# Justin Stanford

> Justin Stanford is a seed investor at Silicon Cape Initiative backing FinTech and Security. See 8 investments, check sizes, portfolio. Updated Aug 2026.

- Type: Angel Investor
- Fund: [Silicon Cape Initiative](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/silicon-cape-initiative)
- Location: Cape Town, South Africa
- Total investments: 8
- Last investment: Mar 2022
- Lead investor: 38%
- Last updated: Aug 2026
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/justins
- X (Twitter): http://twitter.com/justinstanford
- Website: https://x.com/justinstanford

Justin Stanford is a seed investor at Silicon Cape Initiative in Cape Town focused on FinTech and Security. Justin is a 31-year old entrepreneur, angel investor and venture capitalist from Cape Town, South Africa. He is founder, MD, board member, advisor, or investor to a wide variety of companies in the global technology sector.Having grown up on a farm, he decided not to complete high-school and instead made the move to the city of Cape Town, topursue his dreams of being an Internet entrepreneur.Despite years of struggles and false starts in the wake of the dotcom crash in 2001, he ultimately went on to successfully launch and grow a pan-African Internet based software company from a garage in the suburbs of Cape Town.Have founded his first startup attempt at the age of 18, Justin has been involved in tech startups and entrepreneurial endeavours ever since.He is today the co-founder and MD of 4Di Group, a diversified investment management group and family office, and co-founding General Partner of early-stage technology venture capital firm 4Di Capital, as well as an active angel investor.As co-founder and Steering Committee Chairman of the Silicon Cape Initiative in 2009, designed to highlight and foster South Africa's nascent emerging tech startup ecosystem, Justin fully believes in South Africa’s potential as a global technology innovation hub.In 2011, he was listed by the Mail & Guardian for the 'Top 200 Young South Africans', and in 2013, listed by Forbes for '30 Under 30: Africa's Best Young Entrepreneurs'.

## Round sizes

| Stage | Round size |
| --- | --- |
| Series A | $3.4M–$6.4M |

## Investment focus

### Industry

| Industry | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| FinTech | 2 | 25% |
| Security | 2 | 25% |
| Financial Services | 2 | 25% |
| Apps | 1 | 13% |
| Mobile | 1 | 13% |

21 industries tracked in total.

### Stage

| Stage | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Seed | 2 | 25% |
| Angel | 2 | 25% |
| Series A | 2 | 25% |
| Series B | 1 | 13% |

## Investments

| Company | Description | Amount | Stage | Date | Website |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| VALR | VALR.com is a digital asset trading platform where you can buy, sell, store and transfer cryptocurrencies seamlessly and securely. We offer one of the widest selections of digital assets. We‘re helping to build a financial system that recognises the oneness of humanity. | $50M | Series B | Mar 01, 2022 |  |
| VALR | VALR.com is a digital asset trading platform where you can buy, sell, store and transfer cryptocurrencies seamlessly and securely. We offer one of the widest selections of digital assets. We‘re helping to build a financial system that recognises the oneness of humanity. | $3.5M | Series A | Jul 21, 2020 |  |
| Lumkani | Lumkani is a social enterprise known for its fire detector and system designed to overcome the shack-fire challenge in urban slums in South Africa and across the globe with the use of a heat detection technology. It measures the incidence of harmful fires and alert families inside the shack of the danger, using the rate-of-rise of temperaturetechnology. Its devices are networked using transmission technology which connects each device within a 60 meter radius of each other. In the event of a fire, devices within this range ring creating a community-wide response to the danger.Lumkani is based in Cape Town, South Africa. |  | Seed | Jun 08, 2018 |  |
| Ekaya.com | Founded by Justin R. Melville, Ruark Ferreira, Rudolf Vavruch & Mark Heerden, we make clever little things in the real estate and rental space. We make mobile-oriented, beautiful and powerful tools. Ekaya is a part of the 88mph Accelerator Cape Town Summer 2014 Program. We're currently in "stealth mode" |  | Angel | Jun 01, 2015 |  |
| Ekaya.com | Founded by Justin R. Melville, Ruark Ferreira, Rudolf Vavruch & Mark Heerden, we make clever little things in the real estate and rental space. We make mobile-oriented, beautiful and powerful tools. Ekaya is a part of the 88mph Accelerator Cape Town Summer 2014 Program. We're currently in "stealth mode" | $77K | Angel | Sep 17, 2014 |  |
| FitKey | FitKey is about helping you find and manage the fitness life that makes you happy, through discovering new classes, studios, and fitness activities. With easy online and mobile booking, FitKey keeps your routine interesting. |  | Seed |  |  |
| TaxTim | Originally funded by Google in 2011, TaxTim is Africa's answer to Making Tax Easy. Answer simple questions one-by-one, in a friendly automated chat, and your tax return is done in minutes. TaxTim has 40% market share of the tax base in South Africa (~4.5m), and has deployed localised versions in Namibia and Nigeria as JVs with PwC previously.TaxTim is integrated with the local revenue service (SARS) for instant electronic tax submissions, and partners with some of SA's largest consumer brands - Airbnb, Momentum, Sanlam, Old Mutual, FNB eBucks - to provide tax services for free or at discount. TaxTim has several business models including B2C, B2B and B2B2C. TaxTim is a compelling and popular consumer brand, with a fully-developed, profitable broker/financial product leads ecosystem. |  | Angel |  |  |
| FireID | FireID is a technology incubator based in Stellenbosch, South Africa.We focus on the development and commercialisation of innovative and disruptive technologies. We operate across a number of industries where we help our clients to take advantage of new technology trends. Our success is driven by a committed and dynamic team who are passionateaboutcreating products that have major impact. | $6.4M | Series A |  |  |

8 of 8 investments shown.

## Co-investors
- [Bittrex Global](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/bittrex) — VC Fund, 2 deals together
- [100X.VC](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/100x-vc) — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- [10x Group](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/10xgroup) — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- [Avon Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/avon-ventures) — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- [Cadenza Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/cadenza-capital-management) — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- [CMT Digital](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/cmt-digital-ventures-llc) — VC Fund, 1 deal together

## About Silicon Cape Initiative

VC Fund · Cape Town, South Africa

The Silicon Cape Initiative is a Social Enterprise aimed at encouraging IT and Technology entrepreneurship in the Western Cape. It's aim is to brand the greater Cape Town area as the “Silicon Valley of Africa”, or simply, as the “Silicon Cape”. It was founded in October 2009 by Vinny Lingham and Justin Stanford, who broughtvarious entrepreneurs, investors and service providers in the industry together - including Dr Mphela Ramphela, Johan Rupert and Hellen Zille.. They formed an online community on www.siliconcape.com, which currently has over 4 000 members, where members could network, join forum discussions and collaborate on ideas. This has lead to a couple of large networking events where members from within the community can meet and connect. With the primary focus of creating a brand that will help to unify and showcase the diversity of the local IT sector, Silicon Cape Initiative aims to focus on 3 main channels to achieve this: Awareness, Community Building and Engagement.Awareness - Silicon Cape Initiative aims to create awareness about the diversity of entrepreneurs and companies that are currently operating in the area and to provide a channel for this talent and the opportunities to be showcased. Also to help advertise the successes in the sector to encourage interest locally as well as internationally. Community Building - The current landscape sees a fair amount of activity in the area, but also highlights how isolated and independent the various programmes, companies and entrepreneurs are. The aim is, through the Silicon Cape brand, to help unify the current industry as well as to encourage industry growth by attracting new talent. Engagement - The Silicon Cape Initiative aims to create opportunities for engagement internally between our community members though our online platform and various offline events where they can network and interact with others in the industry. They also serve to create interaction between our community and external bodies or individuals such as local government, international investors and expats.

5 contacts available at Silicon Cape Initiative.

| Name | Title | Profile |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Ellen Fischat | Managing Director | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/ellen-fischat |
| Justin Stanford | Co-Founder and Past Chairman Elect | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/justin-stanford |
| Phillip Sebole Masango | Member | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/phillip-sebole-masango-phillips |
| Rob Stokes | Chairman | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/rob-stokes-2 |
| Rob Stokes | Chairman | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/rob-stokes |

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## FAQ

### What does Justin Stanford invest in?

Justin Stanford invests primarily in FinTech, Security and Financial Services startups, most often at Seed and Angel stage. Most of the 8 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in South Africa. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.

### What is Justin Stanford's check size?

Justin Stanford typically joins rounds of $3.4M–$6.4M at Series A. These ranges are 10th–90th percentile round sizes calculated from confirmed public funding rounds, so they are a realistic guide to the rounds Justin Stanford participates in.

### When did Justin Stanford last invest?

The most recent investment recorded for Justin Stanford closed in Mar 2022. Shizune tracks 8 investments in total for this profile, including round sizes, stages and portfolio companies, all sourced from confirmed public funding rounds and refreshed monthly.

### Is Shizune's investor data accurate?

Yes — every stat on this profile is calculated from confirmed public funding rounds monitored across hundreds of sources since 2020. This profile was last refreshed in Aug 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.

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