How ALA got award-winning airships startup founder going in business

For Spencer Horne — who today runs an award-winning logistics startup that uses autonomous airships to transport goods — the African Leadership Academy (ALA) proved “immensely influential” in helping him start out in business.

Horne (pictured above), who was part of ALA’s inaugural class in 2008, started his first two businesses, a student laundry and a pizza parlour, at the ALA’s Johannesburg campus.

Today he runs logistics startup Cloudline. In 2017, his startup, then called Cargonaught, won the Airbus BizLab AEROmobility pitching competition (see this Ventureburn article). The startup has also worked with the World Food Programme’s Munich-based innovation accelerator as part of Singularity U’s Global Impact Challenge.

“There is a very real difference between learning about entrepreneurship from the pages of a textbook and exercising it to learn the lessons from the real world — within the protection of a setting where failure is embraced and failure has a limited downside,” says Horne.

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The Anzisha Prize seeks to fundamentally and significantly increase the number of job generative entrepreneurs in Africa, and is a partnership between African Leadership Academy and Mastercard Foundation. Through Ventureburn, they hope to share inspirational and relatable stories of very young (15 to 22 year old) African entrepreneurs and the people that support them. [learn more]

Read more: Startup Cargonaught off to France after winning Airbus BizLab AEROmobility pitch

Featured image: Cloudline founder Spencer Horne pitching in 2017 at the Airbus BizLab AEROmobility pitching competition in Cape Town