I think this is one of the most important videos any entrepreneur should watch, if he or she is raising capital for their business. Everyone always focuses on the skill of successfully pitching venture capitalists. However, once your pitch is successful, you get down to the details and if you aren’t careful about understanding the term sheet and keeping future rounds in mind, there is potential for making grave mistakes.

However, over time I slowly stopped reaching out for advice as I had learned quite a lot in such a short space of time. The more you learn, the more you know, the less you need advice, right? Although, I didn’t completely stop asking for advice, as it’s something people will give you even if you don’t ask for it.

I am busy establishing an advisory board for Aduity, as we’re approaching the point where we need to surround ourselves with people who have great insight into the market we play in, to provide us with some fresh thinking, guidance and also validation from both local and global perspectives.

I met with our first potential advisory board member today and I was quickly reminded of the immense value that the right advisors and mentors hold. We met briefly for an hour, but we could have easily gone on for hours. In such a short time, we were able to validate and resolve so many points that were searching for conclusion.

I have now been brought back to my days of seeking advise and mentorship, as it really is key to growing myself as an entrepreneur (we can never stop learning) and my business too. I think that every start-up should, at some point, look at establishing an advisory board, consisting of the right people. It will also be highly recommended to ensure they know your industry and aren’t shy to play devil’s advocate.

The basic vision for the Silicon Cape Initiative is to establish both a brand and geographical region, in this case the Western Cape, much like that of the infamous Silicon Valley where technology innovation and investment can flourish.

However the focus on this initiative benefiting the Western Cape has left some entrepreneurs from other parts of South Africa feeling a bit left out. As an entrepreneur from Johannesburg, I actually don’t feel left out at all and I will share why.

Firstly, the organisers of the Silicon Cape Initiative invited me to attend the event as an entrepreneur from Johannesburg and to sit on the entrepreneurial panel discussion. Besides being personally involved, I feel that this demonstrates that initiative does have a keen interest in supporting entrepreneurs outside of the Western Cape.

Secondly, as an entrepreneur building a start-up that has global ambitions. I find that South Africa doesn’t have a strong technology brand in the global start-up and investment scenes abroad. Indeed we have several successful global entrepreneurs and start-ups from South Africa, but nobody is really shouting “I can’t wait to see what comes out of South Africa next!”.

Therefore the fact that the Silicon Cape Initiative is attempting to boost the profile of a region within South Africa is a good enough reason for me to support it. I have no doubt that once someone looks within the Western Cape, it won’t be long before they look at South Africa as a whole. Before we moan about where the focus is, lets get people from abroad focussing here first!

Thirdly, the geographic distance between the Western Cape and Gauteng is really minimal when compared to Silicon Valley and Boston, New York or Atlanta where several other start-up hubs reside. We can do business in both provinces and until the Western Cape receives regulatory benefits (tax benefits, etc) we really have no reason to feel excluded. I would suggest everyone who can and is willing should get involved.

On that note, Marc Ashton and Catherine Luckhoff are planning on organising a Silicon Cape event in Johannesburg sometime soon, so if you are interested please keep an eye out over at the Silicon Cape website.

However, I will share why I won’t be registering my sim card. In South Africa, identity theft is still a reality yet we are obliged to hand over all of our personal information to anyone who asks for it. I’m quite annoyed by this as I hate filling in documentation, but more importantly I don’t feel comfortable sharing my personal information with just anybody.

In the article, they mention that “all information will kept confidential in a secure database”. I would like to question how secure that database is if I can go to numerous outlets around the country to register. If it is so secure and confidential, then what happens if I need to update my information? How does someone at one of these outlets assist me? If they can retrieve and update my information, then I don’t trust the system because there are thousands of outlets and thousands of people who can access this information.

I’ve been thinking about it quite a bit and this is what I think is going to happen in 18 months when the registration window expires for existing sim cards. All the major mobile operator networks (Vodacom, MTN and Cell C) will submit a letter to government stating that they cannot de-active the sim cards that have not registered due to the large quantity and the effect it will have on their business. We will be granted an extension period.

What are your thoughts on RICA?

In the venture capital game it’s all about increasing the return on their investment in your business. Unfortunately, South Africa’s internet population can hardly be considered a market in global terms and we also lack a VC eco-system. Therefore, your start-up needs to be thinking global from day one.

If you are thinking global and raising venture capital, please start thinking about raising in dollar / euro conversions. While R5mil is a lot of cash, globally it would be considered as angel funding. It doesn’t make sense to raise angel funding under the label of venture capital.

I also get the feeling that entrepreneurs in South Africa are some how excited by the hype of venture capital and think it’s their best bet. I urge you to please take a look at the types of funding available to you. I would rather consider early stage venture capital once your product / service needs the capital to expand rather than to keep it a float or build a prototype.

The most important advice I can share is that you should build something tangible and don’t go looking for venture capital with a concept. If your product or service is already generating revenue then you are in an even better position to negotiate. The more risk a VC has to take, the less negotiating power you have.

There are many articles and blog posts on the internet about venture capital, however the best I have come a cross is a talk by Guy Kawasaki. I suggest you watch it over here.

Do you have any thoughts on VC in South Africa?

We have a very neat iPhone theme in production, however due to some bugs we have held it back. The iPhone theme available with this release has some minor AJAX enabled on certain pages.

Note: This is not Project Wolf, only a component of Project Wolf. Our launch date for the new product will be announced shortly.

The Case: John Needs Sushi
I’ll quickly run through a case scenario. John, who travels a lot, has found himself in a town he has never been to before. He has no idea where anything is and all he has is his mobile handset. He is hungry and in the mood for Sushi, and he is not sure if there is a Sushi restaurant nearby.

John grabs his mobile handset and types in “sushi”, using CellID technology his location is automatically determined. After John has clicked the “search” button, the results are shown on a map and John can now find the nearest Sushi restaurant. He can also request directions to the address of the restaurant.

Types of Location Based Search
In terms of structuring location based search results, I have identified two types. These types depend on the type of search you are performing.

• Radial Search
  If a user performs a search for something nearby, then a radial search is performed. The radius can be set to a default by the search engine or changed by the user. Lets assume the default radius is 5km, if no results are returned within 5km then the search engine will increase the radius until it finds results. The search engine will return no results within 5km, however display that there x results within ykm radius. The nearest results would then be the most relevant and important in this case.
• Point-to-Point Search
  If a user is traveling or looking for directions from Point A to Point B, then a point-to-point search is performed where the results are confined to anything between the two points. The challenge with this type of search is either to return the results from all possible routes or ask the user to define one route. Once the route has been determined, the search engine can then perform the search within the selected constraints.

Location Based Advertising
Why is location based advertising so special? Once again, it ties in with being able to target people who looking for specific information at or withing a specific location. Therefore if advertising is location relevant or specific, it has a greater chance of being more relevant to the person. Even if they are not performing a search, information that is location specific to the person’s current position can be just as relevant.

Google – Search with My Location