Adii Pienaar

In the past, I've been very critical of (some / most, but not all) South African startups that tend to work on ideas that are either a poor man's version of an existing (international) product / service or just completely lacks any kind of quality. Stumbling onto new startup, MoneySmart, has restored my faith in my fellow countrymen.

I've not even got to the point where I've signed up and used the product, but everything else just oozes quality: the design on the sales page looks quality, the sales video is nicely done and previewing bits of the UI via the feature tour makes the product look mightily inviting. If it wasn't for the .co.za domain or the fact that they just support South African banks at this stage, I wouldn't have known it is a South African startup. This is actually something that I might use myself.

This has always been something that I've tried to do with WooThemes: create an internationally recognized product, whilst still being proudly South African. Fact is that I designed & developed the first product (which eventually lead to the creation of WooThemes) from my small apartment in Stellenbosch whilst I was studying. Yet very few people - and I'd bet a fair chunk of change that 99% of WooThemes customer - know that we've been born & bred in South Africa.

So what's the lesson here? Make quality shit and always aim to be on par internationally with the quality of your design & code.

I'm 26 years old now and ever since I can remember, computers have been billed as "the next big thing" in the way that we will integrate it with our daily lives. And so it has too; computers are being used by more people, doing more different things than they did at any given stage in the past.

In the last couple of years, the internet has taken over that moniker from "computers". We've seen platforms like Facebook, Twitter & Foursquare that have managed to integrate itself into our daily lives and actually change some of our social behaviour. For just a minute, consider how much time you spent online and how much of that time actually applies to physical, real-world stuff that you're doing: communicating, shopping, doing business etc.

One thing that is changing at a rapid rate at the moment, is the attractiveness of the internet to the mainstream masses. Before some of the things that the early adopters were doing online, were considered too "geeky" for the Average Joe Public. It kinda felt like if you were working online in some way, then you'd be the only type of person interested in some of these products & services. But this perception has changed significantly, since new online(-based) ventures have started to disrupt traditional industries. 

Seeing Uber, the luxury, personalized car service, raise another $32m in funding reminded me of how many great new ideas are truly disruptingthe  traditional status quo for transportation. I'm then quickly reminded of Hipmunk, who has done the same for travel booking, and AirBnB, who have revolutionized accommodation. This is online in the wild.

I'm excited to see this trend continuing and see a few more traditional industries disrupted.

I've always been a firm believer in supporting companies and brands based not on the mistakes they make, but on the way they rectify those mistakes. That in my opinion has always delivered that lasting impression which gets my brand loyalty & commitment going.

Well-known publisher, GigaOM, had a case of e-mail blues today as they sent out truckloads of the same newsletter to subscribers (or in some cases, non-subscribers). I got 40-odd copies of the same newsletter.

It turns out that MailChimp is their newsletter provider and the issues GigaOM were experiencing was a result of a deployment issue on MailChimp's side. It would be easy for MailChimp to hide in a situation like this; if they didn't put up their hand and claimed responsibility, then nobody - except them - would've known that they were at fault. Instead they post a very public apology, pulling no punches in acknowledging their mistake and also rectifying the underlying issue ASAP.

That in my opinion is the magic stuff that great companies & brands are made of: transparency, honesty & accountability. I'm not a MailChimp customer today, but if I were ever to switch away from CampaignMonitor, MailChimp's actions in this regard would've greatly influenced that move. Kudo's to MailChimp for impeccable customer service.

Celebrating the birth of my son, obviously hasn't brought enough "newness" to my life lately with a bunch of exciting things happening elsewhere too. Heck, when it rains it pours.

One of my ambitions this year has been to step up my angel investing activities and literally just get a couple of toes into the water; mostly to learn and just expose myself to more startups (preferably in various industries). In addition to this - and acknowledging that my investment budget is still very limited - I decided to find startups where I could offer value as an advisor (something which I'm also publicly advertising here).

On both these fronts, I have some exciting news to share and would like to introduce you to three new startups that I'm involved in... 

Dress Rush

I was first introduced to Dress Rush a couple of weeks ago when I saw their amazingly designed investor pitch deck. From the very first moment I interacted with the brand, business & ideas, I knew that I wanted to be involved. I subsequently reached out to the team and a couple of weeks later (having been made to jump through hoops to get funds transferred internationally), I'm now officially an investor in Dress Rush.

Two things make me specifically proud about this: 1) Jeanne & I made this investment together, as she was just as keen - if not more keen - to get in on this action; and 2) I get to experience a whole different industry and business model.

Having also got married a little more than a year ago myself, I could've most definitely used something similar to Dress Rush. I bet I would've saved a lot of time and even more money.

Buffer

I've been using Buffer for a couple of months now and have actually been an early user since the first time I stumbled onto Joel Gascoigne's, one of the co-founder, blog. Having found Buffer to be incredibly valuable to my own workflow and online activities, I'm honoured to be joining their team as an advisor.

I love the idea behind Buffer and I see them going from strength to strength.

PressTrends

PressTrends is a little closer to home and is already something we're trying out at WooThemes. Considering how big the WordPress ecosystem has become and how many people are buying themes, I believe PressTrends fills a massive gap for developers in giving them crucial data & analytics to fuel proper, data-driven decision-making.

I'm advising the PressTrends team and even though these are early days, they've already laid the platform of a very exciting business. These guys will be adding a very valuable component to the WordPress ecosystem.

And in addition to all of this, I might be working on a little side-project of my own that should see the light in Q1 2012. All I'll say for now is that the project was one of the ideas that remained after Radiiate was closed down earlier this year.

Finally, if you wanted to get in touch with me on any of these fronts, feel free to have a look at my AngelList profile or my startup services.

I first signed up for Path a little more than a year ago (on 23 November to be precise), after it was lauded as an "app to watch" being the brainchild of long-time Facebook employee, Dave Morin (heck, Google apparently tried to acquire Path for $100m back then). Path sounded good, so I gave it a try... A signup and one "status" later and I didn't see how Path would fit into my current social (networking) landscape.

Fast-forward to today and everyone is raving about Path V2. Like any pretend-hipster, I can't resist the urge of having a look at the new version; so I install a new copy on my iPhone (because I obviously deleted it after the useless experience last time around).

First impression: Shit, this looks really great! I love the UI, the interactions and everything is just so beautiful. I want to spend more time with this.

Second Impression: Wait. This now means I need to maintain yet another - separate - network. Mmm, unlikely. 

Having thought about this in more detail, I'm really unsure why Path are trying to create a whole new network, when there's so many great networks out there already. Surely it would've made sense to tap into those, since this would lower the barrier to entry (assuming that the user's time to maintain multiple networks is the constraint) for so many users?

Path is being billed as "A diary for a mobile and social world" and I actually think that - at the heart of the app - they accomplish this incredibly well. I can imagine myself scrolling through screens and screens of beautiful data, looking back at exactly what I did in the last year. That's not my problem with Path, in fact I love that about them. But as is the case with most things in life: "shit in, shit out", meaning that if I want that lovely reminiscing experience, I need to get the data in there.

I guess it would've been easier for me to use Path if they were aggregating my social data from elsewhere. Why not take my photos from Instagram? My check-ins from Foursquare / Gowalla / Facebook? And how nifty would Spotify or Rdio integration have been for music?

Had this been there, I'd likely have been a very active Path user... As things stand though, I've already deleted Path from my iPhone.