This post is probably going to make some of my readers throw up a little in their mouth but I’m gonna post it anyway because I’ve seen some pretty negative

things written about SA in the last few days.

Earlier today a bunch of Twits (the Twitter kind) got the chance to ride on the Gautrain – what a friggin awesome experience! How can you not be excited that after all this talk we are getting a decent passenger train system!?

It’s finally here and will be ready for use in less than three months time – this is monumental in my humble opinion.

I humbly apologise in advance to the peeps over at the Gautrain but I have stolen this picture off their site, because I think its important that people actually see that this thing is real. For all you nay-sayers does this like a country which is falling apart?! DORKS
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This is a multi-million rand train system that will ultimately make a huge difference to the congestion on the roads and improve your productivity and those around you. See the opportunity, not the negative.

So endeth this rant.

I interviewed William Green this morning and one of the questions I asked him was: “You’re represented in 120 countries around the world, which are the most exciting as an international investor?”

His response: South Africa, Mexico and South Korea

I’m doing more of a write-up on the interview for Fin24.com later today but suffice to say, his view was that SA and Mexico are the only two “normal” economies that actually want to do business with international investors. Fantastic stuff…

He had a lot of praise for the innovation he was seeing coming out of South Africa, the passion and spirit of South Africans. His only criticism of us is that we don’t trumpet our successes enough.

Personally I just thought that it was brilliant to have a highly respected industry professional saying good things about the country.

It got me thinking about other South Africans who are very pro-SA.

Jeremy Gardiner from Investec Asset Management kicks off all his presentations with a video on why South Africa is so damn good compared to the rest of the world. He includes feedback from leading SA business people and backs it up with stats and figures and when you leave one of his presentations you feel proud to be a South Africa.

I am not sure that Nic Haralambous from SA Rocks would like to be described as the “pin-up boy” of Pro-South Africa but he’s right up there with the best of them.

Let’s go out on a Friday and add your pro-SA voice to this thread by telling us one thing that is truly South African to the core!

and don’t normally do the whole poetry thing but I thought this was an interesting piece of advice for a Friday. First two paragraphs make for an interesting entrepreneurs lesson:

My Wage
Jessie Belle Rittenhouse (1869–1948)

I bargained with Life for a penny,
And Life would pay no more,
However I begged at evening
When I counted my scanty store;
For Life is a just employer,
He gives you what you ask,
But once you have set the wages,
Why, you must bear the task.
I worked for a menial’s hire,
Only to learn, dismayed,
That any wage I had asked of Life,
Life would have paid.

JESSIE B. RITTENHOUSE, “My Wage,” The Door of Dreams, p. 25 (1918).

WIn a nutshell the way it works is that angel investors can make investments into a centralised fund, starting at a minimum of R1000.  The money is pooled together and will then be invested in start-ups who need R50000 – R100000 to be invested in start-ups who need some dosh to put together proto-types.

I came across the site purely by chance yesterday and saw that 34 people had pledged about R40k. I checked again this afternoon and that number had jumped to 84 people pledging R240k… absolutely brilliant. (PS yes Rival has made a pledge.)

Anyway the website explains it in more detail but I thought I would chuck in my 10c in terms of why I believe this initiative is so important.

• South Africa does not have a culture of Angel investor networks – this is a very important step in the right direction
• At any given time there are 20 – 25 young entrepreneur teams and ideas being given a chance to be part of the start-up environment
• It sounds grandiose but concepts like these change the South African venture capital and funding landscape PERMANENTLY.  Banks, venture capitalists and incubators have come in for a lot of flak for their failure to back small businesses and start-ups but over the last two years they have been scrambling to put together SME offerings… just when the real innovators have found a better way to access the market.

For me the most interesting part of all of this has been the great response to “social lending”.

A few years back I shot down a business called AngelMoola which was maybe before its time in providing facilities to promote social lending to people seeking small short-term loans. Fast forward three years and Kiva and now Crowdfunding has picked up a very real supporter base.

People like this just give me a super good feeling about South Africa, they make the world go round. Well done to everybody involved in supporting this initiative – you guys rock!

I get to read quite a lot of negative commentary about SA banks – specifically the big four (Nedbank, Absa, Standard and FNB) – and the way that they deal with small and micro enterprises (SMMEs).

The main comment that is made is that big banks “don’t understand” small business but this seems like a really generic comment and doesn’t help them improve what they are doing.

If I sum up the comments and try and take some of the emotion out of it these seem to be the main criticisms which are levelled against these institutions:

• They don’t lend to small businesses
• If they do offer to lend, they require high levels of collateral and don’t take risks with entreprreneurs
• It’s too expensive for small businesses to borrow from banks
• Banks hound entrepreneurs when they don’t make their repayment commitments

I am not going to try and influence this debate yet but I am going to make some observations and then maybe let the blogosphere and contributors to this blog give their input about what they expect a bank to do to better support small businesses.

• FNB has brought a number of innovative technology solutions including Instant Accounting and potentially PayPal
• Standard Bank is putting a lot of effort into initiatives in the franchising sector and small business networking
• Nedbank is supposed to be bringing a technology driven solution along to compete with PayPal (not totally sure how that is going to work)
• Absa has been throwing money at a couple of grassroots initiatives but don’t really seem to have a “small business identity”
• Sasfin is supposed to be “the bank for entrepreneurs” but you never really see them doing much visible in the sector

So my question to you is:

1. In your opinion which SA bank is doing the most to supoprt small business?
2. What are they doing well?
3. Which products have the most benefit to you as a small business?
4. What could they do to better improve their offering to you as an SME owner?

We’ll rustle up a bottle of something nice for the blogger with the best comments so go wild.

Remember – this is not a bank bashing exercise, this is an attempt to come up with constructive criticism to support the sector. Let me know.

Earlier this morning Chile was hit by a massive earthquake and big parts of the world are now on tsunami / tidal wave alert. With the devastation in Haiti still fresh in many peoples minds, many people are gearing up to offer assistance to areas which are going to be impacted.

Just some stats which I have picked up following Twitter this afternoon:

• Roughly 3 million people have been impacted by the earthquake
• All commercial ports in Hawaii are closed
• 500000 families in Chile alone have been displaced
• Technology infrastructure in Chile, Argentina, Hawaii, French Polynesia has been damaged
• I’ve just read on Twitter that the King of Tonga has just opened the palace gates to take in fleeing residents

These are society changing events and we have had some really big earthquakes in the last few years.

This year we had Haiti and Chile and not so long ago (2004) there was a major one in Iran as well which killed 15000 people. On top of this there was the 2004 Tsunami which killed roughly 230000 people

With these events being in the news, I was under the impression that natural disasters of this magnitude were on the up and the world was falling apart.

I went and found this page on the US Geological Survey National Earthquake Information Center site which seems to show that in fact there has not been a noticeable increase over the last 10 years.

Watching the world react to these various crises it has been interesting social experience.

Point 1 – expand your horizons

I mentioned Iran earlier on in my post because many of us (myself included) have this American fuelled perception of Iran as little more than a carbon copy of Iraq let by religious extremists chanting along in the desert.  Yet if you go and do your homework it is considered as being just outside of the whole “MAVIN” group of countries (Mexico, Australia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Nigeria) which has been identified as some of the most promising growth regions for business in the coming years… (just as an aside you might be interested to know that global geo-political consulting agency Stratfor identifies Egypt as the new African super-power within the next decade – how are you positioning your business around this?

My point – the world doesn’t just revolve around the US, UK, Japan Brazil, Russia, India, China – other economies offer just as many opportunities for your innovations. But it means you have to expand your horizons and be aware of what is happening in these places.

Maybe the world is tired of excess

I am always a bit cynical when I read about “social responsibility”.

I get the concept and I get “the bigger picture” which is why where possible Rival makes investments in various social responsibility projects but in many cases it just comes across as too soft and fluffy.

But maybe a combination of major natural disasters, the global financial crisis and the global recession (which has seen millions of people lose their formal jobs) might hasten the shift of the world into a new world order where excess is no longer the order of the day.

I dunno… Busy watching various web-cams and following the Twitter feeds and it is super eerie… let’s see how this plays out.

There has been some mumbling from the Gauteng quarter, that not enough has been done to involve them in the whole Silicon Cape initiative.

Having chatted to Justin Stanford last week, he seems to be of the view that it should be an all-embracing community initiative which encourages community driven events and idea sharing. That includes extending it beyond Cape Town, even to the plebs of Johannesburg.

The flip-side of that, is that some of the tech entrepreneurs in Cape Town feel that it detracts from the idea of a close-knit innovation sharing community.

Me, I’m of the humble view that the more the merrier and technology has meant that we can exchange ideas and opportunities from Gauteng, Durban, Cape Town, Limpopo (howzit Julius Malema!) or anywhere else.

No reason to limit networking under the Silicon Cape banner if it benefits the industry.

With that in mind I bounced it off Justin last week and we’re going to try and test the waters in Gauteng to see what people are saying and doing and maybe some feedback about what their expectations of Silicon Cape is.

But this is where I need some input:

• What’s the expectation of an event in Gauteng? Is it to share a couple of drinks and network a bit?
• Do you want a speaker from the Silicon Cape steering committee to give you their take on life and where the initiative is headed?
• Do we need a minimum dress code to keep the bankers (cold shiver) out of the room?
• Any objections to somewhere in Sandton?

Catherine Luckhoff and I opened our big mouths and have decided to make a run with a Gauteng event some time in the next few weeks but we’re kinda shooting in the dark in terms of expectations and what people want. Plus we’re always keen to have people volunteer to commit some time / ideas to making it run smoothly.

PS if anybody feels like sponsoring a couple of crates of Spiced Gold for the organisers I won’t complain… I promise to disclose them to Julius’ satisfaction and will be totally transparent with the gift register.

Ok jokes aside – a couple of us are prepared to run with this, but we need guidance from the Gauteng community. All input would be appreciated!

There is no substitute for experience when putting together a quality small business and a good business mentor can help you avoid some of the basic mistakes that start-up entrepreneurs make.

We look back on some of the problems we encountered and in hindsight an experienced mentor could have helped us conserve our cash and build our brand more effectively.

The great thing about technology including Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms is that you now have some “access” to a lot of these big names. You don’t just have to sit back and buy their books when they roll them out once a year. This new “Meet the Giants” offering from Gibs is a perfect example of what people can access. Check it out if you get a chance.

Are you looking to make a MASSIVE BREAKTHROUGH with your business and raise your game to a new level?
Would you like to have access to the best entrepreneurs on the planet helping you to build a truly remarkable business? Click Here

Cheesy poses, cheesy one-liners and cheesy plots all rolled into one…

… and yet out of the TV hit series he has developed a cult following that you wouldn’t believe. While it is not “empirical evidence” I did a quick search on Facebook – Cane has 36000 plus fans in his fan page versus the 900 odd that Gill Grissom (of CSI Las Vegas fame) has.

Much like “The Hoff” or Chuck Norris, Caine’s fame has grown far beyond the likes of CSI, Baywatch or some bad martial arts flicks. They’ve become something a little quirky and different.

Even the mighty Google – which does not bow down to even the mighty Chinese government – pays homage to Chuck Norris. If you go to Google search and type in “where is Chuck Norris” and hit the “I’m feeling lucky” option you will get the message:

“Google won’t search for Chuck Norris because it knows you don’t find Chuck Norris, he finds you.”

You cannot buy publicity or brand awareness of that nature.

I think there is a fantastic lesson in that for small business owners – particularly those who are just starting out – and that is that you need to be quirky to try and stand-out.

There is obviously a very fine line between “quirky” and “immature” and the line is often very difficult to see, but try and do something that is going to make you stand out a bit. Think about Nando’s and its in-your-face advertising campaign as an example.

If you are going to compete against 1000 businesses and they’re all going to be rolling out corporate identities which are very similar to the next one, then how are you going to stand-out?

I’ve said before on my blog that I think we are about to enter a generation of small business. This is going to change the way you pitch for business.

For your bread and butter revenue, you are probably not going to be pitching to a corporate in a suit and that means that you can afford to be a little quirky and different… provided that like Horatio Caine you always deliver the goods.

This involves you taking the ultimate leap of faith including raiding savings, credit cards, access bonds etc just to get your business off the ground.

It involves ducking and diving and cutting back on all of your vices in the slim hope that you will get the business off the ground. In a nutshell – it is one of the most terrifying and exhilarating experiences any entrepreneur will go through.

With that in mind Rival Pioneers is putting together an industry event entitled “The Bitch of Bootstrapping”. We will be bringing in a couple of speakers from different backgrounds to talk about their experiences in bootstrapping their businesses and some of the lessons they have learnt.

Details of the event are below:

When: 10 March 2010

Where: Old Mutual auditorium. Sandton offices

Time: 6 for 6:30pm. Presentations will run for about 1 hour and then there will be some time to network afterwards.

Cost: R125 per person (Price includes a drink before and after the presentation and 25% of the money raised will be donated to Adriaan Pienaars Rockstar Foundation provides full academic bursaries to exceptionally bright young girls from impoverished and disadvantaged communities in Cape Town.)

To RSVP for the event – please e-mail marc@rival.co.za.

A big part of the idea behind Rival Pioneers is to also provide a platform for people to network and exchange ideas so don’t run off after the presentations. Make an effort to meet new people, exchange business cards, talk about your businesses and aspirations.

Look forward to seeing lots of you there!

Banking details for payment:

Rival Industrial cc
Standard Bank, Fourways Crossing
Branch Code: 9953
Acc: 422148636