Design Yangu One Week In: The Real Numbers
Design Yangu launched on March 17, 2026. One week later, here's what actually happened the numbers, the surprises, and what we're building next.
One Week In: What We Learned Launching Kenya's First Print-on-Demand Marketplace
I've been sitting on these numbers for a few days. Not because they're bad because I wanted to say something real about them, not just post a celebration thread and move on.
Kenya has incredible designers. Anyone who's been on Twitter KOT or walked through the creative spaces in Nairobi knows this. What we didn't have was a way for those designers to turn a graphic into a physical product without a printer, a warehouse, or KES 50,000 in startup capital.
That's what Design Yangu is: a marketplace where Kenyan designers upload their work, we handle the printing and delivery, and they earn a royalty on every sale paid via M-Pesa.
First post went up on Instagram and Twitter simultaneously. Then WhatsApp. Then the designer pilots who'd been with us since before launch started posting too.
The first hour felt like shouting into a void. That's normal. The internet doesn't owe you attention.
By noon, traffic had picked up. By evening, our first order notification came through an M-Pesa payment, confirmed, processing.
[NOTE: Fill in actual numbers before publishing. These are placeholders replace with real data from Supabase/analytics dashboard.]