We value your company #8: From Joburg to the world (with Vangelis Kyriazis, Syft Analytics)

In this episode of the bizval podcast, Syft Analytics co-founder and CEO Vangelis Kyriazis joined The Finance Ghost for a discussion on Syft’s business and insights into the journey to build it.

Syft is a wonderful example of South Africans taking their talents to the global stage, with a locally developed software product that services clients across the world by plugging into leading accounting tools.

In this podcast, topics covered included:

• A brief background on Syft’s business.
• The concept of managing cash for small businesses and how it looks simple at first but gets far more complicated as different taxes etc. come through.
• The importance of plugging into the different accounting systems and to what extent the product roadmap was in place at the start of this journey.
• “Learning by doing” and iterating the business while it is being built.
• The demand for management accounting by entrepreneurs rather than financial accounting.
• The time taken to achieve product-market fit in Syft and having critical mass when it comes to features.
• The value of having in-house skills in the product development phase, along with thoughts on internal resources vs. outsourcing.
• The availability of capital in the US vs. South Africa for entrepreneurs and what this means for the way that startups are built in South Africa.
• The benefits of bootstrapping in terms of having the right mindset from day one and focusing on unit economics.
• The potential impact of artificial intelligence on this industry and on Syft’s business.

And of course, the podcast ended off with Vangelis giving his advice to any entrepreneur who is currently in a scaling phase. Spoiler alert: it relates to hiring.

For more information on Syft Analytics, visit the website here and connect with Vangelis on LinkedIn here.

For more information on bizval, visit the website here and connect with our CEO Graham Stephen on LinkedIn here.