Having attempted to start a SaaS business in Mauritius and failed, here are some of my reflections on the subject:

There are several issues with Mauritius as a landscape for starting businesses in:

1. Small market size
   1. Difficult to operate on small profits due to few customers
   2. Competition kills businesses faster due to already scarce pool of customers
2. Constraints due to geographic location
   1. Distribution over large geographic areas is difficult
   2. Expensive product shipping
3. Limited natural resources
4. Brain drain and skill shortages
5. Limited access to financing
   1. No venture capitalists and few angel investors.
6. Corruption
7. Cultural Peculiarities
   1. Americans are outgoing and like to talk, unlike Mauritians. This makes it easier for them to network, learn and sell.
   2. Days are shorter in Mauritius. Few daylight hours means fewer working hours.
   3. Mauritian people value family more than American people and they are less willing to have long working days.

The above lead to a market where customers are:

1. Few
2. Limited in budget
3. Reluctant to spend because they are generally operating on low profit margins
4. Difficult and expensive to reach
5. Unlikely to opt for high tech solutions due to
   1. Perceived high adoption cost
   2. General lack of adoption in the industry leading to
      1. Unfamiliarity
      2. Perceived complexity
6. Reluctant to build B2B relations beyond purchase of goods and sales of goods

Due to the above conditions, business often hit a hurdle in terms of scalability quite quickly. Even those who do well and earn dominance in their market. They are still unable to meet their own expectations in terms of revenue. What they do then is instead of scaling as a company would in countries with larger markets, they now have to re-invent and re-discover themselves more quickly. Some succeed and become groups of companies while other fail and remain small businesses. There is no in between.

In short, Mauritius is not an great market for general purpose software or hardware. The market is too small and it is too costly to expand overseas. The types of services which have the biggest chances of succeeding are of 2 types:

1. Boutique Software Development Agencies
2. Companies which sell a particular type of service made possible via their bespoke software

However, at the moment, I do not think the future lies in software. The future is automation as it always has been. It lies in robotics and low cost manufacturing, and at the moment it lies especially in AI.

But even the AI race will not last foreever. I suspect even the IT industry at the scale it is currently at will not last forever. It sits upon too many layers. It sits upon the internet, which sits upon computers, which sit upon electricity. Therefore I do not think it far fetch to anticipate that the future may also hold conflicts and likely war. Wars produce displaced people and lack of food and lack of resources in general. During war time, the scarcity comes from both low production and poor distribution. Therefore, those are issues which can be catered for as well.

Software itself isn’t inherently valuable. Software provides value to users of computer and electronic devices. It helps optimize tasks and therefore save time. This is the value of software. It is a tool and I am a tool-maker. What tool can I make for those who need a tool they don’t have?