On 22 February 2023, we celebrated MyBusiness App's big 1 year anniversary 🎊. Any startup knows just how difficult it can be to survive your first year.

To make this year an even better one, we have joined

Microsoft for Startups

' Founders Hub. It brings people, knowledge, and technology together to help founders at every stage solve startup challenges.

Despite being vital to innovation and growth, by some 

estimates

, over 90% of startups will go out of business in their first year.

From our point of view, we are in the 10% of startups that survive their first year. We plan on thriving this year, and this year we are bringing in some big guns from Microsoft.

Furthermore, I'd like to highlight why the Founders Hub is important, what real benefits we have gained, and where we are going next with this. So read on for some exciting revelations coming to MyBusiness App soon.

Why the Founders Hub is important to us?

The idea that 90% of startups do not survive their first year becomes more pronounced in a country like South Africa where a myriad of issues such as load-shedding, high amounts of red tape, and widespread corruption are experienced by all citizens and businesses on a daily basis. Despite this, MyBusiness App has faced these issues head-on and focused on providing digital tools that small businesses need to improve their business operations in the current climate. We believe, strongly, in our abilities to make a positive impact on the South African economy and its communities.

Keeping this local context in mind, we aspire to solve some of the world's biggest problems for small business and continue building towards a technologically-enabled global company. Therefore, deciding to

sign up

to Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub was a simple decision to make. More tools and technologies are required to enable all MyBusiness App employees to collaborate, communicate and develop effectively and easily. With happy employees, MyBusiness App can continue to focus on providing innovative digital technologies to its customers.

Being part of the Microsoft for Startups' Founders Hub provides real benefits to MyBusiness App, its employees and its customers.

What are the real benefits for us?

The platform provides free access to over $100.000 in powerful development and productivity tools including

GitHub

,

Microsoft 365

,

Close

and more.

We have already realised savings of over R50 000,00 for our annual subscriptions related to the development and productivity tools used internally by employees. More specifically, within 1 day of gaining access to the Microsoft for Startups' Founders Hub we have started using a few tools to aid our remote-first environment.

All our teams will be using Microsoft 365 to share their work, collaborate with others for instant feedback, and manage communications more effectively with each other and customers.

The development team will be using Github Enterprise to increase their productivity. With access to higher usage quotas on GitHub products and free credits on

Azure

, our engineers will be able to increase research and development of our software products.

The sales team, on the other hand, will be using a CRM called Close to provide our customers with the best possible support and relationship with MyBusiness App. With features that support bulk actions, email syncing, unified communications, and more, our sales team has never been more empowered.

What's next for us?

According to an

article

written by

Charlotte Yarkoni

, President of Commerce and Ecosystems at Microsoft, the Founders Hub is centered around three key areas:

• Unlocking innovation for all: The platform eliminates traditional barriers founders face when getting started, such as venture capital requirements or third-party validation to help any founder regardless of background, location or access be successful.

• Technology benefits that grow: Keeping pace with a startup’s lifecycle, the platform helps founders speed development with free access to GitHub and the Microsoft Cloud with the ability to unlock additional benefits over time. To address the unique needs of startups, we are also partnering with innovative companies like

  OpenAI

  , a global leader in AI research and deployment, that develops AI systems such as GPT-3 and Codex to provide startups with exclusive benefits and discounts.

• Access to mentorship and guidance: Becoming a founder is no longer about “who you know.” Through the platform, startups can connect with industry veterans, access tailored startup-centric training and innovate quickly with expert technical guidance.

It's been only 1 day since we have started unlocking innovation through our new capabilities. We are excited for all the announcements coming in the next 12 months. As MyBusiness App grows, with the help of Microsoft for Startups' Founders Hub, it will begin to place more focus on growing technology benefits, for example by integrating AI, and accessing mentorship and guidance.

MyBusiness App, in its second year, is already thriving with more to come.