Business

#30Under30: Business Category 2019

Forbes Africa is on the hunt for Africans under the age of 30, who are building brands, creating jobs and representing and transforming the continent.



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FORBES AFRICA is
on the hunt for Africans under the age of 30, who are building brands, creating
jobs and representing and transforming the continent, to join the Under 30
community for 2019.



Each year,
FORBES AFRICA looks for resilient self-starters, innovators, entrepreneurs and
disruptors who have the acumen to stay the course in their chosen field, come
what may. 



Past honorees
include Kwesta, Nomzamo Mbatha, Ink Eze, Isaya Yunge, Jokate Mwegelo, Yannick
Nzonde, Gilbert Eugene Peters, Yemi Alade, Vere Shaba, Kevin Lubega, Davido,
Rivo Mhlari, Nasty C and Wiz Kid.



&nbsp;“2019 will
be the fifth anniversary of the FORBES AFRICA Under 30 list. Every year, there
emerges, in the continent of a billion-plus people, young luminaries who are
blazing a trail to the finish line, and the idea of the list is to unearth and
uncover them on their way up,” says FORBES AFRICA’s Managing Editor, Methil
Renuka.



In addition to
the three categories – Creatives, Technology and Business in 2018, this year, FORBES
AFRICA introduces a new category — Sports.



&nbsp;“Leaders
are also born in the world of sport. It requires grit and determination to be a
game-changer and they definitely need to be celebrated early,” says Renuka.



If you think you
have what it takes to be on this year’s list or know an entrepreneur, creative,
technology entrepreneur or sports star under 30 with a proven track-record on
the continent – introduce them to FORBES AFRICA by submitting your nomination.



Nominations
close on 15 February 2019.



NOMINATIONS
CRITERIA:



Business and
Technology categories



<ol class="wp-block-list"><li>Must bean entrepreneur aged 29 or younger on 30 June 2019</li><li>Should have a legitimate REGISTERED business on the continent</li><li>Business or businesses should be two years or older</li><li>Nominees must have risked own money and have a social impact</li><li>Must be profit generating</li><li>Must employ people in Africa</li><li>All applications must be in English</li><li>Should be available and prepared to participate in the Under 30 Meet-Up</li></ol>



Sports
Category



<ol class="wp-block-list"><li>Must be a sports person aged 29 or younger on 30 June 2019</li><li>Must be representing an African team</li><li>Should have a proven track record of no less than two years</li><li>Should be making significant earnings</li><li>Should have some endorsement deals</li><li>Entrepreneurship and social impact is a plus</li><li>All applications must be in English</li><li>Should be available and prepared to participate in the Under 30 Meet-Up</li></ol>



Creatives



<ol class="wp-block-list"><li>Must be a creative aged 29 or younger on 30 June 2019</li><li>Must be from or based in Africa</li><li>Should be making significant earnings</li><li>Should have a proven creative record of no less than two years</li><li>Must have social influence</li><li>Entrepreneurship and social impact is a plus</li><li>All applications must be in English</li><li>Should be available and prepared to participate in the Under 30 Meet-Up</li></ol>



Your entry should include:



<ul class="wp-block-list"><li>Country</li><li>Full Name</li><li>Company name/Team</li><li>A short reason why they should be an Under 30</li><li>Links of published material about nominee</li><li>Contact information</li></ul>



Share your photographs, via email. 



Nominations must be sent to: 



 <a href="mailto:Karen.Mwendera@abn360.com">Karen.Mwendera@abn360.com</a> and<a rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)" href="mailto:30under30@abn360.com" target="_blank">30under30@abn360.com</a>



All nominees
will be vetted by a panel, FORBES AFRICA editors and the editorial team.

Forbes_30under30

Forbes Africa Under 30 Opens Nominations For 2019

Under 30 alumni, born on the same day and with similar stories of entrepreneurship, are collaborating to disrupt industries and shape the future of Africa.

The road to entrepreneurship is cold, lonely and riddled with potholes. It helps if you are walking it with someone else.
Millennials Siya Beyile and Thato Kgatlhanye are doing just that.
Together, they are redefining business and shaping the future
of Africa.
“Entrepreneurs always talk about collaborations but we don’t do it enough. We want to resource Africa’s future. Resources go beyond natural resources, which is where the world has been focused. Our ideas, our people and the way we do things has value, so we must take advantage of it,” says Kgatlhanye.
Beyile and Kgatlhanye have big dreams, but a year ago, they were strangers, treading a path of hardship and pain.
At just 25 years old, Beyile has a resume most would envy.
In 2013, he founded The Threaded Man, a fashion blog for men, inspired by his mother, who often called him “umfana othungiweyo”, the ‘threaded man’ in isiXhosa.
He worked with major brands such as Adidas, Stuttafords, American Swiss, TITAN watches, H&amp;M, SAB, Hugo Boss and Pandora. He styled stars like Nomuzi Mabena, MsCosmo, Khuli Chana, AKA, DA LES, Amanda Black and Somizi Mhlongo.
At the age of 22, he was appointed Fashion Director of the South African Music Awards and MTV Africa Music Awards, he was named one of the seven leading voices of African men’s fashion by GQ and he graced the cover of GQ Style.
Beyile was adored by many, but beneath the stylish exterior was a story that was less flattering.
A slew of bad business decisions saw him lose money and his credibility, and the setbacks almost cost him his life.
“I had to shut the business down because of depression. I tried to commit suicide many times. I had made a lot of money but I had not touched it. It had gone to pay loans and also buy my company back. I never got to enjoy it. I shut down,” he says.
It took a toll on his confidence. He tonsured his head and spent six months in a rehabilitation facility, where he worked on rebuilding himself.
“I lost a lot of public value. People started unfollowing me [on social media] and just didn’t like me. People in the industry that I respected even turned on me. I would go to places and people would whisper around me and look at me with shame. It was embarrassing. I would go home and cry.”
He closed his business and moved back home to Cape Town to rethink and rejuvenate.
With a new attitude towards life, he relocated yet again to Johannesburg to start over. In February, he connected with Kgatlhanye, a FORBES AFRICA 30 Under 30 alumni and award-winning entrepreneur.
“When we met, we realized we had the same vision of disrupting. She was tired of being known as a bag entrepreneur and wanted to make sustainable luxury and wanted to get into fashion and I wanted my fashion to be sustainable and wanted to run a factory but didn’t know how. She had the experience of running a factory and I knew all things fashion,” says Beyile.
<div id="attachment_37746" style="width: 693px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-37746" class="wp-image-37746 size-large" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Thato-n-Siya-712-683x1024.jpg" alt="" width="683" height="1024" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Thato-n-Siya-712-683x1024.jpg 683w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Thato-n-Siya-712-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Thato-n-Siya-712-600x900.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Thato-n-Siya-712-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Thato-n-Siya-712-768x1151.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Thato-n-Siya-712.jpg 1366w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 683px) 100vw, 683px" />Thato Kgatlhanye and Siya Beyile. Photo by Motlabana Monnakgotla.</div>
<a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2016/02/01/ceo-rethaka/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: CEO, Rethaka</a>
Kgatlhanye is the founder of Rethaka Group, which started in textile manufacturing and waste management. She became known for collecting and recycling plastic waste into solar-powered school bags for poor children.
“We started like that so we could get an understanding of the nuts and bolts of manufacturing. Most of the time we don’t own the value chain of products. Take clothes, for example, people just go somewhere to buy things but don’t know the suppliers of zips and buttons and you end up cutting into your margins by virtue of not understanding the value chain. So we collaborated to form a new company, where we bring in the ability to build and make things in a sustainable way and then sell them on our platforms,” says Kgatlhanye.
Beyile and Kgatlhanye founded 712 Group, which now houses both their brands. The company is named after their birthday; they were both born on December 7.
“We are building a global powerhouse with African brands. Those brands will be spread across technology, manufacturing, fashion and sustainability. Africa right now has become a focal point but a lot of the brands we consume on a daily basis are not African. We have a lot of talented people in these spaces but we don’t see them opening stores around the world and disrupting. We feel like our market has been hijacked. There is no corporate structure that supports our brands,” says Beyile.
The pair agree there is more power in collaborating than working in silos.
“Working together helps. We know our strengths and weaknesses. For example, I know that I can’t be CEO. In the last five years, I have been in business, I have learned I am not capable because there are certain things I don’t think about. However, I have also learned I am a visionary.  I am good at coming up with concepts and connecting people but I am not good at implementing. However, Thato is good at taking the idea and having it live in the world, which is a nice balance,” says Beyile.
Kgatlhanye concurs: “There were a lot of loopholes in our individual businesses that we were struggling with. It would have taken us longer to try togrow our businesses individually than it will take us now as a combined unit. I was a master in something he needed and he was a master in something I needed.”
Beyile says they have both learned not to rush, but rather to build a solid foundation, generate cash reserves and work on growth.
<blockquote>“A lot of businesses led by young people will ‘grow’ but when you look at their growth metrics, staff turnover and profitability, those things are not solid,” says Kgatlhanye.</blockquote>
Beyile agrees.
“The biggest lesson from my journey is that business is not a friendly sport. If you have ambitions to be a billionaire and to be on the cover of FORBES AFRICA magazine, to get there, you will suffer.”
Given the current market, Beyile says their business structure is different.
“When I look at media companies, their staff turnover is low. This is because young people are frustrated. They don’t want a nine-to-five. They want to build their own businesses and have their own lives. We can’t expect to hire young people full-time and expect them to be happy and to work for us for 20 years… Young people need to be put in positions of empowerment, so we work with freelancers and businesses owned by young people on a project-by-project basis.”
They say the additional benefit of collaborating is it helps them save money on office space, speeds up project turnaround times, ensures quality work and gives them faster and more effective growth and team results.
It is true: teamwork makes the dream work. The future is bright for these young entrepreneurs born on the same day in the same year and with the same vision for Africa.

Thato-n-Siya-733

Two’s Company; 30 Under 30 Alumni Collaborate

FA-June-2018.

Under 30 Business

When Whitney Wolfe Herd started planning an October launch party for a new product at Bumble, America&#8217;s fastest-growing dating-app company, she was deliberate in her choice of venue: the Manhattan space that for 57 years hosted the Four Seasons restaurant, where regulars like Henry Kissinger, Vernon Jordan, Edgar Bronfman and Stephen Schwarzman created the ultimate power lunch.
The space now has a new name, new management and a new menu. And, as Herd insists, a new perspective on business. &#8220;The power lunch is no longer just for men,&#8221; Herd announces to the mostly young, mostly female crowd, before ceding the stage to the popstar Fergie. &#8220;We all deserve a seat at the table.&#8221;
That table surely now includes the 28-year-old Herd, who has changed the tenor of dating dynamics. By letting women make the first move, Bumble has amassed over 22 million registered users, to closest competitor Tinder&#8217;s 46 million, and at more than 70% year-over-year growth, to Tinder&#8217;s roughly 10%, it&#8217;s closing the gap quickly.
Bumble began monetizing via in-app purchases only in August 2016 and crossed $100 million in sales in 2017, a figure that – aided by the introduction of tailored, hyperlocal advertising – is projected to double in 2018.
Herd turned down a $450 million buyout offer from the Match Group in early 2017, according to sources with knowledge of the conversations. And these sources maintain that Match approached the company again later in the year to discuss a valuation well over $1 billion. This 30 Under 30 honoree retains 20% of Bumble, a stake that makes her a centimillionaire. (Match declined to comment.)
It&#8217;s a stunning comeback. As cofounder and vice president of marketing at Tinder, which has reinvented how people date and mate, she was part of one of the great business success stories of the smartphone age. But then she found herself in one of the era&#8217;s great public dramas.
In June 2014, she sued Tinder for sexual harassment, alleging that her ex-boss and ex-boyfriend Justin Mateen called her a &#8220;whore&#8221; and &#8220;gold digger&#8221; and bombarded her with threatening and derogatory text messages, which she attached to her complaint. She also alleged that Tinder, owned by IAC and then by its Match Group spinoff, had wrongly stripped her of a cofounder title.
The company denied any wrongdoing, but Mateen was suspended and then resigned. Sean Rad, then the CEO of Tinder, told Forbes in 2014 that Herd bore part of the blame for the bad blood between her and Mateen. The suit was quickly settled for a sum that Forbes previously reported to be approximately $1 million. (The settlement bars the parties from discussing the case.)
There&#8217;s no question who the founder of Bumble is. Rather than sulk about Tinder, Herd decided to compete against it. In doing so, she belatedly entered one of the most crowded and established digital fields (over 90% of online dating start-ups fail) and nonetheless quickly carved out a lucrative space by focusing on the needs of one segment: women.
<div id="attachment_35221" style="width: 380px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-35221" class=" wp-image-35221" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Whitney-Wolfe-Herd-Bumble-200x300.jpg" alt="Whitney Wolfe Herd Bumble" width="370" height="555" />Whitney Wolfe Herd in the Bumble headquarters (Photo by Kristen Kilpatrick)</div>
More than 10% of Bumble&#8217;s users pay $9.99 for a monthly subscription to access perks like extra time to decide whether a suitor merits a message. At Tinder, just about 5% of users pay for a similar service, according to a report from the investment firm Jefferies. It helps, of course, that her segment also happens to represent a majority of the population.
&#8220;I just don&#8217;t harbor resentment toward anything or anywhere or anyone – I&#8217;m too busy,&#8221; Herd says. But if success is the best revenge, then nine digits in three years flat offers the kind of vindication people make movies about.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/life/2017/12/08/karlie-kloss-codings-supermodel/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Karlie Kloss &#8211; Coding&#8217;s Supermodel</a>
Herd’s path to Bumble was unintended. In the months between filing suit against Tinder and settling, she experienced the sort of online abuse that&#8217;s all too familiar to women who make public sexual harassment allegations. &#8220;I was being told the ugliest things by complete strangers, and they were having full debates about me,&#8221; Herd says. &#8220;I wasn&#8217;t running for office. I wasn&#8217;t trying to be on a reality show. I was just a girl who left somewhere.&#8221;
When that abuse turned into rape and murder threats from strangers, she deleted her Twitter account. Panic attacks and paranoia followed. A Salt Lake City native who attended private school and is a third-generation legacy at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, she retreated to Texas and the family of her then boyfriend Michael Herd, who&#8217;s now her husband.
&#8220;I was broken,&#8221; she says. Trying to give some purpose to this trauma, Herd began sketching out a women-only social network called Merci, which would focus on positivity. &#8220;No compliments on physicality,&#8221; she says. &#8220;Compliments about who they are.&#8221;
Then came an unsolicited e-mail from someone with an unfamiliar address and a Russian name, Andrey Andreev. Born in Moscow and based in London, Andreev in 2006 had founded Badoo, an online dating network that is today the world&#8217;s largest, with over 360 million registered users in 190 countries.
Herd had met Andreev at a dinner in 2013 while she was at Tinder, and she&#8217;d made an impression. &#8220;To be honest, I immediately fell in love with Whitney&#8217;s passion and energy,&#8221; says the thick-accented Andreev, who has acquired a reputation as a recluse because he rarely grants interviews. &#8220;I thought she was a very cool lady and that I should be watching her very carefully.&#8221;
When she didn&#8217;t reply, his team e-mailed Herd&#8217;s lawyers, wishing her well with her legal battle and adding that he&#8217;d like to work with her. &#8220;My original idea was to get her as CMO at Badoo,&#8221; says Andreev, who&#8217;s 43.
As it turned out, Herd had plans to visit her little sister at cooking school in Paris, and she made a pit stop in London. She didn&#8217;t want any part of his job offer. &#8220;Dream on – I&#8217;m not for hire,&#8221; she recalls saying. &#8220;I&#8217;m starting a company, and I don&#8217;t want to be in dating.&#8221; She did pitch him on Merci, though.
While Andreev liked the idea of a women-centric social brand, he thought Herd should stick to her forte and his: the dating sector. They spent days walking around London&#8217;s streets and parks together, exchanging ideas. Andreev told her he wanted to pair her innate talent for marketing and branding with the infrastructure, capital and resources at his disposal after almost a decade at Badoo.
After she settled the Tinder lawsuit in September 2014 – which, conveniently, did not contain a non-compete clause – she took Andreev up on his offer. He&#8217;d make an initial investment of about $10 million for launch marketing and commit additional funds to fuel growth, taking 79% of the company. She&#8217;d be the founder, the CEO and a 20% owner, with all the autonomy those titles imply, while tapping into Badoo&#8217;s infrastructure and Andreev&#8217;s know-how.
Both have come in handy. At Badoo, Andreev has a decade&#8217;s worth of A-B tests, data on the effectiveness of various monetization efforts and experience bringing a product to scale that have no parallel in the dating market. When the time came to start charging users for in-app perks, for instance, the team at Bumble was able to develop sophisticated technology to support subscriptions from day one thanks to input from Badoo.
From September to December of that year, Herd flew between Texas and London around 15 times. She and Andreev brought in two of her fellow former Tinder executives, Chris Gulczynski and Sarah Mick, to design the new app&#8217;s back-end and user interface. (The two left Bumble in April to launch their own agency but still share the 1% of equity not held by Andreev and Herd.)
<div id="attachment_35222" style="width: 380px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-35222" class=" wp-image-35222" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Whitney-Wolfe-Herd-200x300.jpg" alt="Whitney Wolfe Herd Bumble" width="370" height="555" />Whitney Wolfe Herd (Photo by Jamel Toppin for Forbes)</div>
One night, over cocktails, Herd stumbled upon Bumble&#8217;s special sauce. &#8220;I always wanted to have a scenario where the guy didn&#8217;t have my number but I had his,&#8221; she recalls telling Andreev. &#8220;What if women make the first move, send the first message? And if they don&#8217;t, the match disappears after 24 hours, like in Cinderella, the pumpkin and the carriage? It&#8217;d be symbolic of a Sadie Hawkins dance – going after it, girls ask first. What if we could hardwire that into a product?&#8221; It was the kind of brilliant tweak that comes from someone who understands the target demographic because they&#8217;re in it.
After toying with names, the two settled on Bumble, confident that branding details like hives and bees would prove a marketing boon. The app went live in December 2014 and garnered over 100,000 downloads in its first month. &#8220;Women were ready for this,&#8221; says Dave Evans, an industry consultant who has chronicled hundreds of bad experiences women have had with men on dating apps. &#8220;Women got scared years ago. This goes way back.&#8221;
It’s 105 degrees outside Bumble&#8217;s new headquarters in an otherwise residential neighborhood in north Austin, Texas. The oppressive August heat hasn&#8217;t stopped passersby from gawking at the building&#8217;s exterior. For its grand opening, artists have covered the sunflower-yellow roof and walls with thousands of oversize pastel balloons. It looks like the inside of a gumball machine. Pedestrians take selfies in front of it; cars linger, drivers asking the name of the company inside. At Bumble, even something as ostensibly mundane as a crosstown move is a marketing opportunity.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/life/2017/12/15/zedd-85-million-classically-trained-dj/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Zedd &#8211; The $85 Million Classically trained DJ</a>
Bumble has 70 employees, approximately 85% of whom are women, including in all the top jobs, Andreev aside. The new office reflects that, from posters and neon signs espousing various Bumble mantras like &#8220;You&#8217;re a Queen Bee,&#8221; &#8220;Be the CEO Your Parents Always Wanted You to Marry&#8221; and &#8220;Make the First Move.&#8221; When Bumble hands out its cream-and-yellow sweaters as gifts at events – the familiar honeycomb logo on the front, along with the word &#8220;Honey&#8221; – there&#8217;s invariably a scramble.
&#8220;I think it&#8217;s part of feeling empowered, being proud enough to say &#8216;I&#8217;m on this service,&#8217; &#8221; Evans says. &#8220;On the street, if I was wearing an AdultFriendFinder shirt, it&#8217;d be a different story.&#8221;
The bee theme and Bumble&#8217;s signature yellow are front and center in the app, which works like this: When two users of the opposite sex match by swiping right on each other&#8217;s profile, the woman must send her potential date a message first or the connection is void.
By giving women control over the initial contact, Bumble feels more polite and walled-off than competitors, avoiding the unsolicited photos &#8211; including the occasional male genitalia &#8211; that plague online dating. Last year Bumble banned shirtless mirror selfies (common in male profiles on Tinder); they were the most-left-swiped photos. This doesn&#8217;t mean Bumble can prevent all abuse or unpleasant experiences &#8211; but it does undercut them.
The more controlled environment has resulted in surprising dividends. Hundreds of thousands of women indicated on their profiles that they weren&#8217;t there only for love. They also cared about friendship and career. Hence BFF, an offshoot that focuses on platonic connections between women, and Bizz, which launched officially at the October party at the old Four Seasons in New York and offers a challenge to LinkedIn, with the same women-first interface that Bumble&#8217;s users have grown accustomed to. &#8220;We&#8217;re taking out the soliciting nature and the sexism that exists in networking,&#8221; Herd says. &#8220;We think we have a chance.&#8221;
Success for these offshoots has been modest so far. Bumble BFF has been tried by over 3 million users, but just 500,000 are active in a typical month. Bumble Bizz is too new to evaluate, but like taking on Tinder with a product customized for just under half the workforce, even modest success carries huge potential.
&#8220;To be able to test at that scale is something most start-ups can&#8217;t do,&#8221; says Evans, the consultant. &#8220;They can seed that network with millions of people on Day 1.&#8221;
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/life/2017/12/05/kendrick-lamar-conscious-capitalist/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Kendrick Lamar: The Conscious Capitalist</a>
Of course, there&#8217;s at least one other dating start-up that also has the scale – and enough men and women – to delve into such areas. Rad, who is still at Tinder running its mergers and acquisitions arm, Swipe Ventures, declined to comment for this story (as did Mateen). But the company is obviously taking notes on Bumble&#8217;s moves: Last year Tinder also expanded into platonic relationships with an investment in Hey! Vina, a fast-growing female-friendship network.
And then there&#8217;s the keen interest of Tinder&#8217;s parent, the Match Group, which remains the biggest player in the online-dating business in the United States. The publicly traded company, which in addition to Tinder owns Match.com, OkCupid, PlentyOfFish and other niche dating sites, would clearly like to add Bumble to its roster.
&#8220;Look, Match has been lucky, because they have 45 different brands,&#8221; says Brent Thill, who covers the dating-app market for Jefferies. &#8220;But probably the one brand that seems to have caught everyone&#8217;s imagination is not theirs.&#8221;
Herd wouldn&#8217;t comment on the attempted buyouts, but selling to Tinder&#8217;s parent and folding Bumble under the same corporate umbrella would, of course, serve as a poetic coda to the ugliness of 2014. Indeed, among those at the headquarters dedication were representatives of a high-profile Hollywood production company that is contemplating making a movie about her saga. It is, Herd acknowledges with a laugh, a pretty good story. &#8211; Written by Clare O’Connor

Billion-Dollar Bumble

Before regularly scoring six-figure nightly fees spinning thumpy electronic tunes, Zedd got his start playing classical music at age 4. He learned how to plan performances with meticulous detail, an ability that&#8217;s obvious in his carefully choreographed shows today, which feature less of the freewheeling song selection used by most popular DJs. &#8220;I see myself as an artist who presents a show,&#8221; says Zedd, who earned $19 million this year and $85 million over the past five. &#8220;It&#8217;s almost like when you go to the movies. You&#8217;re not going to buy your ticket and see a movie and, if you don&#8217;t like it, expect the movie to change in real time.&#8221;
Zedd has produced hits for Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga and released solo smashes like last year&#8217;s multiplatinum &#8220;Stay&#8221;- while becoming the anti-DJ of the DJ universe. To distinguish himself from competitors, he created a graphics-heavy live show that feels like watching a videogame projected onto a movie screen with a custom visual for each song. A cable runs from his computer to the front of the house, where a team of technicians makes sure everything syncs up, including the program&#8217;s lasers and pyrotechnics. &#8220;It used to be really cheap to make a show &#8211; I used to be able to keep all the money,&#8221; Zedd recalls. &#8220;Now the shows cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.&#8221;
As costs continue to escalate in a musical arms race, Zedd is flirting with the idea of reinventing the DJ model again by turning to something with which he&#8217;s very familiar: live instrumentation. &#8220;I think I will one day go unplugged.&#8221;
<div id="attachment_34829" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-34829" class=" wp-image-34829" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Zedd-1-200x300.jpg" alt="Zedd DJ" width="300" height="450" />Zedd: He&#8217;s earned $85 million over the past five years at the height of the EDM boom. Just don&#8217;t call him a DJ (Photo by Jamel Toppin)</div>
Forbes senior editor Zack O&#8217;Malley Greenburg sat down with Zedd at the 30 Under 30 Summit in October. Here&#8217;s the interview for the first time, with a few light edits for clarity and brevity.
ZOG: The first time I interviewed you, about four years ago, you said, &#8220;You know, I don&#8217;t want to say I&#8217;ll be a producer, and a DJ, for the rest of my life. I can totally see myself being in another band in five years, if that&#8217;s what my heart and soul wants to do. If that&#8217;s what will make me happy, I&#8217;m totally happy just to not DJ anymore.&#8221; So, it&#8217;s been almost five years, how are you feeling about that? Are you going to go unplugged? Or are you going to do the current thing a little while longer?
Zedd: I think I will one day go unplugged or change my show somehow. Or my show form, I&#8217;ll say that. Currently I am still DJing, yet I think I have a way more dramatic show, and a much for dynamic show than I&#8217;ve ever had, that involves a lot of planning&#8230; the nature of the DJ is to go up there, and play a song, look at the crowd, feel it out, and then play whatever you think people want to hear. That&#8217;s very difficult for me, because I see myself as a musician in the first place, and I [challenge you to] name any artist who&#8217;d want to think they&#8217;d go on stage, and look at the crowd, and say, &#8220;Maybe let&#8217;s play this song. I don&#8217;t think people will like that one.&#8221; You present the show, you prepare, you rehearse for weeks, and then this is what you present to the crowd. And there&#8217;s always a section that is staying flexible to mix stuff up, if you have to, or if you want to. But I would say the majority of my set is pre-planned; it&#8217;s a show that I want to present. I want people to see something that I spent a lot of time working on.
ZOG: And the live element in your show, it&#8217;s obviously the core of the electronic music experience. But also streaming being the way the music gets out, the economics have changed a ton, even in the last few years. Talk a little bit about that, and how it&#8217;s starting to change for artists.
Zedd: I think that streaming became a huge part of every musician&#8217;s career. Even for, or especially for, unsigned artists. I have a friend who is a singer, and she just makes music at home and she puts it up on SoundCloud, and puts it up on Spotify, and she makes a really decent living off of people streaming her music. I think there&#8217;s a lot of artists who actually make more money now, streaming their music, than they did selling their music prior. And I was one of those people who was really scared of that whole streaming world, because you see all these numbers, and I don&#8217;t know what exactly the numbers [are], but it&#8217;s a fraction of a cent that you make per stream. And then in your mind it&#8217;s, &#8220;Oh my God, people are going to listen to my song once, and then that&#8217;s all I&#8217;m going to get.&#8221; But the reality is, that you can have millions of people stream your song, or songs, every single day. You can have 10 million streams on your album daily. Over a really long time that becomes a lot of money. So, I think that the streaming section that sounded so scary to me, and probably many others, is actually a really good thing.
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ZOG: Before, artists would put out new albums so that they could have new stuff to put in the concerts. But maybe [it will soon] flip back so that you do concerts just to raise awareness about the new music?
Zedd: Yeah, I mean, I think the music industry is changing really fast. So it&#8217;s hard to predict where things are going to go. I know a lot of artists don&#8217;t like touring. They do not like not having any sleep every day, being stressed every day. They like being at home, waking up, doing their thing, and then making music whenever they want to. There is much less of a schedule to create music than being on tour, and having to open the doors on time, and having a curfew.
And there&#8217;s artists that are the exact opposite, they hate being at home. And they feel frustrated, and they want to get out there and play music. I think that if anything, the streaming world may open the door for people who don&#8217;t want to tour, to actually not have to tour. There&#8217;s a great living you can make off of being creative and not having a schedule at all. And working when you want to work, and putting up music the next day. There use to be two or three months in the lead time to when you could release an album. And here you can just release your music the next day, if you want to.
ZOG: Tell me a little bit about your live show, what goes into it. I think a lot of people have a preconceived notion about what that entails.
Zedd: So my live show is not a DJ show at all. My platform is Djing, and I can change my music, and my selection of songs anytime. But essentially, what&#8217;s most important for me is for the crowd to go home and think that was an incredible experience. And to think that they can&#8217;t get that same experience from anybody else. And that involves, of course, the music choice, but also the visuals you see: the lights you see, the lasers, the special effects, and that&#8217;s all very choreographed. And that&#8217;s still all made live. So the way we do it is I DJ, and then there&#8217;s a cable running from my computer to the front of the house, with three screens so everybody is always aware of what I am playing, if I decide to change something last minute. Every song that I&#8217;ve ever played has a specific visual that goes with the song. And my team can, in real time, see what I am about to play, and adjust and create the visuals, and the lighting looks, and the colors, that we rehearsed for each song. Sometimes I play a song that has a visual that is also assigned to another song, then they can decide to, on the spot, change it, or whatever fits that moment. So, we essentially have a show that looks really rehearsed, and almost pre-made. Yet I have the flexibility to change anything, at any point in time.
ZOG: It&#8217;s more like a theater production than a movie, although you said it could be like a movie in some ways too.
Zedd: Yeah &#8230; it&#8217;s almost like when you go to the movies. You&#8217;re not going to buy your ticket and see a movie and if you don&#8217;t like it, you expect the movie to change in real time. That&#8217;s kind of how I see it. I am not going to go on stage, and look at the people, and if someone&#8217;s unhappy I&#8217;m going to change the music for that person. I spend way too much time &#8230; creating a theatrical show, to then adjust it on the spot, and make it something that&#8217;s not perfect. In my mind, this is what I want to present as an artist, and if people see me on tour, this is what they&#8217;re going to get. And if I, on the fly, decide to change something, that becomes part of the show. &#8230; Every moment is really planned out, every single light is planned out. So when people go to the show they should expect a real experience, not just me deciding on the fly what song I want to play.
ZOG: What sort of instance would cause you to change something on the fly?
Zedd: Well, for example, a few days ago I didn&#8217;t play one song, and what made me do that was just a mistake. I just forgot that I didn&#8217;t play that song. I thought I had already queued that song up, but I didn&#8217;t. And I was already mixed into another key &#8230; I&#8217;m trying to be very musical about the song choices I make, and I can&#8217;t just mix keys back and forth all the time, because that just doesn&#8217;t feel musical to me. So at that point, I was too far ahead. And I didn&#8217;t have any more songs that could lead into the key of that song that I missed. So I just left it out for the entire show.
What else could happen is that one part of my production is not working. There&#8217;s certain songs that &#8230; are not particularly exciting songs just by themselves, and I would never listen to them, because they&#8217;re not musical at all. But they give you the sense of lasers. Literally. You hear it and you think of something space flavored &#8230; and if we don&#8217;t have those lasers working, I&#8217;m not going to play that song, because it&#8217;s all senses that come together into one experience.
It&#8217;s not just about what you hear, but it&#8217;s the combination of what you see, and what you hear. And if you hear that sound of lasers, and then you see that right over you, and you feel like you can touch it, that&#8217;s the experience I want people to experience, and not just a song by itself. So, there&#8217;s a lot of things that can go wrong that would make me not play a certain song.
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ZOG: What are some things that you do in your live set that nobody else does at all?
Zedd: I think the preparation that goes into my sets is something that most DJs are embarrassed of. And I&#8217;ve had a conversation with an amazing DJ, one of the best DJs in that sense, he could go up there and play six hours. I don&#8217;t even have enough music to play six hours. I could never do that. Neither do I think there are six hours of incredible music that I&#8217;d want to play. But, he was under the impression that it&#8217;s not real DJ&#8217;ing if you go up there and you already have something prepared, if you have a list that you plan on playing. To me, that may be true for a DJ. But I just don&#8217;t consider myself a DJ. I see myself an artist who presents a show. So, to me there is nothing embarrassing about being perfectly prepared in knowing exactly what you&#8217;re about to do, but I think that most DJs have an issue with that. &#8230; A lot of people back five, six years ago thought, &#8220;You don&#8217;t even use headphones; so you&#8217;re not a real DJ.&#8221; [I say], &#8220;Yeah maybe?&#8221; I don&#8217;t know. I don&#8217;t think there&#8217;s a need to use headphones if you&#8217;re well prepared.
ZOG: You don&#8217;t always use headphones, but you have your own headphone line. Tell me a little about that.
Zedd: Yeah. So my headphone line is essentially a headphone that is for everyday use. I wanted it to look nice, because a lot of headphones that look great, don&#8217;t sound great. So, in Tokyo I met with the people who make the headphones, and they had created a version of a Transformers type headphone &#8230; I don&#8217;t know how to make the parts, so it was dozens of parts, and you essentially build it as you go, and then you put on the headphone, and it looked terrible, but it sounded incredible. So I asked them, &#8220;Why don&#8217;t we both come together and make a headphone that looks incredible but also sounds incredible?&#8221; And so we started the process, and it was far over a year from the first drawings, to the first renderings, to the first design, then to changing the shape. And I just wanted everyone to have a headphone that is really pretty, and good-looking, and sounds incredible, but most importantly is really comfortable to wear for a long period of time, because as somebody who sometimes has to mix something on the road, it was important for me to have a tool that I can trust. So some headphones that I know: this is exactly what I make my music like in the studios, so this is what it sounds like on the road. And just to have that connection was really important for me.
ZOG: What&#8217;s next for you?
Zedd: What&#8217;s next for me is I just started my tour, so I will be touring for a while. And I am, for the first time, trying out to not spend two years working on one single album and then put it out at the same time. But I essentially want to finish a song. I will try to release it pretty quickly. And I started that with &#8220;Stay,&#8221; that was the first time I finished a song essentially, and put it out right away &#8230; it sounded fresh. I don&#8217;t know how fresh &#8220;Stay&#8221; would have sounded if I released it two years from now, when the rest of my album is done. I want to try that for a little while. Then next year I will probably take some time and make an album, and I don&#8217;t know what that will mean yet and whether that will be a concept album, but I&#8217;m starting to want to make one again.
ZOG: Have you seen costs go up dramatically for your show? What are some of the things that have changed over time, in that regard?
Zedd: Yeah, I mean, I remember my first tour I ever played as a DJ was with Skrillex, and back then, my production, as an opening act, was just a folding table. And between me and the next DJ, who was Porter Robinson, I looped the song, and he came on stage, and while the song was looping, we switched tables into his laptop, and then I was like, &#8220;Thanks, guys!&#8221; And I&#8217;d walk off the stage and he&#8217;d start. That is not the thing anymore today. Everything is really professional. From the change over music, from what you hear and see, between each DJ, to the cost you spend on a show. I mean it used to be really cheap to make a show, I used to be able to keep all the money, and now the shows cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, just to put on one show, because the special effects are expensive, and you have to get all these licenses &#8230; the expenses have gone up dramatically.

Zedd – The $85 Million Classically Trained DJ

Karlie Kloss is sitting in a glass-walled SoHo office holding court with five teenage girls. Over video chat with several more, they are brainstorming how to support scholars of Kode With Klossy once class is out. The teenagers are all graduates of Kode With Klossy summer camps, an initiative by Kloss’ education nonprofit that aims to teach girls the basics of computer programming.
In her off-duty uniform of a Planned Parenthood T-shirt, black jeans and Gucci loafers, the 6&#8217;2&#8243; supermodel listens intently. One young woman wearing a white Kode With Klossy top suggests a custom app for students to communicate through. Kloss nods and encourages more ideas. Perhaps Kode With Klossy could upload lesson videos for scholars to look back on, or start a newsletter with events and internships. Another girl in glasses says she posts tricky coding problems on Snapchat and scholars from her camp offer solutions.
As the meeting concludes, Kloss hugs the girls before rallying them to put their hands in for a cheer. &#8220;Klossy Posse!&#8221; they shout in unison.
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A 36-time Vogue cover girl is an unlikely candidate to launch a charity that has taught more than 500 young women how to code. But the 25-year-old has leveraged her giant social audience &#8211; some 12.6 million followers across platforms &#8211; to grow a burgeoning nonprofit that aims to balance the scales of software engineering’s gender disparity.
&#8220;I didn&#8217;t go into this with the plan to build an education nonprofit,&#8221; says Kloss, a member of the 30 Under 30 Class of 2018, over vegan cupcakes and cookies in her Manhattan office. &#8220;I really went into all this out of my own curiosity of wanting to learn what the heck coding was, because it was building massive enterprise value for people in a short period of time.&#8221;
Her first taste came in 2014, when she signed up for a two-week boot camp at adult-education company the Flatiron School in Manhattan to learn the basics of computer programming. &#8220;I didn&#8217;t actually know who she was,&#8221; says Avi Flombaum, cofounder of the Flatiron School, who taught Kloss’ class. &#8220;She was the best student in that group and I was surprised by how enthusiastic she was.&#8221;
Kloss covered the basics of Ruby on Rails, a popular web development framework. But she quickly noticed that her classes weren’t gender equal, an imbalance that mirrored the tech workforce. &#8220;I was curious, why are there not more women in this space?&#8221; recalls Kloss. An idea for how to help took form: &#8220;I realized, here I am with this platform and reach to young women across the country and around the world,&#8221; Kloss explains. &#8220;If I could just help a handful of girls that would be really meaningful.&#8221;
<div id="attachment_34682" style="width: 330px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-34682" class=" wp-image-34682" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Karlie-Kloss-INSIDE-234x300.jpg" alt="Karlie Kloss " width="320" height="410" />Karlie Kloss (Photo by Jamel Toppin)</div>
In 2015, Kloss spent more than $20,000 to personally underwrite 21 scholarships for teenage girls to the Flatiron School’s two week pre-college coding class &#8211; the very class she had taken the year prior (Flatiron School matched the donation).
But she was itching to do more. Last summer, Kloss took the initiative in-house, launching her own two-week summer camp for teenage girls aged 13 to 18 in New York, Los Angeles and her hometown of St. Louis. Kloss helped pick candidates, design the curriculum and select teachers; its graduates have gone on to win hackathons and land places at Ivy League universities. In June, the program expanded to 12 cities across the U.S., with plans to grow further.
Adults are also included: Last July Kloss launched a year-long online scholarship with the Flatiron School that selected one woman every month to enroll in its full stack web development course. And while other nonprofits with similar missions, such as Girls Who Code and Black Girls Code, are far more established, Kloss&#8217; reach brings her objective to millions.
To date, funding for Kode With Klossy programs has come from Kloss herself and the brands she poses for. According to a familiar source, Kloss has personally contributed into seven figures to Kode With Klossy since 2015. She has also redirected a slice of her modeling contracts with companies such as Adidas, Swarovski and Express to fund and support Kode With Klossy. Ford&#8217;s STEAM Experience — an initiative focused on science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines as well as the arts, part of the car maker&#8217;s philanthropic arm — lent additional support to this summer’s camps.
Such initiatives are sorely needed. Half a million more jobs related to computers are expected to be added by 2024. Though 74% of high school girls are interested in STEM, women only earned 18% of all undergraduate computer science degrees in 2015. That impacts employment, especially among minorities: Women made up just over a quarter of the tech workforce last year, though African-American women comprised a mere 3% and Latina women counted for only 2%.
&#8220;There are so many young women who really could change the world with this kind of opportunity, girls who self-select out because they don&#8217;t see others in the industry that look like them,&#8221; says Kloss.
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The daughter of an emergency room physician, Kloss&#8217; favorite subjects as a child were math and science. Had she not been discovered at a charity fashion show in a mall, aged 13, she might have become a doctor or a teacher, she says. Instead, she booked her first advertisement in 2007; that same year she landed her first major runway show, walking for Calvin Klein.
Her career quickly took off, but it went into overdrive with the advent of Instagram. Thanks to social media, says Kloss, &#8220;I could be seen as well as heard.&#8221; As her followers swelled, her fees increased. She premiered on Forbes’ highest-paid models list in 2014 banking $4 million pretax; this year, her contract earnings soared to $9 million in the 12 months prior to June 2017.
&#8220;When social media arrived, models came back into the spotlight because now everyone could see what was behind the velvet rope,&#8221; says Maja Chiesi, SVP at IMG Models, the agency that represents Kloss. &#8220;The next evolution is brands wanting the full, 360-degree sense of who these women are&#8230; They want women with a voice.&#8221;
Enter Kloss, who has long presented herself as more than just a pretty face. In 2012, she started a charitable cookie line called Klossies with Manhattan dessert spot Momofuku Milk Bar; the treats donated to meals for children with each purchase. After taking the odd night class at New York University, in 2015 she enrolled (mentor and supermodel-turned-philanthropist Christy Turlington wrote her recommendation letter). With her busy schedule, she has opted for approximately one class a semester, so far notching credits in creative writing and feminism.
She is eager to expand her platform through a YouTube channel, launched in 2015, that documents her travels and baking forays. Next up: A talk show, Movie Night with Karlie Kloss, airing on the Disney-owned Freeform in December.
All of it serves to raise awareness for Kode With Klossy. As she focuses on the nonprofit, she has pared down her modeling contracts to the most lucrative partnerships. Today, says Kloss, she works with &#8220;partners that really are excited to work with me because of not just what I look like, but because of what I stand for.&#8221; It makes sense that her bookings have shifted from conventional beauty and fashion to tech; she can be seen in recent advertisements for electronics giant Samsung and website builder Wix.
For now, the aim is to grow quickly and cost-effectively. &#8220;I&#8217;ve been thinking about Kode With Klossy like a startup,&#8221; says Kloss. The nonprofit&#8217;s team is lean, with Kloss, her manager, business partner and SVP of SB Projects Penni Thow, five full-time employees and consultants plus help from three members of her management.
And, Kloss says, she is just getting started.
&#8220;I plan on building a big business at some point, too.&#8221;
Startups, you’re on notice.
&#8211; Written by <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/natalierobehmed/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-ga-track="contrib block byline">Natalie Robehmed</a>, FORBES STAFF

Karlie Kloss – Coding’s Supermodel

Kendrick Lamar: The Conscious Capitalist

Jokate Mwegelo has more followers than AKA and Bonang Matheba put together. She inspires girls from Angola to Zimbabwe without even trying. For an entrepreneur in a Tanzanian town, she has a celeb-style social media following.
“You are such a down-to-earth and inspirational queen. Your hard work and humility have shown me that there is hope for me no matter what life throws at me,” writes one of her 2.5 million followers on Instagram.
It’s been a long road to here for 30-year-old Mwegelo. Her journey began in 2006 when taking a gap year after high school.
To pass time, Mwagelo volunteered for the United Nations and entered the Miss Tanzania contest.
“I was extremely shy and didn’t want to wear short things but was very confident in my ability to speak in public which kind of propelled me to the finals,” says Mwegelo.
She wasn’t crowned queen, but left an impression, which ushered in opportunities for acting; her debut was a role in a movie called Fake Pastors. The movie’s success was genuine.
“This was at a time when the movie industry was becoming more commercialized in Tanzania. So it was among the first movies to do very well commercially and the promotion was huge, although the pay for us actors was little.”
It paved way for more roles and earned her two awards at the Zanzibar International Film Festival and a stint as a musician collaborating with the likes of Nigerian multiple award-winning hip-hop star Ice Prince.
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Although supportive of her extra-curricular achievements, her family encouraged her to stick to the plan and to go to university after the gap year.
“My parents were civil servants and very strict and valued education. In primary school, I remember my dad would forget to pick me up. Sometimes I would be the last child to leave school and even walk four to five kilometers home after 6PM,” she says.
In the end, Mwegelo listened to her parents’ advice. She graduated in Political Science and Philosophy at the University of Dar es Salaam. It wasn’t enough to fulfil the deep void she felt, six months into her post-graduation studies. Something was seriously amiss.
“As a former beauty queen, actress, media personality and fashion enthusiast, I felt I could do so much more with my image and for the industry… I hated that in entertainment, sometimes you are at the mercy of the people who may give you a job…&#8221;
<blockquote>&#8220;I felt like we needed a female billionaire. Many industries are male-dominated yet females are the main users. I want to be a billionaire.”</blockquote>
It took soul-searching, research and endless hours at a business incubating program. Her interest in fashion was heightened and her successful stints in the entertainment industry earned her precious contacts. She saw a ripe opportunity to start a business.
Five years ago, Mwegelo used her savings to found Kidoti Company, a lifestyle brand.
“I have a mole or beauty spot on my face and some people call it kidoti so that’s how I came up with the name of the company.”
She started designing clothes for popular artists, and then received a soft loan from Africa’s youngest billionaire, Tanzanian <a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/people/mohammed-dewji/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Mohamed Dewji</a>. It changed everything. He gave her items from his company to sell from which she bought her first van.
“When we rolled out our first line of products which were hair extensions, we had such a successful media run and penetration in the market. A lady from an advertising firm called me saying my brand was the most innovative in the market at that time and she wanted to know how I did it. I was ecstatic,” she says.
Kidoti designs and manufactures synthetic hair extensions, sandals and bags.
“So far we have managed to roll out around 60,000 hair pieces in the market with prospects of doing tenfold better once we establish our own factory in the region,” she says.
To realize this, they partnered with China’s Rainbow Shell Craft.
“We were simply looking for someone to help produce our goods… No one in Tanzania was ready to invest in us and our dream. So we had to go to the source of all these factories… Partnering with the Chinese is hectic, language and cultural barriers were [business threatening]. However, it was such an amazing time. We learned a lot from each other especially about values that are vital to sustaining an international bilateral agreement,” says Mwegelo.
The company promises to be a big success but for Mwegelo, it doesn’t end here. She says giving back is a key part of her life.
She launched ‘Be Kidotified’, a campaign which empowers young girls by building sports facilities in public schools, and through education and entrepreneurship. She also launched ‘Msusi Wao’, translated ‘their hairstylist’, which connects hair dressers, financiers and customers.
Africa certainly needs more female billionaires. Given her feisty zeal, hopefully, Mwegelo will one day be among the many to make it.
– <a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/people30/jokate-mwegelo/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Mwegelo is one of the 30 under 30 class of 2017 in the June edition of </a>FORBES AFRICA.

Millions Online And In Her Designer Pockets

Here it is, the most talked about FORBES AFRICA list; 30 of the brightest, hungriest and most successful entrepreneurs under the age of 30. These are our cover stories in 10 years&#8217; time, or maybe even sooner. The list is in no particular order.
<a href="/30-under-30/">CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL FEATURE</a>
Class of 2017 in numbers:
<ul>
<li>The average age of the class is 27</li>
<li>Women make up 33% of the class</li>
<li>The average age of women is 28.2 while the average age of men on the list is 26.4</li>
<li>9 members on the list are from South Africa</li>
<li>53% of nominees on the list are from Southern Africa while West and East Africa make up 23.3% each</li>
</ul>
&nbsp;
&nbsp;
<div id="attachment_31677" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-31677" class="wp-image-31677 size-full" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/TAP8165-2-1.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="683" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/TAP8165-2-1.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/TAP8165-2-1-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/TAP8165-2-1-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/TAP8165-2-1-768x512.jpg 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Nasir Yammama | Founder, Verdant Agri-Tech | Country: Nigeria</div>
<div id="attachment_31056" style="width: 1031px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/30under30-7121-1-e1496176403706.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-31056" class="wp-image-31056 size-full" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/30under30-7121-1-e1496176403706.jpg" alt="" width="1021" height="522" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/30under30-7121-1-e1496176403706.jpg 1021w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/30under30-7121-1-e1496176403706-300x153.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/30under30-7121-1-e1496176403706-600x307.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/30under30-7121-1-e1496176403706-768x393.jpg 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1021px) 100vw, 1021px" /></a>Members of FORBES AFRICA&#8217;s 30 under 30 at Mesh Club in Johannesburg South Africa</div>

FA-June-2017lr-11

Meet 2017’s new class of 30 under 30

According to the IPSOS Affluent Africa Survey Africa in 2016, this year FORBES AFRICA reached a monthly readership of 163,000 or 4.7% of the affluent in Africa, between the ages of 25 and 64. But, it is with young entrepreneurs, between the ages of 30 and 34, that the magazine strikes a chord, with 21%.
One of Africa’s youngest entrepreneurs, Emeka Akano, CEO and Co-founder of Jara Mobile Ltd, returned from England to Nigeria – his land of birth – to build his own businesses. Akano was on FORBES AFRICA’s 30 under 30 list last year.
“Ever since I started reading the magazine, I’ve been better informed about prospects in different industries and the wonderful work that my fellow entrepreneurs are doing in Africa. It has also opened my eyes to a world of possibilities and creative ideas,” he says.
Akano finds the lists inside the magazine inspiring and motivational.
“Seeing people who make it to the lists from different walks of life and background is encouraging,” he says.
The 2014 FORBES 30 under 30 list caught his eye. Little did he know, a year later, he’d be on it. Since featuring on the list, founder of EBonoko Holdings, in Johannesburg, South Africa, Emmanuel Bonoko, says the magazine helps him keep an eye on other entrepreneurs who are breaking boundaries in their industries.
He says FORBES AFRICA has changed his life and business.
“We got more business opportunities across South Africa and our business network has been expanding across Africa. Through the profiling, we got more companies having interest to work with us. I have been meeting the ministers and other influential business leaders in South Africa,” he says.
Reitumetse Shebe, a 22-year-old reader from Vaal, in Gauteng, South Africa, highlights three stories that stood out for her – ‘Power Of The Hashtag’, from FORBES AFRICA’s March 2016 edition, as well as ‘It Was Like Playing Twister Underground’ and ‘The Children Who Became Women Too Soon’, both from the October/November 2015 edition of FORBES WOMAN AFRICA.
“These stories captivated me and they were well crafted. The story of the children, who became women to soon, was shocking but it changed by perception about Nigeria and broadened my knowledge. Its picture on its own told a story,” she says.
Shebe hopes FORBES AFRICA will mesmerize its readers with more cutting-edge stories in the next five years.
“I’d love to read more about the truths, beauties and hidden traditions of Africa. Keep making us proud FORBES AFRICA!”

Tag: 30 under 30

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA