WeeTracker UberPITCH: Meet The Investors
Last week we announced our exciting initiative – UberPITCH!
You can apply to pitch your idea to investors within 90 seconds in an Uber ride. South Africa, are you ready?
If you are an entrepreneur/Startup based in South Africa with a product in at least Beta Stage/MVP and you have a maximum team size of 8 including the founders with no or up to ZAR 1 Million in revenues; then you are eligible to apply!
Meet the investors you would be talking to!
Brett Commaille; Lead Partner, AngelHub Ventures: AngelHub Ventures is a Venture Capital fund that invests in high-growth businesses led by strong entrepreneurs. Brett began his career with Deloitte and spent two years working in Saudi Arabia for PwC before returning to South Africa as a merchant banker. He was born and raised in Pretoria and he is a graduate of the University of Pretoria. He is a merchant banker turned VC and Angel Investor. He also co-founded and ran a VC fund for Remgro Ltd. Currently, he is a Venture Capitalist and business development professional who assist young businesses in their drive to achieve their full potential through rapid growth in a sustainable manner. He also lectures on early-stage business, entrepreneurship, and VC for various organizations and universities.
Clive Butkow; CEO, Kalon Venture Partners: Kalon Venture Partners is a disruptive digital technology Venture Capital Fund (VCC) that builds and invests in high growth technology companies, with innovative business models, geared to existing and emerging institutions and their customers. Clive is the former Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Accenture South Africa. He has 28 years of management consulting experience. Clive sits on various boards of the VCC’s underlying companies including chairman on one of the companies. In addition, he is armed with lots of deep technology skills from working across multiple industries including Financial Services, Resources, Retail, Automotive, and Communications.
Keet Van Zyl; Co-Founder & Partner, Knife Capital: Keet Van Zyl is an High-Growth Venture Investor with a huge wealth of experience. He has structured different private equity funds in Southern Africa for a US fund-of-funds investor and worked at industry-leading companies such as Procter & Gamble, Investec Bank and ‘Here Be Dragons’ (HBD) Venture Capital. Keet co-founded Knife Capital in 2010. Knife Capital focuses on innovation-driven ventures with proven traction. They help businesses to achieve scalability across different markets, assist businesses to transition to international growth, and also select entrepreneurs who have achieved proven traction with product/ market fit in a beachhead market. In 2005, Keet became the first “Extreme Accounting” world champion. He is also very passionate about building the early-stage funding ecosystem in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Philip Maris; CEO, LaunchLab: LaunchLab, an initiative of Innovus is a cutting-edge mixed-use business incubator based at Stellenbosch University that supports mainly technology and innovation businesses in ICT (specifically Payments & Big Data and Paid Media), Cleantech, Agriculture, and Education. Philip has been part of LaunchLab for about 5 years. He is also been involved in the startup scene for the past 10 years. At LaunchLab, their mission is to assist innovation seeking corporates to identify, evaluate and experiment with new business models and solutions through startup engagement. Their goal is to help startups build viable and sustainable businesses through different coaching and mentorship programmes. Before LaunchLab, Philip obtained an MSc in engineering at UCT and then pursued a career in software development. After that, he left the software development industry in 2000 to become one of the founding members of HBD Venture Capital. He then started his own consulting company in 2006.
Zachariah George; Partner and Chief Investment Officer, Startupbootcamp Africa: Zach is an Angel Investor and advisor to numerous African start-ups and SMEs. Startupbootcamp Africa is also a leading multi-corporate backed and mentor-driven venture accelerator program in Africa. In addition, Zachariah founded Cactus Advisors. Cactus Advisors is an Angel investment fund and business advisory firm in Cape Town focused on high impact, high growth early-stage businesses in Africa. From 2011 to 2014, Zach led the Africa operations of U-Start – a Swiss-based global investment advisory firm specializing in direct and indirect venture capital investments in the tech and digital sector for private as well as VC funds, corporate ventures and wealth management institutions. He was formerly an investment banker at Lehman Brothers and Barclays Capital New York and in 2014 was recognized as a Certified Business Adviser at the Institute of Business Advisers and is a member of the Institute of Directors in Southern Africa (IoDSA). At the age of 22, Zach got his M.S. in Management Science from Stanford University specializing in Corporate Finance.
So if you can charm these stalwarts with your business ideas, wait no more! Apply here
