Umbono by Google – Google Jump Start Your Idea

The People

Entrepreneurs thrive when they’re connected. When you join Umbono you’ll have access to our incredible Mentor Base, which includes Google experts, venture capitalists, Angel investors and amazing community mentors. The Mentors in the program will be able to assist you with your product build, business plan, how to raise further capital and the commercialization of your business.

The following list of Mentors showcases the level of quality counsel Teams are able to access for technical and business development advice.

Ahmad, Google Mentor & Head of New Business Development

Ahmad leads Google’s engineering teams focused on building and adapting products for the Arab world. Before coming to Google, he managed engineers at several Silicon Valley start ups and taught courses at the University of San Francisco’s Department of Computer Science.

Emma, Local Mentor & Mobile Entertainment Pioneer

Emma recently founded a mobile media company in South Africa after an illustrious career focusing on the intersection of entertainment and new media technologies. Named one of South Africa’s top businesswomen, she was also elected to the board of the Mobile Entertainment Forum after being the first African to be nominated.

Gareth, Local Mentor & Tech Entrepreneur

Gareth has founded several online and mobile businesses and has a background in strategy consulting and venture capital. He currently runs one of SA's premier mobile aggregators, and is also the founder of an online contract signature and storage service. Gareth also founded Finance4Entrepreneurs, which provides capital raising, valuation, and modeling tools specific to entrepreneurs.

Gustav, Local Mentor & Mobile Tech Leader

Gustav founded a technology company that develops mobile solutions for emerging markets and established a mobile-focused technology incubator in 2006. He also co-founded and acted as a technical director for one of Africa’s earliest digital interactive studios.

Joe, Google Mentor & Country Lead, Kenya

Joe opened Google’s first operation in Africa – its Nairobi, Kenya hub and currently runs all of Google’s Africa business and operations from there. Formerly the CEO of a major Kenyan telecom company, Joe has a passion for developing content and applications and holds an MBA from Stanford Business School.

Pieter, Google Mentor & Developer Advocate for Android

Pieter is a Developer Advocate for Android at Google and is the co-author of "Practical Android Projects", a book that teaches Android program development using Java, Python, Lua and JavaScript. He is passionate about mobile devices, the web, and free and open source computing. Before joining Google, Pieter worked internationally as a software architect and developer for over two decades in many roles and industries building systems and applications with myriad platforms and programming languages.

Andy, Local Mentor & Tech Entrepreneur

Andy Volk is the VP of Developer Relations for MXit, the Stellenbosch-based social networking company and Africa's largest mobile social network. With over 13 years of web product experience, his entrepreneurial work includes inventing Live365.com in 1999, which grew exponentially to become the world's second-largest online radio network in its first year, and founding the consulting and incubation firm Downtempo in 2007.