Big Business in Cape Town Supporting Early Stage Entrepreneurs
Accelerate Cape Town has championed an initiative to connect seasoned business professionals in Cape Town with growing local start-ups. Accelerate Cape Town obtained support from 50+ mentors in the Cape Town region and connected them to companies located in three Cape Town business incubators for an initial pilot phase. The incubators involved are LaunchLab in Stellenbosch, the MTN Solution Space at the UCT GSB, and Grindstone Accelerator by Knife Capital.
The vibrant business ecosystem in Cape Town continually strives to grow the local economy and improve the region. To this end, governmental, private and academic stakeholders have come together and launched a Mentorship Programme which sees collaborations between big business in the Western Cape, and the thriving start-up community. Accelerate Cape Town has championed this very exciting initiative under the leadership of Ms Juliet Prowse who has been instrumental in getting it off the ground and liaising with the universities in the region.
“Accelerate Cape Town is a business leadership organisation representing top-tier corporate business in the Cape Town city region. Established in 2006, ACT provide a forum for corporate business to connect and catalyse action to position Cape Town for growing economic success as a globally recognised business destination in Africa.”
The mentorship pilot program will see top-tier businesses in Cape Town share their wealth of knowledge and experience with the business start-up community. The support will be provided through a mentorship program to interested start-ups, by willing businesses. The programme aims to support the innovation value chain from R&D to the commercialisation of ideas through spin-out and start-up companies in the Western Cape.
The mentorship initiative was launched in a pilot program format. After Accelerate Cape Town spent a decent amount of time getting to know the start-up scene in Cape Town and the surroundings, 3 x business incubators were identified to partner with for the pilot phase. The partners are business incubators & accelerators each with several companies currently within their various incubation and acceleration programs. They are:
It has long been known that entrepreneurship and start-up companies provide many solutions to the socio-economic problems faced in RSA. Unfortunately, there is still an alarmingly high failure rate for start-up’s in RSA. The mentorship programme is thus an ideal fit for the identified participants, and aims to:
- Encourage business professionals to play an active role in the innovation ecosystem
- Build relationships with established incubators and determine what additional assistance is required
- Determine and formalise the process a business professionals go through when mentoring as well as what additional support they require to effectively mentor a start-up or SME.
The program was formally launched at Webber Wentzel offices in Cape Town where mentors were exposed to the companies in the respective incubators’ portfolio’s. The mentors can review and interact with companies, and where there is a good fit between mentee and mentor – the parties can embark on a joint journey for mutual improvement. All eyes will be on this initiative for the rest of 2017.