Posts Tagged ‘Business’

Posted on December 6, 2010 - by Justin Hartman

Social Code goes public, finally

Almost twelve months ago I had an idea, largely from on my experience with Afrigator, to provide social media services to corporate companies looking to dive into the space. This idea grew even further when I had a chat to my good friend Gregor Rohrig about it. Both Gregor and I got hugely excited about the idea and so we put the wheels in motion, began planning and formed the business together. It’s almost a year later since that initial idea and we’ve only gone public with Social Code in the last two weeks.

Why? Well, two main reasons. The first being that after deciding to create a social media agency we realised that providing social media services simply wasn’t going to cut it. We knew that we needed to offer more and we needed to really focus on digital strategies rather than digital implementations. The second reason was that in April we acquired the business and client side of Entelligence – a leading development company started more than 11 years ago by Sean Riley of Ad Dynamo and GT Ferreira of FirstRand.

The Entelligence acquisition was mostly about being in the right place at the right time but nonetheless, strategically it was a brilliant move for both parties. Since April we’ve been streamlining and integrating the Entelligence business into Social Code and it’s been an interesting and challenging experience in itself. We decided to keep a lid on things until we had gotten the entire operation functional and until we were ready to take on more clients.

So, here we are. Social Code just moved into new offices, we’re hiring new staff and currently service 91 clients from all over the world. The growth and potential for Social Code has blown my mind away and I know that in 2011 you’re going to be hearing a lot more about us.

Many people have asked me what this means for Afrigator. Well, in short, it’s business as usual but if you want to find out more about Social Code and the impact on Afrigator I suggest you listen to the latest Digital Edge podcast where I spill the beans about both businesses.

 

Posted on October 21, 2010 - by Justin Hartman

Social Media ROI… does it exist?

Yesterday I delivered a presentation at the WTF Media Conference titled Social Media ROI… does it exist?. In the ever growing world of Social Media businesses are often scared to dabble in the industry. I ask the question about whether or not Social Media can deliver a ROI or not.

 

Posted on July 29, 2009 - by Justin Hartman

My presentation at the MIH Media Lab Entrepreneurship Workshop

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.