by Eugene Jansen, CEO of Stone Three Venture Technology

Venture capital is the buzzword on every entrepreneur’s lips, especially in South Africa where initiatives such as Silicon Cape aim to replicate the success of technology startup environments elsewhere in the world. Attracting investment, be it angel, venture or otherwise is about more than money, in fact: I hold the opinion that securing a large amount of cash early on is the worst thing that can happen to a new venture.

Entrepreneurs need to remain agile, constantly figuring out how to shape and develop their offering. That focus to validate by securing the first customer sales or user adoption often disappears as soon as too much cash provides a big comfort zone. Entrepreneurs need the involvement of experienced investors with a track record of success and complementary skills to help them take their business to the next stage of success and to ensure that each financial investment truly works.

We developed an approach that focuses on skills development, specialisation and focusing on what truly makes talented people within our company alive with passion for the business ventures they are involved with. On Friday April 17th, one of our ventures was spun out as a separate company. It provided validation for a process of co-creation, where risks during the exploration and development stage of new ventures are shared with both our internal entrepreneurial team and external partners.

This co-creation, I believe, is the future of long-term venture success within our business.

A new way of investment

Building great businesses is all about adaptable strategy, efficient execution and most critically the people to make this possible. Our Mining division was established in 2010 with the vision to build a sector focussed business leveraging our long legacy of machine vision capabilities. Five years later, they are a leading provider of stabilisation and optimisation solutions for mineral extraction processes in the mining industry.

Their success was driven by the entrepreneurial team’s growing depth of knowledge, technical skills and dedication to providing value to their clients. Late last year, we decided to empower the senior team by giving them ownership of a company that they dedicate their days, skills and passion to. In addition, spinning out the division allows the team to expand their industry aligned partnerships to unlock the next phase of growth.

Successful companies have to grow through client acquisition and revenue growth. To free our entrepreneurs up to do what they do best, we provide vital administrative and governance support to our divisions and startups. Dropping the ball on financial management, HR management or administration creates distracting crisis's to even the greatest of ventures. I believe that by removing this burden we create an environment that is conducive to success and long-term fulfilment, and delivers the greatest amount of value to current and prospective clients. Over time as a venture reaches scale these functions can be internalised without risk of disruption.

The value offering

While a focus on technical expertise and an ability to use technology to deliver value to clients around the world is a great way to build a business, technology itself will not ensure the success of a venture. Without the right people, even the best technology concepts and ideas will fail.

Company culture needs to ensure that every staff member is fulfilled by the work they do, constantly challenged, and motivated to give their best at all times. Our head of Human Resources, aptly referred to as Team Dynamics within the organisation, plays a pivotal role in maintaining high levels of employee satisfaction and engagement. This helps retain our skilled staff, which is critically important particularly among the technical teams who are in high demand in the job market.

Retaining skilled staff is tremendously challenging. Smaller companies are often faced with competition from large corporates offering salaries that are impossible to match. Where they can compete is in giving senior staff a sense of ownership in the work they do, and a feeling of self-direction that enables them to determine their own destinies.

Mentorship play a big role. As an example: our Chief Technology Officer (CTO) provides mentorship to skilled technical members within all our divisions. This gives highly talented and skilled staff the opportunity to continue growing into CTOs themselves, once their venture reaches the business maturity required to justify a corporate spin-off.

A commercial understanding of technology

Companies will often find that some skilled developers and engineers develop an appetite for the commercial side of things. Structuring deals, building market strategies and growing the business through commercial astuteness excite them. The co-creation model enables us to empower these staff members and grow them into positions that may see them playing key roles in their own spin-off company in the not too distant future.

We carefully cultivate our world-class capabilities in all areas related to advanced signal processing ranging from Software Defined Radio to Big Data Analytics and Machine Learning. Exciting opportunities in these fields allow us to attract top technical talent, growing them over time to add value to those ventures that excite them.

Through a partnership model with our key customers we are aggressively venturing into new sectors that include health care, finance, knowledge management and maritime communications. Our specialist teams working on projects within these sectors have seen the success of the Mining team, and are working with renewed passion and energy to grow their portfolio of clients and projects.

A successful new product or service that provides real value is in fact the end-result of hundreds of little experiments aiming to find the optimal point between technology maturity and perceived end-user value. By empowering our employees to pursue partnerships with knowledgeable experts in their respective markets we ensure they come to appreciate the great value that direct access to end-users provide. Co-creating product solutions within this framework ensures that a significant amount of risk is removed, thereby improving the sustainability of any new technology venture we embark on.