27 Jul Small steps make big dreams come true, success comes from boldness!
Each year, the South African and regional entrepreneurial ecosystem is significantly more diverse, closely connected and globally competitive. We have dedicated the past five years mostly to designing attractive national programmes for supporting entrepreneurship, connecting key stakeholders at the local, regional and national level, and obtaining public and private capital assigned exclusively to startup companies.
Now it is time for the last big and important step, namely for systematically attracting internationally established large and medium-sized companies into the picture of the entrepreneurial startup ecosystem and into all possible forms of collaborating and connecting startups with innovative large and medium-sized companies, not only in the form of subcontracting but also in more advanced forms, such as licensing, open innovation, incubation and acceleration programmes, and mutual exchange of knowledge.
This is also the last important cornerstone of our business accelerator of the Startup Mzansi Foundation. The comprehensive supporting services of business accelerators currently include access to financial resources, public (up to R250 000 of capital) as well as private ones (network of business angels and venture capital funds), content support in the form of educational programmes, mentorship, individual guidance and training, and joint promotion of programmes. The latter includes publicly selecting programme participants, monitoring and promoting them, thus ensuring an efficient control of how public funds are used.
Last but not least, it is also important to ensure a suitable infrastructure, as it is very important for community building and active collaboration between companies, and has to be filled with content and programmes.
Besides further implementation of national programmes and even more international integration, there is another important strategic goal that we have set for ourselves, namely active integration of established innovative companies into our programmes. Everyone will benefit from this, small and large companies, and at the end of the day, the country and the region as well.
Sandile Shabangu
Founder & CEO
Startup Mzansi Foundation NPC
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