Stellenbosch University has built an ecosystem encompassing education, research, investment and commercialisation that is helping start-ups in the Western Cape town thrive. Standouts include Praelexis, Spatialedge and CubeSpace, which has reached a R1-billion valuation.

According to Prof Brink van der Merwe, head of computer science at the university, infusing entrepreneurial expertise into the teaching environment and maintaining close relationships with industry players have contributed the success of its alumni in business.

“Computer science should interact better with local industry,” Van der Merwe said in a recent interview with TechCentral. “Something we have been doing in the department is getting entrepreneurs who run their own businesses, who also have a strong academic background, to lecture final-year students. The students can interact with them and learn about all the pains that come with growing a tech start-up.”

Among this particular cohort of lecturers is Fabian Yamaguchi, who holds a PhD in informatics from the University of Göttingen in Germany and is also the co-founder and chief technology officer of Whirly Labs, a cybersecurity and consulting services company based in Cape Town.

Another way in which the university’s computer science department keeps up with industry is through an advisory board that meets it twice a year.

Insights from industry leaders and hiring managers on the advisory board are used to augment the teaching syllabus so students get an education that prepares them for the world of work, said Van der Merwe. Internships and school projects where industry leaders play a supervisory role have a similar effect.

“Our fourth-year data science students use real data from Shoprite for their projects and sit with somebody from Shoprite X (Shoprite’s digital innovation lab) who might say, ‘Well maybe at university you do it like this but this is how we do it at Shoprite,’” said Van der Merwe.

Incubator programme

Creating a closer relationship between theory and real-world application is only part of the story. For start-ups to thrive, a broader support system is needed, and Stellenbosch provides this through its LaunchLab incubator programme. It provides students – those who have created patentable intellectual property as part of their studies – with administrative, legal and funding support to help them launch their start-ups successfully. Start-ups created outside the university can also approach the lab for its services.

“We are in the innovation and commercial division, a non-academic division of the university,” said Brandon Paschal, deputy director of spinout companies and funds at Stellenbosch University.

Read: From Stellenbosch to the stars

“The technology transfer office takes all the disclosures from interesting research and they figure out what is protectable or commercialisable IP, and they then protect what they can. They commercialise what they can either through licensing to industry to use or through spinning out a company – and that’s when it comes to us; we provide the incubation support.”

Paschal said most of the start-ups spun out of the university involve “deep tech” that will “take a PhD to understand”. Much of what is patented, whether it be in materials science, biochemistry or space technology, involves coding a process that defines a faster, cheaper and more efficient way of doing something.

The most successful spinout from the LaunchLab is CubeSpace, a space-tech company that designs control systems for satellites. According to Paschal, CubeSpace is now valued at R1-billion.

“They started with four or five engineers back in 2017 and now they have between 80 and 90 people working there,” he said. CubeSpace was one of three Stellenbosch-based space-tech companies to be featured in Nasa’s Small Spacecraft Technology State-of-the-Art Report for 2024, released earlier this year. Read TechCentral’s coverage of that here.

Other successful LaunchLab spinouts include Nanosene, which specialises in the design and manufacturing of protein polymers used in drug manufacturing, and Immobazyme, an enzyme manufacturer for the manufacturing, agri-processing and medical sectors.

According to Paschal, LaunchLab participants work closely with students, allowing them to set an entrepreneurial example for them that is close to home.

Read: Stellenbosch satellite start-up CubeSpace in R47m fundraise

“We don’t have Silicon Valley examples because those don’t make sense in our own world. We have our own examples from our own lab and our own alumni. The students in the Launch Lab now were in the same seats as other students three years ago, so you get that role modelling happening where they can see themselves doing that, too,” said Paschal. — (c) 2025 NewsCentral Media

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