Startup Financing
The Financing Gap
& Solution for South Africa
justin spratt – 4 July 2009

South Africa
SA has….
Great people
Right Culture
Great ideas
Enough money
So what is the problem?
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Context: Recession
• Global mainly
• U versus V
• SA should be out be early
2010
• But 3.5% growth wont solve
our problems!
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Context: Poor
Fundamentals
• Government wont solve our
problems
• Enablement can help
• Intervention by private
business is critical
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The Good News
• Michael Porter & Cluster
Theory
• Examples:
• Bangalore
• Silicon Valley
• Detroit
• Wall Street
• Rwanda
• Venice
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“All we need is deal
flow for VC and
Angel to start
working… I am
coming back soon
to help with this”
Vinny Lingham, June 2009
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Finance Continuum
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ISLabs – Germination
• Water-cooler chats…
gazillion ideas
• IS has some of the smartest
people
• We are best equipped
private enterprise to help
tech
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The Idea: A Mashup
Angel great, but we don’t have $
Incubator best model for IS
Y- Combinator
Google Projects
Summer of Code
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Y-Combinator: Successes
• Loopt (2005), mobile social networking, on all
the major U.S. carrier networks
• Scribd (2006), a Web-based document
publisher, partnered with Random House
• Xobni (2006), an e-mail software maker, was
demoed by Bill Gates, a $20 million buyout offer
• Weebly (2007), a website authoring toolmaker,
1-million-users mark
• Omnisio (2008), an online video annotator,
acquired last year by Google, circa $15 million
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Google Projects: Successes
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Thanks!
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