Andy Hadfield

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 …

There is a slide in the FutureWorld "10 Lessons from the Future" presentation that talks about India overtaking China as a world power in the year 2020. It's a fairly easy scenario to debate I think. My favourite dinner table points:

China have 1 billion people. That's a lot of people to employ in an increasingly automated manufacturing environment.  China competes on low quality, low cost. That only works until some other country goes lower. Sure, it might mean even more heinous human rights violations. Sure, it may mean living in a box instead of a 1x1 cage. But hey, people get desperate in recession. (*Andy does not condone the Chinese labour policies*)You can hire an Indian MBA student for $5/hr on eLance. That's just a silly amount of brain power for that kind of money. India is investing in high tech industries and further education. China is investing in Henry Ford style automatons. 
This is going to be the economic battle to watch over the next 10 years. A…

Interesting list off a PR release that found my InBox. According to Jump Shopping (it's a bit odd for an eCommerce site to be judging eCommerce awards, but they have been doing it for a while and do seem to recuse themselves), the following are SA's top 20 (whittled down from a list of 40) eCommerce websites:


Bid or BuyCaloraCars.co.zaGreenloveGroupon My City DealKalahari.comkulula.comLeisure BooksLook and ListenLoot.co.zaNuMetroPrivate PropertyProphecy.co.zaSafariNow.comSimplicity OnlineTakealotTravel GroundUbuntuDealWicountYuppiechef

Of course, group buying had to have made their way into our eCommerce lives, such has been the public's fascination with cheap prices on things you mostly don't need. Perhaps Ster Kinekor is an omission here? Perhaps they didn't enter.

Otherwise good to see our eCommerce sector growing. In my mind, this is ALL about UX - and we need as much competition, learning and morale boosting as possible. We're a little behind the curve.

My f…