Archive for the ‘Business’ Category
by Thando on Jan 21st, 2013
Allon Raiz was interviewed by Entrepreneur Magazine and spoke about some of the hardships he’s faced on the road to success with Raizcorp, which is a business based on an entrepreneurship incubator model. He cites some of his major failures, with money and investments lost, as the hardest lessons he’s encountered, but despite all that he had a mentor who believed in him and kept his faith in him.
The book Raiz co-authored with Trevor Waller, What to do When You Want to Give Up: Help for Entrepreneurs in Tough Times, details what he had to do in order to survive his own growing pains in the business world, and what failure taught him about “the other perspective”.
Ask Allon Raiz about his darkest moment and the answer comes quickly. “When my first child was born I had to borrow money from two different people to pay the hospital bill so they would release him. It was about R22 000. I brought him home and was watching him sleeping in his crib and I just collapsed on the floor in tears. I thought, ‘What am I doing? What AM I doing? I can’t even pay for my own baby to come home.’”
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by Thando on Dec 7th, 2012
Duncan Alfreds from News24 interviewed Alan Knott-Craig Junior, co-author of Mobinomics: Mxit and Africa’s Mobile Revolution, about his experience in start-up companies.
Knott-Craig shares the lessons he’s learnt from his recent exit from Mxit and gives tech start-ups advice on how to tap into local innovation.
Serial tech entrepreneur Alan Knott-Craig jnr shares some of his thoughts on surviving in the high-paced world of a start-up culture.
Knott-Craig, who recently left chat platform Mxit after a brief spell, and says that the platform remains relevant, despite strong competition from other platforms.
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by Thando on Nov 30th, 2012
Charl Norman interviewed Alan Knott-Craig Junior about his recent exit from World of Avatar, the company he founded, and Mxit.
Knott-Craig described the process of buying Mxit from its founder Herman Heunis and recommended Mobinomics: Mxit and Africa’s Mobile Revolution for anyone interested in the full story. He went on to say that although he and the shareholders shared a vision for where they wanted the company to go, they disagreed on the path they should take to get there. That is why he is longer a part of Mxit or World of Avatar.
He expressed his faith in Mxit, calling it the biggest opportunity on the continent.
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by Thando on Nov 22nd, 2012
CNN’s Marketplace Africa recently profiled Mxit, the social media network that, with 9,6 million users, tops Twitter and Facebook in South Africa, the country of its inception. Former CEO of Mxit, Alan Knott-Craig Jr, co-author, along with Gus Silber, of Mobinomics: Mxit and the Mobile Revolution in Africa, spoke to Marketplace Africa about Mxit’s phenomenal performance.
When it comes to social media’s heavy hitters, there are no bigger players than Facebook or Twitter, right? Not if you’re in South Africa.
Mobile network Mxit claims to have nearly 10 million users in the country, making it South Africa’s most popular social media platform by far, eclipsing Facebook’s six million users and Twitter’s 1.1 million subscribers.
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by Thando on Nov 20th, 2012
Alan Knott-Craig Junior, former CEO of Mxit and co-author of Mobinomics: Mxit and Africa’s Mobile Revolution, has shared seven of the career lessons that he has learnt on Ventureburn.
Knott-Craig highlights the importance of communication and recommends taking risks, which he categorises as being financial, emotional and reputational:
When I think of the factors that led to any successes (or failures) in my career thus far, the following come to mind:
1. Communicate
If you can’t effectively transmit the picture in your head into the head of the person you’re communicating with, you’re dead. This is the key to getting people swimming in the same direction, and it applies to customers, staff, partners, suppliers and shareholders.
The more people swimming in your direction, the more likely you are to reach the other side.
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by Thando on Sep 7th, 2012
The Daily Maverick’s Rebecca Davis tested social network Mxit’s new initiative, Mxit Money, ahead of its official launch to the entire network next week. Alan Knott-Craig Jr, Mxit CEO and co-author of Mobinomics: Mxit and the Mobile Revolution in Africa, has said that the initiative is not to be confused with what is referred to as a mobile wallet:
The idea of a mobile-based financial service is not new to Africa. Money transfers via cell phones have been happening for some time in Uganda and Kenya, with the latter’s M-Pesa a particularly successful example of how well the service can work. According to website Kiwanja.net, around 50% of Kenya’s entire GDP is expected to pass through the M-Pesa platform over the next 12 months.
There are logical reasons why the technology would take off so well in Africa. For one thing, the practice of remittance (sending money to a distant recipient) is well established. A 2011 World Bank publication, Remittance Markets in Africa, noted that “African countries are estimated to have received $40-billion in officially recorded flows in 2010, but the true size is believed to be far larger”. Secondly, the vast majority of African families do not have formal bank accounts: the World Bank puts the figure as low as 20%. Mobile phones, on the other hand, are everywhere – by some estimates mobile penetration in South Africa is up to 90%.
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by Thando on Aug 22nd, 2012
Earlier this month, Alan Knott-Craig Jr and Gus Silber’s Mobinomics: Mxit and Africa’s Mobile Revolution was released as a mobi-book on the social networking platform Mxit. The FunDza Literacy Trust, which encourages the use of Mxit as a literacy tool, has made the first chapter of the Mobinomics mobi-book available to read online for free:
Tuesday evening in Stellenbosch. It’s raining. A soft mist sweeping in from the roof of the mountains, falling like a benediction on the rows of green that will one day be turned into wine. One day.
For now, the traffic in Dorp Street heading out of town is heavy and sluggish, as it always is at this hour.
People who’ve lived in Stellies all their lives will tell you that the town isn’t what it used to be. They’ll say it’s become a place of bustle and noise, and outsiders rushing in to make a quick buck. I don’t know about that. The bucks aren’t quick in Stellenbosch.
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by Thando on Aug 8th, 2012
Alan Knott-Craig and Gus Silber’s ground-breaking book, Mobinomics, is now available as a mobi-book via the cellphone-based social networking site, Mxit.
The book, which examines the role played by Mxit in Africa’s so-called “Mobile Revolution”, will be available on the network from midday on 8 August at one tenth the cost of the printed edition. According to Knott-Craig Jr, this new level of accessibility to Mxit users is only appropriate as “It’s more their story than it is ours”:
Press release:
The Mxit story now available on the social network
[8 August 2012 – Stellenbosch] Mobinomics, the book by Alan Knott-Craig and Gus Silber on Mxit and Africa’s mobile revolution, has been published to the social network. This is the first time a printed book, available in national book stores, has been distributed via Mxit.
“The book is about Mxit,” says Alan Knott-Craig, CEO of Mxit. “It would be completely insane not to make it easily accessible to our users. It’s more their story than it is ours.”
The publishing of Mobinomics on the social media network is part of a bigger strategy to increase access to books by creating pricing and distribution models that make sense to the broader South African population and eventually the entire African continent.
Digital publishing, in all its forms, is challenging traditional publishing and distribution models. “In the case of Mxit, the opportunity is to reach new people who don’t traditionally buy printed books,” says Louise Grantham, CEO and Publisher at Bookstorm.
“The local market has seen slow growth of digital format books as the market is geared towards those who can afford Kindles and iPads. Mxit has the potential to help us leapfrog our digital sales via a completely African platform and meet the needs of large numbers of African consumers,” says Grantham.
Mxit has been bringing books to its 10 million active users since 2009 when it published its first mBook, ‘Emily and the battle of the veil.’ The true power of publishing on the social network is being explored by FunDza Literacy Trust. It joined Mxit in 2011 and has grown its subscriber base to over 35 000 readers who read the serialised stories on the platform..
Mobinomics twelve chapters will be sold individually. The first chapter is free and each subsequent chapter will cost between 50 Moola (50 cents) and 295 Moola (R2.95). The book will cost a total of R18.95, less than a tenth of the cost of the printed book.
To read Mobinomics please go onto Mxit> Tradepost> Mxit Reach> Mobi books> FunDza
Ends
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by Thando on Jul 26th, 2012
Dion Chang’s New Urban Tribes of South Africa shows how trends analysis is a useful tool in determining how consumers push the marketing agenda, or aspire to acquire certain goods and services.
Bruce Dennill of The Citizen observed Dion Chang’s analysis, and asked him a few questions about how to spot trends and tribes, and which “boxes” to tick. New Urban Tribes of South Africa is available as an eBook from Pan Macmillan.
Dion Chang’s new e-book New Urban Tribes is, not at all sur-prisingly, inspiring some strong reactions from observers.
“The biggest reaction I get,” grins Chang, “is from people who can’t find themselves on the list.
“But I reiterate: these are new tribes; groupings that are just popping their heads above the parapet. That reaction says that people want to be boxed.”
The “boxes” determined by Chang and his team in New Urban Tribes are as follows:
Diamond Chips: brand-conscious kids of the original Black Diamonds.
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by Thando on Jul 19th, 2012
Finweek invites you to join Alan Knott-Craig Jnr and Gus Silber for a discussion on technology, revolutionising communication, business, and the story of lives changed by mobile phones.
The talk will be centred around the book Mobinomics, in which Knott-Craig Jr and Silber tell the story of the Mxit phenomenon and the potential for change that mobile phones have brought to Africa. The talk will take place at the Gibson Institute of Business Science (GIBS) on Monday 23 July, at 6PM.
See you there!
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