No Picket Fence: a new hub for South African entrepreneurial knowledge

I’ll admit that I was skeptical about No Picket Fence, essentially a Quora for South African entrepreneurs. Like the popular question and answer site by ex-Facebook CTO, Adam D’Angelo, No Picket Fence is a knowledge market, but niched to cater exclusively for South African entrepreneurs. With a lot of functionality overlap I wondered, “what’s the point?” I’ve been lurking around the site for months now and it’s clear my initial skepticism has no merit. There’s something special here.

Founders Michael Bouchier and Michael Cowen are candid about their appreciation of Quora. The site’s engagement format and the community quality inspired Bouchier and Cowen, both long-standing entrepreneurs, to create No Picket Fence. “We wanted to create more successful entrepreneurs in South Africa by allowing them to share their knowledge and insights through the asking and answering of quality questions, connecting, and telling their entrepreneurial story. We thought about how, along our journeys, this would have been extremely useful,” says Bouchier.