Permjot Valia is the founder and CEO of Help with Sales Ltd. He has been an active business angel for several years having made over 25 investments in start ups.

In 2010, Permjot was nominated by Techcrunch as one of the top start up mentors in Europe. He regularly mentors companies in both the UK and in Canada both privately and on behalf of government agencies such as ACOA (Canada), NWDA (UK) and LDA (UK).

In 2007, Permjot co-founded Flight & Partners, a fund management business which buys and helps to turn around distressed businesses. Prior to launching his business, Permjot was involved in a sales career and his last employed position was as Sales & Marketing Director of Ernst & Young, Entrepreneurial Services, London.

Permjot holds the Investment Management Certificate and is approved by the Financial Services Authority in the UK to carry out investment business. He also holds an MBA from the Open University and has an Honours degree in Economics from the University of Leeds.

He currently lives between London and Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Oliver Rippel was appointed CEO Ecommerce Africa & Middle East by MIH Internet in July 2009. This business includes various internet assets including Kalahari.net and Kalahari Ads, Leisure Books, Pricecheck, and Careers 24 in South Africa, as well as Mocality, Dealfish and Kalahari in several other African countries. He was recently appointed to head up the e-commerce division in India and Southeast Asia as well. He joined Naspers in January 2009 as Head of Business Development in Southeast Asia before relocating to Cape Town, South Africa.

Prior to working for Naspers, Oliver spent nine years at eBay – first in his home country Germany and then as part of the Asia-Pacific region in China, Korea, and Southeast Asia. There he mostly focused on strategy, business development, as well as category management and marketing operations.

Oliver studied economics in Berlin, Germany. He is married and has two children.

The Zimbabwean born Diana Blake was raised in South Africa where she read an interesting mix of fine art and engineering. After an initial stint in conservation which saw her working in both Botswana and Morocco, Diana joined BMW where she worked in various capacities for some 18 years. Her career at BMW included diverse disciplines, giving her a broad foundation in the automotive industry.

In 2004, Diana was appointed to the executive management team of BMW South Africa as the General Manager for MINI South Africa. Under her leadership, MINI sales grew by some 200% from 2004 to 2006, and MINI won a number of media and advertising awards.

Jonathan Gosier is a designer, software developer, and serial entrepreneur. He currently serves as Director of Product for SwiftRiver at Ushahidi, on a platform for making sense of streams of realtime data. He’s also the founder of Appfrica, a business accelerator and incubator for East African technologists.

Jon Gosier is a frequent speaker at the TED Conference, is a TED Senior Fellow, and TEDxOrganizer. In 2009 Jon spoke at TEDGlobal in Oxford about his company Appfrica and one of their projects which connected rural African villages with the internet. The service, in collaboration with nonprofit OpenMind, was called QuestionBox and allowed people with no access to the internet to ask questions and get timely, vetted answers.

Prior to working as a software developer, Jon worked in the Film and Music industries. He attended Savannah College of Art and Design and the University of Georgia.

John Waibochi is the CEO of Virtual City, an innovative Mobility solutions provider in Kenya.

In 2010 Virtual City won the Nokia $1,000,000 Growth Economy Venture Challenge at Nokia World. This included an investment of $1m in the business, and the full backing and support of the international mobile giant. The award was in recognition of the company’s Mobile Distributor Solution designed to improve the distribution efficiencies for small and micro enterprises in the fast moving consumer goods market.

Jason is the Chief Executive Officer of Native, one of Africa’s largest Full-Service Digital Agencies.

In 1993 Jason graduated from New York University with an honors degree in Film and Television.

In 1994, Jason founded VWV Interactive, which rapidly grew to be one of South Africa’s leading web development companies.

From 1998 – 2000 Jason held the position of CEO at Metropolis Transactive, a JSE-listed Internet Media Group.

In 2001, Jason completed his first feature film as writer-director, Promised Land, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and went on to win several international awards.

In addition to his work as a feature film director, Jason has directed a host of award-winning TV commercials for local and international brands.

From 2004 – 2007, Jason held the position of Executive Creative Director at Y&R South Africa.
In 2008, Jason co-founded 2.0 Media, a Branded Entertainment Agency, where he served as Chief Creative Officer.

Jason ranked in the Top 5 Most Highly Awarded directors at the 2010 Loerie Awards Festival where he won Campaign Gold and Campaign Silver awards.

Richard Mulholland is the founder of Missing Link (www.missinglink.co.za), a specialist conference and presentation strategy company, and co-owner of Thunk! (www.thunklab.com) SA’s first perspective lab.

Rich’s dynamic way of thinking took him from rigging lights at rock concerts to telling CEOs what and how they should present. A renowned speaker, strategist, creative thinker and capitalist punk, Rich is the guy you hire to make your presentation or conference rock. He also has a deep hatred for pretentious biogs, of which his is a fine example.

Gustav Praekelt is the founder of Praekelt Digital – a company that develops mobile solutions for emerging markets. After completing his B.Sc. in Computer Science and Philosophy, he co-founded one of the early digital interactive studio in Africa and was its technical director for 10 years.

His belief in the power of mobile phones to transform Africa inspired him to establish the Praekelt Foundation in 2006. A technology incubator that develops robust, highly scalable mobile solutions for social good, its programmes have reached over 50 million people across 15 countries in Africa.

Gustav is a passionate advocate of the idea that mobile technology should be available to all and is a frequent speaker at a variety of international conferences.

After a distinctive university life including leadership positions on several councils and internships with some of the world’s biggest corporates, Rapelang Rabana graduated in 2005 with a Bachelor in Business Science Degree, Honours in Computer Science and a Finance Major from the University of Cape Town. Rabana went on to be selected as an Endeavour Entrepreneur in 2007 and a finalist in the BBQ Young Business Achiever Award, also in 2007. She is without doubt, as the Mail & Guardian newspaper suggested, one of the top 100 young people you must have lunch with. Rapelang has been featured in numerous print publications including Oprah, Financial Mail, Destiny, Finance Week, Sunday Times, The Star, Business Report and Fair Lady among others.

Rapelang as co-founder and CEO of SA based, software development organisation, Yeigo, oversaw the company’s integration into the TelFree Group of companies in 2008. Now as Global Head of R&D, she and her colleagues in Cape Town continue to ensure that the telecommunications pioneer remains at the forefront of alternative communications.

The TelFree Group is a privately-owned group of companies headquartered in Switzerland with extensive operations in South Africa.

Rapelang has a fetish for the beautiful Cape Winelands, great cuisine, stimulating conversation, learning, reading and consuming all that is the internet.

Seth Rotherham, celebrity-blogger-turned-business-maverick, is the founder of 2oceansvibe Media Group, which is home to leading alternative news source 2oceansvibe.com, and groundbreaking online radio station 2oceansvibe Radio.

From it’s humble beggings roots as a lifestyle news blog, 2oceansvibe Media Group has quickly grown to be a formidable force in South African online media, now spanning across multiple online channels, through their cutting edge use of social media and technology.

Nikki Cockcroft graduated from UCT with a business degree in Information Systems and a post graduate diploma in Marketing. After starting her career as IT Manager at Acceleration she soon realised she had a passion for online media and thereafter moved into the position of Campaign Manager.

In March 2003, Cockcroft joined 365 Digital as Business Development Manager. Here she quickly progressed through the ranks to become CEO. In her capacity as CEO she successfully introduced additional business areas including that of web development, ad operations and content syndication. After building 365 Digital into a profitable business, Cockcroft oversaw a successful Management Buyout of the business and subsequent sale to Primedia. Cockcroft was appointed as CEO of Primedia Online a year later in September 2007. Primedia Online includes iafrica.com, the 365 sports brands and 365 Digital. In recent months Cockcroft added to her portfolio in her appointment as CEO of Prezence Digital, a leading agency in the digital landscape and also part of the Primedia stable.

Cockcroft has been a member of the DMMA for the past seven years, and in 2011 Cockcroft was appointed as Chairwoman of the DMMA and the Bookmarks Awards, the South African Digital Awards recognising and rewarding excellence and measurability in digital.

Cockcroft is passionate about all things digital and believes the DMMA’s mission is to learn from each other, share experiences, educate the newcomers and lead research and development whilst establishing an ethical code of conduct under which all digital company’s should operate.

Geoff Cohen is the General Manager of 24.com, one of Africa’s largest digital publishing business, reaching more than 4m consumers across desktop, mobile and tablet devices. One of the founding members of the Online Publishers Association, now the DMMA, he has been working with digital media and technology since 1998.

As one of the few online-only businesses in SA, Geoff and his team create and run destinations that combine technology, content and communities that consistently rank highest in the news and lifestyle segments.

Taking handy inspiration from a plethora of Silicon Valley giants, Geoff is a university drop-out with a degree from the school of hard knocks with a major in Learning Through Doing and Sometimes Failing. Geoff has a fondness for economics, technology, speaking in the third-person and Irish Single Malt. IRL he can be found at the 24.com HQ in Cape Town.

Named as one of “SA’s top 100 most influential media and advertising people” (The Annual), Matthew has worked on the web literally from its inception.

He is the MD of Cape Town-based digital agency Creative Spark and publisher of award-winning social media and emerging technology analysis site, Memeburn.com – companies he started in 2010. Matthew previously worked for the BBC Online (beeb.com division) in London, and South Africa’s largest online operation 24.com, first as the GM of Publishing, and then going on to found and head up the award-winning 20FourLabs (Nokia mobile app innovation challenge). Prior to this he headed up online news publisher Mail & Guardian Online for seven years (co-owned by Guardian Newspapers Limited), turning the online division into a profitable entity for the first time in its history and founding the Webby Honoree-award winning Thought Leader.

He’s also had stints at Avusa, Carte Blanche and iafrica.com. He has spoken and guest-lectured on online media issues around the world, including New York, London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Ireland and Kenya. He was also proud to share the stage with Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales in a talk on “Future Web Trends” in 2007, and Craigslist creator Craig Newmark at the IIE Goldman Sachs Global Leaders in New York in 2008.