Ahead of this week's "Talk And Fireside Chat" about starting up and scaling across 14 African countries, iAfrikan had a Twitter chat session with one of the event speakers and Founder of Fuseware - Michal Wronski. Some of Africa's Technology and Social Media Experts joined in the conversation and the following is how it all went down.
Hello everybody and welcome to our #StartupJozi #Twitterview with Michal Wronski, Founder of http://t.co/O4ja7pssEF.
— iAfrikan (@iafrikan) June 17, 2015We invite you all to be part of the conversation and send us questions/comments using the hashtag #StartupJozi
— iAfrikan (@iafrikan) June 17, 2015Our team will be keeping track of the hashtag & the Top2 questions win double tickets to the next #startupJozi event (25 June at Ogilvy SA)
— iAfrikan (@iafrikan) June 17, 2015@iafrikan I am firstly a technologist and entrepreneur, very passionate about disrupting traditional industries with tech #StartupJozi
— Mike Wronski (@mikewronski) June 17, 2015Studied elec/comp eng. at UCT, worked as an engineer for 1y before deciding I wanted to make a bigger impact as an entrepreneur #StartupJozi
— Mike Wronski (@mikewronski) June 17, 2015@Fuseware was born out of a passion to change the way social media is measured and used by brands, and to disrupt thinking #StartupJozi
— Mike Wronski (@mikewronski) June 17, 2015Secured seed funding in a year, grew it into an industry leading brand and exited to @OrnicoMedia earlier this year (woop!) #StartupJozi
— Mike Wronski (@mikewronski) June 17, 2015The future for digi media and the broader ICT market in Africa is very bright, and I am humbled and excited to be in the space #StartupJozi
— Mike Wronski (@mikewronski) June 17, 2015@BrettMagill @Fuseware @iafrikan #StartupJozi Social is forming a new communications fabric across all industries. In education, it will ..
— Mike Wronski (@mikewronski) June 17, 2015@BrettMagill @Fuseware @iafrikan #StartupJozi ... lower barriers to entry, reduce costs and improve the way teaching and learning is done
— Mike Wronski (@mikewronski) June 17, 2015@BrettMagill @Fuseware @iafrikan Social will allow us to scale learning resources across the continent. An African Coursera #StartupJozi
— Mike Wronski (@mikewronski) June 17, 2015@mikewronski Big up on the exit to @OrnicoMedia!
— iAfrikan (@iafrikan) June 17, 2015@iafrikan @Fuseware is unlocking the value in social media data for brands to help them understand their customers #StartupJozi
— Mike Wronski (@mikewronski) June 17, 2015@Fuseware has a big data layer at its core, built on top of the Mongo/Ruby stack. On top, we have analytics + filtering layers #StartupJozi
— Mike Wronski (@mikewronski) June 17, 2015@Fuseware also provides in-depth research and consulting around this data and automated analysis for a 360 degree soln #StartupJozi
— Mike Wronski (@mikewronski) June 17, 2015@mohloboloko @mikewronski @BrettMagill @Fuseware You're always welcome. Thank you for joining us Octavius!
— iAfrikan (@iafrikan) June 17, 2015@mohloboloko @BrettMagill @Fuseware @iafrikan Feature phones still extremely popular, but will be phased out in coming years #StartupJozi
— Mike Wronski (@mikewronski) June 17, 2015@mohloboloko @BrettMagill @Fuseware @iafrikan Low cost smartphones+data will take over market in next couple of years #StartupJozi
— Mike Wronski (@mikewronski) June 17, 2015@TefoMohapi From last year's social landscape report, Nokia Asha top phone in SA for Facebook, BB Curve top phone for Twitter #StartupJozi
— Mike Wronski (@mikewronski) June 17, 2015.@mikewronski Interesting, can you venture a guess at the dominant device for the next five years? @TefoMohapi #startupJozi #MobileDevices
— Brett Magill (@BrettMagill) June 17, 2015@BrettMagill @TefoMohapi I'm an HTC brand ambassador, so a little biased ;) honestly, Huawei may be an upcoming giant soon #StartupJozi
— Mike Wronski (@mikewronski) June 17, 2015@mikewronski I CALLED IT FIRST! Lol! Said the same thing! Such potential to shakeup mobile device space @TefoMohapi #StartupJozi @HuaweiZA
— Brett Magill (@BrettMagill) June 17, 2015@BrettMagill @mikewronski @TefoMohapi @HuaweiZA If we ever have to review a Huawei device Brett's our guy! ;-)
— iAfrikan (@iafrikan) June 17, 2015.@iafrikan Well @HuaweiZA you heard the men! lol ... (humble laugh) @mikewronski @TefoMohapi I love my Mate, just saying! #StartupJozi
— Brett Magill (@BrettMagill) June 17, 2015@mikewronski I agree, Huawei have affordability with advanced technology on their side right now @TefoMohapi #StartupJozi, so cool
— Brett Magill (@BrettMagill) June 17, 2015@iafrikan No, just my awesome personality and corny jokes and detailed blogs! Lol! @mikewronski @TefoMohapi
— Brett Magill (@BrettMagill) June 17, 2015@YogitaRed8 Always had exit strategy in mind, but plans always change. Entrepreneurs must be agile and respond quickly to opp. #StartupJozi
— Mike Wronski (@mikewronski) June 17, 2015@BrettMagill @Fuseware Blogs extremely popular, not dying at all. Blogs allow for long-form content which has seen a resurgence #StartupJozi
— Mike Wronski (@mikewronski) June 17, 2015@BrettMagill SA's top bloggers get 10k+ social shares on top posts. Social media becomes the hub around blog content #StartupJozi
— Mike Wronski (@mikewronski) June 17, 2015@BrettMagill Top blog post in the country a few months back was from @mikestopforth http://t.co/xFA21jFxNH (15k shares) #StartupJozi
— Mike Wronski (@mikewronski) June 17, 2015@mikewronski I think that was Agency Life. Very cool read ;) @mikestopforth #startupJozi
— Brett Magill (@BrettMagill) June 17, 2015@BrettMagill that's an interesting question when even news sites also blogs to a certain extent. #StartupJozi https://t.co/Y3Pv4Ynpsw
— Ornico (@OrnicoMedia) June 17, 2015@OrnicoMedia Exactly, so makes a good one. Punting content isnt good enough in a flooded topical space. #StartupJozi
— Brett Magill (@BrettMagill) June 17, 2015@mikewronski in the next #StartupJozi event, we'll be talking "Starting Up in Africa" with @Orestaki. We're expecting to learn of challenges
— iAfrikan (@iafrikan) June 17, 2015@iafrikan access to talented staff is by far the biggest challenge. Raising money and accessing markets is easy in comparison! #StartupJozi
— Mike Wronski (@mikewronski) June 17, 2015@iafrikan Entrepreneurs are desperate for good talent in tech. We need to educate and grow our technical expertise in Africa #StartupJozi
— Mike Wronski (@mikewronski) June 17, 2015@mikewronski Thats true, but we've begun with #HackJozi it can only get better slowly, but we need more @iafrikan #StartupJozi
— Brett Magill (@BrettMagill) June 17, 2015@NubiKay Thanks, I think so too Nubi. And Im listening to rock on my end, so it helps lol @mikewronski @iafrikan @mikestopforth #startupJozi
— Brett Magill (@BrettMagill) June 17, 2015@BrettMagill @iafrikan SA has unique heritage and culture. I think @m4jam will dominate lower end of job market in future #StartupJozi
— Mike Wronski (@mikewronski) June 17, 2015@mikewronski I like that, @m4jam seems to have a shared element to it. I believe that is the key 2 JHB Startup success #StartupJozi
— Brett Magill (@BrettMagill) June 17, 2015@Mongezi Can I marry your brain! Its what I want to do with my own business, full mobile think tanks #StartupJozi Freakin love that!
— Brett Magill (@BrettMagill) June 17, 2015@BrettMagill @iafrikan We may see our own version of Uber that caters to SA needs (unbanked market,low income,SA taxis etc) #StartupJozi
— Mike Wronski (@mikewronski) June 17, 2015.@mikewronski We see that with some startups here in JHB, they just need some kinda push to reach mass @iafrikan #StartupJozi @SnappCab
— Brett Magill (@BrettMagill) June 17, 2015@Mongezi @iafrikan Absolutely! Size of market and competition much higher in US. Access to capital+talent much easier #StartupJozi
— Mike Wronski (@mikewronski) June 17, 2015@Mongezi @iafrikan Regulatory hurdles, legislation, labour law are more tricky in SA. BUT corporates are hungry for innovation #StartupJozi
— Mike Wronski (@mikewronski) June 17, 2015@Mongezi @iafrikan I find its actually easy doing business in Joburg if you solve a real problem in B2B. In CT, much harder... #StartupJozi
— Mike Wronski (@mikewronski) June 17, 2015@BrettMagill My first major client in 2010 was Nokia, who put big budget behind social research! Corps want innovation, implementation slow
— Mike Wronski (@mikewronski) June 17, 2015@mikewronski where I'm from, we usually say companies are sick. Implementation has always been a problem #StartupJozi
— Brett Magill (@BrettMagill) June 17, 2015@Mongezi @iafrikan easier said than done of course. We need more public sector support for tech entrepeurship and innovation #StartupJozi
— Mike Wronski (@mikewronski) June 17, 2015I hope I've given everyone a fair chance 2 ask questions. I need 2 close the session now. Catch us next week @ the actual event #StartupJozi
— iAfrikan (@iafrikan) June 17, 2015Thank you once again for hanging out with us on #StartupJozi @mikewronski! It's been uber-cool... minus your loadshedding challenge. :-P
— iAfrikan (@iafrikan) June 17, 2015@mikewronski we hope we didn't drain all your battery life & left you something to last your loadshedding. See you at #startupJozi next week
— iAfrikan (@iafrikan) June 17, 2015Thank you to everyone who joined and contributed to the chat. We'll be announcing the winner of the #StartupJozi tickets shortly.
— iAfrikan (@iafrikan) June 17, 2015Special shout out 2 @BrettMagill @Mongezi @TefoMohapi @mohloboloko @OrnicoMedia @YogitaRed8 for all ur ?ions & making #startupJozi happen!
— iAfrikan (@iafrikan) June 17, 2015@BrettMagill @iafrikan @Mongezi @TefoMohapi @OrnicoMedia @fuseware Thanks guys, was a great session tonight. Cheers #StartupJozi
— Mike Wronski (@mikewronski) June 17, 2015We like to keep our chat sessions shorter than an hour but Twitter had other plans. Picking up from Mike's tweet about low cost smartphones and data taking over the market in coming years:
[email protected] I agree! Now if we could get data costs down. @mohloboloko @Fuseware @iafrikan #StartupJozi
— Brett Magill (@BrettMagill) June 17, 2015@mohloboloko @BrettMagill @Fuseware @iafrikan Hard to estimate impact as I believe we will see disruptions in data biz models in coming yrs
— Mike Wronski (@mikewronski) June 17, 2015@mohloboloko @BrettMagill @Fuseware @iafrikan Musk planning global satellite powered internet. Google has project Loon. Telcos should worry
— Mike Wronski (@mikewronski) June 17, 2015@mikewronski And Facebook's http://t.co/sAZ8Wioxru is also in there. I hope to make a move before its too late @mohloboloko
— Brett Magill (@BrettMagill) June 17, 2015Mike's tweet about government regulations being a hurdle for startups caught Jonathan Daniel's attention:
@rightimage @Mongezi @iafrikan Expensive tax structures and complex labour law for SMEs are hurdles that directly affect cashflow+employment
— Mike Wronski (@mikewronski) June 17, 2015@rightimage @Mongezi @iafrikan Gvmt is putting effort in though e.g turnover tax. This only positively affects a tiny proportion of SMEs
— Mike Wronski (@mikewronski) June 17, 2015There were more "off the hashtag" tweets around the chat session that we haven't captured here. To get more insight on some of the topics discussed and a chance to network with some of South Africa's Technology and Social Media Experts, join us on the 25th of June at Ogilvy and Mather Johannesburg.