SA Rocks

I adore entrepreneurs. For the guts it takes to risk your livelihood on a great idea. For the fact that life rewards these brave beings with the fastest, grittiest schooling and gruelling tests to prove commitment. For the fact that entrepreneurs always get in over their heads if the idea is big enough, worthy enough.

The guarantees that come with choosing this path are, being screwed over at some point, emptying your bank accounts at others, and taking an ego hammering from critics and the market.. among other exciting challenges. But those who make it out the other side are ALIVE and interesting and add value to the world and get rewarded accordingly.

In South Africa we have a pitifully small percentage of people with the guts to dare to be an entrepreneur – don’t believe me? check here

Henk Kleynhans is one of those who is rocking the game with style. Not because he hasn’t had his fair share of scary and absurd obstacles, legal, financial, logistical. But he keeps proving that if you play the game with clean hands, have good taste in problems and gather a strong network of mentors and fellow maniacs.. the gods will finally smile broadly on you.

Henk has won numerous awards for his company, Skyrove. It launched in 2005 as the world’s first prepaid wireless hotspot service. And he doesn’t just keep the business all to himself – he enables others who want to run their own businesses to get started easily in this HUGELY promising industry >> Go check out Skyrove’s opportunities for entrepreneurs (a little residual income never hurts)

I’m so excited to watch where Henk is going to go next, especially after the very healthy injection of venture capital from Lingham Capital (good job Vinny!)

Henk is an asset to the tech industry in South Africa, particularly for the young entrepreneurs who need to know how the hell to deal with the challenges that we all undoubtedly face starting our own businesses. Get to know him and link in before he goes stratospheric.

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I met Donna McCallum newly returned from Argentina, enroute to Jozi and ablaze with spark for a new project called Fairy Godmother inc. She had been working with Mignon Lotz-Keyser of Peer Power (hit the Bandwidth Barn & check it out if you’re an entrepreneur in Cape Town – it is power!)

Donna makes her own luck like no other, and she helps others tap into their own daring realms beyond corporate slavery or lack of direction/confidence. The heart of her mission is to help those she works with discover their dreams ..and then helps them translate it into practical reality. Don’t let her fairy dust fool you, she brings in the clarity of hard-nosed applied business strategy learnt from her own business successes here and in San Francisco through the dot-com boom. She’s also the powerhouse manager behind Verity, who graced us at one of the 27dinners.

If there was a quote that I believe she embodies it would be this one be Theodore Roethke:

“What we need are more people who specialise in the impossible“

Donna disregards the notion that to be successful in business one should dress the part & appear serious to be taken seriously. It takes a lot of courage & confidence to move in the other direction, to embody the quirkiness of your character, and rock a pair of wings on the back of a finely tailored business.suit, which she pulls off in style.

Success and international recognition have caught up with her and she jets off to Europe to take her workshops to Germany & London. If you’ve ever longingly ached to do something that you think would be utterly absurd, but afraid that you’ll plunge headlong into destitution if you follow your heart.. I recommend a chat with the Fairy Godmother. The world of work is changing and the kind of inspiration and leadership required for the wild times to come will be those who coax us out of the Calvinist work ethic, from tired old Industrial Age hangovers. Donna has exactly the right mix of expertise and fearless character to inspire SA entrepreneurs into action.

She’s also an alarmingly potent networker. She’s just joined us in the blogosphere and on Facebook so get in contact.. and if you’re in London, pop into her workshop & connect with this force for good while you can.

Addendum: just dashed down to St George’s Mall to support the Fairy Godmother in launching the Free Hugs Project in South Africa. Should be hitting Jozi soon.. watch the Facebook group for updates. Oh and watch the clip if you haven’t seen it before, there’s a reason why this thing went viral. Respect for bringing it home Donna!

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WOW.. what an interesting week this has been. Have you been finding that there are more opportunities, changes, things to learn, things to read, people to meet than you’ve got time for?

.. the feeling of how the hell am I EVER going to catch up?!

I woke up this morning with the words of powerful exponent of innovation and leadership – GE’s Jack Welch – cutting through the clutter.

Shun the incremental, and look for the quantum leap

As South Africans this kind of thinking is crucial to our success. Anyone who’s travelled through countries with developed economies and you’ll agree that we haven’t a hope of catching up if we choose a tried & tested, conservative, incremental route to get there.

I laughingly inferred that the Patricia de Lille camp had strategically been campaigning a la Bullard on the post that I thought I was posting for SA Rocks on Monday. South Africa has slipped backed again on the Global Entrepreneurial Monitor’s annual report. Nigeria kicks our butt in entrepreneurial confidence, and hungrily using any tools that give inexpensive leverage.

Technology, particularly web and mobile technology offer us the opportunity to circumvent the heavy infrastructure that was historically required to be a world force. South Africa’s success in business or politics requires a perception shift, from working hard to working smart.. the lifeblood charged with embracing innovation. Innovation requires leadership to provide a solid framework, and guidance but NOT control. Do our leaders have that level of courage?

“Small companies have huge competitive advantages. They are uncluttered, informal. They thrive on passion and ridicule bureaucracy. Small companies grow on good ideas – regardless of their source. They need everyone, involve everyone, and reward or remove people based on their contribution to winning. Small companies dream big dreams and set the bar high – increments and fractions don’t interest them.”

Confidence always precedes courage. The risk to venture into using emerging technology or taking the entrepreneurial leap, is most often not taken because of a lack of knowledge. Being clear kills fear.

I’m helping to design the Nomadic Marketing course running at the UCT Graduate School of Business using the principles of tech-enhanced brain-based learning to make a daunting subject relevant and immediately useful. [So if you find yourself at sitting next to someone at dinner who's in digital denial.. send them the link. They NEED to know how easy it actually is to use technology without being a geek or spending a fortune now]

South Africa hasn’t got the luxury of waiting for the hand-me-down, safe applications of social technology if we have big dreams for our little country.

BUT if we’re happy hanging out on the benches .. then slamming blogger’s rights, or waiting till the “playing field” is levelled is the surest path. Uninspired, derivative success is guaranteed, we’re getting there: slowly and incrementally.

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Hi Yeigites!
Welcome to SA Rocks!! We think you guys/girls rocks so lets begin!

SA Rocks (SAR): Tell me about the people behind the product? (Just a few sentences on each of the founders!!)

Yeigo(Y): Yeigo was started by three B.Bus.Sci students, Wilter, Lungisa and myself. In 2006, we were also joined by Sebastian and Andrew. This founding group of five is responsible for the first version of Yeigo as well as the upcoming Yeigo Version 2.0.
Please refer to descriptions on the Yeigo Blog where all the members introduce themselves.

Rapelang: http://blog.yeigo.com/authors/48/Rapelang-Rabana

Wilter: http://blog.yeigo.com/authors/49/Wilter-du-Toit

Lungisa: http://blog.yeigo.com/authors/66/Lungisa-Matshoba

Andrew: http://blog.yeigo.com/authors/67/Andrew-Snowden

Sebastian: http://blog.yeigo.com/authors/69/Sebastian-Murray-Roberts

SAR: Why/How did this project come about?

Y: This is described in Wilter’s opening post.

SAR: Come down to my level and tell me how exactly Yeigo works?

Y: Register an account on our website with just your mobile number and email address. We send you an SMS which allows you to install Yeigo. Open Yeigo, and make calls for no charge to other Yeigo users and really cheap calls to non-Yeigo users. Just enter a number, or select a number from your phonebook and press the green dial button while you are in the Yeigo application, to start a call. Test credits are provided to test calls to non-Yeigo users.

Yeigo is able to offer this service my sending voice conversations over the internet, otherwise known as VoIP. The user therefore faces the cost of connecting to the internet, whether they are using Wi-Fi or 3G.

A large and growing knowledgebase covering a range of topics is available on the site.

SAR: I am interested in the legality of Yeigo… am I going to go prison if I use it?

Y: In 2005, legislation was passed in South Africa legalising the provision and use of VoIP. Our view is that the legislation did not discriminate between how you access these VoIP services, whether you use a fixed-line connection or connect through your mobile phone. Exactly how the operators will react is unclear, nor has Icasa provided a conclusive response.

There has been no indication that users will be penalised for using VoIP services.

SAR: Have you had some flack from the big cellular providers?

Y: The cellular operators have not made any contact with Yeigo.

SAR: ave you had any overseas interest?

Y: Yes, a number of our users are coming from the US and the UK.

SAR: Do you have any exciting new products or improvements on Yeigo coming up?

Yeigo Version 2.0 will be out in a matter of days and includes interconnection with IM clients like MSN.

SAR: At what rate is Yeigo growing? Are there Bazillions of people using it yet?

Y: Yeigo released in February 2007. First local public announcement was made end of March, and since then there has been strong interest in the product. Marketing of Yeigo will begin shortly. Right now, its very early days.

SAR: How commercial is Yeigo going? How many handsets are compatible and is this number growing quickly?

Y: Please refer to the list of compatible handsets.

Yeigo is working to support more phones and realizes the importance of this. Where possible, Yeigo will supply a version.

SAR: Thank you so much for talking to SA Rocks! Please keep us in the know and let our readers know how to take on Telkom and the Cellular bigwigs!

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Fellow SA Rocktonian Max Kaizen wrote a piece this week about innovation in South Africa and it certainly spurred some heated debate amongst readers of this blog. I have to admit it also got me thinking because web-based innovators in South Africa are often called copy-cats for their apparent lack of originality.

So I decided that I’d do some searching to find some innovation and I registered as an attendee at the Futurex expo at the Sandton Convention Center. I figured that I’d go there and find lots of unique and innovative ideas that I could then report-back on and write about in my Technology Thursday post and I headed off yesterday morning to the most comprehensive showcase of products, services and solutions for big, small and home business.

My mandate was simple – find innovative products developed and/or manufactured in South Africa. I really wanted to find any technology that would promote the theme of SA Rocks and prove the critics wrong.

After spending three hours going through two large conference halls filled with hundreds of exhibitors I ended up with finding a grand total of zero innovative products made by us fellow South Africans.

What I did find was the large corporate giants showcasing their various software and broadband offerings and a whole bunch of smaller players showcasing products that were developed all over the world except South Africa.

It’s the first time also that I’ve seen Futurex promoting investment opportunities for countries like China and India and both countries had entire sections at Futurex that they could use to showcase their products to our market. This is fantastic to a point but not what I was looking for.

Futurex last year combined the expo with Linuxworld which I felt really helped promote the idea of Open Source and Linux to companies in South Africa. So much innovation is happening on the Linux front and for me the link between the two was very important and helped promote this innovation to big business.

After a disappointing expo my challenge now is to prove to the critics that South Africa is innovative and I’d like you to help me with this.

I need a list of home grown innovation so that we can shut the critics up so if you know of any innovative products, websites or services developed by South Africans that could be included in this list then please post a link to that website in the comments below.

Depending on the feedback received we might even be able to start a web directory on this site to help promote these home grown innovations so let’s get this thing going.

By Justin Hartman

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There’s a system that’s been around in this country since 2002 called the Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) yet up until now it has remained largely behind the scenes due to setting the AFIS system up.

The R120-million system is supplied by France with the financial support of the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) but in order for it to become operational 4,5 million fingerprint cards had to be configured on the computer system.

At present, fingerprints are matched by manually searching through the 4,5 million recorded prints but AFIS will be able to match fingerprints within 48 hours as opposed to the approximate 40 working days it takes to do so manually.

One of the added advantages of AFIS is the ID Tool machine which is manufactured locally by a company called Face Technologies.

The ID Tool machine is a small mobile device which plugs directly into the AFIS database and is being used by the SAPS to identify wanted suspects and criminals. By placing a suspect’s finger on the tiny touch pad, police can find out if they are wanted for any crime in a matter of seconds.

This week the ID Tool Machine was in the news largely all thanks to the efforts of John Robbie of Radio 702. On Tuesday, John asked businesses to phone in and sponsor an ID Tool machine at a cost of R22 500 each.

Radio 702 wanted to try and get South African businesses to sponsor 20 machines in total but by the end of the show a total of 78 machines had been sponsored which in turn saved the SAPS a total of R1,775,000.

In a country where crime is a huge concern it’s a great to see technology, the SAPS and businesses taking the right steps in trying to make this a better country for all.

Justin Hartman

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Ideate just blogged about the following two businesses. These two initiatives definitely deserve a mention on SA Rocks because they are doing some rocking things to better our country and help charitable causes!

ArgusX2: www.argusx2.co.za

These guys are going to do the Cape Argus cycle challenge twice in one day to raise money for charity. You go boys!!

2twenty6: www.2twenty6.co.za

2twenty6 has set themselves a goal of R4 million to raise for 2007. They intend on using all the money to help find a cure for Leukaemia, Lymphoma and Myeloma.

Thank you Ideate for the heads up and thanks to these two incredible initiatives for their positivity! Visit their sites today and help them reach their goals!

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