Posted on May 26th, 2009 by Carel
Filed under Business, Carel's Conversations, Entrepreneurship, South Africa, Technology, Venture Capital
Hasso Plattner’s African Venture fund was launched in early 2008. In February 2009 I attended the fund’s Emerging Market Africa conference in South Africa. HPVA has invested ZAR80mm of ZAR350mm in 5 companies to date and expect to invest in at least 5 more. HPVA doesn’t disclose investments and shareholding, although they did indicate that [...]
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Posted on May 21st, 2009 by Carel
Filed under South Africa, Technology
MXit is a South African social networking company with 12 million subscribers around the world. According to MXit it is “a next generation Mobile Instant Messenger that connects you to a world of expression, using both instant messaging and social networking.”
MXit recently launched an iPhone app. I’ve been a beta user for a few weeks. [...]
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Posted on April 26th, 2009 by Carel
Filed under Entrepreneurship, SAP, South Africa, Technology
Thanks to the Collaboration@Rural project, SAP enables small grocers in rural South Africa to sell the goods, their customers actually need – through a mobile delivery system.
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Posted on March 19th, 2009 by Carel
Filed under Business, South Africa, Technology
On March 11, 2009 GrandCentral finally became Google Voice. I’ve used GrandCentral since November 2006 and found it to be a very useful and reliable service. David Poque does a great job of explaining GrandCentral’s original “one number for life” approach. In July 2007 GrandCentral was acquired by Google and for awhile people thought that [...]
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Posted on March 17th, 2009 by Carel
Filed under Entrepreneurship, South Africa, Technology, Venture Capital
I had the distinct pleasure to visit my homeland, South Africa, to attend Hasso Plattner Ventures Africa’s first conference after forming HPV’s ZAR350mm VC fund in early 2008. Andrea Böhmert, one of HPV Africa’s co-managing partners, invited me to participate on a panel discussing “Local entrepreneurs going international”. The panel consisted of:
Herman Heunis – CEO [...]
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Posted on February 27th, 2009 by Carel
Filed under Entrepreneurship, South Africa, Technology, Venture Capital
I previously blogged about SynthaSite’s charismatic CEO, Vinny Lingham (Wow, I see Vinny has been selected as a 2009 Young Global Leader!). SynthaSite seems to be growing by leaps and bounds amid all the bad economic news.
On February 17, 2009 Synthasite announced a $20mm in second round funding from Reinet Investments. I received this email [...]
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Posted on August 13th, 2008 by Carel
Filed under Apple, Business, HCM, SAP, South Africa
Update: January 1, 2009 – I’m not with ROC anymore.
First off, I apologize for the lengthy silence. I’ve been busy! As of July 1, I’m the CEO of ROC Americas, Inc. and a board member of ROC Global. ROC’s vision is to be THE Global SAP HCM specialist, and after just 7 weeks with ROC [...]
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Posted on June 6th, 2008 by Carel
Filed under Entrepreneurship, South Africa, Technology
Listed below are some of the best websites from Africa and South Africa. Another good source of African IT news is ITWeb. My friend Thomas Otter writes some very insightful posts about technology in South Africa. Google recently expanded into Africa as well. Google has a specific site for South Africa.
Synthasite is a site where people [...]
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Posted on May 19th, 2008 by Carel
Filed under Entrepreneurship, HCM, South Africa, Technology
Martin Sacks and HumanConcepts just announced the release of OrgPlus Enterprise Blueprint, further solidifying the company’s position as leading provider of workforce decision support software.
OrgPlus Enterprise Blueprint uses a Web 2.0 solution and allows executives and managers from across a company to collaborate on organizational changes and planning decisions.
Martin has been the CEO of HumanConcepts [...]
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Posted on April 30th, 2008 by Carel
Filed under Business, Entrepreneurship, South Africa, Technology
Seems like Pieter de Villiers is a good name for South African success stories. There’s the rugby player, the hurdler, the business consultant, and the IT whiz. De Villiers (the whiz) is the CEO of Clickatell, the first (and leading) global high-speed service provider of bulk SMS messages. Its 8,000 customers can connect in [...]
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