Justin Stanford is an entrepreneur and venture capitalist from Cape Town, South Africa. With more than 20 years experience, he is founder, board member, advisor, or investor to a wide variety of companies in the global technology industry.
What else?
Growing up on a farm, he decided not to complete high school and instead made the move to the city of Cape Town alone, to pursue his dreams of being an early Internet entrepreneur at the turn of the century.
Despite a few years of failed attempts in the wake of the infamous dotcom crash, he eventually prevailed and successfully launched and grew a pan-African online software company from a garage in the suburbs of Cape Town, centred around the emerging theme of Internet security.
Having founded his first startup attempt at the age of 18, Justin has been involved in tech startups and entrepreneurial endeavours ever since, and has advised or invested in dozens of companies, domestically and abroad.
Today, he focuses his time as co-founding General Partner of pioneering venture capital firm 4Di Capital. Based in Cape Town and Atlanta, 4Di Capital specialises in investing in early-stage tech companies in Southern and Eastern Africa. 4Di Capital is an independent venture capital fund manager based in South Africa’s “Silicon Cape”, specialising in high-growth technology venture opportunities, at the seed, early-and growth-funding stages. The fund manager has offices in Cape Town, South Africa and Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A. and funds are managed by the GP partnership team of Anton van Vlaanderen, Erik van Vlaanderen, Justin Stanford and Laurie Olivier.
As co-founder of the Silicon Cape Initiative in 2009, designed to highlight and catalyse South Africa’s nascent emerging tech startup ecosystem, Justin believes in Cape Town’s potential as a global technology innovation hub.
In 2011, he was listed by the Mail & Guardian for the ‘Top 200 Young South Africans‘, in 2013, listed by Forbes for ‘30 Under 30: Africa’s Best Young Entrepreneurs‘. In 2014, he was nominated for The Future Africa Awards Prize in Enterprise Support. For 2014 through to 2018, he was listed by the Institut Choiseul for the ‘Choiseul 100 Africa: Economic Leaders for Tomorrow‘, and in 2017 he was listed in the inaugural ‘100 Most Influential Young South Africans‘ by Avance Media.
