USAID and SA’s Grindstone collaborate on two-year program to support startups
A special two-year program to “redefine startup and scale-up support in South Africa” has been launched by South African accelerator Grindstone in collaboration with USAID Southern Africa Mobilizing Investment.
Founded in 2013, Grindstone is a structured program for entrepreneurship development, co-owned by Knife Capital and Thinkroom Limited. It helps high-growth, innovation-driven businesses put the necessary foundations in place to grow rapidly, become sustainable, and attract funding. Thus far, it has effectively finished sixteen accelerators.
Among the 13 grantees in Southern Africa, Grindstone was chosen by USAID Mobilizing Investment to launch a new program that will support 40 startups yearly. The program will recruit from Grindstone alumni as well as other startups and scale-ups in the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Starting in July, a first cohort of startups will receive back-office services that startups often ignore, like finance, marketing and branding, operations, legal, and technology, along with mentorship and expert coaching. Incorporating Grindstone Boost, a dynamic back-office solution, will help startups improve their operations, fortify their financial position, bolster their brand, and effectively leverage technology to scale.
“Companies can only truly scale and reach their full potential from a base of solid fundamentals. Accurate financial reporting and forecasting is a sign that these fundamentals are in place. Grindstone Boost will greatly enhance the quality of robust financial records and modelling, which in return will enable improved investment decisions for both us as VCs and the potential investee companies,” said Keet van Zyl, co-founder of Grindstone and partner at Knife Capital.
Grindstone will continue to plan and develop the back-office services for Grindstone Boost until the application and recruitment phase in May and June, when it will hire its first batch of startups. Over the following two years, a rolling intake of cohorts will take place.
