What is Silicon Cape?
Silicon Cape is a nonprofit company committed to building and catalysing the technology ecosystem in the Western Cape.
Founded in 2009, by Vinny Lingham and Justin Standford (Here’s the original post), the organisation has grown to over 10 000 individual members, representing over 500 organisations with close ties with other professional bodies such as Wesgro, CITI and Global Entrepreneurship, the government of the Western Cape and the City of Cape Town.
Since its inception it has grown into a recognised organisation that has access to, and represents, the interested of the tech and entrepreneurial communities in the province.
After seven years as a purely volunteer organisation, Silicon Cape has evolved into an NPO with a full time operations team, supported by the Volunteer Board of Directors and Community Council.
Its primary focus is supporting the development of high growth, high tech businesses in the Western Cape to kick-start meaningful economic growth, build new industries and create jobs.
What does Silicon Cape do?
It supports the growth of the ecosystem by attracting the right stakeholders to the ecosystem and by working with entrepreneurs, regulators, governments and corporate businesses to create an environment where startups can thrive.
How does Silicon Cape do this?
Silicon Cape has four main areas of the focus:
- Providing non-financial resources to the Silicon Cape community in the form of information , industry research , networking events and facilitating connections.
- Creating an enabling environment by working to bring about better regulations and less red tape by working with local and national government bodies and Chapter Nine Institutions and encouraging more diversity with active support from the Transformation portfolio team.
- Increasing partnerships and bring as many different players into the sector through formal partnerships and sponsors with corporate businesses, government departments and agencies and local and national networking organisations.
- Market the Western Cape in general, and Cape Town and surrounds in particular, as an international technology hub by showcasing our startups successes to international visiting government and private sector delegations, investors and MBA groups.
How to get involved
Initially why not become a member, subscribe to our newsletter and come to our upcoming events.
If you would like to become part of the volunteer community you can learn more about the council and what it entails here and then watch for the call for nominations which takes place every two years. The next call for nomination will be December 2016.
If you have a specific request please contact engage@siliconcape.com