Business

Business / People — No Comments
31
May 10

Entrepreneurs – Find Mentors & Advisors

When I first got into business, I had quite a few mentors and advisors that I could reach out to. These mentors and advisors ranged from family members and friends to fellow businessmen and other people in various industries. I have always enjoyed learning from other people’s experiences and taking their advice and seeing where it applies and how I can use it.

However, over time I slowly stopped reaching out for advice as I had learned quite a lot in such a short space of time. The more you learn, the more you know, the less you need advice, right? Although, I didn’t completely stop asking for advice, as it’s something people will give you even if you don’t ask for it.

I am busy establishing an advisory board for Aduity, as we’re approaching the point where we need to surround ourselves with people who have great insight into the market we play in, to provide us with some fresh thinking, guidance and also validation from both local and global perspectives.

I met with our first potential advisory board member today and I was quickly reminded of the immense value that the right advisors and mentors hold. We met briefly for an hour, but we could have easily gone on for hours. In such a short time, we were able to validate and resolve so many points that were searching for conclusion.

I have now been brought back to my days of seeking advise and mentorship, as it really is key to growing myself as an entrepreneur (we can never stop learning) and my business too. I think that every start-up should, at some point, look at establishing an advisory board, consisting of the right people. It will also be highly recommended to ensure they know your industry and aren’t shy to play devil’s advocate.

Business / People / Venture Capital — 1 Comment
25
Feb 10

Thoughts on Silicon Cape in Gauteng

The Silicon Cape Initiative has gained significant traction and coverage since it’s initial inception and launch event, which attracted several high profile speakers and attendees from all over South Africa.

The basic vision for the Silicon Cape Initiative is to establish both a brand and geographical region, in this case the Western Cape, much like that of the infamous Silicon Valley where technology innovation and investment can flourish.

However the focus on this initiative benefiting the Western Cape has left some entrepreneurs from other parts of South Africa feeling a bit left out. As an entrepreneur from Johannesburg, I actually don’t feel left out at all and I will share why.

Firstly, the organisers of the Silicon Cape Initiative invited me to attend the event as an entrepreneur from Johannesburg and to sit on the entrepreneurial panel discussion. Besides being personally involved, I feel that this demonstrates that initiative does have a keen interest in supporting entrepreneurs outside of the Western Cape.

Secondly, as an entrepreneur building a start-up that has global ambitions. I find that South Africa doesn’t have a strong technology brand in the global start-up and investment scenes abroad. Indeed we have several successful global entrepreneurs and start-ups from South Africa, but nobody is really shouting “I can’t wait to see what comes out of South Africa next!”.

Therefore the fact that the Silicon Cape Initiative is attempting to boost the profile of a region within South Africa is a good enough reason for me to support it. I have no doubt that once someone looks within the Western Cape, it won’t be long before they look at South Africa as a whole. Before we moan about where the focus is, lets get people from abroad focussing here first!

Thirdly, the geographic distance between the Western Cape and Gauteng is really minimal when compared to Silicon Valley and Boston, New York or Atlanta where several other start-up hubs reside. We can do business in both provinces and until the Western Cape receives regulatory benefits (tax benefits, etc) we really have no reason to feel excluded. I would suggest everyone who can and is willing should get involved.

On that note, Marc Ashton and Catherine Luckhoff are planning on organising a Silicon Cape event in Johannesburg sometime soon, so if you are interested please keep an eye out over at the Silicon Cape website.

Business / Venture Capital — No Comments
23
Jun 09

Thoughts on Venture Capital

The most common topic discussed in the South African start-up community has been around the lack of venture capital (VC) or the ease of access to venture capital in South Africa. I am no VC expert, however I have had my fair share of discussions with them as well as people who have had experience in the VC game.

In the venture capital game it’s all about increasing the return on their investment in your business. Unfortunately, South Africa’s internet population can hardly be considered a market in global terms and we also lack a VC eco-system. Therefore, your start-up needs to be thinking global from day one.

If you are thinking global and raising venture capital, please start thinking about raising in dollar / euro conversions. While R5mil is a lot of cash, globally it would be considered as angel funding. It doesn’t make sense to raise angel funding under the label of venture capital.

I also get the feeling that entrepreneurs in South Africa are some how excited by the hype of venture capital and think it’s their best bet. I urge you to please take a look at the types of funding available to you. I would rather consider early stage venture capital once your product / service needs the capital to expand rather than to keep it a float or build a prototype.

The most important advice I can share is that you should build something tangible and don’t go looking for venture capital with a concept. If your product or service is already generating revenue then you are in an even better position to negotiate. The more risk a VC has to take, the less negotiating power you have.

There are many articles and blog posts on the internet about venture capital, however the best I have come a cross is a talk by Guy Kawasaki. I suggest you watch it over here.

Do you have any thoughts on VC in South Africa?

Business — 4 Comments
21
Jul 08

Project Wolf – Development Server(s)

I ordered the first development server for Project Wolf today. Choosing a server wasn’t as easy at I thought it would be, as there were many variables to consider. However at the end of the day, after much debating amongst the team, I decided on a local server.

We could have gone with some cheap overseas hosting, but this project is top notch and should be treated as such. Below are some of the points we discussed before deciding on choosing a development server.

  • Cost Effectiveness
    Without a doubt, hosting locally is drastically more expensive when compared to hosting overseas. Not in terms of hardware but bandwidth costs. You are looking to pay anywhere from R93 to R123 per GB (Gigabyte). However, the options to follow justify the local purchase.
  • Operations
    If you look at it from an operational point of view, the majority of our first clients will be South African. We want to be able to deliver true local speed. Why waste time moving from an overseas server to a local server? In demonstration scenarios, you want the service to load as fast as possible, even on a really slow connection. That being said, we will be able to quickly and easily add capacity for the Americas, Europe and Asia as we grow.
  • Testing, Implementation and Deployment
    Having a local server makes life easier and faster. Every single file upload and page refresh happens much faster, add all the seconds up and we save a lot of production time.
  • IP Protection and Security
    The great thing about having a local server, that you are in control of, is that you have legal recourse on SLA (Service Level Agreements), which means it’s easier to protect your service. Another thing I wasn’t happy about was having all our code on a foreign server, which does back-ups to other foreign servers. I want to sleep at night knowing I am in control of our data and that it’s only a drive away.
Business — 11 Comments
20
Jul 08

Project Wolf – Introduction

Last week Thursday, “Project Wolf” was born during one of our weekly team meetings. The project is essentially a new product / service (see SaaS) that will be offered to both businesses and individuals.

At this point in time we don’t want to give too much away, in fact we don’t want to give anything away, but I have to share my excitement. The offering will be available via both the traditional web and the mobile web. Personally, the most exciting aspect of the offering, for me, is that fact that this will be an international product.

Development has been scheduled to start within the next two weeks, as there is a lot of planning that needs to go into this. I hope to keep everyone up-to-date by blogging about the project as we go along. I am really excited and can’t wait to share the finished product with everyone.

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