Our team will turn a validated idea into a proof of concept and ultimately a real product ready for the market. We use rapid prototyping and MVP (Minimally Viable Product) release to assess customer feedback.

Successful startups require extraordinary people and fast access to capital. We will use an effective spinout process to get a startup off the ground, staffed up, and funded as fast as humanly possible.

We will be dedicated on how to scale our startups. Since focus is paramount for an early-stage company, our studio will handle recruiting, legal, and finance, along with our relationships with top service providers, to allow founders to keep their full dedication on building the business.

Yes, we will ideate, develop, grow, exit, and repeat!

After we validate ideas in our studio, we put together the best team with the needed expertise to develop the idea, turn it into a startup, and manage it. The studio continues to provide funding, shared resources, and operational support to ensure startups are focused on what matter the most – developing products to solve society grand challenges.

As venture builders, we will have an end-to-end in-house expertise consisting of designers, engineers, business analysts, legal, financial, and brand/marketing specialists and leverage our resources to ideate, plan, develop, test and validate our own ideas and scale them.

From inception to proof-of-concept, validation, initial customer acquisition and scale, we take every step using rapid solution prototyping and design thinking, an effective approach to new product development that keeps a human-centered design process at its core.

Provide employment opportunities for the youth in Ethiopian and beyond with the emphasis on women.

Contribute to a startup ecosystem development through our venture building.

Create young entrepreneurs driven by critical problem-solving thinking and “can do” mindset.

Produce a tech/ knowledge-based economy and bring digital transformation.

The Victory of Adwa in 1888 EC (1896 GC) has been an inspiration for black people to fight for freedom. One notable example of such inspiration is the story of the African-American aviation pioneer and the father of Tuskegee Airmen John C. Robinson who in May 1935 answered Ethiopia’s call to defend the nation from Italian colonial invasion in revenge for the defeat at The Battle of Adwa nearly 40 years earlier.

Besides fighting on behalf of Ethiopia with bravery earning him global renown as the “Brown Condor of Ethiopia,” Robinson also played a key role in tech transfer and capacity building. He is credited in modernizing Ethiopia’s air force by training Ethiopian pilots. He was also a key player in the establishment of Ethiopian Airlines, Africa’s largest, most modern and successful airline. Robinson’s heroic and selfless dedication has become the cornerstone of African Americans’ historical affinity to Ethiopia & Ethiopia’s gratitude to African-Americans’ broad support at its darkest moment during World War II.

African-American, global African diaspora, local African entrepreneurs deeply share a common challenges of institutional biases. Foreign investors have the tendency to invest in African-based startups founded by western entrepreneurs. While the global black enterprise doesn’t get the “first movers” advantage in emerging affinity markets, black-founded startups in Africa also miss out investment opportunities due to lack of exposure and equity. 1888EC strives to foster a global mindset and outlook while intentionally creating an inclusive and equitable ecosystem that can level the playing field for black-led ventures.

The JCR Fellowship is designed to challenge the status quo by connecting underrepresented talent and resources to startup opportunities in emerging African markets while creating an inclusive and sustainable impact. The Fellowship, when it launches, will entail a 3-month entrepreneurial “tour-of-duty” fellowship in Ethiopia and later in other parts of Africa that helps candidates collaborate and work with local startups and entrepreneurs to deepen the startup ecosystem and connect Ethiopia to the global innovation grid and funding stream.  Upon completion of their fellowship, the Fellows will also serve as global 1888EC Ambassadors spreading the importance of collaboration & venture building in Africa.

Founder, 1888EC | Tech Consultant & Strategist | Author | TV Personality | Public Speaker

In his professional career, Solomon has been working as technology consulting & strategy manager at a Fortune 500 Global Firm leading multi-million-dollar large technology implementations. He worked as a software engineer prior to joining management consulting. He is also a producer & host of the popular “TechTalk With Solomon” on EBS. For the past 9 years, Solomon produced more than 230 episodes, discussing 600+ science & tech topics as well as interviewing 85+ prominent guests including Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.

In 2018, Solomon published “ግርምተ ሳይቴክ” (The Wonder of SciTech) – the first-of-its-kind science & tech 400 pages book to be ever published in Amharic. Solomon is a social media influencer with more than 715,000 followers.

Head of Operations

Teshager is an Economist and has been working as a consultant since 2016. He has worked in analysis, design, implementation and operations support for various digital transformation projects across Africa.

Teshager was a cofounder of a construction services company founded in 2014 and has now transitioned to other ventures after selling the company in 2020 and then worked in providing professional services in a startup consulting firm engaged in providing technical services to setup national/private commodity exchanges in Africa (Ghana, Nigeria) and a number of ERP deployments for private and public sector organizations (Ethiopia, Zimbabwe and Lesotho).

Tech Lead

Kibru is a full-stack developer in charge of the technical team of 1888EC. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Engineering from Adama Science and Technology University. In the past, Kibru co-founded a startup and was responsible for developing several web-based and native software. Prior to joining 1888 EC, he worked briefly as an exploit researcher for INSA (Information Network Security Agency).