Bad Entrepreneur

I received two interesting e-mails today which I thought might be of interest to local entrepreneurs.

The first was from Scott Cundill of Majestic and boy is he seething!

As you may know Marc, CIPRO has been in plenty hot water regarding accusations of fraud. However, there is something else that you personally need to check up on urgently.

Read the rest of this entry »

This statement is probably going to rattle a few cages but here goes:

“In my humble opinion – for all this money and energy being chucked at technology start-ups, the reality is that the pay off is miniscule on pretty much every front and maybe we should be focusing the collective energy on other sectors.”

The South African “geek” community (for lack of a better word) is relatively tight knit. There is quite a lot of back-patting and gratuitous self promotion that goes on amongst the bloggers / social media gurus / venture capitalists etc. But on the whole it is a healthy combination of innovation and support for a generation of entrepreneurs and innovators.

Amongst this crowd, there is lots of excitement today that Matthew Buckland has launched his memeburn.com site. No disrespect to Matthew but, truth be told I can’t tell you what the difference is between this and what Duncan was doing with TechCentral.

The reality is that there is more money sloshing around this sector than common sense in a lot of cases and for all the talk of “the big global idea” these are seriously few and far between.

It’s great to see some kind of angel funding network being established on the back of the Crowd Fund success, but suddenly it’s “hip” for IT entrepreneurs to start tossing money toward start-ups… why the hell can’t it all be chucked to Eve and her crowd to drive instead of drips and drabs being sprinkled around?

The fact that the technology sector has gotten some legs and is raising its profile is fantastic. It is exactly the kind of innovation community South Africa needs to be establishing… only I don’t think that the tech sector is necessarily where it should be being established.

Rather I’d argue that we would be better off to focus the money, skills and knowledge on sectors like manufacturing, food, agriculture, electronics and education which are potentially far higher impact sectors for South Africa and Africa as a whole.

Maybe I’m wrong – anybody disagree that tech is not a high impact entrepreneur sector for Africa?

I got this late on Sunday night and I thought it gave me a bit of enthusiasm to take on the world as Monday rolls around:

Via JP van der Spuy of Mytrade.co.za via Muhammad Ali:

The quote reads:

“Impossible” is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion

Having spent the better part of two years fighting to get this business back on its feet and just survive another day, week, month sometimes you become cynical to dreaming big as an entrepreneur.

Hopefully the quote inspires you to see the opportunity that this week presents!

Thanks JP

The sun has set on a pretty historic day in South Africa with PayPal officially breaking cover today. On top of that the  governor of the Reserve Bank had on one of her more stylish “tents” today and kindly granted us a 50bps rate cut which will have been some welcome relief for anybody with any debt hanging over them.

I thought I was going to let some of the dust settle before I posted my thoughts on the PayPal thing and now that all the usual suspects have put their thoughts out there I thought I’d share some of the feedback from my one on one interviews withthe execs from First National Bank (FNB) and some thoughts on the day in general.

1. For the naysayers who are complaining that this is not the PayPal that they really want, just take it in context. Over the last 10 days broadband prices have been cut, it’s cheaper to lend money and we now have a form of PayPal that was not there 24 hours ago…. progress is being made!

2. I think FNB have erred by bumping heads with Silicon Cape, but I’ll let that one play itself out. I’ve raised the issue  with Michael Jordaan (FNB CEO) and he has indicated that he really does want to engage the Silicon Cape people. So while there have been some issues this week, hopefully they will sort themselves out.

3. Something which I haven’t seen reported anywhere else – I asked Michael Jordaan what the South African Reserve Bank had  said when they brought them the idea of bringing PayPal to South Africa. Their answer to FNB – “What has taken you guys solong to come and ask?”.

We criticise government but there are parts that work really well and despite all our misgivings, they are trying to create an enabling environment for small business.

4. I pointed out to Jordaan that there are a lot more smiles around the bank, compared to the interviews we did in late 2009. His comment to me was that FNB had adopted the motto: “Don’t waste a good crisis” – this stuck with me as being really pertinent considering all the negativity floating around. While everyone else was being super negative FNB was pouring money into tech investments and they’ve emerged with some clear advantages over their competitors.

5. I asked both Jordaan and Iris Dempsey (head of FNB’s commercial banking unit) about the recent trading environment. Both commented that the last quarter had been one of the best in the last 18 months. While the media sells the idea that there is a lot of negativity around, the bank is apparently seeing a very noticeable improvement in business volumes which bodes well for the broader economy.

6. If you have never done or been to an event at the Turbine Hall in Newtown, then I sincerely suggest you check it out. Super venue! No more of this kak of fighting traffic to get into bloody Sandton anymore – Joburg as a city worked beautifully today and this is a great venue for events like the PayPal launch.

7. I don’t totally know what it says about society but I found it weird to watch people doing live tweeting while the presentation was going on. It’s a funny society where we need to keep people updated with every minute of our lives. Having said that Jordaan impressed me as somebody who was really enthusiastic about technology and spent a part of our interview explaining all the things he was able to do with his mobile phone (in terms of financial services products). When somebody of his stature and enthusiasm for innovation is spearheading one of our big banks then you get excited that the best quality products and services are going to be rolled out to you as clients.

On that note I am signing off for tonight with the words of Michael Jordaan – “Don’t waste a good crisis”.

Instead of seeing what isn’t there, rather envisage what could be there and then make it happen.

Whoop whoop – another historic day for the mighty mighty South Africa comes to a close!

I touched on it in one of my previous posts, but I’m curious to dig a bit deeper and get some thoughts from African technology entrepreneurs on the subject of targetting the African continent as a market-place.

One of the things which really irks me about the local funding community is their perception that the only ideas “worth” investing in are those which can “go global” because “the South African market place is not big enough”.

Even more irritating is this idea that “going global” means aiming (and billing in dollars) for the US, Western Europe and rather generically “Asia”.

For some reason going global doesn’t mean looking at Africa – a continent which has been identified as having some of the highest growth potential in the world.

• Nigeria – roughly 155m people – roughly the 8th biggest population in the world and expected to breach 200m in the next 10 years
• Ethiopia (not that I would rush to invest here) – 80m
• Egypt (identified by Stratfor as a global powerhouse in the next 10 years) – 79m
• Democratic Republic of the Congo – (or whatever it is called this week) – 70m

These are big and real potential economies and in many cases they are crying out for technology innovation and investment.

So my questions to SA tech innovators:

1. Does Africa even come into your thinking when you consider investment?

2. What are you doing to target Africa?

3. Do you battle to make contact / strike up partnerships in other African countries? (I know this is something we are battling with at the moment)

Give me your thoughts on the challenges and opportunities of doing business with Africa.

Because it is Monday and we all need to start off the week in the right frame of mind, I am going to start with a quote that a friend has just e-mailed me:

“Life is short, so treaure and love those that make you happy and smile, banish those things that make you sad and angry and live every day as if it was your last, since you never know when it is your time to go.”

I have a couple of observations from this weekend which I thought I would toss out to the blogosphere and see what others are  saying.

Bread price
Until Saturday I had never bought bread from a local bakery. Sure I’ve had Fournos for breakfast or lunch but never really been one to do the bakery thing. If I need bread I run into Pick ‘n Pay or Spar and I fork out about R10.50 for a loaf of bread or two each each day depending on how many of the three kids are at home that particular day.

Purely by chance I ran into a small local bakery and a loaf of bread was R6.50… err that’s a pretty big price saving. The next day I ran into the Woolworths attached to the Engen garage and was about to buy my normal brand of Tiger Brands manufactured bread (R10.50) and I found Woolworths no name bread for R7.95 – still a sizeable difference.

It doesn’t look like the Competition Commission fines are making any real meaningful impact on the retail price of bread, but maybe you need to shop around and support some of the small business or non-traditional brands and vote with your wallet!

Nigerians and Indians
I won’t lie, I racial profile my e-mail inbox. When it involves Indian, Chinese or Nigerian businesess looking to “strike up a business venture”, I tend to hit the delete button pretty quickly.

This is kind of ironic or “dof”, considering that each week I am writing about how Nigeria, India and China are the most promising growth regions across the globe.

Yeah of course a lot of them are still 419 scams and half the time I can’t work out what their broken English is trying to say but maybe I am being a bit short-sighted.

A couple of things happened this weekend which got me thinking. I was on Afrigator on Saturday and at one point the top bloggers were from Egypt (which incidentally has been identified by Stratfor as a continental superpower within the next 10 years) and Nigeria.

Shortly after that I had reasonable business enquiries – “reasonable” being that they appeared to be legitimate companies – from both Nigeria and India.

Maybe that was a wake-up call to myself that you can no longer just talk about these countries as growth opportunities for tech and business investments – you need to live it.

I was on Loy’s StartupsNigeria site last night and I realised what a cracking offering he has. We focus a lot of attention on opportunities in South Africa but don’t spend much time looking at what these guys are doing. The venture cap guys whinge that the SA market is too small and need a “global” audience but how much time do they spend looking at Africa? It is easy to say you are designing something to be sold into the US markets but how much effort do you put into selling something into African markets?

Beyond tech
Lastly I have become a bit frustrated with non-tech entrepreneurs who don’t make use of tech for their businesses. I know a lot of people who quite happily use Facebook as a social networking (non business) tool, but don’t make any effort to use it for business networking.

Yes Twitter and blogging might be a little “geeky” but then you can’t turn around to me and say that you can’t afford advertising and marketing for your small business.

I’ve seen some really cracking local businesses out there including sports, social responsibility, engineering, e-learning and administration but the brains behind them are using very little in the way of technology to promote their brands.

Guys – technology makes you flexible to market, administer and ramp up your business much quicker than traditional business tools. Use it to your advantage!

This post has next to nothing to do with entrepreneurship, but I thought it might stimulate a bit of debate over the weekend.

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.

… well sort of.

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

I’m looking over my scrawled notes from this evening and trying to decide what my takeaway was from the presentation by trend analyst Dion Chang who spoke at Gibs in Johannesburg.

First up I was a little irritated by listening to that woman whose two “questions” were more like statements on how she did it in HER business. For crying in a bucket, if I wanted to listen to what you had say, I’d book an appointment with you. I came to hear people put their questions to Dion.

Now that, that rant is out the way….

In my humble opinion the presentation itself was a bit wishy-washy. I can’t say that anything ground-breaking came out of it.

Largely it came across as a bit of a rehash of most of the issues those involved in publishing / PR / advertising / online communities have been debating for a while.

Dion spoke quite a lot about the “empathetic consumer” which is a concept I think I can buy into. My short-term concern is that we still need to see the “frugal consumer”.

It is important we don’t mix up the empathetic consumer with the frugal one – something that could be very important if you are planning to launch a consumer driven business.

Two statements from Dion did jump out at me:

• “Networking is going to be a force to be reckoned with” – that in itself is not new but I can see a very clear difference between the people who focus on their own personal networking compared to those who sit behind a desk waiting for things to come to them.  If you are planning to start a business then use every single piece of technology – blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn etc and network like crazy to give yourself half a chance
• “Involve me and I will understand – collaborate” – Dion spoke about seeking out mutually beneficial partnerships. Again it is not new – but the point is that you can go out and use technology to help you find these partnerships. This is a helluva important message for people who are looking to start their own business… in 95% of the instances you will not succeed by trying to do it all yourself.

Anyway – I am going to sleep on those two thoughts for a bit and decide how they might influence my business in the coming months.

If you would like to buy Dion Changs, Flux Trend Review for 2010 – you can buy it online at retailer Loot for R163.

The original press release with Dions “top 10″ trends is further below. Feel free to scroll back and give your thoughts.