In a world where Artificial Intelligence (AI) is all the rage, we are proud to include the human touch in everything we do.

Every single bizval live valuation has a quality control process in the back-end, performed by an actual human (shocker, right?). When we perform a concierge valuation, our team spends significant time understanding the business. Of course, the human interaction only increases as we move through the bootcamp offering and into bizval next – our exclusive offering to bootcamp clients who request our assistance in implementation of recommendations.

Heck, even a human wrote this! Well, a human operating via a ghost-inspired pseudonym. Still, ghosts are far more human than ChatGPT and the way it always wants to “navigate a dynamic landscape” – because yes, people can still tell the difference when AI has written something.

The power of the human touch was clearly visible at events we hosted in February, including one in Johannesburg and another in Cape Town. There’s something special about entrepreneurs sharing a space and their stories, while connecting with like-minded people. We had guests from Zurich, the UK and the USA in attendance at the Cape Town event, so the conversations were as international as the gleaming classic cars on the floor at the venue. 

We also posted a video on TikTok, follow us and check it out.

With the entrepreneur at the centre of everything that we do, we will always focus on building real relationships. The technology is here to help us, not replace us. If the levels of delight amongst our clients is anything to go by, it seems to be working.

On the product development side, we’ve been very busy in recent weeks refining our approach to valuing startups. As you probably know, startups are a different beast altogether. Instead of being able to demonstrate a revenue track record, there’s usually a messy diagram on a whiteboard that has been turned into some PowerPoint slides.

How do you value an idea? Well, this is the challenge that we have been taking on. Our approach has been endorsed by the team at the University of Cape Town, Africa’s highest rated university. Together with that team, we’ve been putting our approach through its paces and the results have been excellent.

If you want to know more about how we value startups, then look out for our upcoming webinar - How to value a Startup. Of course, you’re also welcome to get in touch with us in the meantime.

Howard Blake is a co-founder of bizval and brings plenty of experience (and grey hairs – not all of which are age-related) to the table. He has been there and done that in the world of business, having bought and sold businesses and grown them from the ground up. This makes him an incredible resource for the team to tap into for guidance and insights.

In this article, Howard sat down with the bizval team to talk about bootstrapping vs. raising funding and what the different approaches mean for entrepreneurs. The concept of “hybrid bootstrapping” is incredibly powerful and can be the difference between success and failure for entrepreneurs. Watch this webinar.

If you just can’t get enough of this concept, then you’ll love the webinar we hosted in February on the same topic. We spent nearly an hour discussing the risks and opportunities of raising funding and the important concepts that entrepreneurs and founders need to keep in mind.

Not every part of a business is glamorous. In fact, success or failure is usually defined by what happens behind the scenes in the engine room. This is where Chay Stockdale likes to make sure that things are ticking over beautifully, a role he performs at Iridium Business Solutions.

In this podcast hosted by our co-founder The Finance Ghost, Chay talked about the importance of getting the basics right and ensuring that the foundations are in place for a business. The operations simply cannot be ignored!

We also covered some other interesting topics, like areas of activity that he is seeing in the South African economy.

That’s it for this mailer.

We hope you have a fantastic month ahead.

We recently launched bizval express and we couldn’t be happier with the results we are seeing. As a first stab at a valuation, express uses the core of our methodology and delivers a plausible valuation range. For those seeking a more accurate answer, our live and concierge offerings are perfect.