The Premature South African Entrepreneurs’ Success Story.

Internet and Tech billionaires around the world share amazing stories of success and struggle they went through for that success. What about the South African stories?


The determinants of success or failure: Ideas are plentiful, but only a few people are willing to risk everything to create something different. South Africa is at an “ideas” tipping point. The stories that will be told by successful individuals will be captured on camera, placed on YouTube and instantly the risk takers will be viewed by millions. It’s time for our own Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerbergs to emerge. We have them. But have you heard of Justin Stanford’s story, Zibusiso Mkhwanazi, JP van der Spuy, Tshepho Mashigo, maybe Justin Hartman? Or better yet Vinny Lingham? Most South Africans haven’t, and that’s a pity.

My name will soon be mentioned with these pioneers, I will call them friends, or at least industry buddies, guys I know on a first name basis or something like that, wait I know, il attend conferences with them, yes that’s it. The reason is simple, I’m willing to take the risks, I’ve made that leap and I will land on soft ground.
But with every name there’s a story, I mean how did these South African Internet Entrepreneurs “make it”? how did their ideas take off in a South African internet climate that’s as cold as the North Pole? Maybe someone should take the time to ask them, to get their stories out there and inspire a generation of entrepreneurs that will take this internet monster buy the dragon horns, tame it and ride it!


I have a story, it’s dramatic and filled with hardships, failure and basically all the ingredients for a moving success story, only thing is that the success part hasn’t quiet taken place yet. Regardless, it’s important to know what it takes to pursue a passion and live a dream. Similar to the likes of Justin Stanford, Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs to name a few, I didn’t like what I was studying at Stellenbosch, it was great, but just not for me, but I kept at it for the years I was required to, more to tell the truth. But always my passion was entrepreneurship, I wanted to start something, not just become part of an already existing machine, it didn’t move me at all. When I was in high school in Durban, I started making t-shirts that sold like hot cakes, my mother saw that I was doing well and helped me out with capital to get t-shirts to print on, some ink and screen printing equipment, some of which I stole from the school art department. I loved making money from work I had done, but that venture soon bored me and I stopped, later on in varsity I started an events company with two friends, we did well, were able to feed ourselves and party often, perhaps too often for students.

We made contacts with the right people in the club scene and were able to throw parties in clubs without paying for the venues and keeping the money we made at the door. It was good and a small success. That also came to an end and so did mu varsity career and I had to find a job, that’s how it works. I got into an online marketing agency in Cape Town and that’s where I fell in love with the internet. The possibilities literally drove me insane. I wanted to be a leader in this industry, to somehow make a success of my life through the internet, the ideas were endless, I’d read up about young internet entrepreneurs daily, I still do. After working for three different companies in the online marketing industry, I found myself without a job, far from home and coming close to becoming homeless. I experienced a few nights of no food at all during my job hunt, some friends were good enough to give me their couches for some time and my lovely girlfriend basically fed me. It was/is the struggle of my life. I was in a city far from home and too ambitious to just give up and run home. After a year or more of constant rejection from companies I finally gave up.

I moved to Johannesburg for two months to live with a good friend under the hope of finding a job in my line of work in the bigger city, but that came to nought too. It was during the days on my friends couch that I came up with Three internet business ideas, All three inspired by three successful and brave internet entrepreneurs, namely Alex Tew, Tony Hsieh and Google’s’ Larry Page and Sergey Brin. I have started with the first project Adbuzz, an online advertising platform, very simple, nothing fancy, but a great way for businesses to be noticed without spending hundreds of thousands on advertising and also not being listed as just another company on a boring online directory that no clients or customers even visit.
These three projects are going to be my life’s work. I haven’t made a single cent yet, but success is along the path, the ideas are great and the risk is huge. The passion is burning and the faith is endless. South Africa could do with a public internet success story, I’m willing to hand it over.

थे इन्टरनेट इस गोने!!!!!!!

Great Entrepreneur. Maybe Not African, But Worth Learning From

As an entrepreneur, you've probably set your sights high. You dream of a reality that others would brush off as, well, simply a dream. You envision creating a brand that crosses oceans and continents in its importance and recognition. You don't think in multiples of one, but instead in hundreds, perhaps thousands. And you might even be calculating not if but when your business will officially cross the threshold from the millions to $1 billion. And even in the throes of a recession, you hold on to that vision, knowing that if you can build the foundation and survive now, you will thrive later.

We recently caught up with two individuals who have survived turbulent waters, skillfully navigating their companies through the dotcom bust and building billion-dollar companies before age 40. Here's how they made a billion happen--in their own ways and on their own terms.


The Entrepreneurs
Michael Chasen, 37, travels extensively every month and values meeting people and sharing ideas. He has been doing that since 1997, when he co-founded Blackboard Inc., a Washington, DC-based provider of enterprise software that enables colleges, schools and other educational institutions to bring their processes online. (To interview him, I had to trail him down to Mexico, where he was attending a networking event with 60 other successful entrepreneurs.)

Tony Hsieh, 35, is a smart investor who placed his bets on a small startup called Zappos.com in August 1999 but then became so convinced of the potential in the marketplace for an online shoe retailer that he joined full time, ultimately outlasting even the founder. Over the past decade, he has taken the Las Vegas-based company well beyond shoes into apparel, bags, housewares, electronics and cookware.

Building the Foundation
There's no better way to build a billion-dollar company than by starting off with an idea that has billion-dollar potential. Even at a time when the internet hadn't yet become such a prominent shopping destination, Hsieh knew Zappos.com was a business concept with potential. "At that time, footwear in the U.S. was a $40-billion-a-year industry, and paper and mail-order catalogs were 5 percent of that, or $2 billion a year," he explains. "In our minds, it seemed the web was going to at least surpass paper catalogs." For Hsieh, the equation spelled success, and he didn't hesitate to move forward, confident that the numbers would work in his favor.

Zappos.com weathered the dotcom bust by focusing less on attracting new customers and concentrating more on retaining old ones. Word about the service-friendly business spread quickly, and the number of repeat customers increased. It introduced free shipping long before it was a common business practice, and the company continues to go above and beyond for customers. It has a 365-day return policy and even relocated the entire warehouse from California to Kentucky to be near UPS's hub and ensure faster delivery of its merchandise. Customer service got the company through hard times and has become an identifying characteristic of the business. Hsieh says it's the No. 1 driver behind Zappos.com reaching $1 billion in gross merchandise sales.

For Chasen, competitors already existed when he entered the space, so it was a matter of creating a better product, building a better business model and meeting the right people. He chose to build Blackboard using a subscription model in which the school would pay annually to continue using the software. This simple decision would later become the company's lifeline. When the tech bubble burst and financing dried up, Blackboard stayed afloat thanks to $40 million coming in from annual subscriptions.

But before any of that could happen, Chasen had to get the word out. He attended networking events, signed up for business plan competitions and met with as many investors as possible. As a result, Chasen not only raised about half a million dollars in his first round of angel financing, but also met a group of Cornell University students who had developed tools for bringing teaching and learning online. He persuaded them to come on board after graduation. "Talk to as many people as you can and get as much feedback as possible," Chasen says. "It's only by tapping that greater collective of knowledge that you can really succeed."

Want to build a billion-dollar business?

Here are some tips from Bill Bartmann, CEO of BillionaireU.com, an online business educational resource.

Think big. Think exponentially--shoot for 200 percent growth vs. 20 percent.

Do the unconventional. No one ever became a billionaire doing what "everyone else" is doing.

Believe in yourself and your idea. If you're unwavering in your belief, you'll infect all those around you.

Share your vision. Tell everyone what you plan to accomplish. Some will help.

Execute. Get off the couch. Great ideas are a dime a dozen.

Focus. Do one thing extremely well. Multitasking is multistupid.

Never give up. Every successful person achieved that status after plowing through tough times and failures.

Growing the Business
Reaching $1 billion requires scaling a business effectively. Chasen has kept one step ahead by making sure the right management team is in place every step of the way. He says, "We've continued to hire and expand and improve our management team along the way, always looking not at where the company is today, but where the company is going to be five years from now and making sure we have the right team in place to get us there."

He has also mastered the art of M&A, which has contributed largely to the company's growth. He saved money and time by acquiring businesses or technologies that fit with the company's product offerings. Through acquisitions, Blackboard added Blackboard Transact, a student ID card that doubles as a debit card, as well as Blackboard Connect, an emergency notification and alert system. "With M&A, it's not an either/or vs. organic growth," Chasen says. "It's really something that's additive, and when we reach a certain size, it's often one of the better ways to deploy capital."

Hsieh has been able to stay ahead of the curve by creating an environment where his employees feel empowered to contribute ideas and take charge. He invests time in teaching his employees, knowing it will pay off in the long run. In fact, the company just rolled out management and leadership training classes to equip employees with the know-how to grow within the company.

Hsieh also advocates creating a strong company culture. Ten core values make up the culture at Zappos.com--"Embrace and drive change" and "Create fun and a little weirdness" top the list. Culture is so important that it's integrated into the interview pro-cess: Applicants are asked to rank their weirdness on a scale of one to 10, for example--and qualified people have been rejected because they didn't fit the company culture. Says Hsieh, "The most important thing is that there's a culture you believe in and are willing to hire and fire based upon."

Moving Forward
Today, Zappos.com stocks millions of shoes and more than 1,000 brands, and requires the work of approximately 1,600 employees. Blackboard serves more than 3,000 colleges worldwide and more than 400 K-12 districts. The company went public in 2004 and employs 1,100 people.

These businesses' successes didn't happen overnight, nor are they immune to hard times. At the end of 2008, Blackboard's stock price was down by 30 percent due to the economic downturn. But Hsieh and Chasen aren't anywhere close to slowing down. "Less than 200 schools in China and 30 schools in the Middle East are using Blackboard technology, and there are hundreds of millions of learners in those areas that are not yet using technology in the education process," Chasen says. "In places like those, we are in the very beginning. So if you look at it as a global opportunity, which we do, we still have a very long distance to go."

For Hsieh, selling shoes online was just the launching point. Now he's working toward making people forget that Zappos.com ever sold only shoes by expanding into different product lines. Hsieh has even fielded customer requests to start an airline. He doesn't make any promises, but he considers it a real possibility in the future. Anything is possible. Such is the attitude of a billionaire entrepreneur.

Go Open - Mark Shuttleworth Full Interview

Seth Godin: Sliced bread and other marketing delights

Social Media for NGOs Conference

The annual SANGONeT “ICTs for Civil Society” Conference is the premier ICT event dedicated to the work of the NGO sector in Southern Africa.

The 2009 event will be held in two parts - from 15-16 October 2009 in Johannesburg, and 20-21 October 2009 in Cape Town.

Following the success of the previous four annual SANGONeT conferences, the 2009 event will focus on the relevance of social media tools to the South African NGO sector. Specific attention will be given to three key related issues:

how NGOs are and/or should be using social media tools (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc) in support of their work;
how to strengthen and complement fundraising strategies using social media tools;
how social media tools are used on 'Africa's computer' - the mobile phone.
Social media are tools that allow groups to generate content, engage in peer-to-peer conversations and exchange content. The key features of social media are participation and interaction, connecting people and providing the tools necessary to have a conversation - all important components of NGOs’ day-to-day work.

The SANGONeT conference will interrogate and assess this scenario in the South African context by drawing on the experience of international experts, showcasing innovative projects, and facilitating the transfer of skills.

The conference programme will include an impressive list of local and international speakers which will make this a truly memorable event.

By hosting the event in two cities we hope to attract many NGOs that would otherwise not be able to attend. The two events will convene approximately 300 NGO practitioners, government officials, donors and representatives from the IT and telecommunications industry interested in the use and application of social media in support of the NGO sector.

The programme of the 2009 SANGONeT conference will be strategically informed by the findings of the 2009 “State of ICTs in the South African NGO Sector” research project which we are implementing in conjunction with World Wide Worx.

The winners of the South African NGO Web Awards 2009 will also be announced during the two events.

25 Tips by Entrepreneurs for Entrepreneurs

Ready to leave your job behind and become your own boss? It takes a certain kind of person to make it through the first few years. To help you along, we’ve culled the best tips from our own members - people with years’ of experience in running their own businesses.


1. Don’t work for less than you can afford to, but do offer a discount to customers or clients who sign contracts with you.

2. Find people who will refer jobs to you. If they send you nightmare jobs, make sure they’re balanced out with rewarding (profitable!) ones.

3. Surround yourself with supportive people and don’t be discouraged by anyone. If your idea is good and you’re determined to stick with it through the first few difficult years, your chances of success are great.

4. Be flexible in your thinking. Prepare to change the way you work, the products you use and the services you offer, in order to meet the demands of your customers.
5. Admit your mistakes, correct them and carry on.(For example, if you purchase a piece of equipment that does not meet your expectations, send it back, sell it or exchange it!)
6. Develop a good relationship with your bank manager and creditors. Show a genuine interest in solving problems. Pay as much as you can afford to, to everyone to whom you owe money.

7. Get trained! You’ll be spending a lot of time doing things that have nothing to do with your area of expertise, like bookkeeping, marketing, and IT support!

8. Avoid isolation. Even if you work closely with your clients, you won’t be part of a gang anymore. Develop your own network of entrepreneurs that you see regularly and bounce ideas off. Ideally they’ll allow you to vent your anger and share your successes.

9. Separate your work and personal life. Set your working hours and stick to a strict timetable. When you’re not available to clients, leave a message on your answer machine letting them know when they can expect a reply from you. Let them know how to reach you in an emergency.

10. Plan some ‘thinking time’ into every day. If you pack your diary with back-to-back activities, your business will never grow.
11. Plan time to do something you enjoy at least a few times a week - recharge your batteries!

12. Write a business plan so you’re clear about what you’re doing, and update it every year.

13. Develop an excellent telephone manner and react quickly to any complaints or problems.
14. Confirm orders personally and immediately, especially those you receive on email.

15. Never lose sight of the big picture – look for innovative, little-explored directions in which to take your business.


16. When you find someone cleverer than you, employ them!

17. Solicit advice from people who know, for example, other entrepreneurs and reputable small business advisers – the DTI offers lots of information and support for new businesses.

18. Don’t enter a business or a venture that you know nothing about. You’ll be running to catch up for the rest of your business life.

19. Have an existing, loyal customer base and start locally.

20. Be aware that you will get through any initial investment quickly, so ensure you are covered financially until at least the end of the second year.

21. Focus on a specific goal and work at it until it’s achieved

22. Never worry about how to get things done when you are first developing your idea. Money and resources will come together once you have set your goals and begun to work at them.

23. Make quality in every aspect of your business your primary focus and aim. If it isn’t, you will eventually go out of business.

24. Use the Internet. Use email. Build a website (if you aren’t familiar with websites, try HTML for Dummies), send out email newsletters, buy online banner advertisements and register your site with all the major search engines.

25. Delegate. You might have to hire a good PA, lawyer, or marketing professional to ensure you’ll be profitable in the future.

source: ivillage.co.uk

Search Engine Marketing

African Solutions

Article from This Is Africa. "The Digital Generation"

Google’s Nairobi office has none of the famous beanbags “but we have an exercise ball,” says Joe Mucheru, “and a Nintendo Wii.”

Mr Mucheru, head of Google East Africa, is spearheading the company’s drive into Africa’s growing software markets. Google is one of the world’s most recognised brands, synonymous with the bleeding edge of the internet economy. Its market capitalisation stands at more than $100bn and its sprawling headquarters in Palo Alto, California, has been both lauded and derided for its unconventional working practices.

Regardless of – or perhaps due to – its peculiarities, Google has continually proven itself devastatingly effective at both anticipating and shaping future trends in the internet economy. However, it seems strange that it sees the future here, in a small but airy office overlooking Nairobi’s well-heeled commercial district of Westlands.

There are still, Mr Mucheru concedes, those within Google who do not yet understand exactly what his operation does. Dubbed a “deployment office”, it combines a mixture of functions, from development and sales to some that are less well defined. This, he says, is a necessity, given the current state of the marketplace. “Traditionally, Google has either opened a sales office, so a place where the primary objective is dollars, or an engineering office, where the primary objective is engineering. You’ve had that happen all throughout the world,” he says.

East Africa is not yet well connected. In fact, much of the continent lacks penetration of fibreoptic cables, keeping the availability of access low and the cost to the consumer high. For Google, which essentially thrives as a gateway to content and makes its revenues through targeted advertisements placed alongside search results, access is vital. Even so, Google sees in the continent’s huge population of under-25s an enormous opportunity. Like many others, he points to the rapid uptake of mobile phones and associated applications as an indicator of consumer demand for technology.

“If you look at the mobile [industry], and how it has grown, it grew like that,” Mr Mucheru says, snapping his fingers. “The take-up is very fast. Technology comes in waves, and if you’re not prepared – if you’re not ready at the beginning of the wave – then you’ll have a big task to climb to the top, if you want to ride it.

“So that, combined with the mission of the company – which is to organise all of the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful – it makes sense to have an office in sub-Saharan Africa, but you can’t then have an office that looks at revenues. You can’t then have an office that’s looking at engineering talent. Not because there’s no talent, but we don’t have an abundance of either,” he explains. In true Californian style, Google Kenya is waiting for a wave. It is a wave that has been building in developed markets for the past few years, changing the economics of technology and having broadly felt – if sometimes shallow – social effects.

A Different and Better version of Entrepreneurship

A Note From One Better Africa

One Better Africa is a new organisation comprising of a young dynamic team that is passionate about creating change through giving. As an organisation we are itching to get things going, we firmly believe that every passion has its destiny, and that this passion for creating social change and awareness has a great destiny in our country and continent. But we cannot do it alone.

Our society has put great emphasis in the youth succeeding against all odds, especially in the time of economic growth in South Africa specifically. Much emphasis has been put in entrepreneurial strides for the emerging youth of South Africa. Structures have been placed to financially aid small business and growing businesses, but it seems little of these funds have been allocated to empowering those that are to follow.
The few that have gained from these structures, such as the Umsobomvu Youth Fund, are but a fraction of those that have little or no proper education in the country, and Africa as a whole. Much more emphasis needs to be placed on creating awareness of these great gaps between those that have and those that have no opportunity to even be educated adequately. The past regimes of apartheid and other regimes through out Africa focused on marginalising racially. The current ‘regime’ has knowingly or not, marginalised people through social classing. If the most needy can be given opportunities to be educated, fed, housed and provided with adequate health facilities, the playing fields will certainly be levelled. Poverty will almost certainly be a thing of the past, and the economic gains speak for themselves. The more South Africa and Africa at large produce skilled men and women, the greater the chance of economic growth and foreign investment, the results of a ripple effect created by giving all the opportunity to learn and grow, to be healthy and live a humane quality of life. And the best place to begin as at the beginning literally. Giving the millions of orphaned children and underprivileged youths the chance to be educated, the chance to choose their own path, and to not have it determined by poverty and circumstances.

Along with education, health is a massive area of concern in South Africa and Africa. With the number of HIV/AIDS infections struggling to go down year after year. However, there are countries such as Uganda that have managed to reduce the number of infections dramatically. Such cases should be used for research and implementation in countries such as South Africa, were the HIV/AIDS infection rates and deaths are the highest in the world. And the number of children orphaned as a result of their parents dying from the disease increasing daily.

Awareness. Africans are not aware of the state of their own continent. We as Africans are not aware of conditions that our neighbours live in. We do not tell our own stories, instead our stories are told by people and structures from abroad. We have not found a way of sharing information in this age of information. Information is without a doubt one of the most important tools in learning, in gaining knowledge and using knowledge to better the conditions our continent finds itself. A method of sharing such information widely and freely needs to be found and implemented at any cost. The stories of our lives, our struggles, concerns and solutions need to be freely aired without fear or judgement.

Zappos CEO Tony Hseih talks about customer service and company culture.

Some African Insight on Education

Interenet Stats for Africa

SEO

Cheaper Broadband for South Africa

Johannesburg - Businesses and consumers are likely to pay much less for their broadband internet as soon as the $650m, 15 000km-long Seacom undersea cabling system goes live at the end of June.

"The effect is likely to be felt immediately," said Seacom CEO, Brian Herlihy.

Most of South Africa's international bandwidth is trafficked along the SAT3 fibre-optic cable to which Telkom and, since April 2008, Neotel, have exclusive access. This new available bandwidth will remove the duopoly, increase competition, improve the quality of broadband and drive market prices lower.

"The cable will enable a whole lot of people to have access to the internet, especially at grass-roots level, and this will then have an enormous impact on the macro-economy," said director of Digital Bridges, Kate Elphick.

All those previously disenfranchised by poor infrastructure will now be able to connect to the internet and develop themselves as entrepreneurs. Also, access to information will be readily available and government services could be delivered with ease using the internet, said Elphick.

Seacom's 1.2 terabits per second (Tb/s) cable capacity far outweighs Telkom's current 30 gigabits per second (Gb/s) capacity. Even if Telkom were to upgrade its system it would only reach 320 Gb/s, said Arthur Goldstuck, MD of technology research firm World Wide Worx.

With the introduction of Seacom's fibre-optic cabling system, broadband would no longer be a scarce resource but rather a valuable commodity.

Dial-up 'to die away'

Even if broadband prices don't drop immediately, it is likely that data caps will increase, giving consumers more for their money while dial-up systems slowly die away, said Goldstruck.

The laying of fibre-optic cables has already begun in the Red Sea with another group of ships en route to South Africa to begin laying cables in two weeks.

By the middle of February a third set of ships will begin laying cables in India, while a fourth starts laying cables in the Mediterranean Sea in March, said Herlihy.

The cables will run from these three points towards Yemen, with the final joining of the cables, known as splicing, taking place in Yemen around mid-May.

"Seacom is real, the time schedule is real and we have a strong head start on new projects," said Herlihy.

Various cable stations in Asia, Europe and the East Africa have been completed. Station construction in Kenya will be completed by the end of January, Tanzanian stations will be finished by the end of February and South African stations are set to be ready by March 15.

The hiring of operational staff brought the cable system one step closer to completion. International experts advised Seacom to hire a large third national party workforce to run the system, but Seacom had other plans.

"We had resisted this advice and were determined to hire local employees," said Herlihy, "I am very pleased, overwhelmed, with the applications we received and we have hired almost all of our employees out of local markets."