Bonolo Zwane

The Initiatives I would like to bring attention to:

Given my two decade experience in investments within the corporate sector, I'd like to shine a light on how blended funding can be considered and modelled for emerging businesses that are on a path to scale. 

South Africa has reasonably mature, innovative and accessible funding solutions for sub-scale and growing businesses. Yet often as business people or leaders we tend to think of 'either or solutions' to funding; for example smaller pockets of working capital vs substantial longer term money, as opposed to how different types of funding can be blended together in line with the cycle that the business is in. This also implies that it's helpful that as business owners we appreciate the things and language that will appeal to the respective and different funders.

Transformational leadership to Bonolo:

It means a number of things for me which I sometimes still battle to prioritize in my mind. Especially with the reality of limited resources such as time, energy and money. In my experience, I've seen that to transform for the better it benefits one to somehow build the mental capacity in themselves to be pragmatic about the current state of a business while at the same time challenging ourselves to think about future prospects that importantly, can be executed in a way that can easily leverage or extend the current state of the business. 

That way it tends to feel a little less daunting to balance current and future priorities because for most business leaders, 'undoing' substantial pieces in their organisation is not appealing or even practical - notwithstanding the cherry dangling in terms of the future.