Archive location
Dakar Founder Stories
Founder records where Dakar's financial systems, artisans, customers, and operating constraints directly shaped the company.
The Dakar archive connects mobile-money infrastructure and luxury production through founders who built direct relationships with the people using, making, and distributing the product.
Founder Case Files
Wilglory TanjongWilglory Tanjong turned grief, $5,000 in savings, and direct relationships with Dakar artisans into Anima Iris, a luxury brand that insists African craft belongs at the center of the value chain.Anima Iris / Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United StatesDrew DurbinDrew Durbin turned field experience in Tanzania into two financial-infrastructure companies: Sendwave for cross-border remittances and Wave for low-cost domestic mobile money.Wave / Dakar, SenegalLincoln QuirkLincoln Quirk is the technical and product founder behind Sendwave and Wave, shaped by failed social products, regulated payments infrastructure, and a bias toward building inside real constraints.Wave / Washington, D.C.
Company Records
Anima IrisAnima Iris is a luxury handbag company founded by Wilglory Tanjong and built through direct production relationships with artisans in Dakar, Senegal.Luxury fashion and accessories / Founded 2019WaveWave is a mobile-money company founded by Drew Durbin and Lincoln Quirk. It launched in Senegal in 2018 with free deposits and withdrawals, a one-percent person-to-person transfer fee, an app-led wallet, QR access, and a physical agent network connecting cash to electronic money.Fintech and mobile money / Founded 2018
Films
Ledger Records
Wilglory Tanjong: From Grief to Beyonce in 1,000 DaysWilglory Tanjong built Anima Iris while grieving her mother, studying at Wharton, and constructing a luxury-handbag supply chain with artisans in Dakar.Case File / 13 minDrew Durbin and Lincoln Quirk: Building WaveThe deeply reported story of how Brown University hallmates Drew Durbin and Lincoln Quirk moved from failed social apps and remittances to the full-stack mobile-money infrastructure behind Wave.Case File / 24 min
Field Notes
Global Startups Beyond the Silicon Valley PlaybookStartup methods travel more easily than the infrastructure assumptions embedded inside them.Global Founder ContextThe Geography of InnovationRemote work changed access, but place still shapes capital, talent, networks, customers, and the knowledge a company begins with.Founder Ecosystems
Adjacent archive paths
Keep following the context.
Topic / 9 shared recordsGlobal ExpansionFounder records about entering new markets without assuming infrastructure, customers, regulation, or trust travel unchanged.Topic / 5 shared recordsCultural Product DesignRecords where trust, language, payments, social norms, and local behavior became product requirements.Topic / 4 shared recordsFintech FoundersFounder records shaped by payments, business finance, capital access, and the infrastructure behind moving money.Topic / 3 shared recordsFemale FoundersFounder records preserving the decisions, constraints, and company-building work of women founders without reducing them to a demographic label.