Morgan Gicheha

Rurallink AI 2024 - Present

The journey of Rurallink AI is quite unique. It all started when I followed one piece of advice from Y Combinator's videos: for the project you're building, don't worry about the website design - just establish an online presence with a domain, logo, and waitlist. That's exactly what I did.

I also designed my project to work independently because I never imagined involving other people in it - or so I thought at the time.

The initial version was a bare minimum implementation. I didn't set up a database because I couldn't see the need to store my own data, there were no logs, and all I had were basic print statements for debugging.

I started posting about it on my WhatsApp and Instagram profiles. As an introvert, I don't have a large following, but two of my friends signed up for the waitlist. This created both motivation and pressure for me to continue developing it since people had shown interest.

I began saving money to purchase an SMS header service so I could communicate with the users on my waitlist. At around 8,000 Kenyan shillings, it felt quite expensive at the time.

I finally scraped together the 8,000 shillings and bought the SMS header service. Setting it up with Safaricom was nerve-wracking, but once the short code was live, everything changed.

That's also when Paul Theceri came on board as co-founder. He brought fresh ideas and the technical muscle we needed to connect the SMS gateway to a real AI backend. Together we turned the bare-minimum prototype into something that actually worked on any phone — even the basic kabambe feature phones that most people in rural Kenya use.

We launched the service publicly: just text "AI " followed by your question to 40024. The AI answers instantly through SMS, no internet, no data, no smartphone required. Each message costs only Sh1, billed directly by Safaricom.

The response was better than I ever expected. Students started asking for help with math and science homework. Farmers texted about weather patterns, pest control, and market prices. Two of my original waitlist friends became our very first power users and helped spread the word.

A few weeks later the Kenya News Agency picked up the story. Suddenly we were being called "the innovators making AI accessible without internet." That media coverage brought in more users, more motivation, and even a few investor inquiries. Later, Media Observer gave KNA a "kudos" for sharing inspiring stories like ours.

Buoyed by the momentum, we decided to swing for the fences and applied to Y Combinator. We recorded our full application video, but unfortunately we were rejected. You can watch the video we submitted here. It was a tough pill to swallow, but it reminded us why we started in the first place — and made us even more determined to keep building.

We're still iterating every week — improving response speed, adding local language support, and figuring out how to lower costs. Our big dream at Rurallink is to one day make the service completely free for every Kenyan who needs it.

The journey is far from over, but for the first time I can clearly see the impact we're already creating in places where internet has never reached.