#028 Donald of Mavoni and Zulzi | Lessons From Raising 30M ZAR After Living in His Office Basement

In this episode, we sit down with Donald Valoyi—serial entrepreneur, co-founder of Zulzi, and founder of Mavoni Fiber—to unpack his extraordinary journey from software engineer to tech visionary reshaping Africa’s digital economy. Donald shares raw, powerful lessons from building one of South Africa’s most successful quick-commerce platforms and leading a fiber rollout across underserved townships.

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Highlights

🚀 From Software Engineer to Serial Entrepreneur: Donald shares how his passion for tech began at university and how it led to founding and failing early ventures before eventually co-founding Zulzi and Mavoni Fiber.
📉 Lessons from Failure: He recounts a tough but defining chapter—launching an ISP in Ghana with no capital, living in his office basement, and still managing to raise $30M in funding years later.
💡 Zulzi’s Grind to Greatness: From selling textbooks online to becoming Shoprite’s tech partner for the 60/60 app, Donald walks us through how timing, grit, and strategic pivots defined their success.
📡 Fiber for the People: Donald’s mission with Mavoni Fiber is to bring high-speed internet to townships and rural communities, using hybrid infrastructure and lean models to scale where others can’t.
🧠 Investor’s Mindset: Now also a VC partner at Chanzo Capital, Donald explains why entrepreneur-led investing is critical to Africa’s startup ecosystem.

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Key Insights

🛠️ Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish: Donald’s guiding mantra from Steve Jobs has shaped how he navigates risk, opportunity, and reinvention throughout his entrepreneurial journey.
📊 Preparation Meets Opportunity: Zulzi’s partnership with Shoprite succeeded not just because of vision, but because their product was ready—just in time for 2020’s e-commerce explosion.
👥 Founding Teams Matter: Donald emphasizes how co-founders, complementary skills, and early believers helped keep the vision alive through hard times.
🔥 Grit Over Glamour: From working midnight casino shifts to bootstrapping telecom ventures, Donald’s journey is a reminder that entrepreneurship is more sweat than spotlight.
🌍 Pan-African Vision: Having operated in Ghana, South Africa, and across the continent, Donald’s playbook is built for scale—driven by a belief that Africa’s hardest problems are also its biggest opportunities.
💰 Smart Capital: As both an entrepreneur and investor, he calls for founders to have “skin in the game” and solve meaningful problems to attract long-term capital.
🔄 Adaptability is Everything: Whether it’s pivoting Zulzi’s business model or engineering new ways to lower fiber costs, Donald’s story shows that iteration is the path to breakthrough.

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Vision for the Future
Donald is building toward a future where every African home—no matter the income bracket—has access to affordable, high-speed internet. His story is a masterclass in long-term thinking, bold execution, and doing hard things in hard places.

Whether you’re a startup founder, tech builder, or aspiring investor, this episode is packed with wisdom you won’t find in textbooks.

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