When hosting my ‘Payroll with a Voice’ Seminars, I always make sure to ask the attending entrepreneurs when introducing themselves to also mention their true reason for starting their business. The disappointing thing is money always outnumbers all other reasons. Is this wrong though? No it’s not, I tend to feel sorry for those who give this reason because this is one of the major reasons why businesses fail. People who start their businesses mainly for money end up failing because their reason for starting the business was not compelling enough.  read more »

What’s the one thing that successful companies have in common? It’s not the filthy rich directors, it’s not the beautiful and expensive offices and prime real estate, it’s not even the unlimited client entertainment budgets. The simple answer is that they are all compliant with business, government as well as industry regulation. Is your company compliant as per SARS, Labour Department and other industry regulations?  read more »

Angel Investors are a special breed. They take on the riskiest
investments at a stage that VCs will not engage. That’s why they call
them angels. For a struggling entrepreneur they are heaven sent. They
are usually experienced entrepreneurs that have built and sold several
companies. They love to help start companies, solve the tough problems,
build a great team, and be actively involved in finding customers,
partners, and key employees. They tend to invest in companies that are
within a one hour drive so that they can be actively involved and  read more »

This a toast to those entrepreneurs who are first timers, unknown risk takers who are passionate about an idea and stop at nothing to achieve what they think will change the world

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One day, they both quit their jobs and started working on an idea in their garage. They worked 20 hours a day, 7 days a week for 6 months building product and a prototype. That's when their financial troubles started. They told me plenty of stories of how empty their wallets were. I will only highlight a couple of salient points that detail their journey.  read more »

By Sheraan Amod
URL: http://www.personera.com/

I'm the Co-Founder of Personera, a personalized publishing service offering useful print products enhanced with Facebook content. As a member of ISLabs, we often meet budding entrepreneurs eager to learn local stories of idea incubation, development and launch. In sharing our story in this blog post, I hope that we inspire other young upstarts to become bonafide startups!  read more »

The Great Obami Roadtrip
By Barbara Mallinson - 20 Jan 2009
URL: www.obami.com

The story of how Obami (the safe social networking site for South African schools) has come to be is best illustrated using the analogy of a good old fashioned roadtrip - an incredible journey, with challenges and opportunities around every corner.

The Destination  read more »

By Devin de Vries - 19 January 2009
URL: www.whereismytransport.com

 read more »

by Jason Adriaan (Local List Founder)

Today Local List celebrates it's first birthday, being awarded a Mayoral Award by the Kouga Municipality in the Eastern Cape and we welcome a new team member Adrian Riddle. Today we shake off the hickups and glithes and wake up to a fresh approach, but before I get to that let's take a look back...

Humble Beginnings  read more »

Apply for a GeekRetreat scholarship now...

If you're working on or have an idea for an education project that uses the Internet to improve quality/access/diversity of education in South Africa, please fill out the form here by 7 December at the latest.  read more »

Guest Blog by Guy Taylor
twitter: @xsyn
http://guy.cognasium.com/

Although still in it's infancy the buzzword Enterprise 2.0 brings with it a number of expectations; better communication channels, easier access to information and of course self organised managing of teams.  read more »

Guest Post by Charlie Tanton
Founder of Drupal community network South Africa  read more »

So Andreessen launched a new VC fund with his buddy Horowitz yesterday.  What was interesting about the press release was the type of entrepreneurs he is looking for....

Here are some more specifics about what kinds of entrepreneurs and companies we are looking for:  read more »

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Guest Blog post by Brian Pinnock, GM of New Product Development at Internet Solutions
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Ed - This is guest blog post by Gareth Knight - http://www.oneafrikan.com/ - he founded Kindo which is now MyHeritage, amongst others.  Gareth is heading back to SA from London very soon.  Watch this space....

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The standoff between file sharers and record and movie companies has come into the spotlight again with the dramatic judgement against Jammie Thomas. On the opposite side of the Atlantic, however, the Swedish Pirate Party has managed to win a seat in the European Parliament.  read more »

This past #followfriday, 29 May 2009, I presented an overview of Twitter and how it can be used as an effective communications tool in a corporate environment. Attendance was great, roughly 70 people showed up.

This was the first of many to come, the IS Marketing team in collaboration with @ISLabs aims to bring regular talks on web-related topics with the aim of sparking thought, dialogue and debate within IS.  read more »

While the SEACOM submarine cable system has had its challenges, and is due to go live towards the end of June, Australia's PPC-1 cable has also had its challenges, with its CEO Bevan Slattery even claiming to have received threats from a tier 1 operator.  read more »

A good FMC service balances features, cost savings and implementability with implementation cost, intrusiveness into end-user behaviour and not pissing off the mobile networks.  read more »

How do you choose a future-proof smartphone ? There are a literally thousands of choices. You have to choose what you need. For me, critical criteria are;  read more »

Scoregrid.com - SA based online startup today made front page of the coveted tech site TechCrunch UK. Founded by locals Adrian Moss and Steven Morris, its great to see local talent making international headlines.  read more »