BODMAS: Who writes the equation?

Look around Nairobi today and you can see multiple equations unfolding. One involves infrastructure and climate. When the rains came, roads flooded, businesses slowed and entire neighbourhoods discovered the limits of our urban planning.

Another is unfolding quietly inside boardrooms. Corporate mergers whispered over coffee, founders negotiating partnerships, investors examining balance sheets with the same intensity a mathematician studies a formula.

Then there is the global equation. Rising tensions in the Middle East, supply chain shifts, capital flows reacting to geopolitical risk.

In BODMAS, brackets always come first. They define the container within which everything else operates. But in real life, brackets are not just values or agreements. Sometimes brackets are institutions. Regulations. Markets. Governments. Infrastructure. The invisible systems that shape the playing field long before a founder enters the arena.

A startup does not decide the tax regime. A small business does not determine interest rates. A founder cannot control global geopolitics. These brackets are already in place. Depending on how they are designed, they either support growth or quietly suffocate it. Countries that build strong institutional brackets make entrepreneurship easier.

Then come orders. Powers and exponents. Forces that multiply quickly. In today’s world, a few exponents are rewriting entire industries. Artificial intelligence. Climate change. Geopolitical fragmentation.

Capital mobility. Technology once moved gradually, now it compounds. A small innovation can scale globally within months. A conflict thousands of kilometres away can change commodity prices overnight. The exponent effect means the equation is no longer linear. Founders who fail to understand this, find themselves reacting to events rather than shaping them.

At the centre of most business equations lies the balance between division and multiplication. Division is how responsibilities, risk and rewards are distributed. Multiplication is how value is created. Founders multiply ideas with execution. Investors multiply capital with patience. Governments multiply opportunity with infrastructure.

But when the equation is misaligned, the opposite happens. Founders divide energy across too many crises. Eventually the system produces frustration instead of value. And the most talented builders quietly leave the equation altogether.

At the bottom of BODMAS sit addition and subtraction. Another strategy meeting. Another committee to address the previous recommendations. Sometimes these activities create progress. Often they simply create the illusion of movement. When deeper structures remain unchanged, small adjustments cannot produce meaningful outcomes.

This is where the founder’s perspective becomes interesting. Founders rarely have the power to rewrite the entire equation. They cannot change global geopolitics. They cannot rebuild infrastructure overnight. But they can decide how they position themselves inside the equation.

They can choose better partners. Design stronger brackets within their own organisations. Recognise exponential forces earlier. Balance division and multiplication more wisely. And sometimes, they can quietly change the equation itself by building something so valuable that the system reorganises around it.

The events of the past fortnight reminded me that equations are not just economic or political. They are personal too. While Nairobi dealt with floods and boardrooms calculated their next moves, my own equation temporarily simplified. Health required rest.

Family unexpectedly filled the house. The outside world continued moving, but the pace inside slowed just enough to notice what actually matters. Sometimes that is the greatest recalibration. Not rewriting the equation entirely. But remembering which variables were important in the first place.

The world today can feel unpredictable. Markets fluctuate. Wars erupt. Cities flood. Partnerships shift. But beneath all of it, certain patterns remain constant. Structure matters. Order matters. Relationships matter.

In mathematics, ignoring BODMAS guarantees the wrong answer. In life and business, ignoring structure creates the same outcome. Chaos may appear random, but often it is simply the result of solving the equation incorrectly.

Sometimes the best thing a founder can do is pause long enough to ask a simple question. Am I solving the right part of the equation? Or have I been adding and subtracting symptoms while ignoring the brackets all along? Because in the end, whether in mathematics, business, or life itself, one truth remains stubbornly consistent. Math is still mathing.

Michael Anthony Macharia is a serial entrepreneur, founder of Seven Seas Technologies and Ponea Health