Whispers of an entrepreneur

South African Flag Daily I am inundated with emails to apply for our Apprenticeship – applications from as remote and as far as the villages of Kwa Zulu, to Lusikisiki in the Eastern Cape and Limpopo. All these applicants have a few things in common – irrespective of race, they are all mostly young, between 17 and 30 years of age and looking for an opportunity to get a jump-start on life and career building.  The unsuccessful ones as applicants – the ones that touch me the most, are the ones who have no form of tertiary education. No further education and training – just a matric and passion to make it one day and live the proverbial “South African dream”. These young people having been born between 1984 and 1996 have largely lived in a society free of Apartheid, been afforded all the freedoms of democracy and grew up an era of opportunities for all. Yet this is not the case. We are arguably worse off as a country now - with an increased population size, cent...

As the world foremost financially well-off individuals, sit and discuss the fate of the world, risk, growth potential and development. I am can’t help to sit and wonder if I am wrong/immoral to want to one day sit at the tables at Davos. WEF 2014 Twitter #hashtag conversation topics If entrepreneurs are the rock stars of the business world, then some entrepreneurs must be rock gods – names present at Davos that come to mind are Bill Gates , Enrique Razon , Aliko Dangote and many more. I am sure all these gents ever set out to do was to have fun, do what they like and maybe change the world. Now rewinding back to some many decades ago, when these men got started – it all started with a dream. Yes we all dream, we dream big and small dreams, we dream wild and cautious dreams – we all dream. As American author, Kathrine Paterson once observed, “a dream without a plan is just a wish”. It has been my experience that only well defined, crystallised plans are the ones w...

Android Apps Anyone who has spent a minute with me, would know that I am evangelistic on the growth of a mobile development market in Africa. I envision an economic opportunity of a life time, which I have on occasion called the gold rush of my generation. Big words – I know. In Cape Town, mobile developers and boutique mobile development shops have increased over the past 3 years in an alarming rate. The introduction or emergence of foreign behemoths, entering the market to essentially explore and exploit the opportunities has led to a supply side push – which invariably will lead to conditions for an artificial market demand for skills. In a market like ours where skilled persons are few, a demand frenzy will occur and income inflation is likely. Where every IT graduate has now become a mobile App developer and when two or more are together, it is called a “company”, a lot of fly-by-night operators are on the rise. In other words – the increase in the numbe...