About Us: Ama-GoodStarters

http://www.GoodStarter.co.za is a crowdfunding innovative digital disrupt-or platform in the Business Finance Lending Market

About The Good Start Agency (Pty) Ltd

The Good Start Agency (Pty) LTD is a South African registered social enterprise with an audacious dream to redefine the South African business growth narrative. We are passionate about all things people beneficial, innovative and revolutionary. We believe that Economic Empowerment is everyone’s individual prerogative and never should it be confined to 25% ownership espoused by BBBEE currently.

(We advocate a Pareto Principle based goal 80:20 African ownership of the South African economy is possible)

Our ambitious goal is to shift the balance of power from financial institutions that lend money to business to entrepreneurs who initiate business ideas and projects; they are the ones who deserve star consideration. We achieve this ideal through the phenomenon practice of crowdfunding.

Our vision is the creation and promotion of a crowd funding culture and practice in South Africa in particular and Africa in general. We manage a crowdfunding internet based platform, matching individual contributors (GoodStarter Angels/ Contributors) with talented individuals (GoodStarter Innovators) seeking support and contribution for their projects, business initiatives and other ventures.

Our Holy Discontent

The World is forever changing, there are major technological developments that will re-define future human existence. This is what has been called the Digital Disruption (think Google, Facebook, Twitter) changing how we as human beings interact, transact and indeed live.

Are we as Africans, mind-set prepared to take advantage of these changes and this on-going Digital Disruption to empower and improve ourselves as a people, e.g. Chinese?

If not WHY NOT?

“The Global Digital Disruption Game”

So What is it? Digital disruption is the change that occurs when new digital technologies and business models affect the value proposition of existing goods and services. In other words when new technology replaces tradition business, think Uber disrupting the meter taxi industry, crowdfunding disrupting the traditional Financial Services Lending Industry such as banks.

This blog is about challenging you to be a Game Changer and enter this Digital Disruption Game. Our Highest Vision is to inspire, motivate, encourage, support and celebrate Africans in particular and all good starters in coming up with digital products and services and to cultivate an innovation culture in our communities.  We believe that Africans have the capacity, ability and wherewithal to make significant contribution towards technological development. With an inspired mind-set change, many technological advancements such as drone manufacturing can be done here in Africa. Why Not?

Please check out future trends below and start thinking about how you can bring some disruption of your own. (from Sense to Solve http://www.sense2solve.co.za/)

What’s Our Future?

Athena @ ST 21 October 2015

This robot prepared, partial forecast of the future of this topic predicts massive changes in the way we all live, learn and work during our lifetimes. Read on to find out how the human condition could change over the next 10-35 years.

 What is changing?

Living

• New technologies like drones, virtual reality and autonomous cars will generate new jobs and be all around us.
• By 2017, an estimated 3.4 billion people worldwide will own a smartphone, half of whom will be using a mobile health
• The next decade will be about virtual reality, implants, transhumanism.
• In ten years 39% of people do not think they will need to use cash and more than a quarter expect to be able to payments via watches and other wearable devices. Mobile payments could very well become the new norm.
• In 2018, people will spend $100 billion on smart-home technology and 45 million smart-home systems will be in use.

 Learning

• Through the evolution of massive online open courses (MOOCs) and similar courseware, more people than ever will have access to hands-on training.
• Kids that don’t have the skills to do tech are going to see less and less and less exciting career options available to them.

 Working

• Labour will be scarcer in the future because there will be more, older people and more workers will be doing healthcare jobs.
• There will be millions of people around the world that can no longer trade their labour for capital.
• Paid-by-the-hour workers will make up as much as 40% of the U.S. workforce by 2020.

 Demographics

• With 1.5 million people moving into cities and towns every week, the construction and refurbishment of urban infrastructure will account for one third of the remaining global carbon budget.
• Between 2014 and 2030 estimates say 2.5 billion new middle-class consumers will join the crush.
• Millions of additional U.S. acres will be needed for homes, schools, offices, and infrastructure to support the burgeoning population while conserving open space and preserving agriculture.
• By 2050, there will be more than two billion people aged over 60 years.
• In the ASEAN region, over 50%, more than 350 million people (more than the entire United
• States) will still be aged 30 or under by 2030.

Health

• Aging populations throughout the developed world will result in significant increases in musculoskeletal conditions.
• China will face enormous numbers of premature smoking deaths.
• By 2025 it is estimated that there will be over a million people living with dementia in the UK.
• If the trajectory does not change, 17% of adults will be obese by 2025. There will be 170 million adults with a BMI above 35, which is the threshold for urgent medical treatment, such as gastric surgery, to reduce the amount people can eat.
• Our world is aging at a rate never before seen and for the first time in history most people can now expect to live beyond their 60th birthday.
• Progress on improving the lives of the world’s poorest people will be limited.

 Climate change

• Decreases in agricultural output due to climate change will most affect women.
• Biology will be crucial for feeding a world of seven billion people today.

 Implications

 Security

• Catastrophic food production shocks from extreme weather will become more than three times more likely by 2040. Changing environmental conditions around the globe caused by human activity could negatively impact the health of millions of people by altering the amount and quality of key crops.
• S. officials worry that any attempt by the Russian government to use vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure like global stock exchanges, power grids and airports as pressure points against the West could lead to a broader conflict.
• Making extreme carbon cuts and moving to renewable energy could save millions of people living in iconic coastal areas of the United States.
• Failure to tackle gaps in the provision of public transport data via mobile devices could result in older and disabled people being excluded from “basic human rights of independence, mobility and social exclusion”.
• High migration is a threat to national cohesion and higher education institutions must be prepared for a drop in international student numbers.
• People are starting to expect to access the world through their smartphones and tablets – this is going to apply to anything your firm does online. A successful digital transformation will not be possible unless people are confident about the security of both Smart Services and their personal data and convinced that the physical infrastructure can be reliably controlled by digital means.

 DRIVERS

technology · countries · power · bank · customers · online · health · cars · growth · jobs ·

money · cities · mobile · climate change · investment · infrastructure

Come to think of it

Why must children go to a school to be taught by one math teacher whose reputation and level of competence you as a parent are not too sure about, when teacher ‘Digital Mthembu’, one the top mathematicians in the world has live on-line streaming math class every day at 10 am and he teaches the best learners from all around the world. Think about it, at an equivalent of R20 subscription per child and because there are no restrictions to the number of learners that can log in and because he is that good, about 100 000 learners take the class every day, netting teacher ‘Digital Mthembu’ a cool R2 000 000.00, not bad for an hour’s work. Now imagine this scenario with every subject. This is digital disruption at its best, changing how children learn and how teachers teach and transforming the entire education system. And what did our digital savvy teacher need to get this fabulously rich, a smart idea and technology, the on-line streaming website, funded by the on-line crowd that became his fist market. This is just one way digital disruption is a game changer, there are many more.

So, let’s start good you and I