What this Investor Wants SA Founders to Know about Good Business Ideas, Failure and Growth

Updated on 18 October 2018

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Clive Butkow is a well-known figure in South Africa’s entrepreneurship ecosystem. He is a venture capitalist, director of Grovest and CEO and chief investment officer of Grotech.

Grotech invests in high-growth, disruptive tech companies and is the fundraising initiative for venture capital company, Grovest which has been around since 2013.

This week Butkow has been sharing some of his wisdom on his Linkedin feed. What he has been calling ‘Entrepreneur lessons from a venture capitalist’ is a series of posts offering advice for entrepreneurs from the perspective of a VC on everything from idea generation to growth.

Advice worth listening to – Here is what Clive Butkow wants you to know. 

On idea generation

“Find something that people are doing inefficiently and create a solution” – Butkow

On growth

“If you optimize for profitability, you sacrifice growth. And for a startup, it’s all about growth” – Butkow

On fear of failure

“Failure is not something to be proud of. But failure is something you can recover from”- Butkow

On sales

“A salesperson should understand the buyer’s goals and how his own solution can help achieve those goals”- Butkow

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