Social Entrepreneurship Bootcamp in Cape Town with BonBillo + Startupbootcamp Afritech

The one thing I took away from Bonbillos incredible program is my new found confidence in global thinking.

It showed me that, as a young South African techpreneur, I am more than able to compete with my international age mates.

You don’t have to go to an ivy-league for a “world class business education”. Just jump into the race and run. Throughout the whole program I was constantly surprised at how much I was learning. Proof that there is no one standard way to become a successful entrepreneur.

The Bootcamp far exceeded any expectations I had. The quality of the content and the people delivering was top class and I feel I grew in ways I did not know I could. The excursions fostered relationships between us as participants which was great. It was an invaluable experience and I am grateful to have been a part!
My entrepreneurial lens was widened and my perspective was stretched. Collaborating with other start-ups and seeing the synergies in our respective journeys brought about great learning.

During the week we would work really hard on our business operations. It was an adventure. Leaving the house every morning around 8:30 not knowing what time exactly are we coming back. We are passionate about the problems we are solving so it wasn't problem. What's interesting the most is the amount of fun we had in between the hard work. We went out for dinner with Suraj and the teams, visited the Robbin Island took interesting tours on Sight Seeing buses. I witnessed how beautiful Cape Town is.

Really awesome enjoyable experience. High learning environment mixed with a lot of fund and travel. Highly recommended. We had a lot of high impact, rapid fire rounds of lectures, activities and a pitch/demo day to potential investors. We also visited local startups: LULA and YOCO who shared their journey on how they built their companies. Every startup needs to go through a programme such as this where it gives exposure to international content on how to build a business with a mix of local startup learnings.

Working with BonBillo has been an amazing experience. I'm grateful for having BonBillo on board they are just as committed to make CarPark, the venture I have found a success. I really liked how they pushed me towards the right direction about the problem we are trying to solve. We have build an application that allows drivers to find their cars in crowded or unfamiliar parking lots. In the boot-camp we invested in the business development side of our product and various ways of creating value for all the stakeholders.

I also got a chance to learn a lot about my country's history and I also experienced the beauty of South Africa, the Table Mountain, Robbin Island and the various beaches in Cape Town.

Africa is the future. Entrepreneurs, like the friends I made during this program, will be the ones who will shape that future.

As for Medyear, we found out we could meet a niche need within the HIV/AIDS narrative. So we as a team got to connect in Cape Town (my teammates flew in from Pretoria).

Education content was pretty high quality (leverages a lot of MIT methodologies). I learned some new stuff and the coursework helped me perfect my craft. A good place to begin is with solid teachers and content. I would recommend studying up, to all aspiring and current entrepreneurs.

I had the best time and came away with so much. Cape Town is like the best place in the world. I couldn't even do it all, and am bummed I missed the safari. But big heartfelt thank you to the BonBillo team and SBC team, and others (Oliver, Papa Trill, etc).

I participated in the Bonbillo Social Impact Incubator program in Boston in 2017. As a student of entrepreneurship, I was grateful for the opportunity to pursue a socially responsible business venture equipped with the backing, support, and training provided through the program. And as a product manager currently working in the tech space, I continue to leverage the tools and methodologies provided during my Bonbillo experience.

One critical feature of the Bonbillo program to call out is its use of the 'Design Sprint' methodology, which allows a team to quickly deploy product prototypes, solicit customer feedback and iterate, all in a matter of days. This is a foundational skillset for innovation in today's rapidly evolving world. It's incredible how much a team can achieve in such a short period of time.

Suraj and his team at BonBillo have a fantastic program in place. As a native Bostonian, I didn't experience the travel/housing component of this, but I can tell you that spring time in Boston is a wonderful time to visit this great city. But the real value is for entrepreneurs looking to fast track their professional development and company's progress. Using a curriculum that is proven and incredibly effective at breaking down your business model into concrete, sequential, step by step process' that will reveal to you where to focus, what assumptions you need to prove, when and why to pivot, you can effectively validate or invalidate your model in order to grow as quickly as possible.

Suraj, Rachel, and Julia are all very knowledgeable and wonderful to work with, and there experience covers a wide breadth of facets of having a company, and they bring in expert outsiders to compliment the course work as well. I spent many hours in brainstorming sessions with Suraj where we made fantastic progress and I felt myself taking massive steps forward in my understanding of entrepreneurship and what are key strenghts, gaps, are.

Highly recommend this to an entrepreneur looking to learn tons in a short period of time and be introduced to the investment community in Boston.