Paperight on Hectic Nine-9!

Paperight was fortunate enough to be invited to appear on SABC2’s Hectic Nine-9 – probably South Africa’s biggest youth TV show – on Tuesday afternoon.

After what felt like hours waiting in the green room, I went live on-air to talk about Paperight, and about how young people can develop their own entrepreneurial ideas and get them funded. (Did you know that South Africa underspends by roughly R2 billion a year on enterprise development? You can tap that money, but most of us just don’t know how to do that.)

The segment was only 5 minutes long – such is the nature of broadcasting. But those 5 minutes turned out to be remarkably potent: Paperight broke its record for daily visits to the site in the hour after Hn9 aired, and we got a few big handfuls of new registrations from curious teens. (Hopefully we’ve got a few budding entrepreneurs into the mix!)

As for the rest of the show, it was jam-packed with talented youngsters, including 13-year-old guitarist Mujahied and rap group A-KRW, all aiming to inspire young people to take control of their lives, explore their talents and fulfil their ambitions. (And log onto Facebook and attempt to eke out an on-air shout-out from the hosts. Teenagers are such attention-seekers.)

So, to the Hn9 crew – to David, Nastasha & Nick – thank you very much for having us! We really appreciate the exposure and hospitality, and it was really fun being on-set. We hope the rest of your 5th birthday celebrations go well and your show goes from strength to strength.