Seedstars World recently pre-selected the best entrepreneurs in Johannesburg and is now doing its final call for applications in Cape Town that will close Sunday, May 28th.
Applicants are expected to apply via the Seedstars World Cape Town event page. In partnership with main sponsor Standard Bank, Seedstars World will host the Cape Town leg on June 8th at Workshop 17.
In line with its mission to place the spotlight on entrepreneurs from emerging markets, Seedstars World is travelling to 80 countries this year to identify the best seed-stage entrepreneurs and provide them with an opportunity to win up to USD 500,000 and network with investors and mentors from around the world. Its previous participants have raised over USD 61M collectively, providing employment to more than 800 employees worldwide.
“We have consistently managed to find high quality startups in Cape Town. We expect that this ongoing trend will continue and are extremely happy to return and find the next potential South Africa and Global winner. ” says Claudia Makadristo, Regional Manager for Africa at Seedstars World.
Since it’s launch , South African startups have had significant success with Giraffe winning the global prize in 2015. In 2016, wildcard winner IDWork, a platform for utilising and reviewing tradesmen for construction needs represented South Africa at the SSW Regional Summit in Rwanda and the Global Summit in Switzerland. With hopes of repeating this success for South African startups in the upcoming summit.
“This is our third year partnering with this awesome global initiative and it always amazes me the amount of talent we find in South Africa through the Seedstars competition.” – Vuyisa Qabaka, Seedstars Ambassador in South Africa and Partner at venture builder, Entrepreneur Traction
The companies selected to pitch at the Seedstars local events need to be less than 2 years old, have raised less than USD 500,000 in funding and have built a minimum viable product, ideally with existing traction and the startup’s regional and global scalability.
Seedstars World is working with partners such as Merck, Standard Bank and Deloitte, Entrepreneur Traction, Payfast, Seedspace, Silicon Cape, Afinil Express and Startup Grind amongst others.
