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Nic a mobile entrepreneur and the co-founder and CEO of Motribe, a mobile platform for publishing on the web. He has previously worked at Vodacom in the social media division launching a mobile alternative reality game, Legends of Echo as well as location based social network, The Grid. He has also worked at the Mail&Guardian as the head of the mobile division.

• Y Combinator: Investors should back the jockey not the horse

  Y Combinator, a leading seed investment incubator, recently announced that it would be accepting startup applications for this years fund from startup founders WITHOUT an idea.Here's how the incubator describes itself on its website:Y Combinator does seed funding for startups. Seed funding is the earliest stage of venture funding. It pays your expenses while you're getting started.Some companies may need no more than seed funding. Others will go through several rounds. There is no right answer. How ...

• The hows and the whats — 5 tough questions VCs ask

  Over the past six months I have spoken with a wide variety of people who have shown, in varying degrees, interest in investing in my company. Many of these VCs have specific ways that they conduct a call, interview or meeting. Many of them have lead me down long and wasteful due diligence processes, many have been kind, some have been blunt and harsh but all have been pedantic and specific about the types of questions they ask.I have found ...

• Social is not defensible

  The concept of being social is inherent and should be a part of everything that a company does, in any industry.Social is just the nature of things and people. When you're in the grocery store and you bump in to someone you know, that's social. When you ask for directions: social. When you talk to a petrol attendant: social. When you get advice from a friend on a dinner venue: social.Everything is social.Therefore nothing that claims to ...

• A second glance: Nokia’s Lumia 800

  Nokia has had a rough couple of years in the eye of the public but in the emerging markets it's still the king of the castle. Their dominance in markets such as Africa has remained mostly unchallenged in recent times. Nokia was the phone that taught me about mobile. I had the Nokia 6310 back in the day and that was definitely the most stable and effective communication device I've ever used, ever. I have an historical affiliation to its ...

• 8 Reasons hiring at a technology startup is tough

  I like to define a startup in a way that goes something like this: A startup in my world is a young company in a new, fast growing and evolving industry that could swing, change or be disrupted very quickly.The reason that it's relevant for me to lay out how I define a startup is because this definition is extremely important when considering hiring a team. It is often not as simple as hiring the best person for the job. ...

• Smartphones are cool but feature phones are smart

  In case you don't know what the Nokia S40 is, here's the Wikipedia page and a brief intro from that entry: Series 40 is a software platform and application user interface (UI) software on Nokia's broad range of mid-tier feature phonesI bet many reading this have never heard of S40. I am willing to guess that without knowing it though, many (if not most) of you have used an S40 device. The first of which came in to the market ...

• Mobile West vs Mobile Rest

  Mobile is the next big thing.Have you heard that before? I have. In fact lately that is all I've heard from every direction and every guru or evangelist out there. And I use the words guru and evangelist very, very loosely.Trying to figure out why everyone is saying that mobile is the next best thing, is actually the next best thing. Everyone is talking about mobile, but no one is being specific. All the big guns: TechCrunch, Mashable, ReadWriteWeb, TheNextWeb ...