Xtech Institute > Team
Salim Ismail is the author of best selling Exponential Organisations. He is the founder of ExO Works, a specialist, globally decentralized network of exponential organization practitioners, and a co-founder of Singularity University in California. Salim’s vision is to help startups achieve global scale and impact in a sustainable manner, to positively impact the lives of a billion people.
Willem is a chartered accountant and formerly the managing partner for Deloitte Africa – Center for the Edge. He is an alumni of the Singularity University in California and CEO of xTech.Capital – a venture capital investment management firm. “It became abundantly clear to me that the majority of current school regimes are preparing youngsters to take life-long jobs…finishing school and ultimately going to university with the premise of entering the job market. If you regard that framework holistically, you
Gerald is the founder and CEO of SovTech, an exponential software development enterprise.With a background in marketing and business economics, Gerald decided to develop solutions for companies that were struggling with digital innovation, and founded SovTech. Having successfully lead the first ICO in South Africa, and a a client list that spans JSE Top 100, Gerald has established himself as a thought leader on all things connected to a computer.
Steve is the founder and CEO of New Reality. Is a leader in the virtual reality/mixed reality/augmented reality field, and is passionate about the capability and potential of this exponential technology as a solution to both corporate and societal innovation issues. Steve has built solutions in training, education, engineering, retail, mining and many other sectors for both SMEs as well as multinational giants like Volkswagen.
Lorien is the founder and CEO of Bankymoon, a blockchain and cryptocurrency consultancy and co-founder/CEO of Centbee, a global cryptocurrency payments and remittance company. As Africa’s foremost blockchain expert, he has addressed and advised Facebook, TEDx, the United Nations, IMF, World Bank, the FBI and a host of other organisations in multiple industries throughout the world. He pioneered blockchain payments for utility smart metering and was the co-founder of the Blockchain Academy which educates professionals on all aspects of blockchains
Angus is an alumni (AMP) of Oxford University, and a non-executive director of several commercial and non-profit organisations. With a background in banking, he has led several banking start-ups over his career, most notably co-founding eBucks.com. He has worked with various large organizations to enable their consumer banking ambitions. Combining a desire to engineer ‘wow’ customer experiences with low-risk and regulatory compliant processes he founded and advises various FinTech start-ups. These include Centbee (a Bitcoin start-up aimed at revolutionizing payments);
Matt is a Fulbright scholar who completed his PhD in computational biological engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He focused on network analysis, multi-objective optimization, and the advanced simulation of high-dimensional systems in the context of DNA nanotechnology. From there Matt has developed powerful predictive analytical methods for application to Big Data. He co-founded the data-science start-up, Tenji and is also the Lead Technologist of Open Data Durban, a civic technology non-profit that leverages modern technologies to democratize
Annabel is the CEO and founder of Strider Technologies, a leading fintech, insurtech and edtech consulting enterprise. She is rated as one of the top females in technology in Africa. Although Annabel is a mechanical engineer with a background in nuclear materials, she decided to move into the exponential technology space when she realized that she has a passion for building systems that educate people and create impactful solutions that serve society. She most recently founded Brave, a business that
Matt Marx is the co-founder of iosiro, a blockchain cybersecurity startup. Before entering the world of entrepreneurship, he was an ethical hacker and helped a number of publicly listed companies around the world improve their cybersecurity. In 2015, he won the global Security Researcher of the Year, and now speaks frequently at international conferences. Matt has served as a security consultant to the European Commission, and lead the team that won the 2015 DEFCON password cracking challenge; a global hacking
Tim is the CFO of Aerobotics – a company focussed on using drones to map citrus fields across the globe, to provide farmers with realtime reliable data that is accurate to the level of individual trees, to usher in the new era of exponential farming. Tim is a chartered accountant, and after his Deloitte articles joined Uber as the operations lead for Sub-Saharan Africa. Tim is intimately acquainted with exponential growth of startups having been responsible for scale at Uber,