Vinny Lingham has recently secured $5m dollars in Venture Capital investment for his startup, Synthasite, from Compagnie Financière Richemont’s subsidiary, Swiss-based Columbus Venture Capital.
He is making waves internationally, he is doing a great job of building an empire. Unfortunately that empire is moving away from it’s home.
Vinny is moving. Now most of you wont think twice about this, good for him making something of himself and moving on to bigger and better things. But I have an issue with all of this and trust me, I am not the only one.
Setting up a fund for local companies to pool resources from (commonly known as Venture Capital - VC) is great. But taking these companies to a global market, removing them from SA and garnering credit from an international market with no emphasis on the South African nature of the product is not on.
If Synthasite is anything for us to go by we can expect all of Vinny’s “investments” to up and leave SA for greener, better, larger, more profitable markets. Which makes sense I suppose. But the nature of our market is one that needs nurturing and growth from the grassroots up and the inside out. Vinny could’ve been our man but it seems as though profit and power motivate more than development and growth for SA.
Don’t misunderstand me, I am not berating Vinny’s success. It is marvelous that the man is set up for at least the next well, forever. Investments are great but how about giving something back?
Vinny has the opportunity to hire local developers, train local people to become great innovators, developers and business people. He has the chance to make an impact. Instead he is fleeing SA for San Francisco. The money is greater, the market (I mean USA when I say “the market”) is more appealing for him and SA is left in his wake. Sad situation if you ask me.
He claims to be a VC but to date Lingham Capital seems to have invested in SkyRove and that’s it. In fact, for someone with a site that builds sites (Synthasite), Lingham Capital’s own website looks pretty dismal to me. The homepage is barren, the featured investments are empty, there hasn’t been a single blog post and it seems as though the site never even got off the ground.
Some might say he’s been busy raising $5m for Synthasite but that’s hogwash. Yes he raised the $5m but then why bother even making a massive announcement that he would be investing in companies locally?
Speaking of local investments, it seems as though Vinny has no interest in investing locally unless there is massive global focus. Vinny has openly stated in the past that he’s not interested in the South African money - the market is too small. He did so on David Bullard’s blog where he only spoke of dollars and pounds because his company, Incubeta, only generate about 5% of their R60 million turnover from SA.
Eve Dmochowska has a great post wherein she chats about a meeting with Vinny, Justin from Afrigator and others. Here’s a quick excerpt:
This is how the situation panned out. Try to keep up.
Vinny cannot invest in Afrigator, because it does not have immediate global appeal, but Triumph cannot invest in Synthasite because it does not have enough local focus. Unfortunately, even though Afrigator is all about local focus, Triumph wouldn’t invest because there is no cash flow. Blue Catalyst might be able to put Afrigator in touch with angel investors who might provide the capital necessary to get Afrigator to a positive cash-flow situation, but the fact that Afrigator’s creator has only had one failure behind him (and not at least five) puts him at a disadvantage in all the VCs’ eyes. Go figure.
Damned if you do and damned if you don’t. I am sure this is how Vinny is going to feel after reading this post. Unfortunately I am one of those people who believe that it’s not someone else’s job to make change happen. It’s my job, it’s your job and it’s the job of whoever can actually make a difference.
Vinny has openly said that he wont invest in Afrigator because it is too local. Why would he not want to invest now and help them mould their company in to one that is locally based with global appeal? Why must profit = global alone? Why can an African website such as Afrigator not make it in a VC’s mind? Short sighted and naive in my opinion.
South Africa needs heroes, captains of industry and leaders. Not Capitalists who flee when things get tough and the market is more lucrative somewhere else.
Justin, Gregor and I have whipped together a bit of a frenzy around our new blog, Nudjit. 
