Vinny Lingham's Blog

I’m really excited to announce that I’ve been selected as a Young Global Leader for 2009, by the World Economic Forum. I’m honored to have been selected and I’m looking forward to contributing to the forum.

Techcrunch has a good post covering it.

The official press release follows:

World Economic Forum announces Young Global Leaders 2009

230 leaders from business, government, academia, media, non-profit organizations and arts chosen from around the world

Geneva, Switzerland, 25 February 2009 – The World Economic Forum has announced the Young Global Leaders (YGL) 2009. The honour, bestowed each year by the Forum, recognizes and acknowledges between 200 and 300 outstanding young leaders from around the world for their professional accomplishments, commitment to society and potential to contribute to shaping the future of the world.

The Forum has nominated Young Global Leaders from 71 countries, including business leaders, as well as leaders from government, academia, non-profit organizations, media and society. The new class represents all regions: East Asia (54), Europe (58), the Middle East and North Africa (12), North America (45), South Asia (24), sub-Saharan Africa (20) and Latin America (17). For a list of YGLs honoured in 2009, click here.

“The World Economic Forum is a true multistakeholder community of global decision-makers. Among the Forum communities, the Young Global Leaders represent the voice for the future and a catalyst for initiatives in the global public interest. As we currently face one of the most challenging times economically and socially, the Young Global Leaders are even more important in developing, designing and leading a world committed to positive change,” said Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum.

Drawn from a pool of almost 5,000 candidates, the Young Global Leaders 2009 were chosen by a selection committee, chaired by H.M. Queen Rania Al Abdullah of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, comprising 31 eminent international media leaders. For a list of the selection committee, click here.

The Young Global Leaders (YGL) 2009 reflect regional and stakeholder diversity. They include :

Anies Baswedan, President, Paramadina University, Indonesia;
Shireen Bhan, Anchor, CNBC-India, India;
Omar Ghobash, Ambassador of the United Arab Emirates to the Russian Federation;
Priya Haji, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, World of Good, USA;
Chad Hurley, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, YouTube, USA;
Paula Santos, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, Vesta Technologies, Brazil;
Brent Stirton, Photographer, South Africa;
Stephan Wrage, Chief Executive Officer, SkySails GmbH & Co. KG, Germany among others.

“I am honoured to be nominated as a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum. I believe this will be a unique opportunity to engage with a community of thought leaders and captains of business, government and other sectors to share the challenges and opportunities faced by entrepreneurs, both working as start-ups and in partnerships with multinationals in emerging markets. There are opportunities to build sustainable businesses, but also hurdles that must be overcome for which solutions are not obvious. The YGL community provides a global network of peers to seek solutions, so that we can collectively contribute to society,” said Kamal Quadir, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, CellBazaar.

The 2009 honourees will become part of the broader Forum of Young Global Leaders that currently comprises 480 outstanding individuals. The YGLs convene at biannual summits, as well as Forum events and meetings throughout the year, and collaborate on initiatives to tackle some of the key challenges of our generation.

“Being a YGL isn’t just an honour for things we’ve each done in the past. Not an award. This is membership in an incredible community that inspires each of us to aim higher and think more broadly,” said Nancy Lublin, Chief Executive Officer, Do Something, USA, nominated to the YGL community in 2007.

In addition, Georges Kern, Chief Executive Officer, IWC International Watch, Switzerland, who has been an active member of the YGL community since 2005 commented: “The Forum of Young Global Leaders has been one of the most inspiring experiences for me, both personally and professionally. Without this global platform, we wouldn’t have had the chance to reach this many powerful business and creative leaders around the world to promote various initiatives. The level of positive drive and commitment to improve global issues, together with the enormous diversity of the community, are the impressive unifying forces of this ambitious group of individuals.”

Supporting Documents
List of YGLs honoured in 2009 (PDF, 14 pages, 243 KB)
List of the YGL community (PDF, 23 pages, 248 KB)
List of the YGL Selection Committee (PDF, 1 pages, 191 KB)

——————————————————————————–
About The Forum of Young Global Leaders
Established in 2004 by Professor Klaus Schwab, The Forum of Young Global Leaders is a unique, multistakeholder community of the world’s most extraordinary young leaders who dedicate a part of their time to jointly address global challenges and who are committed to devote part of their knowledge and energy to collectively work towards a better future. Together the Young Global Leaders work to discover innovative solutions to today’s most pressing problems through various initiatives and workstreams as well as catalysing the next generation of leaders.

——————————————————————————–

The World Economic Forum is an independent international organization committed to improving the state of the world by engaging leaders in partnerships to shape global, regional and industry agendas.

Incorporated as a foundation in 1971, and based in Geneva, Switzerland, the World Economic Forum is impartial and not-for-profit; it is tied to no political, partisan or national interests. (www.weforum.org)

I’m very proud to be able to announce that during what looks like the deepest economic crisis of recent history, SynthaSite’s investors are so confident of our success, that they have increased their investment by a further $20m (R200m). This is testament to the great work that our team have done in building a solid business with a great product. We have also grown our userbase to over 1m from just over 10,000 at the start of last year and we are poised for more radical growth this year.

Even though the world economy is not looking good, the fundamentals of our business remain the same : People everywhere will need websites, today, tomorrow and in 5 years time – when this depression is over! The funny thing is that our business is partially recession-proof, in that as people get retrenched, they start their own small businesses, and therefore need websites.

SynthaSite’s goal is to make it easy enough that anyone with a computer can create a website for their small business, organization or personal needs. We’re building a long term business here – we want to be the undisputed market leader, and this investment goes a long way to getting us there.

The first $5m that we received allowed us to hire 40+ people, create infrastructure, systems, process & support for our business to expand upon. We are now ready to take our product to various large ISP’s & PC Manufacturers and increasing our reach and distribution by getting our product into the mass market. We believe that this $20m investment will allow us to grow very quickly and become the de-facto standard amongst for small business & personal website building.

On a side note, when we first raised the $5m and I moved to San Francisco – I came under criticism from some local South African observers for moving abroad. Today, SynthaSite has created over 20 jobs in Cape Town and we moved 5 of us from Cape Town to San Francisco – this is job creation at it’s best for South Africa. (Thanks to Nic for his blog post today). I’m very proudly still South African and I’m glad to be able to contribute to the local economy and demonstrate what’s possible if you put your mind to it, make sacrifices and keep trying!

And guess what: I’m not alone… guys like Justin Stanford are also out there making things happen in Cape Town, and if this trend continues, Cape Town in particular is going to become the Silicon Cape that I dream of!

TechCrunch gave us some good coverage today and explains a bit about what’s we’re up to – worth a read!

Thanks to everyone for their support thus far – the future certainly looks bright for SynthaSite!