South Africa’s ‘Top web startups’: Did they make it?

Rudolph Muller

Rudolph Muller is the editor at MyBroadband and covers telecoms and broadband news. Rudolph comes from an academic background, but left the University of...

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In 2007 a list of ‘SA’s Top Web Startups’ was released. We look at where they are now, and if they made it as big as predicted.

In 2007 the term Web 2.0 rose to prominence in South Africa, fuelled partly by a very vocal blogging community. During this time numerous new websites – all dubbed as Web 2.0 initiatives – were launched, promising to revolutionise the local Internet environment.

The ‘web 2.0’ hype and boom in blogging and new media websites inspired well known online entrepreneur Charl Norman to write an article entitled ‘South Africa’s web startups to watch’.

This article was widely hailed as a list of who’s who in the new media space in South Africa, with websites like Amatomu, Synthasite, Blueworld, Afrigator, Zoopy, Muti and Vottle listed as startups to keep an eye on.

We caught up with a few of the promising start ups listed by Norman to answer the question that many people wondered back in 2007: Are they profitable and sustainable?

It was encouraging to find that most of these online initiatives grew over the last few years with many employing staff and even turning a profit.

Several of these initiatives have received funding, another sign that there is a fair amount of confidence in the local Internet market.

On top of the pile is serial entrepreneur Vinny Lingham’s Synthasite – now known as Yola – which received around R250-million in funding since its launch. Zoopy, Blueworld and Afrigator all grew and in some cases turned profitable.

The following table provides a snapshot of the current status of the various initiatives mentioned by Norman back in 2007.

Website/Business	Founding members	Funding/Investment	Full time employees	Profitable
Yola (SynthaSite)	Vinny Lingham	Yes (R250million)	65	Not yet, but growing fast
Zoopy	Jason Elk, Gerry da Silva, Pat Elk	Yes (Vodacom)	23	Not disclosed (Unlikely)
Blueworld / Zoopedup	Brent Brooks, Bradley Voges, Charl Norman	Yes (Media24)	13	Yes
Afrigator	Mike Stopforth, Justin Hartman, Stiaan Pretorius, Mark Forrester	Yes, but repurchased back by founders	4	Yes
MyVideo	Rowan Polovin, Tristan Owen, Michael Salzwedel	Yes	3	Yes
Freelancecentral	Jo Duxbury	None	2	Yes
Vottle	Greg de Chasteauneuf, Ronnie Apteker, Andrew Murray, Colin Peterson, Justin Spratt, Richard van Katwijk, Gus MacRobert	Yes	3 Part time	Yes
ModelBase	Peter Sserwanga	None	1	Yes
Amatomu	Vincent Maher, Matthew Buckland	Yes, but repurchased back by founders	2 Part Time	No
Muti	Neville Newey, Dave Duarte	No	Part Time only	No
iBlog	Mark Garbers	Acquired by ITWeb
MyGenius	John Raath, Doug Timberlake	MyGenius did not reply to requests for information
iJol	Founders uncertain	iJol did not reply to requests for information
Amagama	Vincent Maher, Matthew Buckland	Amagama was closed due to a lack of interest