Afrigather Sandbox’s platform will enable firms to search out vetted product administration expertise with ease throughout Africa.
Sandbox is a talent-matching platform constructed for product managers within the African tech ecosystem to search out work regionally and internationally. “It’s like Toptal, however for product managers,” Khadijah Atere, who works as product operations supervisor at Sandbox, instructed TechCabal over X (previously Twitter) whereas making an attempt to clarify their distinctive providing.
Based by Samuel Tobi, Princess Akari, and Ijaola David, the corporate began as a product throughout the People in Product
(PIP) group, “a volunteer-driven group of product managers making a measurable affect and serving to each other develop,” in line with the PIP web site. Ijaola David, Sandbox’s product lead, instructed TechCabal over a video name that plenty of the help for the corporate has come from the PIP group.
David, a undertaking supervisor with over 5 years of expertise, stated he noticed the necessity for Sandbox when he was beginning professionally. “The difficulty was there weren’t plenty of jobs for product managers. I used to be fortunate to stumble into this function that has change into my profession,” he stated.
Whereas the platform continues to be new, having solely formally kicked off in 2023, David says they’re “Africa’s first core product administration matching platform.”
TechCabal requested how Sandbox matches product administration skills with firms that want them and David defined that Sandbox has an evaluation for all PMs on the platform. The evaluation helps them section entrants by expertise, ability set, and specialisation. “So anybody that desires to rent, all you must do is go on our web site, fill out the shape, inform us what the JD appears to be like like, and we’ll now go to our expertise pool and discover matching skills,” David stated.
Sandbox doesn’t presently prepare newbies to change into PMs, in line with David and Atere. Their first part of operations is specializing in serving to present skills to match with firms that want their providers. Nonetheless, the platform presently hosts skills with as little as zero years of expertise to as a lot as 10.
Though it’s nonetheless in its infancy, David confirmed to TechCabal that they’re already a revenue-generating entity from firms which are hiring the PMs of their community. The income comes within the type of service expenses and session charges in the mean time, with plans to introduce different fashions sooner or later.
In the meantime, Sandbox is taking a gradual strategy to elevating exterior funding. David stated that due to the PIP group, operational bills are low. “If we ever want to lift [money] from institutional buyers, it needs to be as a result of we’ve seen that there’s a possible income level that we have to put money into and we have to develop there. Possibly we’d like authorized and compliance points, or we have to develop right into a market and so they have compliance necessities and we all know, as soon as we’re in there, we’ll blow up. Then it’ll make sense to lift cash for such enlargement.”
