R50,000 seed funding and mentoring by seasoned entrepreneurs and investors. During the Innovation  Weekend, 35 participants will go through the following intensive process:
• Friday 23rd March (from 2pm): Ideation Day | local  needs analysis, idea generation and team formation
• Saturday 24th: Hack Day | concept development and prototyping solutions
• Sunday 25th: Pitching Day | pitch to investors and awards Awardees will subsequently benefit from a 6-month  ‘Mentoring & Fruition’ support program designed  by the Hub Johannesburg, consisting of mentoring, building investor relations and opening opportunities through  relevant networks.

Culture Shift is an international initiative and will concurrently take place in Johannesburg, Nairobi and Lagos.

What’s in it for you?
• Connect with inspiring like-minded people
• Access to an Ideas Lab with impactful innovations
• An opening to access seed funding and business mentoring
• Access to a high-energy, collaborative and funInnovation Weekend!

Who should participate?
• Technologists, such as web and mobile app-developers
• Social entrepreneurs and institutional changemakers
• Creatives from the arts, design and cultural sectors.
As a participant you share the following characteristics:
• You have a deep passion for your work
• You are excellent at what you do
• You are committed to making a positive impact on society

Johannesburg: Apply Here

Zing

Impressively, zing have launched on the following platforms:

• Android
• IPhone
• Blackberry
• Java Basic (feature phones, i.e Nokia S40)
• Java Advanced

Zing changes thing up a bit on a tradditional MIM, by adding a few additional features such as a gamification features (Points etc). It also adds content delivery, in a concept called “Zones”, i.e users can subscribe to content about subject x. I think of it as way for brands/news organisations to distribute content via mobile.

While RIM may be loosing ground internationally, it is one of the biggest platforms in South Africa and other emerging markets, one of the main drivers in ZA has been BBM.

The difficulty with MIM, is achieving consistency and reliability with millions of users, not many company’s can claim to this. Last year Live Profile went viral, with millions of users signing up in a short period of time, however the platform could not scale. I tried it out for about a week, attempted to use it, but had to delete the app. The number one issue with LiveProfile, you never knew if your message was actually delivered. Sometime’s it took several hours before a message reached it’s destination.

Mxit and what’s app are quite reliable, it remains to be seen if Zing will be as well.  The gaming elements are interesting, and if well thought out could result in people sticking around just long enough to ensure some amount of success (see foursquare)

Checkout the list below, do you agree with the listed companies, do you think some were missed out? Let us know in the comments.

1. MXit

• Founded: 2003
• Country: South Africa
• Description: MXit was one of the first Mobile Instant messaging services in the world and in Africa, and has a userbase of about 45m.
• Website: http://www.mxit.co.za

2. Yola

• Founded: 2007
• Country: South Africa
• Description: Yola is a simple website builder and hosting service, that allows anyone without any HTML skills to easily create websites.
• Website: http://www.yola.com

3. Dropifi (Ghana)

• Founded: 2011
• Country: Ghana
• Description: Dropifi assists businesses better respond to incoming messages via their website, and also includes analytics for website owners.
• Website: http://www.dropifi.com/

4. Cobi Interactive

• Founded: 2009
• Country: South Africa
• Description: Cobi interactive is a mobile software development company with clients
• Website: http://www.cobiinteractive.com/

5. FloCash

• Founded: 2010
• Country: UK
• Description: FloCash allows anyone with an email address and mobile number to send and receive money across Africa simply and easily.
• Website: https://www.flocash.com

6. Obami

• Founded: 2009
• Country: South Africa
• Description: Obami is a social network and learning management system for schools, teachers and students
• Website: http://www.obami.com

7. Bandeka 

• Founded: 2011
• Country: Ghana/Nigeria
• Description: Bandeka is an exclusive social network, for building relationships/dating.
• Website: http://www.bandeka.com/

8. Jobberman 

• Founded: 2009
• Country: Nigeria
• Description: Jobberman is west africa’s most popular job and placement website.
• Website: http://www.jobberman.com/

9. Motribe

• Founded: 2011
• Country: South Africa
• Description: Motribe is a mobile platform enabling users, brands, agencies and publishers across the world to build and manage their own mobile social communities.
• Website: http://www.motribe.co.za

10. PesaPal

• Founded: 2009
• Country: Kenya
• Description: PesaPal is a payment platform that enables Kenyans to buy and sell on the Internet using M-Pesa, Zap and Credit Cards.
• Website: https://www.pesapal.com/

11. Synaq

• Founded: 2004
• Country: South Africa
• Description: Synaq provides messaging and security products built around open source solutions.
• Website: http://www.synaq.com/

12. Rupu

• Founded: 2010
• Country: Kenya
• Description: Rupu is a daily deals website modeled on groupon.
• Website: https://www.rupu.co.ke

13. BongoLive

• Founded: 2010
• Country: Tanzania
• Description: BongoLive is a mobile and SMS services company.
• Website: http://www.bongolive.co.tz/

14. Skyrove

• Founded: 2006?
• Country: South Africa
• Description: Skyrove  is South Africa’s largest independent Wi-Fi hotspot network with over 600 Wi-Fi hotspots in South Africa.
• Website: http://www.skyrove.com/

15. Njorku 

• Founded: 2011
• Country: Cameroon
• Description: Njorku is a career and recruitment services platform focused on Africa.
• Website: http://www.njorku.com/

16. Ushahidi 

• Founded: 2007
• Country: Kenya
• Description: The only non profit on this list, ushahidi develops software for information collection, visualization and interactive mapping.
• Website: http://ushahidi.com/

17. SMSGH

• Founded: 2005
• Country: Ghana
• Description: SMSGh offers bulk SMS solutions, SMS Gateway solutions and mobile web solutions
• Website: http://smsgh.com/

18. Hummba

• Founded: 2011
• Country: South Africa
• Description: Hummba is a social and travel networking website that lets you download free audio travel guides and share travel experiences directly from your mobile phone.
• Website: http://www.hummba.com/

19. 10Layer

• Founded: 2011
• Country: South Africa
• Description: 10Layer is CMS system targeted specifically at news rooms.
• Website: http://10layer.com/

20. Sembuse (Kenya)

• Founded: 2009
• Country: Kenya
• Description: Sembuse is a mobile social network & instant messaging platform similar to Mxit
• Website: http://www.sembuse.com/

SuperPrenuer is a board game that aim’s to use fun to teach and assist SMME entrepreneurs. The board game aims to encourage good business principals and values while at the same time discouraging behaviours that limit productivity. The ‘game’ takes approximately 2 hours to play, however it requires the use of facilitators who assist with your learnings.

You could learn quite a lot with the right board game, for example some argue monopoly teach quite a few principals that could assist any entrepreneur. While others argue that monopoly actually teach you bad economic principals.

What are your thoughts, would you consider playing a board game to learn?

Event Details

Date: 24 February 2012

Time: 9:00am—12:00 am

Venue: The intelliLAB at the University of Johannesburg

Cost: Free for SAINE members, R95 for non members

Register

Last night I attended the inaugural Angelhub founders dinner. Other than some amazing and inspiring stories from all of the founders there, i learnt quite quickly that including the word ‘snap’ seems to be very popular amongst South African entrepreneurs,  We previously wrote about snapplify , we also have snap-bill and snapt-ui.

I have to say the event was extremely useful, the entrepreneurs shared a whole lot of information they would not usually share in a large room with 50 people in it. Several times we heard :

“Don’t quote me on this”

I dont know if it was the small crowd, the intimate lighting but it worked.  Richard Dewing’s story was truly inspiring, how his first deal went horribly wrong, the ups and downs of his business.

Some interesting quotes from the night:

“I’m not telling dad his pension money is gone! We’re gonna do this!”

“Your customers may like your software for a completely different reason than you do.”

“Co-founders are not about having expertise, it’s about someone who’s with you when it gets dark!”

“Your projections are almost always wrong”

“It is up to us – the SA entrepreneurs – to turn things around in this country and catalyze growth”

Do your self a favour, and the next time this event comes around snap (see what i did there?) up a place as soon as you can. You will not regret it.

Some of the guys in attendance were:

• Andy Hadfield
• Brett Commaille
• Dave Blakey
• Doug Vining
• Jaco van Wyk
• Jan-Jan van der Vyver
• Jason Norwood-Young
• Keet van Zyl
• Richard Dewing
• Styli Charalambous
• Tyler Reed
• Wesley Lynch

I have tried to get everyone’s twitter handle, if i missed yours send me a tweet @ismail.

p.s I hear rumours of a new start-up called snap-tube, check back here for more.

* Shout out to slow in the city for hosting us and keeping the place open later then usual

* Pictures from Jaco Van Wyk & Brett Commaille

Startup Weekends are weekend-long, hands-on experiences where entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs can find out if startup ideas are viable. On average, half of Startup Weekend’s attendees have technical backgrounds, the other half have business backgrounds.

Beginning with open mic pitches on Friday, attendees are encouraged to bring their best ideas and inspire others to join their team. Over Saturday and Sunday teams design and develop business plans while constantly streamlining their startup vision. On Sunday evening teams demo their prototypes, listen to judges’ feedback and in some cities, win prizes.

Startup Weekends are specifically designed for entrepreneurs interested in receiving feedback on an idea, looking for a co-founder, or who want to learn a new skill. We also welcome anyone looking to test the entrepreneurial waters. Startup Weekends are risk-free environments where everyone is expected to roll up their sleeves and dive into the exhilarating world of startups.
Register at: http://nairobi.startupweekend.org

This week, Olga Arara-Kimani, Google’s country manager of Kenya left her job. Now no one knows if she left on her own account or that she was fired, but what is for sure is that is that she hasn’t been playing nice with the competition.

Mocality specialises in keeping a directory of thousands of Kenyan businesses, which are easily accessible via your cellphone. Businesses get to list for free and most of them were contacted directly by the Mocality team, meaning a lot of man hours. But because of this hard work, Mocality has a very valuable database, which they have collected over the last two years.

Then in September of 2011 Google launches Getting Kenyan Businesses Online (GKBO) and that’s when things strange things started to happen, explains CEO in a blog.

“Shortly after that launch, we started receiving some odd calls. One or two business owners were clearly getting confused because they wanted help with their website, and we don’t currently offer websites, only a listing. Initially, we didn’t think much of it, but the confusing calls continued through November,”

he writes.

The Mocality team then discover a reoccurring IP address with a very distinct user agent, not common to Kenyan browsers. This user agent was spending half its time looking at contact details for each individual business.

Magdalinski decides to setup an operation to find out what was going on. He reroutes some of his client’s telephone numbers and instead of calling a business registered on the site, the phone call goes through to a member of the Mocality team.

What he found out was that the user agent turned out to be from GKBO computers and that they were using his database to phone his clients, only to sell them Google products. More than that, these Google employees were lying to the business owners by telling them that Mocality and Google were working together and that Mocailty charges for its listings, a service which is free.

You can click on this transcript to see one of those phone calls.

Magdalinkski discusses the whole sting on his blog and concluded with this:

“Since October, Google’s GKBO appears to have been systematically accessing Mocality’s database and attempting to sell their competing product to our business owners. They have been telling untruths about their relationship with us, and about our business practices, in order to do so. As of January 11th, nearly 30% of our database has apparently been contacted.”

After the blog post, Google officially apologised to Mocality and acknowledged that they were using foul practices to steal clients away from the Kenyan company.

“We were mortified to learn that a team of people working on a Google project improperly used Mocality’s data and misrepresented our relationship with Mocality to encourage customers to create new websites,” said Nelson Mattos, Google’s vice president for product and engineering, Europe and emerging markets.
“We’ve already unreservedly apologized to Mocality. We’re still investigating exactly how this happened, and as soon as we have all the facts, we’ll be taking the appropriate action with the people involved,”

he said in a statement.

This invitation is only open to registered YBSA members. Seats are extremely limited so RSVP today whereupon you will be given payment instructions. Your seat will only be confirmed once proof of payment has been received.

Event Details
Booking is essential
Date: Tuesday 07 February 2012
Time: 8:30 AM-10:00 AM
Venue: Discovery Head Office, 155 West Street, Sandton
Cost: YBSA Members: R100
RSVP:  info@innercoaching.co.za by Friday 3 February 2012