Vinny Lingham, Matthew Buckland to chat ‘Silicon Cape to Silicon Valley’

On Monday, 7 March Gyft founder and Dragon Vinny Lingham will join publisher and agency head Matthew Buckland for a fireside chat hosted by the Silicon Cape Initiative.

The event, titled “Silicon Cape to Silicon Valley” will cover Lingham’s entrepreneurial journey from his days as co-founder of companies such as Clicks2Customers and Yola, to his recent successes in Silicon Valley with the likes of Gyft, which he sold for a reported US$50-million and Civic, his new data protection service, which just raised US$2.75-million.

As a co-founder of Silicon Cape who has also made it big in Silicon Valley, Lingham is uniquely positioned to offer insights into what the former could learn from the latter, as well as what opportunities are available to South African startups looking to stake a claim in the world’s most renowned tech and innovation centre.

An internet entrepreneur and businessman, with a long history of digital successes to his name, Buckland is the founder of Creative Spark — a digital agency and publisher which was acquired in 2015 by UK firm M&C Saatchi PLC (LSE: SAA), the holding group of M&C Saatchi.

Buckland is also the founder of Burn Media, which includes this site, as well as Gearburn, Motorburn, and Memeburn.

The Burn Media publisher previously headed the online division of the Mail & Guardian, thereafter he started 20fourlabs at news24.com, the largest South African online news publisher, owned by Naspers. While at the Mail & Guardian Buckland founded Thought Leader. In 2015 he was selected as a “Master of Digital”, sitting down with actor Idris Elba for a “Q&A Session”.

The event kicks off at 13h00 at Workshop 17 at the V&A Waterfront and ends at 15h00. The first 50 tickets are allocated on a first come, first serve basis and are free to the community.