Carlyn Sassman

Got a business idea? Don’t know quite how to move forward with it?

The Business Place provides a friendly place in the Mother City for you to walk in the door with nothing more than your dreams and inspiration.

Note:Click on Images for a better view!

The Business Place, a friendly walk-in business and entrepreneurship centre, is located at The Business Place, 7 Anton Anreith Arcade, 1st Floor, Cape Town. The Business Place is an Investec entrepreneurship and empowerment initiative, housing a cluster of small business service providers, branding it as a one stop hub for assisting small and micro-enterprises.



The Business Place seeks to create a culture of entrepreneurship and navigate small and micro-enterprises towards reaching their business goals.

Through one-on-one advice entrepreneurs are encouraged and guided through the “how to’s” and “next steps”. Clients are nurtured along the entrepreneurial path in order to provide an option for determining the economic component of their lives.

The Business Place is about starting, improving and expanding small business, it’s about providing:

• Relevant business information and resources
• Internet access for business research and idea generation
• Referrals to government resources and quality business-development service-providers including assistance with business plans, access to finance, business skills and computer training, marketing and market research
• Free accounting advice, by appointment, provided by Ernst and Young
• Free legal advice, by appointment, provided by Webber Wentzel Bowens
• Business-to-business networking opportunities
• Opportunities to showcase your products and services
• Regular hands-on workshops on a wide range of business related topics
• Our place is your space - our meeting rooms and training facilities are available for business use

The Business Place was created through a significant partnership between City of Cape Town, Investec Bank, Provincial Government of the Western Cape and Sekunjalo Investments. Each member contributes funding and resources as well as the shared vision to develop previously disadvantaged entrepreneurs in small and micro-enterprises.

The impact we hope to make in our City is to provide an enabling environment for the start up and growth of small and micro-enterprises from predominantly previously disadvantaged communities. Growth in this sector will contribute toward sustained poverty alleviation, employment, income distribution and economic growth.

Through fostering entrepreneurial talent, frustrated job seekers can become job creators by starting their own enterprise, especially amongst the youth. In order to increase the survival rate of small and micro-enterprises, especially in the crucial first 18 months, we provide ongoing support and needs-driven training.

The Business Place (Cape Town) operates as a franchise of Open for Business International, and a license agreement entitles international cross network communication, collective solution finding and sharing of ideas, programmes, knowledge and experiences.

Our aim is to customize the franchise to local needs, and to integrate our programmes into the international Open for Business Network.

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