Could Cape Town be the next Silicon Valley?
posted by Paul
We've recently heard of a few American visitors to Cape Town mentioning how much our city reminds them of San Francisco, with the exception that San Francisco has "the dial turned way up".
The amount of innovation within the Web community of Cape Town is simply astounding. This evening local web-entrepreneurial hero Vinny Lingham, CEO of Synthasite (a Cape Town web-based startup company) presented a talk to some of Cape Town's web entrepreneurs, explaining how to go about seeking venture capital to help turn small under-funded startup companies into the next Google or Facebook.
If you are thinking about investing in a Cape Town-based startup I'd suggest that you don't wait too long. Over the next couple of months and years I think we'll see Cape Town's web entrepreneurs attempting to turn that virtual dial "way up", making a couple of lucky investors very, very happy in the process.
4 Comments:
As someone who was born and raised in Cape Town, and now living in San Francisco, I can totally see the comparison on a more practical level too: both cities are amazingly similar in climate and nature. San Francisco (or the greater Bay Area) reminded me so much of Cape Town that I decided to settle down here, after spending some time in England and the US East Coast (Washington DC). The San Jose hills resemble Tygerberg hills, my old home in ZA.
Hopefully investors will feel the same way when they see Cape Town, and set up shop there.
Thanks for the mention Paul and Kerry-Anne. I think CT is on the brink of Very Big Things and am so thrilled to be part of the 'circle' of people who are positive, enthusiastic and making things happen. A very inspiring place to be right now!
Having lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, I'm partial to beautiful places like the city by the bay. If John McCain wins the election in November (and please pray he doesn't), I may have to consider Cape Town. Right now I'm leaning toward Vancouver, BC, but if your city is going to be the Silicon Valley of Africa, that sounds quite worth checking out!
Nice photo, btw.
Cape Town and San Francisco are actually sister cities as well. Although this relationship has been largely limited to cultural exchanges (regular visits by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and so forth), I hope such collaboration will eventually lead to more substantive economic cooperation.
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