VeloCITI Graduation – Inspiring…
November 9, 2007 by Jamaal
As most of you know, I’ve been a participant in the VeloCITI Business Acceleration Project since February this year. It’s been a very tough year, but also a very rewarding one. VeloCITI was sponsored by the Western Cape Provincial Government – to the tone of R1 Million – and 16 ICT companies were awarded participation.
VeloCITI is an initiative from the Cape IT Initiative (CITI) – big thanks to Viola Manual, the Executive Director – and the Bandwidth Barn – what would we do without Odette Potter, VeloCITI was her “brainchild.” The project included business workshops and coaching sessions with Cape Venture Partners – we learnt so much from Tony, Andrea, David, and Geoff, as well as personal development sessions with Mignon – the most awesome personal coach I’ve met – from Peerpower. The group also had the opportunity to learn from guest speakers like the CEO of Clickatell, the CEO of the Enablis Entrepreneurial Network, and many others.
Last night marked the graduation ceremony for us. It was a great evening of celebration and achievement. Everyone was happy and the hard work of the year could finally be looked upon with a feeling of accomplishment. I think the highlight of the evening was a very inspiring talk by the guest speaker Taweni Xaba. Taweni is the Managing Director at Africa Book Connection, and she spoke about what inspires her, the struggles and commitments of young entrepreneurs.
Of the initial 16 companies that were selected to participate, 12 managed to hang in there until the last stretch. They are, in no particular order:
- Freelancentral
- E-Biz Solutions
- Red Button
- Silulo Ulotho Technologies
- Jayz Internet Solutions
- iDrive
- iTheko Communications
- FinAssets
- iTrackLive
- C3 Technologies
- Jamtech Projects
- Byte Orbit
All the participants were judged on certain criteria, and the winners received prizes from ITWeb, Sentient Communications, Cape Venture Partners, and BizCommunity. There was 1 overall winner, and 3 runners up. Prizes – which included cash, PR services, press offices, etc – totalled R189,000. That is truly a great investment into growing South African businesses.
Unfortunately Jayz Internet Solutions didn’t feature in the winners list, but our business has grown and benefited tremendously this year and we sincerely thank everyone involved.
The 3 runners up were:
The main and overall winner was Red Button. I think they really deserve the win because they’re a very dedicated and hard working team, and they’ve grown their business considerably over the past year.
The blurb they’ve provided reads: 
“RedButton provides fully managed wireless Internet hotspots with highly flexible in-house software. Venue owners benefit from the convenience of on-demand, prepaid broadband Internet, made available either by online credit card purchase, voucher or automatically in the case of a promotion.”
Congratulations to all the winners, they truly deserve the prizes and the recognition. They’ve worked hard and achieved fantastic results! Congratulations also to all the participants who have made it through the year – everyone is a winner for working hard and making major sacrifices this year!
Good luck to everyone for the future!
Photo of the winning team kindly provided by Jamtech Projects.
Great post Jamaal and thanks for the mention :-) Big congratulations to RedButton for an awesome achievement, as well as to Silulo and MLT – and indeed all the companies participating on the programme. It has been an honour to work with you all. And big thanks to CITI, the Bandwidth Barn (Odette, you star!), the Provincial Govt, CVP, PeerPower and everyone involved in pulling off a fantastic programme.
No prob Jo. It’s been a fantastic year. As I mentioned to you, I’ll be initiating a Facebook Group for VeloCITI 2007, and I hope you will co-ordinate it with me. I think we all need to continue networking with each other because this is a truly dynamic and aspiring group.
Magic post Jamaal, you captured the essence of the evening, the energy levels were awesome and we all had a great time. Well done to Odette for a fantastic function rounding off a great programme. Thanks to all the participants, without your effort and wonderful attitude it would not have been as successful!
VeloCITI truly was inspiring and I take my hat off to all the sponsors and all of those who have poured their hearts and souls into it, participants, mentors and more that you have listed. In particular recognition should go to the Provincial Government of the Western Cape for having the foresight to sponsor a program that should ultimately lead to a return for the Western Cape and South Africa as a whole.
@ Tony, you guys at CVP are wonderful and you ran a brilliant project over the past few months. You presentations and workshops were excellent, and I look forward to seeing what you have planned for the next VeloCITI.
@ Nico, we have to take off our hat to you guys for all the hard work and huge successes Red Button has made this year. Good luck and stay in touch!
Congrats on your graduation Jamaal.
Sounds like it was an amazing course and I know it has been beneficial because I have seen the kind of growth and changes in your business offerings over the last couple of months.
Well done to all involved.
Keep up the great work!
@ Rogeema, VeloCITI is a brilliant project and I hope it becomes an annual project because so many entrepreneurs can benefit from it. Shukran for your kind words! :)