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Botswana food delivery startup MyFoodness wins Seedstars Gaborone
Botswana food delivery platform MyFoodness has been selected as the winner of Seedstars Gaborone pitch event, which took place on Friday (9 November). MyFoodness was placed first for its food ordering and delivery app which has cashless payment solutions embedded in it. Music streaming platform Moments was placed second, while artificial intelligence (AI) powered personal assistant Mohiri came third for its solution which helps users get hired by alerting them when there are jobs in their respective areas which match their profile. MyFoodness will now represent Botswana at the Seedstars regional and global summits By winning Seedstars Gaborone, MyFoodness will go onto represent Botswana at the Seedstars Africa summit in Tanzania...
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Top startup events in South Africa, Africa you should know about this week [12/11/2018]
This week is Global Entrepreneurship Week. Throughout the week The Global Entrepreneurship Network (GEN) will host a series of events at its Johannesburg campus 22 On Sloane. Register for the events here. If you can't make that then you'll definitely want to attend the fourth annual Township Business Innovation Summit which takes place in Tembisa on Friday and Saturday (16 and 17 November). AfricArena 2018 takes place on Thursday and Friday (15 and 16 November) at Century City. The conference will feature keynote speeches and panel discussions with top speakers from Europe and Africa, as well as pitches in which startups will battle...
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SBC AfriTech startups have raised €600k and secured 20 pilot agreements [Updated]
Startupbootcamp (SBC) AfriTech participants have been able to secure 20 proof-of-concept, pilot and commercial agreements and collectively raise €600 000 in funding to date, the Cape Town based tech accelerator announced yesterday (8 November). The announcement was made at a demo day held at Old Mutual's head office in Cape Town which was attended by over 200 investors and corporate leaders. During the event, which was held to conclude the accelerator's second cohort, several of the startups that participated in the accelerator's 13-week programme announced that they had either secured agreements or were in discussions with corporates, investors and government entities. SBC AfriTech's second cohort was...
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‘Seedstars regional summit to help foster meaningful discussions’ [Q&A]
Having successfully held 15 pitch events -- with another taking place today (9 November) in Botswana -- and with four more to go, Seedstars World is close to wrapping up its annual tour of some of Africa's top tech startup ecosystems. For those in the know, that means one thing -- the organisation's annual Africa regional summit is just around the corner. This year's edition will take place in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania on 13 December. Ventureburn readers can get discounted tickets (see here). Read more: Here’s how to qualify for 10% discount on Seedstars Africa Summit tickets The 2018 Seedstars Africa Summit will...
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Cape Town Startup Week 2018 to celebrate city’s ‘vibrant’ tech scene
Over the last decade Cape Town has grown to become arguably Africa's tech startup capital. To celebrate this the city's leading tech organisations yesterday (8 November) unveiled Cape Town Startup Week (CTSUW), which will take place between 3 and 6 December. The event is a result of collaboration between tech organisations Silicon Cape, Heavy Chef, Startup Grind Cape Town, Future Females, Startupbootcamp Afritech, Workshop17, Inner City Ideas Cartel and the CiTi. Commenting in a statement announcing the launch of the event on Heavy Chef's blog yesterday, Silicon Cape interim general manager Kerry Petrie said over the past 12 months, the city's tech ecosystem has been hard at work to build a "vibrant community". Cape...
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When it comes to impact investing, integrity is a two-way street [Opinion]
After six months of cultivating Engineers Without Borders's (EWB) East Africa venture portfolio, and engaging with upwards of 100 social entrepreneurs in Uganda and Kenya, I have come to realise that investors can do better to nurture emerging innovators, to strengthen their capabilities and reduce their risk profile. EWB is one of the handful of organisations proactively enabling early-stage social businesses in sub-Saharan Africa that have the potential to meaningfully improve the lives of vulnerable populations. As an early-stage impact investor, we have learned that the process to qualify a social enterprise for funding is often lopsided. Investors want to make smart...
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Silvertree move to take majority stakes in startups nets mixed view from founders [Updated]
SA investment company Silvertree Internet Holdings is buying up companies left, right and centre -- ahead of a planned listing in 2023 -- relegating many of the founders to mere operators of the businesses they once founded. Not all are happy about it. It comes as in July, Business Day reported that Silvertree, expects to grow annual revenues to more than $300-million by 2023 (up from $40-million at present) and will then consider going public. Its portfolio includes 12 firms in which it has invested in since 2013. They include among others Pricecheck.co.za, CompareGuru.co.za, Ucook.co.za and CarZar.co.za. Last year CompareGuru co-founder Ryan Marx (pictured above) sold his...
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We’re set to become first tokenised African tech accelerator – Kenya’s iHub
Kenyan hub and tech accelerator iHub today (8 October) announced that it will digitise all of its company assets using blockchain technology, and claims that this will make it the first tokenised African tech accelerator. The accelerator made the announcement at the ALN Africa Conference during the ALN Africa Investment Conference which ends today in Dubai. The hub announced that it is partnering with Raise, a Bahamian and Kenyan startup that aims to make it easier to digitally manage and trade corporate assets by providing a compliant way to securitise assets using blockchain technologies iHub will work with Bahamian and Kenyan startup Raise...
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Ghana’s CowTribe nets $300k from US foundation – it’s biggest investment yet
Ghanaian agritech startup CowTribe has secured a $300 000 investment from the US-based Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation. The startup made the announcement earlier today in a post on Twitter. In a subsequent phone call with Ventureburn, CowTribe co-founder and CEO Awin Peter (pictured above, second from right) said the investment was in the form of a convertible note. The deal was concluded a week ago. He added that the investment was the "biggest" the startup had secured since he founded the Tamale-based startup in 2015 with COO Alima Bawah (pictured above, second from left). In addition to the funding, the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation will also assist the...
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What Skinny Sbu saga tells us about backing black entrepreneurs [Opinion]
Late last month, SA social media was briefly consumed with a TV interview in which entrepreneur Sibusiso Ngwenya asked for R5-million in funding. In the interview, the Skinny Sbu Socks founder (pictured above) detailed why his business has struggled, but also brushed off an offer of advice from Thulani Thabethe from 2Larnie Solutions. This is problematic. If we’re going to grow a culture of entrepreneurship in South Africa, we need more Thulanis and entrepreneurs like Sibusiso to listen to them. Because if South Africa has entrepreneurs who are not only willing to take the leap of starting their own businesses, but can...
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Obsession with raising $1bn to become a unicorn is wrong says Silvertree man