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KASA: Your Voice, Your Community, Your Success

  Speech by Emmanuel Kasigazi, KASA President Introduction Good morning, everyone. My name is Emmanuel Kasigazi, and I’m honored to serve as your President of the Katz School African Student Association — KASA. I’m here studying Data Analytics and Visualization, originally from Uganda with an undergraduate degree in Information Systems. But more importantly, I’m here as someone who understands your journey. I’m a seasoned engineer and entrepreneur, and just like you, I’m an immigrant. I arrived here last year. Before that, I spent time in Toronto, and years ago, I lived in South Sudan. I know what it’s like to not live in your home country. I understand what you might be going through, what you might be experiencing. Different countries, yes, but leaving home is leaving home — and that experience connects us all. My Background Back home, I’ve been a leader throughout my life. I ran companies with teams of employees, worked across various sectors from tech to branding, printing prod...
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Venture Capital Is Just Business: Lessons from Chapati Stands, Microfinance, and AI

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  Why This Matters When people hear “venture capital,” they picture boardrooms full of billionaires, complex financial models, and Silicon Valley jargon. But the deeper I’ve gone into this world—through programs like Venture Institute, NSF I-Corps, and my own entrepreneurial journey—I’ve learned a simple truth: venture capital is still business. Like running a chapati stand in high school or lending to small SMEs in East Africa, it comes down to the same loop: Get resources. Add value. Deliver results. Grow trust and relationships. The magnitude changes, but the fundamentals don’t. The People Game One of my biggest insights from the Venture Institute is that venture is a people’s game. Limited Partners (LPs) are the customers of a fund, not startups. GPs live and die by relationships—just as I once did when one client made up 50% of my branding business, and we nearly collapsed when they pulled out. In VC, no LP should ever hold more than 20% of a fund. Diversification isn’t just...
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🚀 IT'S TIME! NSF I-Corps Summer 2025 NY Regional Lean Bootcamp kicks off Thursday! 𝗟𝗘𝗧'𝗦 𝗚𝗢𝗢𝗢!! 🎉

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🚀 IT'S TIME! NSF I-Corps Summer 2025 NY Regional Lean Bootcamp kicks off Thursday! 𝗟𝗘𝗧'𝗦 𝗚𝗢𝗢𝗢!! 🎉 A few months ago, I got accepted into the NSF I-Corps Summer 2025 Lean Bootcamp, a competitive startup training program backed by the 𝗡𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗦𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗙𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 (𝗡𝗦𝗙)! Since we kick off in just a few days (July 31st, a day before my birthday, no less), I figured it’s time I shared the story behind it all. So... what IS this whole thing? Think of it as a three-level pyramid: 🔹 𝗟𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹 𝟭: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗡𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗦𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗙𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 (𝗡𝗦𝗙) – "𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘎𝘰𝘥𝘧𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳"  The NSF is the U.S. government agency funding America’s scientific future. They invest billions in university research and back Nobel Prize winners.  When they support a venture, it carries serious weight. 🔹𝗟𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹 𝟮: 𝗜-𝗖𝗼𝗿𝗽𝘀𝗧𝗠 (𝗜𝗻𝗻𝗼𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗖𝗼𝗿𝗽𝘀) – "𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘌𝘯𝘵𝘳𝘦𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘶𝘳'𝘴 𝘉𝘰𝘰𝘵𝘤𝘢𝘮𝘱" For d...
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A Generation behind

See, when you see some of us do what we do, it’s not ’cause we want to, it’s because we have to —  we are a generation behind . It’s realizing all your friends enjoy luxuries and move up in life so fast at a pace you can’t even fathom, simply because their parents put in the work and set a foundation you don’t have. When shit hits the fan, we have no backup, we have no safety net, no generational wealth, no generational property, no generational insurance, not even a land to call home that we can fall back to or lean on —  we are a generation behind. It’s realizing that you always reach and go through stages of life 5 to 10 years later than the rest.  It’s getting to do your masters in your 30s while your peers did that in their early to mid 20s. It’s getting to build or even afford the idea of owning a home in your 40s, when your peers built and were landlords in their mid 20s. It’s getting to experience the luxuries of travel and going abroad in your late 20s and mid 30s when you...
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I’m a founder with no product to sell.

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Photo By Author About 3 weeks ago, at AI Extravaganza, Andrew Yeung’s electrifying flagship event for New York City Tech Week , I found myself in an unusual position: I’m a founder with no product, no company, no app, nothing to pitch. As an entrepreneur and someone who’s spent the last 15+ years building: from co-founding and running Wazi Group, a B2B firm in tech, branding, and procurement, to launching ventures in microfinance, logistics and shipping (DoBuy Dubai), events (Festa Iquela), and most recently, co-creating the Open Learners Podcast in collab with MIT OpenCourseWare: this rare moment of pause felt strange. I’m used to walking into rooms like this with momentum: something in hand, a project growing, a company scaling, something live, something to share. But this time, there I was, surrounded by founders and investors passionately pitching their products, apps, and big ideas,while I had… just me. My story. My past. And the humbling awareness that I’m in transition....
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🚀 I'm now your go-to Fabric Analyst, thanks to Microsoft! 🚀

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About 4 weeks ago, on a Tuesday I completed the intensive hands-on Fabric Analyst in a Day workshop  at the iconic Microsoft Reactor in Times Square, NYC. Here's a bit about what I mastered: • End-to-end data pipeline from multiple sources (Snowflake, SharePoint, ADLS Gen2, Dataverse) • Lakehouse architecture with shortcuts and visual query transformations • Automated data orchestration using Data Pipelines with smart retry logic • Direct Lake semantic models for lightning-fast analytics • Real-time Power BI reports that update instantly without manual refreshes 💡 Key Game-Changers: • DirectLake Mode: No more waiting for data refreshes - changes appear instantly in reports • Unified Platform: One solution replacing multiple tools (Power BI, Azure Data Factory, SQL Server) • Developer Experience: Browser-based development means no more Windows-only limitations • Resilient Pipelines: Smart retry mechanisms that handle data source delays automatically 🏢 Real Business Impact: The...
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