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