Inspiring start-up legacy
Zuko Tisani dreams of South Africans starting their own ICT firms
A FEW years ago, after graduating with a degree in industrial psychology, Zuko Tisani landed a plum job that he neither had qualifications nor experience for.
A management company was looking for someone with a Master’s degree to occupy the position of a digital consultant. However, fresh out of UCT with an undergraduate degree that was worlds apart from what the employer was looking for, Tisani landed the job easily after an interview.
What he lacked in experience and qualification at the time more than made up for in good knowledge of the digital economy and his good understanding of consumer psychology. Being a go-getter also helped. It’s this tenacity and the urge to always challenge himself that have resulted in Tisani today being the chief executive of a first black-managed venture capital fund at the tender age of 26.
It is Tisani’s dream to one day see his company, Legazy (CRT) Venture, helping black South Africans start their own information and communications technology companies to rival Twitter, Alibaba and Facebook.
Tisani’s company, which has Business Leadership SA chief executive Bonang Mohale as its chairperson, has R150 million it wants to use towards helping entrepreneurs establish business that will take the digital economy forward in South Africa.
“We invest in ICT companies because we believe that is what is coming is the digital economy. We have to position South Africa to be suited to compete within the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” he said.
Tisani’s need to help others make the best of their businesses stems from being surrounded by start-ups that would fail before they took off.
There was even a point when that hit closer to home because his parents had also dabbled in businesses that failed due to lack of financial support.
“I started Legazy Ventures because there were failing start-ups all around me. Everywhere around me start-ups were failing,” he recalls.
“I became the bridge connecting people with opportunities. I also help them expand, to meet the needs of consumers and get business acumen.”
According to Tisani, the start-up culture in South Africa has not grown as there are many contributing factors, as well as no access for funding.
Legazy Technologies, which has entrepreneur Brandon Katz as well as Devon Alexander as general partners, is a company that emerged out of Tisani’s travels and studies on the different entrepreneurial ecosystems and climates he had come across in the world.
This after he noticed how much the South African entrepreneurial ecosystem (the relationship between public, private and entrepreneur) needed maturing and how invisible African innovation was to the world.
“The culture has not shifted in South Africa to take the Fourth Industrial Revolution seriously, we are just consumers.”
Patriotism, he believes, is another issue that could help South African businesses thrive.
“For example, if you look at the East, businesses there are protected by government policy. The governments allow local innovations to thrive by promoting Alibaba, WeChat, others that are the equivalent of WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter.
“I don’t believe in censorship and don’t think it’s the correct way of doing things but that level of patriotism is important for companies to grow and thrive.
“We don’t seem to have the same value of respect for local start-ups,” he says. Today, his company wants to offer local businessmen the opportunity to bring digital disruption in the country and create jobs that will grow the economy.
Companies that want to take advantage of this opportunity, he says, must be ICT based, black-owned, be at least over a year old and their products must be serving the everyday needs of a South African. However, with cases of window dressing rife in South Africa, Tisani says that’s an issue they try to identify early on.
“Window dressing is a problem in South Africa but at least we try to ensure that the business is 51% black. We run an extensive due diligence to avoid window dressing.
To get more information on how you can get your company a piece of that R150m, send an e-mail to info@legazy.co.za and also visit www.legazy.co.za