Cape Town is enjoying a boom in tech start-ups, with companies like Yola.com and Yeigo showing significant promise.
“The overarching reason for Cape Town’s success is due to the fact that start-ups in Cape Town have access to a highly developed ecosystem in the ICT environment, encompassing talent, access to risk capital, infrastructure, support and mentorship,” says Joshin Raghubar, chairman and founder of iKineo, and board member of The Bandwidth Barn. “This has caused Cape Town to thrive as an innovation hub for South Africa.”
He says there are three main reasons for Cape Town’s success as a start-up venue.
The first is the “trust economy”, largely driven by the university culture of the city.
“Many ideas and start-ups in Cape Town originate from university,” says Raghubar. “This shared history and common ground, coupled with a strong culture of sharing ideas and innovation, has carried through into business and feeds this economy of trust.”
Dylan Kohlstadt, of start-up marketing company Shift One, says: “The fear of sharing ideas breeds small thinking. It takes trust for an entrepreneur to share their ‘big idea’ without the threat of it being stolen by someone else. If anything, we become bigger and better by helping each other.”
A collaborative culture also contributes to the city’s success. Start-ups in Cape Town, whether at dream-stage to fully established, meet on a regular basis to share ideas, cross-pollinate skills and to network. This often takes place at the many start up grinds, entrepreneur-focused events and workshops facilitated across the city.
Incubators and accelerators are a vital part of the ecosystem that supports the boom in tech start-ups in Cape Town. Most incubators offer services to start-ups that would include office space, mentorship, training, business skills and more, in order to give start-ups the right tools for attaining success.
Incubators offer a number of benefits, including: shared work spaces; networking and relationships; mentorship and training; and funding and BEE opportunities.