Innovation

The hub of the desert

Want access to technology while dancing in the dunes of the Karoo? There’s a hub for that.

08 May 2017

The Great Karoo spans more than 400 000 square kilometres, capturing more than 50 towns, two mountain ranges and one tech hub in its dramatic embrace. Yes, a tech hub. Two years ago, within this stark and beautiful landscape, two international organisations, Piehole.TV and Rubberstamp.io, established a 100-person space designed to inspire the minds of local entrepreneurs. The founders – Priscilla Groves, George Groves and James Kennedy – developed the hub to allow startups to expand their horizons outside of the smog and bustle of the big cities, and provide the local community with a place to learn, train and grow.

“The whole idea came about when James said, ‘Hey, we should build a Google office in Somerset East’,” recalls George Groves, CEO of Piehole.TV. “We had been doing the geo-arbitrage thing for years and had a distributed team anyway. South Africa just made sense – English-speaking people, good work ethic and a highly talented workforce. It seemed like a fun idea to do it in the Karoo. Small town, not small-time.”

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