ENTREPRENEURS HUMAN RESOURCES HOW TO PLAY IT BY TAESIK YOON For investors, resource-rich Africa is a sleeping giant with hundreds of millions of consumers on the cusp of joining the global economy. One small-cap harnessing Africa’s growth is Net 1 UEPS Technologies, a South African provider of payment-processing technology. Despite generating strong profits over several years from its lucrative contract to distribute welfare grants for the South African Social Security Agency, the company has been plagued by controversy over how the contract was obtained and accusations that Net 1 improperly used grant recipients’ personal data (it has denied the allegations). To improve the stock’s performance, Net 1 has been diversifying its offerings and expanding to other developing regions, including markets within Africa and India. Net 1 trades at a ridiculously low six times earnings. Taesik Yoon is editor of the <strong>Forbes</strong> Special Situation Survey and <strong>Forbes</strong> Investor newsletters. When Coca-Cola asked for an analytics solution that made it easier to spot trends affecting competing brands, Meltwater built it. Other clients found new applications on their own. The CEO of a Swedish window company told Lyseggen he used Meltwater’s hyperlocal media tracking to pinpoint burglary spikes so he could market more heavily in the areas affected. During this period, Lyseggen began pondering what African youngsters might do with high-speed internet and computers like the one he had bought as a college student. “I concluded that if I wanted to do something impactful,” he says, “I needed to do something that was built on my core expertise.” In 2008, Lyseggen established the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology, an all-expenses-paid program that helps African entrepreneurs learn how to launch companies. He selected Accra, Ghana, as its home (see box). He raced around the globe, doing 200 interviews with NGOs, colleges, software companies and po- GOING, GOING, GHANA The bridge on the outskirts of Accra, Ghana, looks like something from an Indiana Jones movie: a series of creaky wooden planks suspended by rope over a fetid stream. Towering palm trees and tin-roofed shacks dot the overgrown landscape. Appearances can be misleading. The span was designed and built by engineers trained by the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology, a program created by Meltwater founder Jorn Lyseggen to help West African entrepreneurs learn how to launch companies. Annual funding from Meltwater: $2 million. The creek separates the two buildings that constitute the school’s headquarters: on the near side, classrooms; on the far side, air-conditioned offices connected by a spiral staircase adorned with quotes from Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Nelson Mandela. The bridge reduced the trek between the edifices from 20 minutes to 2. Inside, entrepreneurs-in-training create startups from scratch and workshop them with other students and faculty. The final exam is a pitch session in front of Lyseggen and other investors, with up to $200,000 in funding on the line. Successful pitches move on to the school’s incubator. Among them: Kudobuzz, which amplifies companies’ positive ratings online; it has taken $190,000 in investment capital from Meltwater and 500 Startups. Claimsync, a platform that processes medical claims, raised more than $100,000 before getting bought for an undisclosed sum. Tress, a hairstyle app, “became the only place to find out what Ghanaian, Nigerian or black women in London . . . have on their head,” says cofounder Priscilla Hazel. It also earned a $20,000 grant from Y Combinator. —Z.O.G. tential students. Today, the program accepts some 60 of 6,000 applicants a year. Instructors start with basics: how to write a business email, how to connect on LinkedIn. Then come units on coding, marketing, accounting and pitching investment ideas. “Africa could be a place where companies all over could find software developers,” Lyseggen says. “It’s a population of a billion people. It’s going to double and triple in the next few decades. Some people might think that’s scary, and of course, there are concerning things around that as well, but if you think of it from a talent perspective, what a phenomenal talent pool.” In the meantime, Lyseggen is happy to tap that pool for Meltwater. He recently hired a handful of graduates from the entrepreneurial technology school to work on the mobile team. FINAL THOUGHT “Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.” —STEPHEN KING MARGIN PROPHET BEST INTENTIONS Four years ago, plagued by egregiously high employee turnover, James Ruder, CEO of L&R Pallet, a maker and recycler of wooden packing pallets, tried hiring from among Denver’s refugee population. It didn’t all go smoothly. Why did you decide to hire refugees? I had to do something different. The Burmese seemed like a good fit, because they were used to hard, dirty work and long days. How did your first hires work out? Within three days, our first six refugees were outperforming all our other guys. Did they all work out that well? We soon had 25, and it was a disaster. Injuries happened daily. Local OSHA had its eye on me. [The new workers] spoke 17 dialects, and none could talk to each other. How did you deal with all this? We created a part-time position for a person who’s like our own social worker. Did you hire only Burmese? We have a lot of Congolese and also Somalis. Can you quantify how the refugees have affected your business? I went from 300% turnover a year to 15%. —Susan Adams LEFT: THOMAS KUHLENBECK FOR FORBES 56 | FORBES JUNE <strong>13</strong>, <strong>2017</strong>
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