In August 2019, in partnership with AKRO Accelerate, Kingson held the inaugural Kingson Akro Pitch Event in Cape Town. Twenty pre-selected tech startups were given the opportunity to pitch their businesses to a panel of experts, including the Kingson team.
Out of this event, ten startups were selected to pitch again, and with input from Kingson’s Silicon Valley startup advisor, Paul Kallmes, five startups were selected. They include Eevly, Flamelink, iMpilo, Khoyn and ParkUpp. They will be travelling to the United States for the two-week boot camp on Friday, 17 January.
The boot camp is an intense two-week workshop, which kicked off on Monday, 20 January 2020, that will bring the five startups face-to-face with leading Silicon Valley experts on everything from startup scaling and implementation to social media marketing and team dynamics. There will be networking opportunities, one-on-one mentorship and valuable advice on how to plan, develop and execute on their business strategies.
Daily classroom-style sessions will be interspersed with networking events, and valuable reflection time to ensure the startups receive the full benefit of the experience. The two-week programme will end with a pitch event in the centre of San Francisco’s financial district, where the startups will be given the opportunity to pitch to a panel of US investors.
The five startups who will head off to San Francisco are:
Flamelink, founded by Marsh Middleton and Andrew McElroy, is a real-time, headless content management system for Firebase – Google’s mobile and web app development platform. It is built for coders and content managers and creates a simple interface between the user and Firebase.
Eevly, created by Sifiso Vundla, is an interactive content aggregation platform that allows content creators (video creators, musicians, vloggers, podcasters, game streamers, illustrators etc.) to connect with their audience, reach new viewers and plug into various brand partners – all in one content network.
iMpilo, founded by Kopano Mere, is a peer-to-peer knowledge and skill-sharing platform for health professionals.
Khoyn, co-founded by Victory Matibiri and Tami Chipika, is a social reselling platform for individuals, companies, wholesalers and more. Users don’t need to hold stock, as the platform works on a drop-ship basis and no investment is required to start selling. This approach is uniquely African, as social selling is hugely popular and conventional e-commerce is still relatively small.
ParkUpp is an innovative parking platform, co-founded by Palesa Moloi. The platform connects people who would normally have to park on the street with landlords and owners who have a surplus of off-street parking.
