You can find Hasso Plattner Venture Europe’s investments here.

Recently the African fund disclosed some of the investments it has made so far:

1. Cibecs: Enterprise backup solutions. According to some articles, HPVA invested ZAR8mm for a 25% stake in the company (HPVA indicated that these numbers aren’t correct. They didn’t say what the correct numbers are.) Cibecs was formed in 2004 by Richard Dewing, and its software has been sold to more than 30,000 users in South Africa.
2. Inala operates in the fields of telecommunications and broadcasting in South Africa.
3. Global Vision specializes in marketing automation software.
4. KnowledgeTree is an open source document management system. KnowledgeTree uses a number of social media technologies to promote its products, including Facebook, Twitter, and blogs…very progressive!
5. Dabba Telecom: Low-cost telecoms in South Africa. Dabba’s CEO Real Lissoos was voted Social Entrepreneur of the year in 2008.

MXit iPhone app

MXit recently launched an iPhone app. I’ve been a beta user for a few weeks. With MXit you can send 1,000 character multi-media messages (MMS) to your MXit, Yahoo!, MSN, Gtalk, AIM or ICQ buddies. It seems to work well, although I still cannot get my AIM and Gtalk accounts to work. Yahoo IM works great! In summary: It works well, however this first version is still too buggy. I’m sure the MXit guys will update it quickly.

MXit is also available on most mobile phones running Java, Blackberry, Windows Mobile and they have a PC beta version. You can win ~$10k (ZAR100,000) for developing the best PC MXit client. So get cracking…

MXit is a great way to send free or low cost messages to friends around the world. Different from Fring and Skype it doesn’t provide VOIP calling capability.

I would like to know your experience with MXit especially if you live in North or South America.

Here goes…

• VIP has many low cost rate plans available. I’ve used VIP for many years and it continues to be my fall back provider. It’s not very user friendly to use, i.e., no integration with the iPhone’s Contacts app. You have to dail a tollfree number and then you can dail your international number.
• Jajah has an iPhone dailer web app that works well. You can add contacts to you Jajah address book via the Jajah.com web site. Unfortunately Jajah’s iPhone app doesn’t integrate with the iPhone’s Contacts app. Jajah on the iPhone only works when you are in 3G or/and WiFi mode.
• ATT Wireless: Adding ATT’s $5.99 p/m World Connect service to your plan allows you can make international calls directly with your iPhone’s Contacts app at much cheaper rates (e.g., 28c p/min to a UK mobile phone vs ATT’s standard $1.69 per min.). This is by far the most friendly solution although not the cheapest. ATT World Connect and Standard Rates lookup.
• Skype recently launched it’s own iPhone app. With the Skype app you can make FREE (only in WiFi mode) calls from your iPhone to any Skype user around the world. The rates below apply when make calls to landlines and mobile phones. Skype’s app works well and a huge plus is that it integrates directly with the iPhone’s Contacts app, so I don’t have to duplicate my contact info in Skype. Skype’s VOIP calling competes with Fring.com.
• Google Voice: In a previous post I wrote about Google’s new Voice service. Google Voice has the lowest rates for international calling! You can access the service in one of two ways: (1) Using Google’s mobile web site — also only works in WiFi and/or 3G mode, or (2) by calling your own Google Voice # and using voice prompts a-la VIP mentioned above. One great thing about Google Voice is that all my contacts are sync-ed with Google automatically using my Mac’s AddressBook. Calling from the mobile web site is fairly easy. Definitely not as easy as Skype or using World Connect.

This table compares call rates from the US to land lines in different countries (click on a title to sort each column):

International Call Rates to Land lines

The following table compares call rates from the US to mobile phone numbers in other countries:

International Call Rates to Mobile phones

To summarize:

• Ease of use winner: ATT World Connect. For ease dailing you cannot beat dailing directly from your iPhone’s Contacts app. Skype is a close second, followed by Google Voice, Jajah and then VIP.
• Low cost winner: Google Voice is the cheapest. Skype is the cheapest (FREE) if you have access to WiFi.
• Overall winner: For me Google Voice is the overall winner — fairly easy to use and the cheapest rates. If cost was less of an issue then I would’ve picked ATT’s World Connect as the winner.

So as a GrandCentral user I am one of the favored few to be able to use the new Google Voice service. Here are my initial thoughts:

• I prefer GrandCentral’s main page and preference settings. Google Voice uses Google’s bare bones, but familiar user interface. I’m sure I’ll get used to this over time.
• The transcribing feature is very cool and seems to work ok. I’ll have to try it with other languages like Afrikaans and/or Germany as well.
• The mobile interface works much better on my iPhone and I’m very impressed that you can playback voice messages using iPhone’s Quicktime player. I hope Google or somebody else will develop a native iPhone app for Google Voice. Here is the iPhone Mobile interface:

• One huge benefit for me is that I can now use OSX’s AddressBook with Google Contacts syncing functionality to keep my contacts updated in Google. GrandCentral didn’t provide an auto-sync facility and it wasn’t easy to keep contacts in GrandCentral in sync with my Mac’s AddressBook.
• International calling rates seem to be very competitive. I’ll blog about this in an upcoming post. Btw, you get $1 free to get you going. Thanks Google. For example I could speak for 17 minutes calling a land line in South Africa (8c a minute).
• With Google Voice you have an instant and FREE (for US users) conference call facility. Very cool. I’ve been using freeconferencecall.com.
• SMS is new and you can now save an SMS conversation. So far I’ve been able to send and receive SMS message to US numbers. I’ve had success in sending SMS messages to international numbers and only partial success in receiving from international numbers.
• Google doesn’t migrate your old voice messages, however you can still access them by going to the GrandCentral web page.

Here are some other useful postings regarding the new Google Voice service:

• Techcrunch believes it is very, very good.
• David Pogue believes that Google Voice is a little revolution for the rest of us.
• CNET – Google Voice: flawed but still awesome.
• @ Wired they speak of Google Voice World Domination.
• All Things Digital.
• Network World says that CrandCentral grows up as Google Voice!
• and finally Google Voice’s own blog.

I would like to know about your experience using Google Voice?

Do you of any other similar service?

I had the distinct pleasure to visit my homeland, South Africa, to attend Hasso Plattner Ventures Africa’s first conference after forming HPV’s ZAR350mm VC fund in early 2008. Andrea Böhmert, one of HPV Africa’s co-managing partners, invited me to participate on a panel discussing “Local entrepreneurs going international”. The panel consisted of:

• Herman Heunis – CEO of MXit,
• Willem van Biljon – ex-founder of Mosiac Software (now S1 corporation) and now founder of a stealth startup, Benguela,
• Brian Richardson – CEO of Wizzit and
• myself (Carel Bekker).

Other speakers during the one day event at the beautiful Webersburg Wine Estate in Stellenbosch included:

• Dr Andile Ngcaba – Chairman of DiData MEA,
• Mteto Nyati – MD of Microsoft SA,
• Kam Chetty – MD of EDS SA,
• Zunaid Mayet – CEO of Siemens IT Solutions & Services,
• Rakesh Wahi – Vice Chairman of CNBC Africa,
• Guy Lundy – CEO of Accelerate Cape Town,
• Martin Schirmer and Dr Herbert Heitmann of SAP and
• Mark Gevisser – author and journalist.

Chris Gibbons did an amazing job as MC of the conference as well as moderating the panels.

I’ve attended numerous conferences over the years, and I have to say that the HPVA conference was unique in at least 2 ways:

1. The conference attendees were each given a silver money box as a gift and the first person to open it were given the opportunity to donate R5,000 to a charity.
2. Having James Durno as a graphic facilitator during the whole conference. James captured the day’s discussion in a set of cartoons. I think James played an important role in the day’s proceedings by keeping us entertained and informed.  Here is how he captured my contributions:

Photos, presentations, speaker bios and more of the one day conference are available here: Hasso Plattner Ventures Africa 2009 Conference.

This was an exciting day for me. I met a number of very interesting people, I was educated regarding the current state of ITC in South Africa and Africa (did you know that Africa has 350mm mobile phone subscribers?), I was given a state of the union regarding South African politics and I played a small part in allowing South African entrepreneurs to think global.

South Africa has some truly ground-breaking technologies to offer the world and if the entrepreneurs that were at this event is anything to go by, then I’m sure we will soon be celebrating more Mark Shuttleworths, Elon Musks and Vinny Linghams.

To all my friends, family & colleagues,
Today, I’m proud to announce that Reinet Fund has just invested $20 million into SynthaSite, securing our future and enabling us to continue to build our business model and product offering.  This is a massive vote of confidence in SynthaSite.  I have attached the press release for your benefit – there is also an article on TechCrunch today about the announcement: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/17/synthasite-gets-a-20-million-boost-for-simple-website-creation-software/
When we began building SynthaSite from our humble base in Cape Town, we sought to create a company whose product would change the lives of millions of people by giving them a voice online.  We wanted to provide the opportunity for anyone anywhere to build a website that would achieve their unique goals, from starting a small business to showcasing their achievements.
In 2007, we raised $5 million in venture capital and moved our headquarters to San Francisco (where I am now based fulltime), keeping a good portion of our technical team in Cape Town.  Since then, SynthaSite has grown from just a handful of people to more than 40 individuals across both offices, supporting over one million users and growing rapidly.

I’m unbelievably excited about the future of SynthaSite and look forward to building on our success in helping you and many others reach their potential online.  These past 15 months have just been the beginning…

I wish you lots of success Vinny!

Just a quick post regarding Porsche CEO, Wiedeking’s amazing feat that allowed Porsche to post a profit of $11.6bn vs total revenues of $10.2bn. How did he achieve this? Well, only 12% came from making cars, the rest came by way of a sophisticated stock deal that may cause Porsche to take-over its parent Volkswagen.

Here is a snippet from the CNN Money article:

Schmidt is referring to a feat that guarantees Wiedeking a place in the record books: Porsche’s profits before taxes of $11.6 billion in the fiscal year ended in July were actually larger than its total revenues from sales of $10.2 billion. Not even Google has profits exceeding 100%. Only 12% of Porsche’s profits came from making cars. The remainder is the fruit of a brilliantly sophisticated stock-hedging strategy (yes, sometimes they do work) that was hatched by CFO Holgar Hrter before Porsche started buying into VW, and ended up panicking short-sellers and enriching the automaker.

Do you know of any other company that has achieved this feat?