Education
University of Cape Town.
founder Chief Executive Officer of Gyft
University of Cape Town.
Linghman serves on the boards of ChessCube, SkyRove, and Personera and previously served on marketing advisory boards for Nasdaq-listed companies ValueClick and Yahoo. Lingham was born on 7 February 1979 in East London, South Africa. He finished high school at the age of 17 and went on to study Information Systems at the University of Cape Town but did not complete his studies there.
In 2003, Lingham founded incuBeta, an investment holding company that engages in the ownership, management, and support of online marketing companies in various stages of development, with offices in the United States, United Kingdom and Cape Town.
Also in 2003, Lingham founded Clicks2Customers, a subsidiary of incuBeta that provides search engine marketing software and services. Lingham served as the Chief Executive Officer of both companies.
In 2007, Lingham founded Yola (formerly known as SynthaSite), a proprietary web development platform for individuals, small businesses and organizations. To date, Yola has received $25 million in funding from Johann Rupert’s Reinet Fund.
Vinny Lingham was selected as an Endeavor (non-profit) Entrepreneur in 2006.
Endeavor (non-profit) is a global non-profit that selects and supports High-Impact Entrepreneurs in emerging markets. Vinny Lingham has sold his tech startup Gyft to First Data for an amount rumoured in excess of United States$54m. In 2014 Vinny Lingham will be one of the dragons in the first season of South Africa"s Dragons" Den.