In our founder interview series, we skip the slide decks and dive into the sparks, doubts, and pivots that shape early-stage ventures.
On the mic: Kamogelo “Kamo” Thumankwe — Environmental Forensic scientist and founder of Tsarona.
Tsarona is a regenerative food company turning indigenous, climate-resilient crops into everyday products – think nut milks and cereals – while building fair, direct supply chains with smallholder farmers. The bet is simple and bold: the most innovative solutions are often the most ancient ones. In this short interview, Kamo talks about the “oh sh*t” parts of building, why “the ingredients selected her,” finding her superpower in connecting with people, and why the right investors “invest in people,” not just projects.
Can you introduce yourself and Tsarona?
I’m Kamo and I am the founder of Tsarona. It’s a a regenerative food company that’s purpose driven, and, it’s mainly sourcing ingredients and indigenous crops from Africa in order to create markets for small farmers in Africa. We connect directly to them, in a farm-to-table system. And we turn these indigenous crops into everyday food products, and, like nut based milk, cereals, etc.
We are empowering communities, we are restoring ecosystems, and nourishing people.
Biggest “oh sh*t” moment?
Oh, sh*t. Taxes. Oh, sh*t. Accounting.
Oh, sh*t book keeping. Oh, sh*t, this is so expensive. Oh, sh*t. I need funding.
Weirdest or funniest thing that’s happened while building your company?
Building Tsarona has been like a roller coaster. And maybe a funny thing is that I have to sometimes look online to check my own ingredients, because I just want to make sure, to double-check. People want to know exactly what’s inside. I know it’s healthy, and I know I was eating this, and I know how it is cooked and all this, but I have to say, “this has this amount of protein.”
And the weirdest thing is that people assume I’m a food scientist or a chef, and that’s not true. I just a a person who knows the food that she’s talking about, knows how it grows. It’s part of my culture.
How did you select the ingredients?
I didn’t select them. They they selected me!
They are part of my my culture. It’s the same kind of crops that I grew up with, the same kind of crops that my mother grew up cooking in the kitchen, my grandma. Those nice black beans, I remember, that I really loved so much. And now I get to work with them.
And guess what? You’ll be having pasta made with black beans from Africa, which are super nutritious. Isn’t that amazing?!
Small moments that keep you going?
I got calls from people and farmers in South America. I got calls from people in India, people and farmers who want to protect their indigenous crops, and we’d love to get them into market and cultivate them more. So for me, that kind of reminded me why I started this in the first place.
When I started, it was just Southern Africa, and now I have 11 countries in Africa. So it just keeps me going and going and going!
What about advice you would have loved to receive earlier?
Find my superpowers. Find what I’m good at and build on that instead of trying to be something else. Because I’ve tried going into tech, which is not at all my superpower. I can say that.
But when I got to sit down and look at it, and realize this this is what I do best, and building up on that, it’s got me to where I am right now.
Your founder super-powers?
I think my superpower is connecting to people. I got to realize that I don’t have to try so much to connect to people. It just comes naturally.
Most over-used startup word right now
Deep tech. But not so much in my in my field of work.
One piece of fundraising advice?
People assume founders have everything figured out, and that’s just a myth. We have no idea what we’re doing 🙂 You just have to know why you are doing what you’re doing, and keep coming back to that because it will get really hard.
And when it gets hard and you get to your why, you’ll be able to wake up in the morning and say, “yes! I I am doing this for something much more bigger than me.”