In this episode, we sit down with Pat Mahlangu, award-winning marketer, media entrepreneur, and founder of Pat On Brands. Pat shares his inspiring journey from promoting phones in a mall to leading one of South Africa’s most impactful brand platforms, while championing youth entrepreneurship, African storytelling, and the long game of brand-building.

Highlights

🌍 From Rural Roots to Brand Leader: Pat unpacks how growing up in a small South African town shaped his early drive, and how a simple promotional gig led him to discover his calling in marketing.

📚 Marketing with Purpose: Pat explains how Pat On Brands became a platform—not just a business—enabling thought leadership, youth empowerment, and brand storytelling across the continent.

🏆 The Top 16 Youth-Owned Brands Awards: Discover how Pat created an awards platform that’s now Pan-African, celebrating excellence among young African entrepreneurs while shifting the narrative around youth and innovation.

💡 “Never Average, Always Awesome”: Pat shares the mindset behind his journey, from changing academic paths to starting his own agency, and why chasing awesomeness is more important than chasing money.

🔥 Branding vs. Business: Learn why Pat believes we should build brands—not just businesses—and how branding drives long-term value, identity, and economic impact.

Key Insights

🧠 Branding is a Long-Term Game: Pat reminds entrepreneurs that branding is not a one-time event, but a consistent, creative, and culturally rooted journey.

📖 Storytelling as a Superpower: The best brands connect emotionally. Pat shows how storytelling, especially through African narratives, can differentiate and deepen brand loyalty.

🧱 Build Before You Monetize: With Pat On Brands, he led with value—not profit—building credibility and community before monetization, a powerful model for emerging founders.

🌱 Youth are Africa’s Greatest Asset: Through initiatives like the Top 16 Awards, Pat demonstrates how young people are not just the future—they’re building the present.

💬 Marketing is More Than Pretty Ads: From pricing strategy to positioning, location to perception—Pat makes a case for marketing as a business-critical function, not just a support service.

🌍 Rewriting Africa’s Narrative: Pat argues that Africa must stop blaming, begging, or borrowing—and instead, start branding. Strong African brands are key to economic transformation.

Vision for the Future

Pat Mahlangu envisions an Africa led by powerful homegrown brands—built by young people, rooted in culture, and positioned for global competitiveness. His story is a rallying cry for entrepreneurs and marketers to embrace creativity, consistency, and courage as tools to rebrand the continent.

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In this episode, we sit down with Tinyiko Valoyi—serial entrepreneur, co-founder of Zulzi, and founder of Mavoni Fiber—to unpack his extraordinary journey from software engineer to tech visionary reshaping Africa’s digital economy. Tinyiko shares raw, powerful lessons from building one of South Africa’s most successful quick-commerce platforms and leading a fiber rollout across underserved townships.

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Highlights

🚀 From Software Engineer to Serial Entrepreneur: Tinyiko shares how his passion for tech began at university and how it led to founding and failing early ventures before eventually co-founding Zulzi and Mavoni Fiber.
📉 Lessons from Failure: He recounts a tough but defining chapter—launching an ISP in Ghana with no capital, living in his office basement, and still managing to raise $30M in funding years later.
💡 Zulzi’s Grind to Greatness: From selling textbooks online to becoming Shoprite’s tech partner for the 60/60 app, Donald walks us through how timing, grit, and strategic pivots defined their success.
📡 Fiber for the People: Tinyiko's mission with Mavoni Fiber is to bring high-speed internet to townships and rural communities, using hybrid infrastructure and lean models to scale where others can’t.
🧠 Investor’s Mindset: Now also a VC partner at Chanzo Capital, Tinyiko explains why entrepreneur-led investing is critical to Africa’s startup ecosystem.

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Key Insights

🛠️ Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish: Tinyiko's guiding mantra from Steve Jobs has shaped how he navigates risk, opportunity, and reinvention throughout his entrepreneurial journey.
📊 Preparation Meets Opportunity: Zulzi’s partnership with Shoprite succeeded not just because of vision, but because their product was ready—just in time for 2020’s e-commerce explosion.
👥 Founding Teams Matter: Tinyiko emphasizes how co-founders, complementary skills, and early believers helped keep the vision alive through hard times.
🔥 Grit Over Glamour: From working midnight casino shifts to bootstrapping telecom ventures, Tinyiko's journey is a reminder that entrepreneurship is more sweat than spotlight.
🌍 Pan-African Vision: Having operated in Ghana, South Africa, and across the continent, Tinyiko's playbook is built for scale—driven by a belief that Africa’s hardest problems are also its biggest opportunities.
💰 Smart Capital: As both an entrepreneur and investor, he calls for founders to have “skin in the game” and solve meaningful problems to attract long-term capital.
🔄 Adaptability is Everything: Whether it’s pivoting Zulzi’s business model or engineering new ways to lower fiber costs, Tinyiko's story shows that iteration is the path to breakthrough.

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Vision for the Future
Tinyiko is building toward a future where every African home—no matter the income bracket—has access to affordable, high-speed internet. His story is a masterclass in long-term thinking, bold execution, and doing hard things in hard places.

Whether you’re a startup founder, tech builder, or aspiring investor, this episode is packed with wisdom you won’t find in textbooks.

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In this episode, Julian Kubel and Lebogang Mothibe, co-founders of Butan, share their remarkable journey of building a streetwear brand rooted in African identity. They delve into the challenges of balancing creativity and business, the importance of cultural preservation, and their vision for taking African fashion to the global stage.

Highlights

🌍 Reclaiming Identity Through Fashion: Butan is a rearrangement of the word "Bantu," symbolizing a reclamation of history and a celebration of African heritage.
🎨 Fusing Creativity and Business: Julian and Lebogang explore how engineering, music, and artistry shaped their approach to designing a brand that resonates with the youth.
💡 Learning from Grassroots Entrepreneurship: From selling mixtapes on the streets to launching a fashion label, they share how grassroots experiences informed their entrepreneurial philosophy.
👕 The Art of Subculture: Butan’s designs capture the essence of hip-hop culture and Pan-Africanism, creating a unique identity in the competitive streetwear market.
🎯 Building a Scalable Brand: They emphasize the importance of creating a brand that thrives independently of its founders, focusing on the promise of the product rather than personalities.

Key Insights

🛠️ Creativity in Business: Julian and Lebogang highlight that creativity exists in all aspects of entrepreneurship, from product design to problem-solving.
📊 Grassroots Growth: The duo discusses how starting small and staying connected to their community helped them build a loyal customer base.
👥 Teamwork and Vision: Their partnership exemplifies the power of complementary skills in turning a creative idea into a sustainable business.
🌍 Pan-African Representation: Butan’s Pan-African ethos is reflected in its use of colors, patterns, and storytelling, making it a brand for the continent and beyond.
💡 Sustainability and Legacy: By focusing on scalability and brand longevity, they aim to create a lasting impact that outlives their involvement.

Vision for the Future
Julian and Lebogang envision Butan as more than a fashion brand—it’s a movement that preserves and celebrates African culture through storytelling and design. Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur or a fan of streetwear, this episode will inspire you to blend passion and purpose in everything you do.

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