We’ve written about the Silicon Cape Initiative before. Below is an interview with the new chairman of the SCI and prominent digital evangelist and CEO of Quirk eMarketing.
What is the Silicon Cape?
The Silicon Cape is a conceptual brand, a committee and a community that was established late last year to drive the growth of the Western Cape as a global tech hub. The founders felt that the existing tech community in Cape Town needed a rallying point that would inspire the ambition to create an African equivalent to Silicon Valley and regions like Bangalore, which has become known as the Silicon Valley of India. Silicon Cape is similarly, a reference to the original Silicon Valley, based around Santa Clara Valley, California, a major hub for IT companies in the United States.
What does Silicon Cape hope to achieve?
We want to create a general awareness that South Africans can produce top class tech start-ups. We hope to establish an environment in the Western Cape of South Africa in which local and foreign investors, tech talent, entrepreneurs and role models can congregate and form a close-knit innovation community, share ideas and make these come to life in a sustainable, even profitable fashion.
Silicon Cape was established late last year, how far have you come?
I think that the biggest challenge has been balancing people’s expectations. A bit of a sobering reality that we have to face and that is that while people may think that we have both power and money, we have neither. What we do have is a committee of passionate people wanting to bring about big changes to the industry and to Cape Town and a very supportive community willing to make these changes. Silicon Cape is more like a social network, both on and offline, than it is an organization. It’s the people that support the idea and are making Silicon Cape a reality, and determining what it can be going forward.
What are your priorities for your year at the helm?
I have three goals for this year. Firstly, to encourage more start-ups in the Western Cape, while raising the profile of the many technology businesses that already exist here. Secondly, to encourage foreign and local investment capital into the Western Cape, and thirdly to create a business culture and a regulatory environment that fosters start-ups.
What do South African tech start-ups do well and what do they not do so well?
Our strengths are that we are hardworking, have great ideas and an entrepreneurial spirit but we fall short in our thinking, as we tend to limit ourselves to the local market while we should be thinking global and competing on that level. We also need to work hard on building an investment culture that supports start-ups, and focus on building products based on what the market really wants.
What are the major challenges facing Silicon Cape’s goals to attract deals, money and talent to the region?
One of our early goals was to attract more foreign talent to SA to work in the ICT sector, but limitations like slow, unreliable Internet makes this a hard sell. It is difficult enough for local developers to deal with our broadband limitations. In my own company, we were looking forward to offer real time online classrooms for the Quirk Education courses, but this is still a pipedream in the current Internet environment in SA.
We also come against a number of limiting exchange controls that need to be addressed to ease up trade between South African software companies and international markets. The introduction of global micropayment system, PayPal is certainly a step in the right direction, but a lot more needs to be done from our side to lobby government for regulatory changes.
What do your responsibilities as Chairman include?
My initial job is to make Silicon Cape a sustainable initiative by bringing on board supportive corporate partners. I intend to work closely with the committee to deliver on our short-term and longer-term goals.
What tip have you got for people thinking of starting a tech business?
Quit thinking about it and just do it! If you are young, you can afford to take a few risks, and if you have a big idea don’t wonder why the big companies are not doing it. Do it yourself! Connecting with initiatives like the Silicon Cape will give you the support and guidance that you need.
What qualities do you believe you bring to the Silicon CAPE?
A “can do” attitude and some real impetus is what I hope to bring. Enough talk – let’s get to action. For one thing, I think we need to have more niche offline events to support the online community, so I foresee a developer’s event, a “meet the investors” event and a number of other networking events for the tech community, both in Cape Town and in Johannesburg and Durban. While Silicon Cape may be named after Cape Town, it stands for whole industry in South Africa with long term economic and prestige benefits for the whole country.
Who is Rob Stokes?
Rob is the CEO of Africa’s largest full service online marketing agency, Quirk eMarketing, which has branches in London, Cape Town and Johannesburg. Stokes founded Quirk towards the end of his Business Science Marketing Honours Degree at the University of Cape Town. Today, he heads up an ever-growing agency with a loyal client base that includes big names like BMW, Sun International and South African Tourism.
Catch Rob at the upcoming Tech4Africa conference in Johannesburg 12- 13 August.
Find him on Twitter @robstokes
