Looking to get into the South African startup scene or scratch up on some of your skills? Well, you’ve come to the right place. There are loads of competitions, networking sessions and workshops happening around South Africa and the rest of the continent (namely Kenya, Nigeria and Ghana) that we’ve rounded up to make your life a bit easier.
This article is part of a weekly series that highlights all the top startup competitions, networking sessions, workshops and conferences around South Africa, and the greater region. If you have any event recommendations for us to add to the list, or next week’s, please let us know in the comments below or send us an email.
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Not all of the events are free and some will require booking in advance. Please click on the event names to find out more information.
Cape Town
Come and join world leaders in innovation to hear how they are building the businesses of the future and staying relevant. Join the conversation with these leading minds in innovation. From entrepreneurs to corporate CEO’s, we’ll be discussing the question on everyone’s minds – can corporates really innovate, and how?
Date: 6 March, 6:00pm to 7:30pm
Location: Workshop 17, V&A Waterfront
TechTalkCPT: The VR Paradigm, interactive games & design
March’s #TechTalkCPT takes you through the future of gaming, and how it is constantly driving the tech industry forward. Our speaker Gerard Slee will tell you about digital multidisciplinary design from architecture to game development. explaining what VR is and the impacts it has on various industries.
Date: 8 March, 6:00pm to 8:00pm
Location: 22Seven, 60 Hout Street
For people working in startups, lean (startup) coffee is a weekly 1-hour coffee that runs a mash-up of leancoffee.org with theleanstartup.com. Unlike other startup meetups, lean (startup) coffee is agendaless, speakerless and talks about what you care about. We each propose topics, vote on them and talk about the most popular ones for a few minutes. Come visit to see how it works.
Date: 8 March, 8:30am to 9:30am
Location: TRUTH. coffeecult, 1 Somerset Road, Green Point
Lean Coffee is a structured, but agenda-less meeting. Participants gather, build an agenda, and begin talking. Conversations are directed and productive because the agenda for the meeting is democratically generated.
Date: 8 March, 7:00am to 9:00am
Location: Pulp Kitchen – Willowbridge Shopping Centre, 39 Carl Cronje Drive, Tyger Valley,
Lean Coffee: Southern Suburbs Suburbs
Lean Coffee is a structured, but agenda-less meeting. Participants gather, build an agenda, and begin talking. Conversations are directed and productive because the agenda for the meeting is democratically generated.
Date: 8 March, 7:00am to 9:00am
Location: Knead Bakery Claremont, Palmyra Junction, 10 Pylmyra Road, Claremont
Lean Coffee Methodology focusing on Innovative ideas for the Hout Bay community
Please join us for another monthly meetup focusing on any new innovations or startup ideas happening within Hout Bay and surrounding areas.
Date: 8 March, 8:00am to 9:00am
Location: Workspace Hout Bay Harbour (behind Urban Brewing), Workspace Corner of Harbour Road and Atlantic Skipper Road, Hout Bay Harbour 31 Harbour Road
Founders Forum provides an intimate setting for entrepreneurs to hear from other founders about their entrepreneurial journey. We ask powerful questions to inspiring founders in order to harness key lessons learnt while building a new venture.
Date: 8 March, 5:30pm to 7:00pm
Location: UCT Graduate School of Business, Boardroom 2, MTN Solution Space, 8 Portswood Road
SABAN Angel Investor Training with Llew Claasen
The session will cover everything you need to know to get started as an angel investor in SA, including: the setup process, identifying good opportunities, due diligence, negotiating transaction terms, valuations, deal syndications, balancing your portfolio, your involvement as an investor, second-round financing and exits. The session will also look at best practices for maximising your returns.
Date: 9 March, 3:00pm to 6:00pm
Location: Barclays Rise, 5th Floor, Block B, Woodstock Exchange, 66 Albert Road, Woodstock
FuckUp Nights Cape Town #sharethefailure
After our wildly popular and successful event last month (140+ attendees!), we’re back this month with more speakers, more fuckups and more lessons learned. Fuckup Nights is a global movement born in Mexico in 2012 to share business failure stories. Hundreds of people attend each event to hear three to four entrepreneurs share their failures. Each speaker is given 7 minutes and is able to use 10 images. After each speaker, there’s a question/answer session, as well as time for networking (beers).
Date: 9 March, 5:45pm to 8:45pm
Location: Canterbury Club, 46a Canterbury Street, Zonnebloem
Johannesburg & Pretoria
Lean Coffee is a format for interesting people to have interesting conversations. Note that ‘Lean’ refers to the structure and not necessarily what we talk about.
Date: 7 March, 7:30am to 9:00am
Location: Father Coffee, The Zone, Rosebank
Startup Grind: Andy Higgins (Bidorbuy)
Startup Grind is a global startup community designed to educate, inspire, and connect entrepreneurs. This month we are hosting Andy Higgins, the Founder of Bidorbuy – Africa’s largest online marketplace. He is also the Managing Director of uAfrica – a technology company with a focus on ecommerce. He attended Durban High School, studied Electrical Engineering from UKZN and has an MBA as well from Wits.
Date: 7 March, 5:30pm to 8:30pm
Location: N/A
Focusing on building long-term business relationships through word of mouth referrals. We are looking for professionals in selected industries to join us and were we tap into one another’s networks to grow each of our businesses.
Date: 8 March, 7:00am to 8:30am
Location: The Street Cafe (Rosebank Union Church), 40 St Andrews Road
Kenya
Startup Grind Nairobi: A Fireside Chat with Myke Rabar (Homeboyz)
Startup Grind is a global startup community designed to educate, inspire, and connect entrepreneurs. This month it is hosting Myke Rabar, who built Homeboyz together with his brother, literally from scratch. The two came from deejaying at house parties to a multi-million shilling conglomerate that has branched into radio television, events and software development.
Date: 9 March, 6:00pm to 9:00pm
Location: Mettā Nairobi, 14 Riverside Drive Belgravia Building Nairobi, Nairobi County
Nigeria
Ennovators Breakfast Series [EBS 1701]
Fintech – the term coined for financial services technology is an extremely fast-growing industry worldwide. Nigeria is not an exception. In fact, the total global investment in Fintech between 2010 and 2016 reached as high as $80bn. This edition, EBS 1701, will examine how banks should relate with FinTechs.
Date: 7 March, 8:30am to 1:00pm
Location: Oriental Hotel, 3 Lekki – Epe Express Way, Lagos
Free Business Coaching For Startups
It is designed for business startups and small business owners who wish to move their business to the next level. Many business owners are struggling and are barely able to break even in in these times of recession.
Date: 11 March, 10:30am to 1:30pm
Location: Benin City Siluko Road, Before Oliha Market, Benin City, Edo, Nigeria
Have a startup event that you’d like featured on next week’s event roundup? Send us an email.
Feature image: David Stanley via Flickr.
