Real Time Wine makes it into Samsung Ignite / Tech4Africa Top 8 Startups

Super awesome news... if I may indulge in a little bit of horn tootin'. My fledgling startup (Real Time Wine) is going to pitched at Tech4Africa 2011 to a bunch of (hopefully) interesting people. Aside from another opportunity for pitch practice and feedback, should be a great way to try and finally close off an angel round I've been working at for the last 6 months or so. Angel rounds are hard. I'll take all the help I can get.

What should be particularly interesting about this pitch, will be what kind of feedback Real Time Wine gets in comparison to the other 7 startups. Essentially, we're still in a content pilot phase, whereas the other startups are much further down the development lifecycle. It's the very reason we're trying to raise seed capital - develop the rich set of app functionality that the wine industry could benefit from. In case you didn't know, dev is bloody expensive these days!

Look forward to it, and look forward to meeting the other 7 startups - so much we can learn from each other. Hope you're coming to Tech4Africa. If you are, come say howsit. If you're a developer, definitely come say howsit - I want to marry you.

Here's the rest of the press release.



Top 8 Samsung Ignite start-ups announced


Eight local technology start-ups have been offered a unique opportunity to pitch their business ideas to delegates, potential investors and media at this year's Tech4Africa conference, taking place at The Forum in Bryanston, Johannesburg on 27 and 28 October.

This platform has been created by virtue of Samsung Apps Ignite, an initiative that aims to showcase and foster local technology development, and which has been made possible by Samsung Apps store, in association with Tech4Africa.

"We are extremely excited about such a platform from which local technology innovators can showcase there ideas to a broad audience, potential investors and technology entrepreneurs who have walked this path before," says Gareth Knight, Tech4Africa Founder and Managing Director. "Tech4Africa’s primary aim is to promote and inspire local mobile and web innovators, entrepreneurs and developers by inviting global leaders in the sector to share their knowledge and insight with an audience from across the continent." 

“The Samsung Apps Ignite programme is an integral part of the overall vision that it is hoped will provide the spark that the eight start-ups need to take the next step in their development.”

The 8 selected startups include:

10Layer: the most feature-complete, competent and customisable open source content management system for serious publishers and media houses.

FeedbackRocket.com: which offers an innovative online solution to obtain useful, insightful and honest feedback.

iSign.pro: that allows users to get legally-binding contracts signed in minutes - legally, cheaper, greener and stored forever, with automatic reminders before renewal/expiry.

Lessfuss: is an affordable South African personal assistant service that helps you save time and get things done for as little as R30/task.

Mobiflock: is a product range that consists of a parental control service, a personal smart phone tracker, and a corporate smart phone manager.  

Plot my Ride: is a social networking service for the cycling community that offers an easy and real-time means of capturing, displaying, saving and sharing a cyclist’s riding activity.

Real Time Wine: captures the supermarket wine-buying audience and empowers them to discover, review, engage with and buy wine using smart phone apps, game mechanics & barcode scanning.

SnapBill: is an automated billing system that allows users to easily sell their services online.

“We are very passionate about the African market and encouraged by the innovations emerging from the continent, so it’s a natural fit for us to partner with Tech4Africa to present this stage for innovators to showcase their products,” says Brett Loubser, B2C Apps Development Lead at Samsung. “We intend using this partnership to help create a wider network of local developers, reward African innovation in the mobile tech and app space and promote the Samsung Apps Store as an alternative channel for smartphone developers.

“A key outcome of our participation as the Ignite partner is to engage South African developers and therefore we have made available a number of discounted tickets to facilitate their involvement at this year’s conference.”

The Samsung Apps Ignite participants will each be afforded five minutes to showcase their products in the main auditorium at the end of the first day of the conference. A panel of judges has been gathered to adjudicate and the winning startup will be announced on the second day of the event, and be given the opportunity to present their start-up to the entire Tech4Africa audience. The winner will also receive the latest Samsung mobile devices and valuable exposure and profiling through the Tech4Africa website. More details are available at www.tech4africa.com.

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