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Glimpse into biggest hurdles for entrepreneurs

Cape Town – Funding and access to markets are the biggest challenges that emerging entrepreneurs face, initial data in the Emerging Companies Insights Survey showed.

Talent or skills, as well as regulatory hurdles and red tape follow closely behind in the survey, which is a collaborative initiative by PwC, the Silicon Cape Initiative and Microsoft BizSpark.

The survey, which is still open for submissions, includes a national cross section of emerging companies spanning all industries with technology enabled solutions, from early stage to approximately R100m revenue per annum, as well as investor and other ecosystem stakeholders' views.  

People who take the survey stand a chance of winning a prize to the value of R50 000.

This survey will form the basis of an in-depth research piece covering specific metrics concerning emerging companies in South Africa, their CEOs and the entrepreneurial landscape in which they operate.

For the first time in South Africa, this survey takes a deep dive into the challenges and opportunities facing emerging companies in South Africa, according to PwC’s accelerator senior manager Maija de Rijk-Uys.

“The idea behind the research is to truly understand - with data backing - what is happening in the entire landscape in South Africa,” she said. “We’ve only seen regionally fragmented data and there are a lot of assumptions and anecdotes, and they have not all been tested.”

The survey will form a basis of the research, as PwC will use existing studies and interview experts “to connect the dots to a picture” that gives the best reflection of the situation.

De Rijk-Uys said there are a lot of assumptions that need testing.

“A big one is access to funding,” she said. “How true is it that there is little access to funding. Everyone says that VCs (venture capitalists) are risk averse and there is little funding available.

“Another one is how stifling our red tape is,” she said. “Is it really putting our entrepreneurs off or are they jumping through loops?

“The quality of our entrepreneurs and how people perceive the companies coming out of SA is another issue this research will explore,” she said.

Microsoft BizSpark, Wesgro, the Western Province’s Trade and investment promotion agency and the City of Tshwane are backing the research, which will be presented at the SA Innovation Summit on August 28, the Vision to Reality Awards Ceremony in 2016, Slush in Finland and PwC’s local to global conference in Berlin, amongst other relevant conferences.

* Take the survey now.

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