If you’re (or anyone you know is) at all interesting in working in Sunny Cape Town, please have a look at the jobs on offer within the award-winning incuBeta Group.

More specifically, with my Synthasite CEO hat on, we’re desperately looking for great people with great attitudes and exceptional talents, to contribute to a fast growing Web 2.0 startup!

If you know of anyone that would be interested, please steer them our way!

Some great SEO work went into this site and we’ve also launched a Pay Per Click campaign for them. We have some more very high profile clients that are launching soon, and our Web Dev/SEO business is growing exponentially at the moment.

On that note : We’re hiring! If you have any SEO/SEM experience, please email careers@incubeta.com (all positions are located in Cape Town), or check the incuBeta careers page.

Congratulations to the entire incuBeta team (and all our partners & clients) for taking our business to the level that makes this transaction possible – it’s hard to believe we’re in our 4th year of business already!

VC FUNDING BOOST FOR AWARD-WINNING SA ENTREPRENEURS

Cape Town, January 31, 2007: Top Technology 100 winners and internet marketing pioneers, incuBeta, this week received the first R15-million installment from a new R25-million investment from Mark Shuttleworth’s HBD Venture Capital. Already positioned at the forefront of the search engine marketing game, the South African entrepreneurs will use the investment to expand incuBeta’s presence in the US and UK and progress its growth strategy which aims to ultimately list on the Johannesburg or London stock exchange.

incuBeta was founded four years ago by SA entrepreneur Vinny Lingham who recognised the opportunity represented by bidding on Google keyword searches and advertising products and services related to each keyword. The business grew quickly and today it has 50 staff, offices in Cape Town, Johannesburg and London and turnover of over R50-million a year.

Giles Douglas, CEO of incuBeta said the investment would allow several goals to become reality. “Our first priority is to open offices in the heartland of technology in Silicon Valley in California so we can be closer to our major search partners, Google and Yahoo, and our US clients. We are already a major virtual player and a physical presence in the States will allow us to build a stronger brand and accelerate our growth prospects. We will also strengthen our European presence. We ultimately plan to list on either the Johannesburg or London stock exchange within the next 24 months and this funding will assist in this growth strategy.”

Eben van Heerden, Portfolio Manager of HBD Venture Capital – one of the few true venture capital firms in South Africa – said, “We are very excited about this investment. This is a truly South African company with no real local competition. It is rated as one of the top three internet marketing companies in the world by Commission Junction, part of the Nasdaq-listed ValueClick Inc. The company has developed robust technology in-house and this provides the perfect platform to achieve future expansion.  incuBeta’s clients include many of the biggest online retailers in the world and it operates one of the world’s most sophisticated keyword bid management software systems. We plan to work closely with incuBeta to ensure exponential growth happens quickly.”

Douglas said that search engine marketing was growing at over 40 percent per annum – particularly since the advent of Web2.0 which has changed the internet from a tool used largely for information purposes to an interactive social arena. “Google is the fastest growing company of all time, and is at the forefront of search and more recently Web2.0. Its turnover is derived predominantly from auctioning keywords for searches which allow merchants to link advertising or marketing campaigns to each specific search. It allows for highly targeted advertising campaigns and is the preferred marketing method for most online merchants.”

He said, “incuBeta bids on millions of different keyword combinations and links targeted advertisements for its clients to each keyword combination. We currently place over 50 million targeted adverts every month. In the next few years we expect to see search engine marketing moving from personal computers onto mobile phones, television and even in-car navigation systems.  We aim to be at the forefront of these technological changes – and the investment by HBD will help us achieve this.”

Douglas said that incuBeta would remain a South African company. “We will keep our headquarters in South Africa and have recently launched incuBeta Consulting in response to local demand for our expertise. The core focus of the consulting business will be to transfer our knowledge of search engine marketing and other Web2.0 trends to other South African companies that are interested in enhancing their brand online. This will enable them to reap real business benefits from the many possibilities which the internet offers.”

Van Heerden concluded that he hoped incuBeta’s success would inspire more South Africans to take the entrepreneurial plunge. “All too often, we are put off ‘going it alone’ because we believe that our ideas must have already been done abroad – this is often not the case and we encourage local talent with business ideas to explore these to the full. Many of the leading economies of the world were built on small-to-medium size enterprises so this is a definite priority for South Africa’s future growth.”
For more information visit www.hbd.com or www.incubeta.com

Well here goes nothing:

I am the very proud recipient of the award for “Top Young Entrepreneur in Africa” in the ICT African Achiever Awards, held in Johannesburg this past weekend (to be broadcast on SABC later this week).  ITWeb reported on it today.  I’ll be posting some pics tomorrow on this posts, and hopefully a video snippet after the broadcast.

A letter from the President of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, was read out at these awards:

“ICT is recognised as a vital tool that can assist with the development of our country and continent. It is a field that can create substantially new forms of employment and entrepreneurship that are much needed in the country and continent.

“In this context, government has been busy putting appropriate measures in place to ensure there is universal access to ICT services at affordable costs aimed at growing the sector,” Mbeki wrote.

He added that government’s efforts for growth and development are focused on achieving higher rates of investment in the economy, increasing the competitiveness of the South African economy, broadening the participation in the economy, improving the capacity of the state to deliver, and contributing to a better world.

“Universal access to ICT services can now have an impact on all these areas, and has already contributed to an environment conducive for small and growing players to thrive in.”

Even though this is a personal award, it is truly testimony to the fabulous bunch of people at incuBeta that I have the pleasure of working with every day, all our clients and partners!  Thanks to everyone who has worked with us over the past few years!

Rob Stokes over at Quirk beat me to my own scoop this morning – the nerve!

When Google launched their new Co-op program last month it captured our imagination! South Africa’s best search engine is the local Google.co.za, with all the others coming a distant second (based on the fact that Google is the #1 accessed site in the country). So we decided to use Google Co-Op to create a better search engine – the power of Google Search combined with local knowledge of the Internet world should lead to substantially better results.

Google Co-Op allows you to create a custom search engine which either prioritizes or only searches a designated set of pre-determined results. You can add additional refinements and as time goes on, I am sure that they will offer additional features to the product set. We are looking to the South African community to assist us in improving the results by adding the good sites, and removing the poor ones – something that is automated for Google, but will be manual for us – human intervention is a great way to detect poor spam sites, etc.

Lee Stuttaford & Keith Feldwick-Davis from incuBeta are responsible for the design & development of Sekamo – and they’ve done a great job.
The beauty of Google Co-Op is that it allows hundreds of people to team together to improve the listings by adding their favourite sites, relevant to the topic in question (in this case, South African interest). Anyone can sign up on the site, and you just need a Gmail account to get started (email me at vlingham-at-gmail.com if you need one), and start contributing the development of our local search engine.

This is true collaboration around Search – Google understands, and I agree, that search has to verticalize over the next few years – Google.com simply will not be able to improve the quality of the information without hundreds and thousands of sites like Sekamo that will feed better information into them, based upon actual user relevance and collaborator input.

I’m pretty impressed with Google, however, they have restricted the site to 5000 refinements (i.e. we cannot load more then 5000 additional sites into the index for prioritisation) – hopefully this will change soon.

So I invite all South Africans who are interested in creating a better search engine locally, to either volunteer or submit site for prioritisation in our index.

Oh, and keep this watching this space – if Sekamo takes off, you can expect us to launch many more vertical search engines!

Last week we were one of the winners of the Regional Finals (Western Cape) for the South African Technology Top 100 Awards and are through to the National Finals in Johannesburg later this month. Although we won “Most Promising Emerging Enterprise” last year, we’ve grown up and are now a finalist in the “Established Companies” division of the award. There is a big gala event (over 1000 people attending), and we’re very exciting to be in the finals – I got the opportunity to do my first television interview yesterday, in case we win, which will then get broadcasted locally.

And that’s not all… Last month (err… September, actually – please excuse me for being late on this one!), we were notified that we were selected as an Endeavor company, after a grueling 6 month process where Endeavor got a chance to lift the hood and inspect our engines! I also had the fortune of being interviewed by Adrian Gore (the Founder & CEO of Discovery Health – the largest healthcare company in South Africa), as part of the process.

Here is a snippet from the Endeavor website:

WHO WE ARE

Endeavor is a non-profit organization that identifies and supports innovative, high-growth entrepreneurs in emerging markets around the world.

We help visionary entrepreneurs, with daring ideas, who are transforming their communities, their industries, and even their countries. We help create jobs, propel economies, and cultivate rising leaders and role models.

Endeavor is not a fund. We’re part talent scouts, part business accelerators, part real-time business school.

OUR MISSION

Endeavor identifies the most promising and innovative entrepreneurs, then provides strategic, world-class support to help take their companies to the next level. Through these success stories, Endeavor inspires the next generation to think big and take risks.

With Endeavor’s support, businesses expand, jobs are created, and entire countries are transformed, one entrepreneur at a time.

Endeavor transforms the economies of emerging markets by identifying and supporting high-impact entrepreneurs.

High-impact entrepreneurs have the biggest ideas and most ambitious plans. They have the potential to create thriving companies that employ hundreds, even thousands of people, and generate millions in wages and revenues. And they have the power to inspire countless others.

Endeavor targets only these high-impact entrepreneurs. We help them break down a society’s barriers to success, offer world-class strategic advice, and open doors to capital. With Endeavor’s guidance, they become role models, encourage others to innovate and take risks, and create sustainable economic growth.

Together, Endeavor and high-impact entrepreneurs change industries, communities and entire countries.

MODEL

1. ENTER– Endeavor targets emerging market countries transitioning from international aid to international investment. Endeavor then seeks out local partners to build country boards and benefactors to launch Endeavor local affiliates.

2. SELECT – Through a rigorous, multi-step selection process, Endeavor screens thousands of emerging market entrepreneurs to identify the best talent in a country. Candidates with the most innovative, high-growth ventures and greatest promise as future leaders become Endeavor Entrepreneurs.
3. SUPPORT – Endeavor provides customized local and global services for selected Endeavor Entrepreneurs, including access to hands-on tools, mentoring and networks that will increase opportunity for success.
4. PROMOTE – Endeavor’s local offices partner with leading media companies and universities to promote Endeavor success stories and role models, demonstrating that regardless of background it is possible to transform an entrepreneurial idea into a world-class business.
5. INFLUENCE – Endeavor partners with governments and multilateral institutions to examine policy changes that countries can make to promote entrepreneurship and venture capital. Endeavor also aims to inspire a tradition of philanthropy where local entrepreneurs serve as community leaders and philanthropists – donating time, money and knowledge back to their communities.

METRICS

Endeavor is changing the face of philanthropy. We are not a charity. We don’t offer financial aid. We support high impact entrepreneurs who are building the economic backbone of emerging markets.

• 251 Endeavor Entrepreneurs from 169 companies selected after screening 11,892 entrepreneurs

• 30,600 jobs created by Endeavor Entrepreneurs

• US$974.4 million in revenues generated by Endeavor Entrepreneurs in 2005e

• US$79.8 million in financing raised by Endeavor Entrepreneurs in 2004e

• 95% of Endeavor Entrepreneurs’ companies still operating

• 2,231 media articles and interviews featuring Endeavor Entrepreneurs

• Over 500 angel investors trained by Endeavor

• Between 1997-2004 6 offices launched: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, South Africa and Uruguay

The great thing about going through the process at Endeavor is that it did help to focus the business thoughts and energies, through some healthly debate. I seriously recommend that entrepreneurs in any of the markets that Endeavor operate in, to apply and go through the process – at the very least, you would have had some smart minds to bounce your thoughts off.

Endeavor also gives us access to a very wide network – part of the real value add of being an Endeavor company. With access to this network, my personal goal to help drive global innovation and entrepreneurship from an African base and contribute to the local IT community will be greatly strengthened. Africa has many problems and challenges, but also opportunity and rewards – incuBeta has certainly proven that local companies can not only be successful domestically, but also internationally.

As I always say, Africa is no longer a charity case, it’s become an economic opportunity – but much work needs to be done to spread the wealth creation from South Africa into the deepest darkest parts of Africa and boost economic growth and alleviate poverty. If you think about it, given the isolation of Africa from the rest of the world – virtual economies like Software Development, eBooks, Travel Bookings, etc (i.e. things that can sold online that do not require delivery), are perfect opportunities for us to leverage and create jobs. The critical element here is ensuring that the goods and services are world class – that is what will put Africa on an equal footing to China & India – where wages are low but output is solid. In some cases, South African wages are almost on par with first world countries, which makes this goal even harder to achieve. That said, our quality is also first world class, in my humble, yet biased opinion
And to finish off this rather lengthy post, and in the spirit of all things African, I thought I might just mention that I’ve been nominated for the African ICT (Information Communication Technology) Awards (which covers all countries in Africa). The category is the “Top ICT Young Entrepreneur in Africa”. This award will be handed out at the end of this month at another big gala event in Johannesburg – hold thumbs!

And seeing as you’ve managed to read this entire post – a big thank you for reading!

The two companies will operate independently, but collaborate on projects and clients where appropriate and share skills and expertise.  The combined staff complement will be around about 85 people and we’ll be celebrating our deal tomorrow afternoon at an undisclosed ocean-view party venue – I’ll post some pics this weekend!

incuBeta:

incuBeta is a South African company, with offices in Cape Town. We employ a total of 50 staff to work on different online technology products, services & companies such as Desktop Search Bars, Synthasite & Clicks2Customers. incuBeta develops the technology solutions that power the Clicks2Customers business.

Clicks2Customers:

Clicks2Customers is a US registered subsidiary company (100% owned by incuBeta, with a small satellite office in California) which operates as a Paid Search Engine Marketing Affiliate. This is a very specific team of about 25 people within incuBeta who work in, and fully understand the PPC (Pay Per Click) marketing arena. We are currently in the process of setting up UK offices as well. This is incuBeta’s most successful business to date. We work with a few, very select merchants to drive them over $100m/annum in sales via the Pay Per Click search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, etc.

Synthasite:

Synthasite is a Proprietary Web Development Platform which we have created to assist us, and other affiliates in deploying websites which are largely built around product feeds, such as MeetPersonals. We have just finished round 1 of our Beta testing program and Synthasite is definitely a long term project for us. It’s a unique piece of intellectual capital that competes head on with products like Dreamweaver, Frontpage and the like, and something that we believe to be far more efficient in building affiliate websites.

Other products:

incuBeta is always investigating new and exciting products in the Internet space, focusing primarily on B2C marketing, and consumer driven applications. Desktop Search Bars is simply a forerunner to a new project that we are launching very soon…