I am one of the many thousands of SA entrepreneurs who has been left with no choice but to close down their business as a direct result of Covid-19. Just as those living with the virus are telling their stories to remove associated stigmas, small business owners must also speak out to destigmatise Covid-19-induced business closure.
With my mentor’s support we pitched the company vision to Investec’s then CEO, who astonishingly agreed to support us. We decided to call the new company En-novate, and our motto was “Growth through global exposure”. When I look back at the nearly 1,000 emerging business leaders we took to 10 countries over the past four years, there are three specific trips I believe demonstrate the positive impact we aimed to make on our country.
For a number of our participants the trip was their first time overseas, and we aimed to show them that they are indeed internationally competitive. We took a group of medical technology entrepreneurs to San Francisco with Discovery in November 2016 and on the second day of the trip our group met Launchpad Digital Health, a prestigious digital health accelerator programme. The very next day one of the entrepreneurs applied to the programme, to which she was almost immediately accepted.
One of our participants, a successful private equity specialist, stood in front of two extremely high-net-worth investors and told her life story of having grown up in a township. She changed her name to attend a better school during apartheid, and overcame much adversity to eventually cofound a private equity vehicle with a major bank. Her story exemplified to these investors just how much untapped talent exists in our country just waiting to be unlocked.