Vinny Lingham

Vinny Lingham is a serial entrepreneur, investor, and technology innovator recognized as a leading tech founder from Africa. His career in technology began with the founding of incuBeta, an incubator and investment firm that developed into a large enterprise focused on digital marketing and technology solutions. Lingham later launched Yola, formerly SynthaSite, a platform that enables users to build websites without coding skills. Yola secured significant venture funding and served millions of users.

Lingham gained further prominence when he started Gyft, a mobile gift card company backed by Google Ventures. Gyft became a leading service in the mobile gift card sector and was acquired by First Data Corporation for more than $54 million. Leveraging his e-commerce experience, Lingham identified the need for a universal solution to address identity fraud, leading to the founding of Civic, a startup that encrypts identity information on the blockchain. Civic raised over $33 million in funding during its initial coin offering. Civic has since shifted its focus to agentic identity and access management.

Beyond his ventures, Lingham has played a significant role in the blockchain investment landscape. He served as a general partner at Multicoin Capital, a crypto investment firm, where he led the seed investment round for Solana and advised the project. His investment portfolio includes early stakes in Filecoin and Render. Lingham also co-founded Praxos Capital, a cryptocurrency money market hedge fund. He is the co-founder of the Silicon Cape Initiative, an organization aimed at developing the Western Cape into a high-tech startup hub, and the co-founder of Newtown Partners, an investment fund through which he has led early-stage investments in startups such as Sweep South and Augmentors.

Lingham's entrepreneurial expertise has established him as a public figure and media personality. He appeared as an investor, referred to as a dragon, on South Africa's Dragons' Den reality TV series and later became one of the sharks on the South African version of Shark Tank. He made headlines by investing in a company on Shark Tank using bitcoin, encouraging the company Augmentors to adopt blockchain technology for their augmented reality game. Lingham also served as an angel on National Geographic's not-for-profit program Undercover Angel. He is the co-author of the book "I'm In: Essential Advice for Entrepreneurs."

Selected as an Endeavor Entrepreneur and a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, Lingham has raised over $50 million in venture capital funding for his companies. A recognized speaker in the technology industry, particularly on blockchain and cryptocurrency, he has been listed among the top 500 CEOs globally. Lingham's influence in cryptocurrency and blockchain has been featured in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and TechCrunch. With a career spanning digital marketing, mobile commerce, decentralized identity, and crypto investing, Lingham brings a combination of founder experience and investment expertise to the technology sector.