Tag: entrepreneurship

Top 8 Samsung Ignite start-ups announced

Eight local technology start-ups have been offered a unique opportunity to pitch their business ideas to delegates, potential investors and media at this year’s Tech4Africa conference, taking place at The Forum in Bryanston, Johannesburg on 27 and 28 October.

This platform has been created by virtue of Samsung Ignite, an initiative that aims to showcase and foster local technology development, and which has been made possible by Samsung Apps store, in association with Tech4Africa. In the words of Gareth Knight, our founder and MD, “this platform allows local technology innovators to showcase their ideas to a broad audience, potential investors and technology entrepreneurs who have walked this path before”.

Tech4Africa’s primary aim is to promote and inspire local mobile and web innovators, entrepreneurs and developers by inviting global leaders in the sector to share their knowledge and insight with an audience from across the continent. The Samsung Ignite programme is an integral part of the overall conference’s vision that it is hoped will provide the spark that the eight start-ups need to take the next step in their development.

The 8 selected startups include:

10Layer: the most feature-complete, competent and customisable open source content management system for serious publishers and media houses.

FeedbackRocket.com: which offers an innovative online solution to obtain useful, insightful and honest feedback.

iSign.pro: that allows users to get legally-binding contracts signed in minutes – legally, cheaper, greener and stored forever, with automatic reminders before renewal/expiry.

Lessfuss: is an affordable South African personal assistant service that helps you save time and get things done for as little as R30/task.

Mobiflock: is a product range that consists of a parental control service, a personal smartphone tracker, and a corporate smartphone manager.

Plot my Ride: is a social networking service for the cycling community that offers an easy and real-time means of capturing, displaying, saving and sharing a cyclist’s riding activity.

Real Time Wine: captures the supermarket wine-buying audience and empowers them to discover, review, engage with and buy wine using smartphone apps, game mechanics & barcode scanning.

SnapBill: is an automated billing system that allows users to easily sell their services online.

“We are very passionate about the African market and encouraged by the innovations emerging from the continent, so it’s a natural fit for us to partner with Tech4Africa to present this stage for innovators to showcase their products,” says Brett Loubser, B2C Apps Development Lead at Samsung. “We intend using this partnership to help create a wider network of local developers, reward African innovation in the mobile tech and app space and promote the Samsung Apps Store as an alternative channel for smartphone developers”. Loubser added: “A key outcome of our participation as the Ignite partner is to engage South African developers and therefore we have made available a number of discounted tickets to facilitate their involvement at this year’s conference.”

The Samsung Ignite participants will each be afforded five minutes to showcase their products in the main auditorium at the end of the first day of the conference. A panel of judges has been gathered to adjudicate and the winning startup will be announced on the second day of the event, and be given the opportunity to present their start-up to the entire Tech4Africa audience. The winner will also receive the latest Samsung mobile devices and valuable exposure and profiling through the Tech4Africa website.

What to expect from Tech4Africa IGNITE?

***  Please forward to anyone, this is public information.
The more people know about this and the more competition there is, the better for everyone.

Who is it for?
IGNITE is for startups & ideas that need funding to go further, and who have the potential to be a viable, profitable business.
We think the local startup environment could be better, and want to help change it through better co-ordination.
We’re trying to help startups by giving them exposure in a credible environment.
There are c 40 startups in the running thus far.

Who are the judges?
Most of the judges have asked to remain anonymous, which we think is a good thing.
All judges will be in the audience for the presentations.

Who are the investors?
Most investors have asked to remain anonymous too. They don’t want to be swamped or mobbed.
If there are any that are OK with being seen as investors, they will be on the website.

Who are the press?
Everyone from TechCentral, Memeburn & Daily Maverick, to ITWeb, magazines and newspapers.
The pick of the crop will be at the conference covering everything.

What are the rewards / incentives for IGNITE?
All applicants will be put onto the website, and will be announced in a press release.
You get exposure, there will be press releases (2 of them – finalists and the winner), all presentations will go up online afterwards.
There will be interviews after the presentation for the winner.
If the winner manages to take their business further, then there will be a speaking slot in the 2012 conference allocated.

What is the process?
Submit your application, with a brief description and a logo (for the website).
We’ll review internally. The judges will vote on for the final 8.
The final 8 will be notified via email.
Applicants not selected will be notified by email.
There will be a practice session where everyone is invited to practice beforehand.
There will be an entrepreneurs, investors and mentors meetup after that.
The final 8 do their presentations on the day.
A winner is picked by the judges after all presentations, and then announced at the cocktail party.
The winner will be given free drinks all night!

What do we have to submit?
Our focus is on how you’re going to explain to 500 people why your company / product / opportunity is awesome, and why people should take notice. If you can’t explain your product in one sentence, then you have bigger things to think about 😉

Step 1: fill in the attached form (you’ll get it if you apply), so we can circulate internally and to investors / journalists for their information.
Step 2: make sure you have a working demo, or kick ass presentation to show on the day. If you’re a finalist, we will need to see this beforehand.
You ***have*** to present a working demo / product – wireframes, powerpoints with financial projections etc won’t be accepted.

What happens on the day? What is the schedule?
There will be a practice session for everyone before the conference.
The main event will be on the Thursday night, starting at about 5:30 pm.
There will be 8 presentations, of 5 mins max, including questions.

What do we get?
Each of the final 8 will get a single free ticket. All your colleagues qualify for early bird tickets.
Everyone who applies qualifies for an early bird ticket (given the criteria above).

Are there any other examples of what we should be doing?
Watch this, try and better it:

Who do we speak to if there are more questions etc?
Email startups@t4a.feedmybeta.com

What are the deadlines?
Deadline for submission is Monday 12th Sept, 9:00am Pretoria time. Any submission after that will be rejected.

The stuff we’re working on, but can’t promise right now:
Amongst other things, we’re working with a major technology sponsor for IGNITE, where we’re trying to get the following things done:
– tickets to SXSW 2012 for the winner
– hardware / tablets for the finalists
– exposure through the partners press network / app site if the finalist is a mobile play
– cash money (you might not need investors!)
– and more which would make you really excited, but which would get us into trouble for calling it too soon

There are also bigger plans afoot for the community as a whole – so my appeal to everyone is that if we can make this a success, then the bigger plans become easier.

May the best win 😉

5 reasons why Tech4Africa 2011 is the technology event of the year

As we start the second half of 2011, the technology landscape is changing at such a pace that the need to be current and timely is greater than ever.  It’s clear that mobile reach will be far greater than the PC, and that apps will be the deciding factor for the market winning device or platform.

It’s not quite the hysteria of 1999, but we are starting to reach a tipping point where most of the worlds population that could be online, are.  Perhaps more importantly, the benefit of this connectedness is felt even more in Africa where people who did not have a voice, now do.  With that as the foundational plumbing, the usefulness and immediacy of mobile will drive more and more people to consume services, utilise data, and engage socially, which then drives demand for cloud based services accessible anywhere and on any device.

Building on the success of Tech4Africa 2010, we’re back in October 2011, and even better! Our themes for this year are Mobile, Social and Cloud, and through listening to great feedback from the 2010 event, our schedule has changed somewhat to focus on fewer talks with deeper content, and expanded to include relevant events for the African tech industry. These are the highlights that make Tech4Africa 2011 the technology event of the year:

1 – Featuring Josh Spear and Herman Chinery-Hesse as keynote speakers, plus 8 more great international speakers.

2 – African speakers who are experts in their fields will share their experiences about developing tech businesses in Africa.

3 – The Trade Show runs through the duration of the conference, and is an ideal opportunity for African technology businesses to showcase their products and/or services in an environment of buyers, decision makers, journalists, tweeters, bloggers and potential recruits.

4 – Ignite is a startup competition, aimed at giving exposure to the hottest new startups, while introducing them to prospective investors, customers and the media.

5 – Presented to a single winner, the Innovation Award encourages innovation for solving uniquely African problems, whilst also encouraging global thinking.  The Award recognises that innovation can be entrepreneurial, as well as intrapreneurial, and so is open to anyone or any company.

It’s through these initiatives and more in the coming years, that we’re delivering on our objectives of Engage, Inspire, Enable, and Innovate. We hope that you can join us at the technology event of the year, running for two full days on the 27th & 28th October, at The Forum, in Bryanston, Johannesburg. To avoid disappointment, book your ticket now.

We’d love to follow you on Twitter too!  We’re @t4a

Calling all startups. Apply to Tech4Africa ‘Ignite’.

We’re proud to launch Ignite, an initiative that will provide leading African startups with the opportunity to pitch their products to a carefully curated panel of Angel investors, mentors and business leaders. Startups selected to partake in the Tech4africa Ignite pitches will be given five minutes to showcase their products, with the opportunity to gain not only potential investors but also invaluable exposure to the wider Tech4Africa audience of thought leaders, decision makers, journalists, influencers and potential recruits.
About the purpose of this event, Gareth Knight, MD of Tech4Africa, said: “Twitter, FourSquare and Gowalla ‘broke’ in the US market, through their pitch stand demonstrations at SxSw. Our DNA is: engage, inspire, enable and innovate and it is for this reason that we decided to launch Ignite to highlight amazing ideas and allow African startups to use Tech4Africa as a platform to enable them to gain valuable press exposure and early stage investment.”

Ignite takes place in the main auditorium at Tech4Africa, happening from 27 to 28 October 2011 at The Forum in Bryanston, Johannesburg. The top 8 applicants will be required to demonstrate a working prototype of their early stage product to event attendees and a panel of judges. Whilst there is no formal prize, the winning startup will be announced on the second day of the conference and have the opportunity to present their innovation to the entire Tech4Africa audience. The winner will also receive valuable exposure and profiling through the Tech4Africa website and Tech4Africa.tv.

Interested startups should visit the Ignite page at the Tech4Africa site or get in touch using startups@t4a.feedmybeta.com. Deadline for submission is August 31, finalists will be announced in the first week of September.

The world-class line-up of technology evangelists presenting at Tech4Africa this year will provide South Africans the opportunity to learn about the role the web plays in African business and development. Keynote speakers include Josh Spear, one of the youngest and most respected digital marketing strategists in the world, and Herman Chinery-Hesse, commonly known as ‘The Bill Gates of Africa’. Spear and Chinery-Hesse join African and international thought leaders from organisations like Amazon, HP, Johns Hopkins University, Mozilla, SwiftRiver, the African Institution of Technology, Motribe, Clearleft, Ultinet Systems and many more.

An open letter to African technologists

PASSION = BRAIN FUEL.
DUMB BRAIN FULL OF GAS ALWAYS BEAT SMART BRAIN WITH EMPTY TANK.
SMART BRAIN WITH FULL TANK BEAT EVERYONE.

Dear African technologist, hacker, developer, geek, product guy, dreamer, thinker, tinkerer, manager, CEO, multi-national-organisation-in-Africa,

We’re at the beginning of a shift in technology usage, where mobile adoption and usage is quickly going to become more prevalent and ubiquitous than the PC. Bandwidth is getting faster and cheaper for both PC and mobile, despite the monopolies that have held everyone back for years. Infrastructure is now massively cheap and easy to scale. There are toolkits, API’s, platforms, frameworks, services and stacks for almost every technology need you may have. It’s easier now to create something, and innovate, than it ever has been. Not moving forward means you’re being left behind.

The traditional approaches we’ve been using for years are dying. People are looking for authenticity, value, engagement, real’ness for want of a better word.

Dream. Find something that provides value. Help people to get some of that value. Make it great. Remove the crappy stuff.

Stop banging the same drums. Stop thinking you’ve got it all figured out. Approach problems differently. Give your people space to think and tinker. Innovate.

Get massively hyped about your product or service. Tell everyone you know. Let go of any conservativeness you may have, because if you can’t get excited about what you do, then no-one else will. If you’re working for a crap company, leave it. There are better things to do with your precious time.

We can learn a lot from places like Silicon Valley, New York, Berlin, Israel, London, Austin, Chile, Singapore, Ireland and India. We can learn even more from the people who live in those places, how they work, what they do with their time, and ultimately the success they create. We can also learn from the people we live among, by asking them about the problems they face.

There is no shortage of investors or money, only shortages of good people, scalable and executable opportunities. Be the person who can execute and scale, and do it with a product that people will use, and the money won’t be a problem. But don’t use a perceived lack of investors, internal or external, as an excuse.

There are no accidents, only trying, failure, and then ultimately succeeding. As a technologist, today, your greatest asset is the time and technical gifts you have. Use them wisely.

There are many problems people face in emerging markets, and they all need elegant solutions. Find the value. Supply the demand for that value, by doing something that makes you get up in the morning with a spring in your step and a whistle in your tune.

In short, there are no excuses or reasons not to do something awesome, other than the ones we limit ourselves with. Africa has the potential to be one of the largest mobile markets on the planet.

What are you doing about it?

Gareth Knight
Founder, Tech4Africa
@oneafrikan

SA startup selected as TechCrunch ‘Best New Startup’

The TechCruch Europas, the European Startup Awards for tech companies, has listed Cognician as one of the top 11 Best New Startup’s in 2010. The company is a South African technology startup founded by Patrick Kayton, who was a speaker at Tech4Africa 2010.

The Europas serve to honour the best technology companies and startups across the web and mobile space. The awards span 22 categories and recognise and celebrate the most compelling technology startups, Internet and mobile innovations of the past year.

Cognican, the original thought processor that presents content in the form of provocative questions, helping users to apply the author’s ideas to their own tasks, so that they can think better, further and faster, was selected through a process done by referencing TechCrunch’s database of tech companies on CrunchBase. This was followed by a month of online public voting that saw 33,126 votes being cast across all categories. The final award winners will be determined based both on popular votes received through website voting along with the results submitted by The Europas Advisory Board.

The award winners will be revealed at The Europas event which will be held in London this Friday, November 19. The evening will be attended by over 350 people from the cream of Europe’s startups, VCs and entrepreneurs along with industry leaders of the the tech startup and investor scene who will be presenting the awards to the winners.

Says Patrick Kayton, co-founder and COO of Cognician “We’re thrilled to be recognised through The Europas and we wish to send out a big thank you to everyone who voted for us. It is especially rewarding as the Europas finalists are determined by the tech community who were invited to have their say in which startups should be recognised. It’s quite remarkable that we’re there at all actually, as little or no votes would have been cast by our local network.

“Cognician has made great strides in 2010 with limited resources and see being nominated in the final 11 as testament to both the quality of Cognician and the work that our small team has put in,” adds Kayton.

“Prior to it’s soft launch in September Cognicain has won the Cape Town Activa competition in the Ideas Track. Later, we were selected as one of Africa’s top three startups at Seedcamp Week Johannesburg and we were finalists at Seedcamp Week in London.

Kayton explains that Cognician is currently making 70 original cogs for two leading corporate clients in The Allan Gray Orbis Foundation and Old Mutual. “Furthermore we’ve signed publishing deals with the UK-based publishers, Profile Books and Infinite Ideas which will enable Cognician to produce further cogs.

“To now be recognised as a finalist in The Europa Awards is the cherry on the top of 2010,” concludes Kayton.

The entrepreneur, an agent of change in the emerging markets?

The first edition of Tech4Africa last August proved to be one of the largest gatherings in Africa of international and local bright technologists, business people and entrepreneurs. One in that bunch was Bright Simons, the founder of mPedrigree.com, who sat on the panel “Mobile content for grownups, being clever with the simple”.

Simons, a young Ghanaian, embodies the figure of the entrepreneur of the emerging markets, as The Economist labelled him in its recent article “The other demographic dividend”. According to the influential magazine, this kind
of entrepreneur has an impressive ability to identify gaps in markets. This is something Simons has shown to have had. His development, mPedrigree, came up with an innovative solution for dealing with the epidemic of counterfeit drugs using the mobile phone. The service helps people to ensure that the medicines they are buying are legitimate and safe.

In his interview “Bright hope for continental scourge” for ITWeb, Simons recognizes that “I felt I could do something more than just write about the issue”. A massive tragedy in Nigeria related to fake drugs that killed 90 children and the daunting statistics about Africa’s plague of counterfeit drugs prompted him into action. From the drugs that find their way onto the market, 30% are illegitimate. And according to the UN, at least half of the anti-malaria tablets that are sold in Africa are counterfeit, meaning a business of about $438 million a year. Simons added that: “A 2001 Interpol research conducted in Lagos, Nigeria showed that 80% of all the medicines on sale were counterfeit.”

With his endeavour to transform lives, he bootstrapped the mPedigree system, which is very accessible and easy to use. Manufacturers place an unique code on the medicine label, which the consumers have to SMS to see whether the medicine is safe. Consumers are responded to with a simple “yes” or “no”, assuring whether the medicine is good for consumption or not. This is in effect a great consumer experience, simple and easy, but it wasn’t that way for Simons to implement it. In the interesting article “Innovative Mobile Phone Strategies in the Developing World“, Simons stressed that “when you develop new technologies, you are not trying to change the consumer; you are trying to change the manufacturer to serve the consumer”.

The raising figure of the entrepreneur in the emerging markets as an agent of change is backed up by academic research, as the article in The Economist points out. Demographers have often noted that most of the emerging world will stay young while the rich world ages. Among other benefits brought by this factor, this will be favourable due to the boost of a more entrepreneurial business culture. This is being reinforced by two big changes in the emerging world:

1- The information-technology revolution: Many consumers in emerging markets are much more likely to access the Internet via mobile devices rather than PCs. “That gives local entrepreneurs an advantage”, says Rob Salkowitz, the author of “Young World Rising”, meaning that Africans can build companies around coming technology, while their Western peers first have to transform old systems and mindsets to do it.

2- Pro-entrepreneurial revolution: Global institutions such as the World Bank and the World Economic Forum as well as several big companies have helped to popularise entrepreneurialism.

These facts may show that Bright Simons, as many other successful African social entrepreneurs, could be in fact representatives of a new leadership scenario in the emerging markets, which drives change and promotes transparency by connecting people and organizations via communications technologies. If this is true for the whole of Africa, it has to be proved, but cases like Simons’ clearly show that technology and entrepreneurship can be a solution to fight some of the toughest plagues that hit the continent: political and economic inefficiencies.

Do you think entrepreneurialism could be an agent of change for Africa?