Pieter de Villiers is a South African born entrepreneur who spent years in Silicon Valley with a passion for mobile and the empowerment it leads to. Pieter is also one of the youngest mobile industry veterans with over 14 years of experience in global telecoms, mobile messaging and mobile payments. In 2013 Pieter launched the SiMODiSA initiative; focused at accelerating start-up success for South African entrepreneurs.
Keet is a Venture Catalyst with extensive high-growth investment experience. He co-founded growth equity fund manager; Knife Capital, to continue the active management of HBD’s South African portfolio of investments and raise third-party funds for growth equity investments. Other companies co-founded: AngelHub, Grindstone Accelerator, KNF Ventures.
Matsi is Vice-Chairperson of SiMODiSA, an industry association whose mission is to accelerate entrepreneurship by collaborating with policy makers to enhance the success rate of high impact, high growth entrepreneurs. She is the founder of Furaha Afrika Holdings and sits on various boards including the Innovation Hub board and the Agrie-Vie Private Equity Fund Board of Advisory. Her experience ranges from Investment banking, enterprise development and building entrepreneurship ecosystems on the African continent.
.
Jason co-founded Edge Growth with the mission of creating jobs by scaling ventures. He has also co-founded Vumela, a Venture Fund initially capitalised by The First Rand Group. Vumela makes investments in early stage, high growth firms. He later launched 10X-e, dedicated to helping successful founding teams Scale Up.
Anusha is a South African Chartered Accountant with over 20 years of experience across financial services and capital markets. As part of CEO at SAVCA, she brings extensive expertise in capital raising, corporate finance and investment, with experience spanning South Africa, the UK and the UAE. She has led significant fundraising and M&A transactions and holds an Executive Leadership qualification from Oxford Saïd Business School. Anusha is also passionate about advancing women in finance and contributes as a guest lecturer at the University of Cape Town.
Alison is the Managing Director of Endeavor South Africa, bringing close to 20 years of experience in strategy and business development across Africa, Europe and Asia. She has first-hand experience establishing global offices for multinational companies, supporting South African startups to expand into international markets, and raising capital to finance growth. Her experience gives her a strong understanding of what it takes to help ambitious businesses scale and compete globally.
Bongulwazi Kunene is the Community Manager at SiMODiSA, having grown from an intern into a full-time team member over the past two years. He brings valuable experience in project coordination, stakeholder engagement and community building, with a strong understanding of social media, content creation and audience engagement. Bongulwazi is recognised for his strong project management and leadership skills, and plays an important role in building relationships and strengthening SiMODiSA’s startup ecosystem community.
As Marketing Coordinator at SiMODiSA, Mandisa supports the Operations team through marketing, communications and stakeholder engagement. She is responsible for managing digital content, campaigns, newsletters and ecosystem communications, while supporting events, reporting and key organisational initiatives. Passionate about entrepreneurship and South Africa’s startup ecosystem, she helps amplify SiMODiSA’s work and strengthen engagement with founders, partners and ecosystem stakeholders.