Springlab‘s doors are now officially open. Springlab is a new technology incubator based in Cape Town and setting out to foster entrepreneurship in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The founders of Springlab are Eugen Petersen (co-founder of Zando, Africa‘s largest online fashion store) and Sheraan Amod (co-founder of Personera, a US-based venture capital backed firm), who bring diverse local and international startup experience to the company. Strategic advisor Randolf Jorberg (founder of Gulli.com, one of Europe‘s largest online tech communities) is renowned as one of Germany‘s top online marketers and brand builders.
“œEntrepreneurship has been the engine for growth in the United States. Now Africa is on the rise and technology entrepreneurship should be at the forefront of it“ says Eugen Petersen. “œWe are deploying the internationally successful incubator model to reduce startup risk and to spur this growth.”
The company is working from a converted warehouse in Observatory, Cape Town and has just opened a sales office in Rivonia, Johannesburg. To date, Springlab has been backed by private angel investors, and is now open for direct equity or convertible loan investments into the incubator and portfolio companies.
Springlab is geared towards lean, data driven startups that are scalable, and will avoid capital-intensive business models such as e-commerce. It also acts as joint venture partner for international technology companies looking to enter the African market.
“œSpringlab founds its own companies and is not an external investor or temporary accelerator“ says Sheraan Amod. “œWe take on fewer projects, but stay hands on while the venture grows up. We‘re a committed partner.“
The typical investment per venture for Springlab will be between R200,000 and R2-million including the use of the incubators core resources and services. Springlab often covers the full spread of a technology venture‘s needs: strategy, product development, online marketing, sales, administration and later stage fundraising. Currently, Springlab is hiring across all areas.
The first venture of Springlab is RecoMed (www.recomed.com) – a site to find the best doctors nearby and book appointments with them. The service already features 4000 doctors and is free for patients. RecoMed was silently launched last December and already attracts 14,000 visits a month, is generating appointments for doctors on a daily basis and has a growing revenue base.
Source: Springlab
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