Portfolio Spotlight: Boost

About the Guest: Mike Quinn is the founder & CEO of Boost. They help distributors and FMCG brands in Africa sell to small retailers more efficiently, using simple ordering flows like WhatsApp and the operating layer behind it.

We actually invested in Boost Technology before I ever met Mike in person.

I first met Mike Quinn four years ago at Web Summit, in a Starbucks, over a coffee.

He wasn't a polished "theater founder." No big gestures. No shiny performance.

But within minutes, you could feel something rare:

Every sentence had content. Not motivational content. Operational content. The kind you only get from people who've been through the whole movie.

Mike is not a "failed founder." He's a scarred founder.

Mike previously built Zoona, one of the early African fintech stories, and he doesn't hide the hard ending.

He even wrote a book about it: Failing to Win, basically a founder's honest field manual on what it feels like to build, bleed, and learn.

What I respect is not the ending.

It's the clarity.

He doesn't romanticize anything. He explains what went wrong, what he learned, and what he'd do differently. And then he actually goes and does it.

That's what Boost is.

The thing that matters to me (and almost nobody talks about)

Mike is an outlier founder in one very specific way:

He never skips an investor update. Good month, bad month. Doesn't matter. He shows up.

This doesn't guarantee a great exit.

But here's my belief after watching hundreds of founders:

Great outcomes require internal discipline. And discipline shows up early, in cadence, process, and communication.

If a founder can't run a simple rhythm when things are hard, scaling later becomes chaos.

Mike's rhythm is consistent.

Why I trust his execution

Because he's not building Boost from a laptop fantasy.

He's on the ground, in markets where things are genuinely difficult: logistics, cash, fragmentation, volatility, regulation, and supply chain complexity.

And Boost is doing the unsexy work:

• Digitizing distributor operations
• Enabling WhatsApp ordering for retailers
• And building financing layers on top

This is not a "nice story" market.

It's a bruising one.

That's why I like founders with scars. They don't panic when things get messy.

One more detail I rarely see

Mike also runs a high-signal global WhatsApp group for investors and operators. Not noise, but structured sharing.

That sounds small, but it's not.

Managing investors well is a skill. And it's an early sign of leadership maturity.

A quick note about how I invest

Through Startupist Ventures, I invest globally in early-stage startups.

I'm sector-agnostic on purpose. I like patterns, not categories. And I love meeting founders early, when it's still messy and uncertain, because that's where you really see who can build.

Boost was one of those early bets.

Also, over the last few months, I met a bunch of startups I found genuinely interesting.

This is not me promoting them, and it's not me trying to make any investment decision "transparent" publicly.

I just like sharing what I'm seeing. Strong teams, sharp ideas, and problems worth paying attention to.

Startups I Met Recently (Interesting Teams)

Virasoft (Turkiye) · Health Tech / Pathology
Provides advanced pathology solutions including virtual microscopy, online training platforms, and AI-powered diagnostic tools. Integrates whole slide images, assignments, and lab management systems for instructors and students.

ReMinded (Finland, USA) · Health Tech / Stress Diagnostics
Developed a portable device that analyzes saliva biomarkers to provide real-time stress level insights without needing a lab. Helps identify and prevent prolonged stress through easy access to quantitative cortisol data.

Hiroo (Turkey) · HR Tech / AI Recruitment
AI-powered recruitment platform that streamlines hiring with automated job posting, candidate assessment, interview scheduling, and talent tracking through a centralized dashboard.

Soil Scout (Finland) · Hardware / Agriculture Tech
Wireless soil moisture sensors for agriculture, golf courses, and sports turf. Helps optimize soil conditions, improve crop production, and reduce water consumption. Clients include Wembley Stadium and the Philadelphia Phillies.