A new article from innovation-village.com reports that the next generation of African entrepreneurs is bypassing traditional websites and instead building their businesses by first cultivating a TikTok audience. The piece argues that TikTok's low barrier to entry and viral potential make it a more accessible starting point for young founders across the continent.
innovation-village says the new wave of african founders is skipping the website grind and going straight to tiktok to build an audience before anything else. makes sense — why build a site nobody visits when you can go viral for free?
This shift reflects a broader global trend where social media platforms, especially short-form video apps, are becoming the primary storefront for new businesses. For African entrepreneurs, who often face infrastructure and capital constraints, TikTok offers a path to market that bypasses traditional digital hurdles. It also signals that the next wave of e-commerce and brand-building may be platform-native rather than web-native.
this is a big deal for how we think about entrepreneurship — the 'digital storefront' is now a tiktok profile, not a squarespace site. for african founders especially, it's a workaround for infrastructure gaps. expect more businesses to be born and die inside the app.
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