Startups

The cogs are turning

South African startup Cognician is turning knowledge into cogs and startup success into stories.

01 July 2011

It’s been a year since Brainstorm  spoke to brothers Barry and Patrick Kayton about their startup Cognician. At the time, the two had prototype web-based software that converted knowledge into what they call ‘cogs’ and were looking for backing. A year down the road and they’ve picked up two major business clients as well as learned some lessons along the way. Barry Kayton says when they started Cognician, they first looked for publishers with a view to adapting books.

“Although that’s been reasonably successful, we’ve found it quite difficult to deal with publishers because of the shift to the digital space. A lot of publishers aren’t ready for it yet and are waiting to see what happens. But we’ve managed to get two projects – one with Old Mutual and one with the Allan Gray Orbis Foundation – that are business-to-business deals. What we’ve realised is that there is a very strong business-to-business demand for what we do. It’s not so much that we’ve dropped the business-to-consumer focus, but that the B2B side is getting a lot of traction and validation.”

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