Knife Capital announces final call for Grindstone Accelerator 2015 intake

The Cape Town, South Africa-based Grindstone Accelerator programme from Knife Capital is calling for its 2015 intake of scalable innovation-driven businesses.

If you haven’t heard, Knife Capital is a Southern African growth equity fund manager and advisory firm that focuses on innovation-driven ventures with proven traction. Its accelerator programme, Grindstone, sets out to supply ten companies annually with relevant networks, gap analysis, business support, coaching, funding, and so forth.

With a strong belief in engineering growth, the accelerator’s previous intake found that all ten companies experienced an average of 61% increase in revenue while mastering business fundamentals. A really exciting stat for any business plan.

Furthermore, between June 2013 and June 2014 the 10 Grindstone companies achieved the following:

• Created 43 new direct jobs;
• Added R43 million in revenue across the ten companies;
• Increased their number of key customers by 120%;
• Doubled their company valuations on average;
• Increased their mastering of business fundamentals index by 20% – from 65% to 78%.

“The biggest success stories are still unfolding on the back of inbound interest in investment-ready companies with funding, partnerships and exits in the air,” writes co-founder of Knife Capital Keet van Zyl in a recent blog post.

Some of the companies that participated include radar tech company iKubu, stationary outfit OfficeBox, personalised radio startup iono.fm and Apurimac Media which is a marketing specialist.

The deadline for the applications is 2 November 2014, so get to it! The final ten will then be selected in mid-December.

Companies keen to join the programme need to have the following criteria:

• Existing South African SMEs
• Post-revenue with positive customer testimonials and traction
• Innovation-driven
• High growth potential in search of achieving scalability
• Profile and passion of the management team
• Vision for the future
• Market attractiveness
• SA Job creation ability and ‘success story’ potential