How To Start The Year Right. Hint: Keep It Simple.
The Heavy Chef team are back. We had our first 2023 team meeting on Monday. Despite unceasing loadshedding, inflation and uncertainty, I’m amazed at how energised I feel after a short break.
We’re just three weeks away from our first Heavy Chef event. We’re kicking off the year with a discussion on future trends. Our stellar guests will help us better navigate the rapidly shifting sands of today’s reality.
ChatGPT, GPT-3, OpenAI, deep learning, Web3, NFTs and sex in space (yup, you read that right). We’re going to cover them all and, importantly, shed some light on where the opportunities for us lie.
If you haven’t reserved your seats do it now. It’s going to be a cracker.
Once again, we have Bronwyn and Dion sharing their irreverent, cocky and massively insightful view of the world. Queen Zinhle will be holding court as MC. I’ll be jumping around in the back of the audience trying to distract the speakers (I’m childish like that).
Last year, we captured recipes from both Bronwyn and Dion unpacking how to analyze trends. If you’ve not seen them, go check ‘em out. They’re both brilliant.
Speaking of recipes, our fresh offerings this week are diverse and inspiring:
Joshua Raphael, a winner at last month’s Top 5 Startups awards, unpacks how to build an app, drawing on app-building experience learned from developing Parket.
Yvonne Wakefield, founder and sole employee of the broad-reaching Caveat legal firm, talks about how to scale a service business.
Luvuyo Rani, founder of the multi-award-winning IT services group Silulo, reveals insights into how to reach township communities.
This year, the Heavy Chef team is hard at work bringing you an ever-increasing array of recipes from inspiring individuals across the African continent.
In the meeting on Monday, Louis and I presented our ideas on starting the year right.
It occurred to me that there are a LOT of things we can talk about. I almost fell into the trap of outlining the next 12 months in onerous detail. Thank goodness, both of us kept it short and sweet.
Together, these are the three problems we’re obsessed with - in order of priority:
Content. - access to hyper-relevant, hyper-personalised bite-sized entrepreneurial learning content.
Community. - access to peers, mentors, investors, events, meetups, networking gatherings, incubators, accelerators and support.
Capital. - access to moolah, when entrepreneurs need it.
As an organisation, we’re zeroing in on the first point in 2023. That’s what Heavy Chef wants to be the best in the world at.
Mo and I attended a webinar yesterday with Tony Fadell, the founder of Nest and creator of the iPhone and iPod. Tony continually hammers home that one cannot solve too many problems, despite the temptation as founders to try do everything at once.
When the focus is clear, the tasks and responsibilities become even clearer.
The tasks at the Heavy Chef Foundation are researching entrepreneurs and running content programmes.
Our tasks at Heavy Chef are delivering entrepreneur recipes and improving the platform.
Simple stuff.
What is your one thing to focus on this year?
How are you keeping it simple?
Over to you.
Peace -
