Posted on July 29, 2009 - by Justin Hartman
My presentation at the MIH Media Lab Entrepreneurship Workshop
Hey, it looks like you're new here to my blog! You may want to consider subscribing to my RSS feed and you'll automatically get notified when I post a new blog entry. If web feeds aren't your thing then why not join my email list by clicking here. Thanks for stopping by.
This morning I delivered the following presentation to the students of Stellenbosch University’s Media Lab. My topic was on the start-up lifecycle and I think it went alright. Students are sometimes hard to gauge but I hope that this provided some insight into life running a startup. There’s also some interesting insight into the Afrigator business which has never been released.
Special thanks to Darren Gorton for unknowingly allowing me to use his lighter side of startups presentation in mine! I simply love it! He’s also got a great post on funding for startups in South Africa which any entrepreneur must read.
I am a seasoned entrepreneur and currently the CEO of 
Visit My Website
July 29, 2009
Permalink
Very nice. The Afrigator growth is a phenominal success. It is also encouraging to see the big uptake in blogs, but disheartening to see it decline. However, the accrued growth does seem to average on the up. Do you think Gatorpeeps played a part in this at the time of the big vertical of March this year?
The two mobile channels is certainly excellent news for iPhone and HTC users, but what about us BlackBerry champions?
I would have loved to hear a bot more about the T-Shirts
Visit My Website
July 29, 2009
Permalink
Nice prez. Amazing growth. Think Africa has a lot of actualising to do in the online sense, which should assure growth for you for some time to come. Love your recipe for success formula, and also when to seek investment [after gaining traction based on your own investments]. If you don’t back yourself, why should anyone else… Thanks for sharing with us.
Visit My Website
July 29, 2009
Permalink
By scrolling through the slide show I can see some valuable points being made. Would love to have been there.
Am certainly going take the points made to hart and try and apply that to my ventures.
Visit My Website
July 29, 2009
Permalink
Good presentation Justin – nice to see a solid dose of planning and realistic thinking in a startup
Visit My Website
July 29, 2009
Permalink
Hey Justin
It was a great talk man. Thx for sharing some nice tips.
Hope to see you again in the near future
J
Visit My Website
July 29, 2009
Permalink
Emil, the March blog growth was as a direct result of our integration with 24.com Blogs (now Letterdash). So while it looks like it declined in April, May this isn’t really accurate. The average seems to be around 700-800 new blogs a month now.
Blackberry will be next on the list. One of us just needs to get our hands on one so we can dev and test
What more can be said about T’s man. You have to have em, and give em away to have a successful startup!!!
Visit My Website
July 29, 2009
Permalink
@Nic and @Robert, thanks for the comments guys!
@Tim, as I said this morning, the truth is we never really planned things according to the presso. We didn’t really know what we were doing but we certainly have a better take on things now. So while lack of planning will get you somewhere at some point you need to actually work it all out – properly!
@Jacques – was great to finally meet you and put a face to the name I’ve been seeing on Twitter. Glad you enjoyed it and looking forward to meeting up with you again in the near future – I hope!
Visit My Website
July 30, 2009
Permalink
Thanks for coming clean – the bill’s in the post.
No, just kidding, but glad you found a use for it.
Good pres Justin, particularly like the way you show the application of theory and really good to see Afrigator’s growth has been better than expected [assuming expected = budgeted
]. Keep going and growing!