Nic’s blog
I write about building businesses, failing and building a life, not a legacy.
Vinny Lingham - Abundant Thinking for Entrepreneurs
In this episode, I chat with Vinny Lingham about his time spent working in a corporate career and how it acted as a stepping stone to entrepreneurship. With a hunger for knowledge and an appreciation for information, Vinny is a massive advocate for skill-building experience and it’s evident in the way he talks about work and career opportunities.
In this episode, I chat with Vinny Lingham about his time spent working in a corporate career and how it acted as a stepping stone to entrepreneurship. With a hunger for knowledge and an appreciation for information, Vinny is a massive advocate for skill-building experience and it’s evident in the way he talks about work and career opportunities.
Hailing from East London in South Africa, he spent time in the corporate world before branching out to start his own companies. After building his first businesses, a search engine marketing platform in 2003 and incubators in South Africa, he moved to Silicon Valley to build up more tech entrepreneur experience. In 2015, Vinny started Civic, an identity platform, which is his current focus to develop to adapt in the COVID-shaken world.
Aiming for knowledge over experience
Coming from debt, being cash-strapped, and having learnt through a year of failed attempts to start things, from franchising to working on his dad’s business to trying to build businesses.
“I made lots of mistakes back then, it was a difficult time… I did a whole bunch of things that all failed. I moved on. That was a lost year, but I learnt a lot. ”
To fund himself through a couple of difficult years, Vinny got a full-time corporate job. In his time working in corporate life, the most important thing he realised was how crucial it is to learn on the job. To work hard and gain lessons through dynamic data and changing information make the hours working for someone else worthwhile. If you’re working in a corporate company and hope to start your own business at some point, Vinny’s advice is to make sure you are gaining worthwhile insights from your experience:
“If you work in a business where it’s dynamic and things are changing and you’re learning new things every single day, you need to maximise those hours. You need to plough in as many hours as you can. If you work twice as hard as everyone else, you can learn twice as fast in a business where data is changing. If you can develop specialised skills in a certain area and you raise yourself, especially in a new industry that’s emerging, you become an expert, you can find a gap in the market and start your own business.”
It’s important to realise that having a “wealth of experience” is not a good representation of how much a person can offer. More often than not, this is one of the biggest fallacies which corporates companies often buy into: A candidate for a job requires X number of years, and they’ll rule out the perfect person because of “inexperience” despite the treasure chest of information they might have. As Vinny pointed out, this creates a niche gap in the market which means the knowledgeable job-seeker will tend towards starting a new company rather than fighting for a job.
The fallacy of the work-life balance
Too many people are ambitious but aren’t willing to work hard to achieve. There needs to be intention to work to align with the ambition for results. And the two need to work together. You can’t only work smart and you can’t only work hard. If you try to balance your work and career and your leisure and your life at 50/50, you don't really give either enough they need. But if you can integrate both your work and your life, letting each other feed, then they can complement one another.
“If you’re trying to create wealth, then you can’t have a work-life balance because the opportunities that present itself don’t care about your life.”
The scarcity vs abundance mindset
Growing up in South Africa makes one guarded about losing something, which leads to a “scarcity mindset” and a conservative fear to mitigate risk. In developed economies, on the other hand, there seems to be a more prominent “abundant mindset”, where there is not the same drive to cling on to something out of fear of losing it.
“If I could go back in time and change one thing, I would have done differently is I would have moved away from South Africa earlier to adjust [and adopt an abundance mindset].”
On this point, Vinny noted that to combat issues of scarcity mindset means keeping overheads low, and take calculated risks, while reducing expenses to combat possible loss. Be frugal to be abundant and maintain cash-flow. As counter-intuitive as it sounds, to be abundant, there needs to be an element of constraint.
To young startup founders: Just take the damn advice
In closing, Vinny offered a key piece of guidance:
Learn from the mistakes others have made already. The advice hasn’t changed over years and learning through your own mistakes when you can avoid them makes for unnecessary use of time, energy, love and money.
“I got all the advice I could have got. I just didn’t listen. Listen to people who have been there and done it. Don’t mistake the same mistakes they made and listen to what they have to say.”
I was wrong about Vinny Lingham
It seems to be my repentance week. And repent I shall.In 2007 I wrote a blog post about Vinny Lingham abondoning South Africa in a tough time, taking his money and running. I was shot down, defended and received 40 comments in total on that post which turned in to a very up-and-down debate.I was immature, I didn't understand the market I was in and I jumped to some unfair conclusions about Vinny and Synthasite. I stand corrected and gladly so.Vinny needed to move to where he moved for relatively obvious reasons. Yet he maintained offices in Cape Town and fed those offices through with some of the brightest talent he could find. He did not abandon SA but did what he needed to do to make his business work. And work it did.I received this in my inbox this morning:
Dear Nic,Today, I'm proud to announce that Reinet Fund has just invested $20 million into SynthaSite, securing our future and enabling us to continue to build our business model and product offering. This is a massive vote of confidence in SynthaSite, and we owe it to each and every one of you. Our future is bright and, with your support, we will continue to make a difference in the world!When we began building SynthaSite, we sought to create a company whose product would change the lives of millions of people by giving them a voice online. We wanted to provide the opportunity for anyone anywhere to build a website that would achieve their unique goals, from starting a small business to showcasing their achievements.In 2007, we raised $5 million in venture capital and moved our headquarters to San Francisco, keeping a good portion of our technical team in Cape Town, South Africa. Since then, SynthaSite has grown from just a handful of people to more than 40 individuals in both offices, supporting over one million users. Our support forum is one of the most active on GetSatisfaction's network, and our recent "Best of SynthaSite" contest attracted more than 1,000 entrants. This level of success could only be achieved thanks to the dedication of both our user community and our staff.I'm unbelievably excited about the future of SynthaSite and look forward to building on our success in helping you and many others reach their potential online. These past 15 months have just been the beginning...Thank you for all your support.Vinny LinghamFounder and CEO
To Vinny and his team I cannot congratulate you enough. You deserve the success (and the money) and I hope sincerely that the investment you've received in this downturn proves well worth it in the long run.
Is South Africa not good enough for Vinny Lingham?
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.
Synthasite Mentioned On TechCrunch
Reading my TechCrunch feed this morning I noticed that Synthasite received another mention on the blog.While referring to a Facebook plugin called Sampa which provides Facebook users with the ability to customise their webpages within the Facebook platfrom, Synthasite was mentioned. Sampa is apparently more focused on content while the TechCrunch blog says that Synthasite is more of a designed based creation platform.Very interesting. Mr Lingham and his startup are making waves. I think it is fantastic for South African startups and Vinny deserves all the praise he can get.