#StartupsEverywhere profile: Prince Mlaudzi, Founder and CEO, Nombolo
This profile is part of #StartupsEverywhere, an ongoing series highlighting startup leaders in ecosystems across the country. This interview has been edited for length, content, and clarity.
Creating a Space for Collaborative, Digital Communities
Nombolo is a social media platform that enables users to engage with one another in real time, to answer questions and share experiences through geo-positioned videos and requests. We spoke with Prince Mlaudzi—Founder and CEO of Nombolo—to learn how he developed the idea for the platform from his love of basketball, the challenges he faces as a small platform developing systems for responsible content moderation, and how the government can do more to support underrepresented founders.
Could you tell us about your background and how it led you to Nombolo?
I'm a scientist with an active life. I went to school to study physics but I always wanted to play basketball after class. Every time I wanted to play, though, it was hard to find a basketball court with people to play a game. It was very hit or miss, so I started thinking about how I could engage the guys within the basketball community to say, “When you go and play basketball, can you post something that says there's a game going on or there's people around interested in getting a game started?”
From there, I taught myself a little bit of Xcode. I have no background in computer science at all, but I was able to write the first few lines and, eventually, I was able to bring on engineering interns to fully build out the code for the app. Our company is still very new. We incorporated in January 2020 and we've gotten a little bit of angel funding, but mostly our team has been bootstrapping the whole way.
Tell us about Nombolo. What is the work you are doing?
The idea of Nombolo is to allow users to ask any questions, anywhere in the world, to learn about things or places they are curious about and get answers that are (close to) real time. I could, for example, ask, “Are there people playing basketball at Wallace Park?” The community can then engage and say, “Yes, there’s a group playing right now.” Or I could ask “What does a street sign look like in China,” or “What does the sunset look like in Dubai,” and another user can reply with an image or video.
We are starting small, but going to get more specific in the design of the app. Eventually users can have interests, like basketball or going out to the dog parks in their profile, which will allow the information they see and share to be focused on such interests. We are currently beta testing the app’s functionalities with 1,000 people. Our end goal is to have as many people as possible with the platform on their phone.
If you think of established social media and search platforms, like Quora, Reddit, or Google, they have some aspects of this functionality—but are missing the real time and the specifics users really want. If I went to Google right now to look up Wallace Park, I would see an image that’s anywhere from a day to a year old because they only update those images so often. You’re not getting information shared in real time or that addresses the specific question you have.
As we undergo beta testing, we are identifying new ways to leverage the platform’s engagement tools; for example, partnering up with local businesses. This would allow users to ask, “How busy is your restaurant right now?” or “What are your specials today?” And the restaurant can reply, even including a photo or video in the response to show the chef cooking the special. Businesses will be able to advertise, welcome customers, and better interact with members of their community. We are trying to bridge that gap of divisiveness that exists in a lot of social media right now. On a lot of platforms there is pressure to be cool, beautiful, or dress a certain way to get a lot of followers. Our platform is focused on, “How can I engage with my community?” We want everybody to feel as valuable as the next person.
Nombolo is based around user-generated content—exchanging questions and advice or experiences from users in the community. Do you have thoughts about legal or policy issues that might be relevant to this user content?
There are several things that keep me up at night regarding the content that gets posted. Someone could post a video with some people appearing or a song playing in the background, and I have to think about how that fits into our work. For example, one time a user posted a video to our app from an airport and the clip included images of a TV show that was playing. I remember looking at it and wondering whether we might need to delete such a post. I was worried something could get us in trouble over copyright. Whether it’s an example like this, or a song that happens to be playing in the background of a video post, there are these laws and terminology that are very difficult to understand, but I have to.
A related example I also worry about brings in privacy concerns. For example, if a picture of a park captures images of children at the playground. We are working on building AI to blur out kids' faces or overlay a cartoon image, to protect them and prevent misuse by people with bad intentions. We are trying to get it right, but these are really tough questions and the algorithms we are putting in place are good but not perfect. And we are a startup, we will make mistakes.
Other social media companies are dealing with these concerns on a daily basis as well and are constantly facing litigation. We are essentially an ask and answer platform, but whenever you open the door to user-generated content, particularly photos and videos, a wide range of concerns come with it. Once we have a lot of people downloading Nombolo, and there are billions of posts, I’ll have a legal team that can help us. I have a lawyer now, of course, to help us address those concerns, but whenever I call them I am thinking about that hourly fee. I know I have to cover everything I need to in my hour call otherwise I am looking at a very expensive cost that will impact my business. I am constantly thinking about how we protect ourselves from the things that we can't foresee happening.
User privacy is a hot topic for policymakers. What are the areas of concern and focus for you in this area?
This is definitely an area we are focused on because we are using location data. Location is sensitive because it can create concerns about who can see where a user is when they post. We're trying to build the functionality of the app in a way that is helpful to our users. We want to build a platform where people can ask and answer questions that's all location-based. How are we going to prevent people that have bad intentions from using this app in a harmful way? How can we encourage users to make use of the app’s privacy features? In the past, some of the social media giants have had to really invest in different ways to protect their users and themselves from misuse of location data, but they had vast resources to make those investments and changes. We are still at a very early stage, but we know that this will be one of the biggest concerns about using our platform.
Are there any startup issues and concerns that you believe should receive more attention from local, state, and federal policymakers?
Well the part that's not a secret is that I'm a Black founder. There aren’t that many Black founders in the tech space. And, because of who I am, the resources and funding opportunities available to me are much more limited. When investors look at me I can see the “Can you really do this?”-type doubts and questions forming. On the other hand, I have a friend who is also a founder—he has a much less developed idea and it’s not anything unique, he’s working on a video game. But I have witnessed him go out and raise $4 million in capital in large part because he didn’t face the same barriers that I do.
Since the Black Lives Matter movement started, a lot of companies have been saying they want to support Black founders, but I have not seen any of that support. There has been one company offering services to Black founders, but none of that has benefited Nombolo. It was good for companies that are further ahead than we are, but we are early-stage.
To be clear, I am not blaming anyone, but I would like to see the playing fields leveled. Someone who doesn’t look like me could pitch my idea and get a $25,000 investment. There are a lot of ways the government could work to help. I am not asking to be handed a bunch of money, but the government has provided no-interest or low-interest, accessible investments to large companies in the past. They should do a better job making those types of grants or loans available to small businesses like ours.
I have two accountability groups I meet with regularly. One group is mostly white founders, and funding hardly ever comes up. But the other group is six Black founders, and everytime we meet we are talking about how we need money. And we’re not looking for millions of dollars. Nombolo is so small and underfunded, even when we bring in a few thousand dollars, that makes a difference for our team.
What are your goals for Nombolo going forward?
I'm very community focused. I would love to see communities using our application for good and using it to strengthen connections. In the long-term, I want our platform to serve as a starting point for giving back to communities, including my home community. I am from a village in Zimbabwe where I used to walk barefoot and have one meal a day, or sometimes no meal. I hope to get to the place where I can return and give back to those communities, where the kids are 20 times smarter than I am, by providing them access to this community-building technology. I really want to create awareness of those communities and provide them an opportunity to share their creative ideas. It all comes back to communities, giant communities doing good things and giving back on Nombolo.
All of the information in this profile was accurate at the date and time of publication.
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