Further to my post last night, I found an article (written by Duncan McLeod) that goes into a little more detail on the machinations of the equity project.
- The R472m will be spent in roughly equal portions of nearly R70m/year over the seven-year investment period.
- MS plans to spend the R472m helping between five and 10 black-led and black-owned software development houses, providing them with technical, business and marketing support.
- They’ll also be given access to Microsoft resources internationally and offered support in selling their products in markets worldwide.
- It is not interested in pure start-ups, wanting to work only with software development companies with a track record.
- They estimate each of the companies they invest in will have 300-400 people at the end of the seven years.
Worth noting is that
Microsoft’s early research suggests it will get about 200 applications from interested companies. The will probably end up with about 50 that meet the criteria
I find this last paragraph the most interesting. This tells us that there are at least 200 black-owned software development houses. This is wonderful news and something that the ICT sector should be proud of (that's when they stop bitching at each other over their BEE Charter).
Two other points and then I go
- McLeod writes that the company will not take an equity stake in any of the businesses it works with and does not expect any payments in return. It also does not expect a return on its investment, though it expects the initiative will benefit it indirectly later. I suspect that this last line was something annouced at the press conference. Brilliant!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It's the WIIFM principle and they are patently obvious about it.
- And MS SA's BEE rating will be boosted, probably taking it from a level-four contributor to level two
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