SynthaSite is on the move – $20mm in new funding
I previously blogged about SynthaSite‘s charismatic CEO, Vinny Lingham (Wow, I see Vinny has been selected as a 2009 Young Global Leader!). SynthaSite seems to be growing by leaps and bounds amid all the bad economic news.On February 17, 2009 Synthasite announced a $20mm in second round funding from Reinet Investments. I received this email from Vinny announcing the news:
To all my friends, family & colleagues,Today, I’m proud to announce that Reinet Fund has just invested $20 million into SynthaSite, securing our future and enabling us to continue to build our business model and product offering. This is a massive vote of confidence in SynthaSite. I have attached the press release for your benefit – there is also an article on TechCrunch today about the announcement: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/17/synthasite-gets-a-20-million-boost-for-simple-website-creation-software/When we began building SynthaSite from our humble base in Cape Town, we sought to create a company whose product would change the lives of millions of people by giving them a voice online. We wanted to provide the opportunity for anyone anywhere to build a website that would achieve their unique goals, from starting a small business to showcasing their achievements.In 2007, we raised $5 million in venture capital and moved our headquarters to San Francisco (where I am now based fulltime), keeping a good portion of our technical team in Cape Town. Since then, SynthaSite has grown from just a handful of people to more than 40 individuals across both offices, supporting over one million users and growing rapidly.I’m unbelievably excited about the future of SynthaSite and look forward to building on our success in helping you and many others reach their potential online. These past 15 months have just been the beginning…
I wish you lots of success Vinny!
Read MoreTop 10+ Websites from Africa
Listed below are some of the best websites from Africa and South Africa. Another good source of African IT news is ITWeb. My friend Thomas Otter writes some very insightful posts about technology in South Africa. Google recently expanded into Africa as well. Google has a specific site for South Africa.
Synthasite is a site where people can build their own Website, without needing any HTML or programming knowledge. Synthasite is a Web 2.0 platform; it uses drag and drop technology, and it’s free. Synthasite also offers free Web hosting and users can download their site onto their own computers. Vinny Lingham is Synthasite’s CEO. He’s also CEO of in Lingham Capital and founded incuBeta and Clicks2Customers.
Ushahidi – A place to track acts of violence in Kenya. Witnesses report what they’ve seen and where, and Ushahidi logs and maps it. Each reported and verified incident is marked on a map for viewers to see. Ushahidi offers buttons for others to use on their blogs and Websites to help spread the word and attract more users to the site.
Afrigator – A social media aggregator and directory for African citizens who publish on the Web. Afrigator showcases digital content – a blog, videocast, any site with an RSS feed – and markets it to the world. It also scans the Web for African-related tags and pulls them into the site. Categories for content include media, technology, competitions, for fun and HOWTO.
muti is a social bookmarking site inspired by reddit and digg but dedicated to Africa. Registered users vote up or down on the content of links submitted by other users. Items can be viewed as hot, stats, new, top, most liked or most viewed.
Amatomu – tags itself as “the South African blogosphere, sorted.” Users can read blogs about business, technology, news and politics, entertainment, media and marketing, sport, life, humour and religion. Visitors can also search for their favorite bloggers or search for blog posts.
Blueworld (LassoSoft) – A software company producing products to create interactive, data driven Websites. LassoSoft offers a variety of products depending on the customer’s need. The site also has a community area where developers, providers and software enthusiasts can exchange information and ideas.
Zoopedup is a social networking site for car aficionados to meet and swap photos, videos, stories, tips and information. Members create an online garage for their autos and can also place their “ride” in a head-to-head “battle” with another car and have fellow users vote for their favorite. Events are also showcased at zoopedup.
Mamamikes – Web surfers with family or friends in Kenya or Uganda can send gifts safely and securely to their loved ones using this online service. Shopping vouchers are a popular gift at this site, as are the newly-added cell phone prepaid minutes. Other gift options include flowers, chocolates, restaurant and fuel vouchers, electronics and gifts for newborns.
Afrigadget – “Solving everyday problems with African ingenuity.” Bloggers and readers contribute stories showcasing innovations from around the African continent. These innovations help others overcome challenges faced in everyday life. There are a plethora of categories: Afrigadget, books, communication, energy, food, gadgets, health, how-to, ingenuity, innovator series, jua kali, material, metal, news, sanitation, toys, transportation, water and wood. The site also includes links to gadget sites and blogs of interest.
Clickatell – The Website of the world’s number one mobile message provider. Visitors to the site can learn about the products, the company, prices, and get product support. Pieter DeVilliers is the CEO and co-founder.
Ananzi – Devoted to servicing South Africa, Ananzi is a search engine and site directory. Ananzi is a free service to owners of South African Websites and sites of interest to South Africans. It was created in 1996.
Vinny Lingham – CEO of Synthasite
Recently Vinny Lingham stepped down from his post as chief strategy officer of IncuBeta, the online marketing company he co-founded, to concentrate on the interests of his venture capital company, Lingham Capital and more specifically on Synthasite. Lingham, along with his wife, Charlene, and a couple of friends started IncuBeta in 2003 and have grown the Cape Town company into a 50-employee operation with offices in the United Kingdom and United States. IncuBeta owns and manages several businesses, namely Clicks2Customers, a performance search marketing partner; SEM agency Quirk, ReveNews, and CostPerNews.
Another IncuBeta startup company, Synthasite, is now one of the primary investments of his venture capital enterprise, Lingham Capital, and one of the primary targets of Lingham’s attention. Synthasite recently received another round of financing worth $5mm.
Lingham is a mix of youthful energy and idealism, hard work, brains and national pride. He’s 28, works 60-70 hours a week, is a member of the Mensa organization, and loves South Africa.
Raised in East London, a city on the east coast of South Africa, Lingham received an information systems degree from the University of Cape Town and (Vinny corrected me: he dropped out because he didn’t have the finances to continue. I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets an honorary degree from UCT) an honors degree in electronic commerce from the University of South Africa. He is a fourth generation South African with ancestors from India. He loves to read, especially novels by Dan Brown and Tom Clancy, and is a movie fan. He considers Virgin founder Richard Bransen and U2 lead singer Bono personal role models. (He admires Bransen for his passion and fun, and Bono for his work for Africa.) In 2006 Lingham was the winner of the Top Young IT Entrepreneur in Africa Award. He is also listed in South Africa’s who’s who database.
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Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud – EC2
Amazon and Google are launching some amazing services these days. Amazon’s services include: Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Simple Storage Service (S3) and now Flexible Payments Service. These services may be accessed via APIs (web services) and are used by developers to introduce new products and services. Amazon charges a small fee for using their infrastructure and this is a new income stream for them. The solutions catalog lists a number of solutions built on Amazon’s Web services. Interesting solutions include: RightScale.com (instance management), File123.com (file management) and Jungledisk.com (internet backups). The following blog gives a good overview of what EC2 means for entrepreneurs.I think that utility computing is finally here. This is what IBM’s been talking about for a while, on demand computing.Google offers another set of interesting web services. It includes APIs for interacting with Google Apps and Google Gears that enables web applications to work offline. Adobe offers something similar called, AIR (formerly Apollo). Offline web applications will bring the power of Web 2.0 applications to the offline desktop (Did I just say that? Web apps more powerful than desktop apps?)Intuitively I know that this is a huge disruptive change — if only I can figure out how to take advantage of it! Let me know if you’ve figured it out…Update Sept 6, 2007: Check out SynthaSite’s use of Amazon’s Computing Cloud. Nirvanix recently launched as an alternative to Amazon’s S3. Nirvanix provides an SLA — Amazon doesn’t.
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