Kanessa Muluneh | The Art of Scaling Startups: Why Marketing Is the Missing Growth Engine
Early-stage founders are conditioned by accelerators, investors, and peers to focus on three things: product, operations, and fundraising. These are tangible, measurable, and urgent. Marketing, on the other hand, is often perceived as second place, subjective, or premature, especially for early-stage startups. This is especially true across Africa, where a report by Briter Bridges revealed that only 30% of startups allocate more than 10% of their budgets to marketing. As a serial entrepreneur and investor, I see this as a gross underinvestment; this not just my opinion it is backed by evidence..
Reports show that Series A startups that allocate 30%+ to marketing achieve 40% faster revenue scaling, while poor marketing is listed as the second most common reason startups fail at 29%.
There’s no debate that the core and essential component of a successful startup is a business idea that can solve a real-life issue or add value for its target audience. However, there are a lot of African startups that can have all of those things and still struggle to scale simply because of minimal exposure.
One of the main benefits of marketing at early-stage companies is that it allows founders to test their service or solution and identify the right product-market fit, an essential cornerstone of long-term success. This is also highly regarded and appreciated by investors when they’re doing their due diligence process. In fact, 72% of seed investors say they favor startups that connect early marketing spend directly to validating product-market fit, because it shows the company is learning, iterating, and responding to real customer needs.
More importantly, early marketing is one of the strongest levers for driving sales and growth. A sales team that is not supported by marketing is left out in the “cold”. They have a lack of targeted insight, reduced productivity, inconsistent brand messaging and it drains resources. When you invest in marketing and have the two functions work together, you can achieve 208% higher marketing revenue, while also closing deals up to 67% more effectively. The benefits can be seen across customer experience, all-round team performance, better customer data, efficient sales funnel and improved revenue growth. The feedback marketing provides is what refines and defines winning sales strategies.
Personally, I see marketing as infrastructure; the systems set-up, tools like Customer Relationship Management (CRM), data and the people – this is something you build early, strengthen over time, and rely on as everything else scales. This conviction is strongly embedded in the way we invest in and support startups through Nyle Diaspora Investment Group.
From theory to impact: real-life scaling stories
Our approach follows a playbook I’ve developed and tested over the years through my own ventures and the dozens of startups I’ve invested in. When we onboard a new company, marketing is one of the first areas we focus on. We start with a comprehensive audit to understand market position, audience channels, current engagement, and where the real opportunities lie.
Our goal is always the same: increase visibility, gather meaningful feedback, and deliver data-driven results. Founders often hesitate to be “too out there” early on, but the noise is critical; comments, complaints, and questions are feedback that help refine offerings. Instead of building in silence, we build alongside a community, using early engagement to shape the product and strengthen trust from the very beginning.
Rise of Fearless, our African battle-royale game, demonstrates this approach in action. Long before any formal launch, we focused on creating an online presence and building a community. We launched social media channels, shared snippets of gameplay and character concepts, and spoke openly about our vision to launch a game that puts African representation at the center. The instant and positive engagement and recommendations we received from gamers confirmed that there was real demand for a game rooted in African narratives.
To deepen this engagement, we opened direct feedback channels through Telegram and continued promoting the game while quietly making it available on the Apple Store. This allowed our community to test the game and provide input on graphics, gameplay, and bugs. Their feedback shaped our roadmap: when 73% of our community requested an Android version, we prioritised Google Play, recognising that Android is the dominant operating system across most African markets. Additionally, we also developed multiplayer functionality when it was requested by our players. By involving the community at every step, we validated product-market fit in real time and strengthened loyalty along the way.
We also invested in visibility beyond our early community. Depending on organic reach alone is limiting, so we used our marketing budget strategically, running targeted ads, collaborating with sector bloggers, announcing tournaments with prizes, and inviting players to live events, all designed to create buzz, deepen engagement, and bring the community closer to the game and each other.
We also heavily relied on content marketing, which costs 62% less than traditional advertising while generating roughly three times as many leads. We regularly produced video explainers showing gameplay mechanics, updated graphics highlighting new features, in-game content teasers, and even player quotes and feedback to showcase the community’s voice.
Today, our Instagram community exceeds 7,000 followers, and the game is approaching 100,000 players just 9 months after launch. Rise of Fearless still has a long road ahead, but the visibility, feedback, and momentum built from day one have positioned us to scale faster and attract stronger investment.
The game reinforces a key lesson: building visibility is just as critical as building the product itself.
This is why ultimately, the future of African startups will belong to those who make marketing a non-negotiable part of building their business, those who invest in visibility, listen to their audience, and act relentlessly on what they learn. Ignore it, and you risk stalling growth, missing investment, and losing influence; embrace it, and you turn insight into action, and products into market leaders.
Kanessa Muluneh is the Founder of Nyle Investment Group.
Go to TECHTRENDSKE.co.ke for more tech and business news from the African continent and across the world.
Follow us on WhatsApp, Telegram, Twitter, and Facebook, or subscribe to our weekly newsletter to ensure you don’t miss out on any future updates. Send tips to editorial@techtrendsmedia.co.ke
