Henry Onyango got into business during his first year of education at the Technical University of Kenya. As well as pursuing a Bachelors degree in Electronics engineering, Henry taught himself software engineering, co-founded and currently serves as the CEO of Roometo, an online market place that helps students find alternative accommodation.  Henry is also a Funzi (funzi.mobi) ambassador and an Android engineer with Skyline Design. His entrepreneurial journey has earned him several awards including the Best startup in NairobiSparks in Kenya and Sahara Sparks, the Global Student Entrepreneurs Award (GSEA), Kenyan chapter and the Technical University of Kenya's most innovative student. And he's only just getting started. The 25 year-old autodidact who describes himself as a student of life says his goal in life is to die empty, being of service as much as possible and doing everything he can possibly do before his time runs out. Henry talks to Damaris Agweyu about learning the ropes of entrepreneurship.

Henry, you started young and now have the benefit of having made mistakes early. What was the biggest assumption you'd made about business?

That a great idea will translate to a great business. The notion that having an idea for a business, especially one with a low barrier to entry, will lead to success is half baked. Building a business is hard work, definitely harder than it seems. I discovered this after many failed attempts.

How many?

At least 3.

When did you develop an interest in business to begin with?

I can't really say. I grew up in a household where I never thought I'd get into business. My dad was employed and though my mum was a small scale business owner, we never spoke much about business. My job was to study, get good grades, play a few video games in between and find a job. Business studies was one of the subjects I did in school but I hated it.

So how did you end up here?

When I joined university, I got intrigued by computers. Before that, I'd only ever used them to play games but now I would look at a mouse and wonder how the cursor worked. I heard about Microsoft Office packages and inquired how much it would cost me to learn. The price was something like 12 thousand shillings. There was no way I was going to pay that amount of money as a student. Still, my sister gave me the money but I used it to learn French instead and taught myself the office packages. I then developed an interest in website development. At around this time, I met one of my co-founders, Michael Shago who was equally interested in this. He was also a gamer so we had a lot in common. We noticed that so many people were paying attention to their photographs on Facebook and we thought photography would be the next big thing...

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