Andy Hadfield

eCommerce is an interesting space to keep an eye on in South Africa. There's plenty of VC flowing into the sector, which tells me they're on a 3-10 year plan to start turning around what has previously been known as a "tough sell". In eCommerce, we're still absolutely dominated by airline ticket sales. From what I remember, 2012 was about R9 billion in airline tickets and R2 billion in "other" eCommerce. Still... when was the last time you bought an airline ticket from a travel agent? That's what the VC's are betting on. The culture will spread, like it has in other digitally empowered nations. I asked on Twitter who people thought were the biggest vs most exciting in the South African eCommerce space. Answers were interesting. BIGGEST eCOMMERCE PLAYER IN SOUTH AFRICA (crowd voted): Kalahari.net (6 votes) TakeALot (3 votes) Woolworths (2 votes) iTunes SA Pick 'n Pay Bid or Buy Groupon South Africa Zando Kulula Amazon Mr Pri

Can't remember exactly where I got this, but it's been rehashed a few times - let's credit "the Internet". It's a slightly tweaked version of the Gartner Hype Cycle - designed to show the peak of expectations and slump of disappointment that most new businesses / products / industries go through. Survive that and the winners start emerging. I think it's useful for every entrepreneur to go back to this every few months and try plot your progress. Be realistic, you're probably not as far along as you think you are. But like all things, it's a process. 90% of entrepreneurship is just gritting it out.

Brett Haggard, Andy Hadfield and Adam Oxford get together for a roundup of what’s been going on in the South African technology over the past week or two. The news discussed includes: 8ta is no more; New Unlimited ‘Red’ plans from Vodacom; The Free State’s R140m WordPress site; Evernote’s been hacked, now change your password; Twitter kills Tweetdeck apps; Is Facebook burying content that isn’t ‘paid for promotion’? Intel Clovertrail, Clovertrail plus and Baytrail coming; and Bradley Manning received record number of nominations for Nobel Peace prize. This week on the rumour mill: IS the Apple iWatch coming? Samsung Galaxy S4 to contain ‘eye scrolling’? iPhone 5s rumoured to have a fibreglass body and plastic back? Our technology picks of the week are: Andy Hadfield picks on Rwanda (again) and picks his launch of www.mybeer.co.za ; Adam Oxford picks on Solid Gold Bomb (on Amazon) and the recent TED talks ; and Brett Haggard picks the Olloclip for iPhone 5.

What a weekend. What a festival. How cool is it to have a BEER APP ? :) Here's the report back from the Clarens Beer Festival where we launched MyBEER (think Real Time Wine for Beer). The pic is of the rad dude from The Cockp it Brewhouse...  SAB BRINGS BEER HEROES TO CLARENS CRAFT BEER FESTIVAL  Festival- goers at this weekend’s third annual Clarens Craft Beer Festival, sponsored by The South African Breweries (SAB), were among the first to become ‘Beer Heroes’ by using the new MyBeer app.  For those who know their stout from their ales or wish they did, MyBeer was launched in the small Free State town this weekend, to assist the beer-loving community to rate, review, discover and share the best beers South Africa has to offer. Users can also see the top 10 trending beers, as voted by the community, in real time, and view prices.  “MyBEER, the new online beer community, was commissioned by SAB to encourage bee