Sbusiso Leope is an extraordinary South African entrepreneur. DJ Sbu, as he's more commonly known in South Africa, was the first speaker to speak on a Heavy Chef stage outside the main centres of SA. Sbu gave a fired-up performance in Khayelitsha, regaling a packed crowd of passionate entrepreneurs with stories of how he started hustling selling sweets while his friends were playing and how he made seemingly ludicrous gambles in his celebrity career.

Andre de Wet has started a host of legendary startups on the African continent. Scrappy, tenacious and incendiary smart, Andre has enviable experience in some of the most challenging regions on the planet and now, with his new business 2ndbase.co, is setting his sites on bridging the gaps between startups in developed nations and emerging regions such as Nigeria, Kenya, Philippines and India. In this succinct presentation on the Heavy Chef stage, May 2018, Andre provides a brief, hilarious and whip-smart guide for startup entrepreneurs.

You’ve been sending amazing content to your newsletter subscribers for weeks and it’s time to hit them with the sales pitch of your product or service. You craft the perfectly written newsletter with only one call to action and hit send and a few sales trickle in. You’ve hit the jackpot! Or so you thought. How about I tell you the one thing that is going to help you double those sales? It’s sitting right in your newsletter stats that you’ve without a doubt seen, but never knew what it meant.

Heavy Chef recently celebrated the publication of a guidebook written by Heavy Chef CEO, Fred Roed. A guidebook that is the first in a series to help South African startups and businesses with practical advice has received a warm welcome from the local entrepreneurial community. 

Operations whizz and Heavy Chef contributing author, Robin Hook shares his views on how a growing business can turn challenges into opportunities. Robin has over a decade of experience working with both top flight companies and scrappy startups getting their operations in order. Click to read some of the most common high-level challenges, the opportunities they present and ways that they can be addressed.   

Sam Beckbessinger used to bury her head in the sand hoping her finances would just work out by themselves. She had also hoped for someone to demystify the subject and explain plainly how to manage money. Now she wrote that book she wish she had had in her 20s: a how-to book on managing your finances entitled How to Manage Your Money Like a Fucking Grownup (Jonathan Ball, February 2018). Fred Roed caught up with Sam recently to learn more about the Sam and the book.