We currently have so many funding institutions, incubation hubs and accelerators in our entrepreneurial ecosystem in South Africa. When we attend these events as Thriving and ask for feedback we still get entrepreneurs complaining that they still struggle to get access to funding, access to market, too many red tapes, long processes, and generally time consuming.
Their view of these programs is another way for corporates to tick boxes on their bee spend rather than making direct impact to the entrepreneurs and the for the Entreprise Development institutions to rather make noise but don't create sustainability in their approach as some of the content they curate is something that an entrepreneur hungry for knowledge could google and find out by himself.
When we look at what's happening in Tel Aviv in Israel known as the Startup Nation because it only has a population of 8 million but boasts 5400 registered startup companies and has the highest amount of startups per capita in the world. The Israeli government gives businesses in digital, data and tech huge tax relief and they have access to a large number of angel investors and VCs. Overall the mindset of these entrepreneurs is the belief that they can get their ideas funded and supported because of how their ecosystem works well and the success stories of companies like Waze, Wix, Pipedrive and Fiverr to name but a few.
In addressing these complaints from entrepreneurs using Tel Aviv as a case study my answer is the more the merrier. The more teams we have in the ecosystem the better players. The better the competition, coaches, money, success stories, the better entrepreneur.
So we need more Raizcorps and Simodisa's to really push this agenda as everyone will contribute what they can into the ecosystem which will allow the entrepreneurs to have options and choose which teams they want to work with that will better suit their businesses, which means the accelerators and incubators would have to adapt or die.