IncuBeta founder and chief strategy officer Vinny Lingham has established his own venture capital (VC) firm.
A "serial entrepreneur", Lingham founded global search marketing company incuBeta and its subsidiary Clicks2Customers. Last year, Lingham was named the Top ICT Young Entrepreneur in Africa at the ICT Achievers Awards.
"IncuBeta is established now and I am ready to move on to new adventures. I still retain my shareholding in the company, but my passion is in helping small local companies to go global," he says.
Lingham will leave his fulltime position at incuBeta on 1 August to focus on incuBeta spin-off company Synthasite and personally-funded Lingham Capital.
Signing deals
Lingham Capital has already signed an equity deal with Cape-based hotspot provider Skyrove.
The two-year-old company received angel finance from the US in the latter half of 2005 to facilitate the launch of its wireless hotspot technology. The technology allows consumers or businesses to set up a local wireless hotspot and on-sell bandwidth capacity to people within range.
Last year, Skyrove's efforts were recognised in the emerging technologies section of the Technology Top 100 awards.
Founder Henk Kleynhans says the company is ready to spread its wings.
"We have a lot of plans to expand our business in the Western Cape region, the rest of SA and eventually outside of our borders. Lingham's investment and future participation in the company will enable us to achieve those aims," he explains.
Lingham did not disclose the value of the investment in Skyrove, nor the shareholding Lingham Capital will get in return. However, he did say it was in the seven-figure range.
Lingham hopes to identify two to three more investment opportunities in the next two years.
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