Founded in 2011, the Net Prophet Sparkup! Weekend Programme has grown exponentially. Adding the Live Investment pitch in 2014 gave the Weekend Programme, sponsored by Saratoga, a rare opportunity for the local community to engage and make live commitments to fund the start-ups in exchange for equity.
For founders Permjot Valia of Mentorcamp and Rob Gilmour of RSAWeb, the idea behind Sparkup! was to provide intensive training, coaching and mentoring for entrepreneurs in the tech-enabled start-up world. The Weekend Programme is split into various modules covering everything from pitching to investors, gaining an online following, business model planning, financial forecasting to IP law and marketing on a shoestring budget.
The Weekend Programme received almost 100 applications with 13 start-ups making the grade. Participating start-ups were Retail Acumen, Wanos, TyreNet, GoVarsity, Space Decode, GenBox by GenWye, Gummie, Erato, IntelWorld, Vula Mobile, FitKey, CodeRed Solutions, and iGrow Academy. Of the 13 start-ups, two were from Joburg, one from Pretoria and one from Uganda.
"They tried to bury us, they didn't know we were seeds." - Mexican Proverb
The start-ups are given access to various mentors over the weekend who are experts in their fields. Their role is to help guide the start-ups, acting as a sounding board to their ideas. We're aware of a number of offers that were made by mentors during these weekend sessions.
Permjot Valia was the connecting thread throughout the weekend, pushing the start-up teams to their limits to get their pitches to be as seamless and as informative as possible. All the pitch training led to the Sunday evening, where six judges, namely Nicholas Haralambous, Sylvia Gruber, Warren Larkan, Sheraan Amod, Marcello Schermer, and Rob Gilmour had to hand-pick the five start-ups they believed were the most primed for investment.
When the judges walked out of the boardroom, all conversation halted and all eyes were on them. While every start-up had pitched brilliantly, the judges found the five most likely to gain investment at this stage of their company's growth were:
TyreNet - a mobile tyre replacement company.
Erato - an online genuine leather boutique that was voted in the top five women's fashion sites in South Africa.
IntelWorld - an electronic wallet that allows users to pay with their smartphones and is geared towards underdeveloped countries in Africa.
Vula Mobile - a patient-to-specialist app that prevents blindness especially directed for rural areas.
Gummie - a curated travel Web site aimed at getting locals to be tourists in their own cities.
The following night, Monday 11 May, 200 guests were bursting out of Cape Town's oldest theatre at 22Seven. The crowd was made up of investors, entrepreneurs, the curious and other start-up initiatives. The three angel investors on stage were Groupon SA's Wayne Gosling, Ernst Hertzog from Action Hero Ventures, and Paul Rutherford from MIH Internet.
While Gosling teetotalled and made no investments on the night, Rutherford pledged $25 000 to Ugandan Allan Rwakatungu of IntelWorld, spurring Silicon Cape Chairperson, Daniel Guasco to match from the audience. Matthew Bresler chimed in with an additional $10 000, bringing IntelWorld up to over R700 000.
Dylan Edwards of Vula Mobile broke Sparkup! Live history as Ernst Hertzog put up a whopping R450 000, which was matched by Brett Commaille of AngelHub Ventures from the audience. Vasili Sofiadellis brought the total investment in Vula Mobile up to R1 million, with an additional R100 000. The non-pitching start-ups may not have received offers of investment, but have benefited from introductions and leads to local investors. Plus all Sparkup! start-ups have been invited to apply to Seedstars World in June.
Tracy Gander, the organiser of the Weekend Programme and the Live Investment evening, said on Monday: "The start-up world is such an exciting place to be at the moment. For those who're willing to get their hands dirty, there's a lot of positive impact to be made in this space." The 2014 event saw just under R1 million in investment offers to 8bit at R550 000, Ekaya at R300 000 and Shopstar at R100 000. Talks about 2016 are already under way and, in the meantime, Sparkup! will be holding monthly workshops on the First Tuesday of each month at the UCT Graduate School of Business, open to anyone and designed to provide a platform for start-ups to engage with industry experts.
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