His Grandfather Was Assassinated. He Still Went Back.

Yacob Berhane's grandfather was one of the first Africans to attend Harvard Law in the 1960s.

He didn't stay in America. He went back to Eritrea. Worked on the Declaration of Independence. Became a judge.

During the civil war, he was targeted. Assassinated. His body was never found.

"My father went to find out who killed his father-in-law and where he was at. His life was put in danger. So my grandmother was like, 'You have to leave.'"

They walked. Hitchhiked. Were smuggled out of Eritrea. Political refugees who started over with nothing in America.

"I still have the letter that signed the asylum for my father."

His parents had one message his entire childhood: "You are Eritrean. America is giving us this opportunity and we're grateful for it. But you have a responsibility to go back to the continent."

Three generations later, Yacob is still honoring that responsibility.

THE BUILDERS WENT QUIET. THE FAKERS FILLED THE VOID.

Yacob hasn't done a podcast in years. Turned down every single one.

Until now.

Why? Because he looked around and realized something that should terrify all of us:

"The inaction of good people is what ruins the world."

While the builders were heads down—raising funds, shipping product, surviving funding winters—the noise makers filled the void. Kevin Samuels. Andrew Tate. A whole ecosystem of people who signal but don't ship.

And we wrote them off. "Nobody's taking that seriously," we told ourselves.

We were wrong.

Young founders DM Yacob on Instagram asking for advice. Young men especially. They're at crossroads, making decisions that will shape their entire lives. And the loudest voices in their feed are people who've never built anything.

The real ones have the scars. The frameworks. The stories of funding rounds that fell through. The lessons from companies that died on the vine.

But we keep it siloed. Private dinners. WhatsApp groups. Conversations that never leave the room.

Yacob decided that has to change.

WHY GOOD COMPANIES DIED

"There's a lot of good companies that died on the vine. Companies not meant to die."

The math broke everyone.

Nigeria's currency went from 400 to one dollar to 1,650 to one. If you're a startup and you grew 300%, you still shrank—because you report in dollars.

Capital allocated to Africa dropped from $5 billion to $1.8 billion. The bar went from "your revenue is growing, we're backing you" to "you need three million in ARR." That number was just an easy way to say no.

African founders were forced to do something no Silicon Valley startup has ever done: build product AND revenue AND expand into new markets—all on a seed round.

"It's never been done before. And whenever people say that, just go look at the tape."

The startups that died weren't weak. Many of them were strong. They just couldn't survive an environment designed to break them.

"It starts with leadership and it goes all the way down."

TASTE IS THE ONLY THING LEFT

"Building a prototype used to cost $140,000 and take three to four months. Now it's $20 and 15 minutes."

When the cost of building drops to zero, the only differentiator is what you choose to build.

"Do you have taste? You can't get taste from reading. You have to live life. To be in communion with each other. To experience things. That's what's going to allow you to build things that people care about."

Yacob calls it the thing AI can't replicate.

"In a world where AI can almost do anything, the next level up is discernment, judgment, and taste."

THE 48-MONTH COUNTDOWN

"I have this number in my head. 48 months, plus or minus six. That's when we're going to have a step function change in AI."

What happens after that?

"If the food in the grocery store and the furniture and everything is being made by robots, and the energy powering the robots is nuclear or the sun—why am I paying for this?"

We're heading toward a question nobody's ready to answer.

But Africa has an opportunity most people aren't seeing:

"AI won't get better without humans training it. Africa has 22% more English speakers than India. We have a much better time zone to America. All the frontier labs should be considering us."

The problem? We're still stuck at low-level data labeling.

"Kenyans and Nigerians have been doing PhD program work for Ivy League schools. The articles have been written—they get subcontracted to do their papers. If you can write a thesis for a PhD student at Yale, you can train these models."

WHY HE FINALLY SAID YES

"I've thought about this. The people asking me to talk more, to write more, to share my opinion—do I think they genuinely believe what they say? I do. Do I enjoy spending time with them? I'm at a point in my life where I don't have to be around anybody I don't want to be around."

He paused.

"I'm doing this because there might be one person who hears it and says, 'All right, I'm going to do this.' That's enough."

Yacob has a tattoo from his grandmother. A letter she wrote him before she passed.

"At the end she writes: 'Make sure you seek out wisdom and guidance from people that you know love you and care about you.'"

The fakers win when the real ones stay silent.

He's not staying silent anymore.On why Netflix and Amazon left Nigeria:

"Subscriber rates were not as high. In Nigeria, we all can share. We love to share. We are family oriented."

Watch the full episode

Yacob breaks down the funding winter, the AI opportunity for Africa, building Quill, and why he finally said yes to a podcast after years of silence.

 THE AI CHIEF OF STAFF FOR BUILDERS

Most AI "meeting assistants" are just glorified tape recorders. They drop an awkward bot into your Zoom call, send your data to the cloud, and then leave you with a transcript you still have to copy-paste into ChatGPT to get anything useful.

Quill changed the game for me.

It lives on your desktop, not in the cloud. No bots, no data leaks, and zero "download-and-paste" rituals. I use it to run every meeting and every podcast episode. By the time I hang up, the work—PRDs, follow-up emails, and Linear tickets—is already drafted right inside the app.

If you're still doing the manual work after your meetings, you're working too hard.

Join the Afropolitan community on Quill for free

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Warmly,
Chika & Eche
Co-Hosts, Afropolitan Podcast