Not all that starts the journey to becoming a successful and skillful entrepreneur always manage to finish well. As a little boy, Houston Malande had always struggle to sustain himself and his family as he was born into a poor family. Today the poor boy, Malande is the founder of Skyline Design, a youth-led design firm focused on designing bespoke websites and brands for corporate.
Not just hardworking, Malande was a smart, intelligent boy as he emerged as the 24th best out of over 400,000 students who sat for the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) taken in 2007. He had to take a two-year gap before going to university as a result of the inability to pay for his tuition fee. He got a job as an intern as a computer repair assistant. There, he noticed a demand for blank Compact Disks (CDs) so people could store information. He decided to venture into the business as he started by getting packs at about 10 Kenya Shillings each to sell. He then made a poster advert detailing he could “burn” documents on a CD at KSh 20 and within a week, he had sold the entire pack. Unfortunately, he was asked to quit the sale of the CDs by the Owners.
In 2008, Malande taught himself web programming and design and after he registered his company, Skyline Design, he got his first two clients before the end of the year which ended up incorporating the business into a limited company.
Currently, the company has six permanent employees and 12 consultants with active contracts and Skyline Designs still intend to keep growing.