The Crowdfund had its first board meeting last week, and we finalised some key strategies for moving forward. In the interest of transparency, I want to mention the most important ones here:

• We decided on a clear filtering method to deal with the applications for funding. You can read more about that here.
• We decided that we will consider South Africa focussed startups for funding, especially if they have applications for the whole continent. However, first prize is still a product that can launch globally.
• We decided that copycat products are OK. I was the one who was opposed to this, as I would like the Crowdfund money to fund innovation, but a strong case was made for the fact that by copying, the necessary improvements can be brought into play that can make a killer product. (Incidentally, just to be clear: I have no issue with copycat products in general, and will in fact be launching one myself later this week. I would just prefer not to spend Crowdfund money on them).
• We had a long discussion about the whole eco-system created by the Crowdfund, with an emphasis on the co-working space we want to set up. This will be huge. Watch this space.