Mattieu Theron is an avid Heavy Chef community member and co-founder of Plant The Seed, a South African education startup that aims to revolutionise the way we teach and learn. We spoke to Mattieu this week about education, training and his crowdfunding campaign that he’s just launched.

Conn Bertish is our second speaker at Tuesday's Heavy Chef event, focusing on Grit, and he is remarkably hard to kill. Conn is one of the country’s top creative thinkers, having worked with some of the leading creative agencies in Africa.  In 2006, Conn was diagnosed with a form of adult malignant brain cancer, leaving him at the mercy of the world's most feared disease. Using a very creative approach - and a truckload of grit - Conn finally beat cancer in 2013 - and then started building a tool, to help others do the same. Read how he did it, here. This week, Heavy Chef CO Fred Roed spoke to him about the journey - read the interview here.

Recently, the founder of socially-conscious design agency Creative Seed, Lee Rael and his team launched SeedPod, a podcast seeking to unearth the impactive, socially relevant entrepreneurs in South Africa and beyond. Last week, Lee interviewed Heavy Chef founder Fred Roed to chat about failure, success, the entrepreneurial challenges in South Africa and Fred’s new venture.

Last week Heavy Chef hosted a duo of events in Johannesburg and Cape Town, based on the state of the nation’s ‘Online Retail’ sector. On Wednesday evening, the event was held at Workshop17 in Sandton, headlined by Arthur Goldstuck, Managing Director of World Wide Worx and Brad Elliot, Founder and CEO of Platinum Seed, joined by Ally Khan Pretorius, GM of Uber Eats. On Thursday evening, in Cape Town at Workshop17, Waterfront, the final presentation was given by Andrew Smith, CEO of Yuppiechef.

Knife’s investment in PharmaScout will accelerate product rollout to pharmacies, medical practitioners and pharmaceutical warehouses and enhance new product development for the international market. Heavy Chef caught up with Knife’s Keet van Zyl, as well as 5nines’ Doug Siepman, for comment.

World Wide Worx in partnership with Platinum Seed, Visa, Heavy Chef and the eCommerce Forum of Africa, awarded top eCommerce accolades to Yuppiechef, KAMERS/MAKERS Marketplace, Clever Little Monkey, as well as Netflorist and Woolworths for growing consumer trust in online retail in SA.

This December, Heavy Chef is partnering with Nedgroup Investments to announce the ‘Top 5 Most Exciting Startups In South Africa’, with popular radio and television personality Mo Flava coming on as MC to announce this year’s most successful nominations.

Jonty Acton created, wrote, produced and directed the 13-part Wildlife Reality TV series Frontier Vets, which premiered on SABC 3 in 2016 and has gone on to achieve international recognition. Now, Jonty is embarking on his next big challenge - making a feature length South African film, called Break In. Heavy Chef’s CEO Fred Roed chatted to Jonty about being a film maker and creative entrepreneur - and asked him to weigh in on some thorny topics in the industry.

On November 24th 2018, Katlego Maphai, CEO of one the fastest growing companies in Africa, comes to Khayelitsha to talk at the next Heavy Chef event at Bandwidth Barn at Lookout Hill, in the centre of Cape Town’s biggest suburb. The title of the talk is “The Story Of An African Fintech Company”.

“I think the future for most retail is going to be: this is the brand, they are a retail brand, and you can shop on your phone, you can shop on your computer, you can go into the store, or you can phone in. Integration is the retailer’s challenge,” Andrew Smith, CEO, YuppieChef reveals his three big insights for the future of ecommerce.

Last week, accelerator programme AlphaCode, awarded entrepreneurial packages valued at R16 million to eight of South Africa’s most promising financial services startups. The entrepreneurial packages consist of R1 million in grant funding and R1 million in support, which includes mentorship, monthly expert-led sessions, exclusive office space in Sandton, marketing, legal and other business support services - as well as access to the broader RMI network. Click to read more about the eight winners.