You may not know Adii Pienaar, but he is one of the more interesting entrepreneurs in South Africa. He was co-founder of the highly successful Woothemes, and his “making new mistakes” – setting up a couple of ventures and writing a book. I have followed and participated in these ventures – including a brilliant idea that never took off, called Public Beta. He has written an extremely important post called What South African Tech Needs. It is a post that helps tech founders to adjust their minds to the realities of starting up in South Africa. Go read it.
He captures the issues by noting that successful South African companies are:
- Not overly sexy (in the way that Instagram or AirBnB is);
- Bootstrapped (at least, initially); and
- Take a considerable amount of time to get to where they are today.
The article is a reality check in other ways, with him noting:
- The advantages of working in a developing country both in terms of investor interest, and lower costs. It is for instance, instructive to note that there are over one thousand investors interested in South Africa, on AngelList.
- The potential that may exist in business-to-business (B2B) markets.
- The importance of building a product or service, and being able to take the next steps.
Adii is looking to support entrepreneurs with an intriguing offer. In Adii’s own words:
I’d be happy to make (up to) R100k available to an entrepreneur (or entrepreneurs) that meets the following criteria:
- You read my post above and found yourself nodding your head to most things.
- You’re a builder and a maker who can at least put a prototype or V1 together.
- You have a B2B idea that either solves a great pain for other businesses or adds a lot of value (as a vitamin). The former gets bonus points.
- Your idea has a potential, global target audience.
- You’re hard-working and are willing to work your ass off to create an awesome company.
- You’re based in Cape Town and willing to meet with me regularly (in Stellenbosch or Paarl) for office hours.
- You’d love to add your name to the success stories that I’ve listed above.
For more details, and contact information please visit his site at the following link. Click here.