SleepOut.com is Africa’s largest social accommodation marketplace connecting travelers looking for cool and unique places to stay with hosts and their empty beds. In 2011 while still working at the UN in Nairobi, SleepOut founder Johann Jenson spent a lot of time visiting Lamu Island where he fell in love with the barefoot bohemian chic lifestyle… Read more
OurHood is a private social network for neighbourhoods. As a digital platform OurHood aims to promote safer and better connected neighbourhoods, by linking the digital and physical worlds. It provides a platform for residents to engage across multiple devices. Our South African curator, Lauren Wallett, met with the creator: Bruce Good. Where did the idea… Read more
Aisha Pandor and Alen Ribic are the co-founders of SweepSouth – an online platform for connecting homeowners with excellent, reliable, experienced domestic cleaning professionals – basically Uber for cleaning professionals. We bumped into them at the recent Start-Up South Africa event where they walked away as winners in the Get Up Start-up competition with an… Read more
South African based TheRoomlink is a platform that matches renters with available rooms. Founder, Liezl Hesketh shares her view on why this is the solution for so many students, commuting professionals and people looking for short term rentals. Why did you decide to start TheRoomLink now? We found that there were many students in South… Read more
We scour the internet to find the most interesting news on the collaborative consumption front. Here are our picks for the week: E-commerce firm AIH bets on peer-to-peer lending Tiisetso Motsoeneng and Nomatter Ndebelle, Reuters E-commerce firm Africa Internet Holdings (AIH) has launched a person-to-person lending service as a digital alternative to banks, adding to its… Read more
Tyrone Rubin, the co-founder of the brand new ‘HipCloset’ , his partner David Franciscus and lead engineer Esmerino Costa, have developed an online market place for people to buy and sell fashion in South Africa. In this interview, Tyrone reveals their goals for the startup, the social media app he can’t live without, and more! Our curator for… Read more
Peer-to-peer accommodation marketplace Airbnb is now available in South Africa, with 3,180 places available to stay country-wide. With around 1462 listings in Cape Town, 452 in Johannesburg and the rest spread across the country, there are diverse opportunities for people to learn more about the way of life in South Africa. While the demand for… Read more
Coming out of South Africa: SME Trade Zone (STZ) is a potential answer for small businesses who are looking to find services offered by those in the same community. Often Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are unsupported by government – due to variety of reasons such as not meeting regulatory requirements or not employing enough… Read more
Menlyn Maine is a South African green city initiative. It is a place where collaboration, greening and sustainable living all meet. Important to realize however, is that it also represents the first aggregation of collaborative initiatives, by the launch of its Findalift.co.za portal. In fact, by incorporating synergetic collaborative ventures into its eco-system, Menlyn Maine… Read more