If you're a South African student with a flair for business, check this out. It's a brand new conference designed especially for the likes of you. Founded this year, the Young Entrepreneur Connect Conference aims to "build an entrepreneurial culture among students in South Africa". The inaugural theme of the conference is "The Year Of The Futurepreneur". Through inspirational stories from real-world entrepreneurs, the conference hopes to provide first-hand recounts of how businesses got started and to equip attendees with ...

I’ll admit that I was skeptical about No Picket Fence, essentially a Quora for South African entrepreneurs. Like the popular question and answer site by ex-Facebook CTO, Adam D'Angelo, No Picket Fence is a knowledge market, but niched to cater exclusively for South African entrepreneurs. With a lot of functionality overlap I wondered, “what’s the point?" I’ve been lurking around the site for months now and it’s clear my initial skepticism has no merit. There’s something special here. Founders Michael Bouchier ...

The inaugural Tech Trailblazers Awards is calling all innovative tech startups to apply, especially those in emerging markets. The competition has a strong focus on finding "green" startups that help companies or data centres save money while saving the planet, but there are also categories for big data, cloud, infosecurity, mobile, networking, storage and virtualisation. A separate emerging markets category is open only to countries based outside of the Middle East, North America, Europe, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Israel, Japan, Singapore, Australia ...

For many years I've been saying that every company is a media company and writing about what that means, as well as its importance to business. At first people were puzzled by that statement but these days it is much better understood. Its importance has increased tremendously and it is now fueling multi-million dollar acquisitions. This week, Fleishman Hillard, one of the world's largest PR firms, and GMR Marketing acquired Amos Content Group in a deal estimated at as much as US$10 ...

This is very cool. South African-based entrepreneurial initiative Silicon Cape is leading a trade mission of 10 startups to London to pitch their ideas and raise capital from UK-based investors. The trip is open to any startup looking to expand beyond South Africa's borders, and that thinks it could benefit from UK investment. According to the Silicon Cape, it's organizing the mission in a bid to: Get local startups in front of investors who are eager to invest in the ...

Tim Cook is Silicon Valley's highest paid CEO, but you already knew that. What do other high profile execs earn? Personal finance and credit service comparison company, NerdWallet, created a tool that shows the compensation of the highest paid executive for each of the S&P 500 companies. We delved into the data for 2011 and ranked the highest earners for some of the more well known US tech companies. Perhaps, like us you are simply curious, but there are some interesting things ...

The team behind a new startup comedy set in present-day San Francisco, is utilising Kickstarter to bring the project to life. Simply called the startup, the film bills itself as comedy-drama and aims to show the "the many, ever-changing sides—from the absurd to the sublime, but mostly the hilarious—of life inside an early-stage startup." The project is gaining traction. With 26 days to go, 52 backers have pledged a total of US$11 565 towards the goal of US$25 000 which ...

Getting a business off the ground takes time, dedication and the occasional bit of sweat and blood. You should be able to pack that all into fifty-four hours right? That's how long people will have to pitch, work and launch their business ideas at Cape Town's second Startup Weekend. These high-pressure events have been a staple of Silicon Valley for some time now, but are relatively new to the South African scene. The 54 hour event essentially provides the networking, ...

Naspers is big. Very big. As in a market cap of US$ 21.3-billion big. A large portion of that is down to its explosive growth since 2008. CEO Koos Bekker has overseen much of that growth, benefiting all the while through the 11.7-million direct and indirect shares he holds in the company. In fact, it's estimated that Bekker's shares in the company are currently worth around R6-billion (US$730-million). That's some serious pocket change. Then again this is a man who ...

The most recent Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) report shows that total early-stage entrepreneurial activity (TEA) in South Africa remains “a matter of grave concern”. The GEM’s TEA metric measures the participation of individuals in early-stage entrepreneurial activity and conveys the percentage of the adult population between the ages of 18 and 64 years that is in the process of starting a business or has recently done so. Although the GEM’s measure of TEA shows that South Africa’s rate in ...