During the South African summer, an interesting shift has been happening — tech investors from Silicon Valley, international family offices, and Africa’s most influential operators have increasingly been drawn to the ‘Mother City’. It’s this shift towards the south that Counder embraced in choosing Cape Town as the host city for its flagship Counder Conference.
In January 2026, 500 visionary leaders will gather together for the second time in the city under the Counder brand, an invite-only convergence of the world’s most influential private capital decision-makers and visionary leaders, all meeting to discuss tomorrow’s most important opportunities.
Counder Conference operates on the premise that meaningful investment conversations on emerging trends & markets can happen when the right people are in the same room, introduced through trusted networks, discussing opportunities with candour and authenticity.
An interview was conducted with Michel Weiss, Founding Partner and CEO of Counder, and Leonard Stiegeler, Founding Partner and Chairman of Counder, to understand why Cape Town is the annual meeting point of one of the largest gatherings of private capital in the world, and why personal relationships are driving the next wave of cross-border collaboration globally.
Let’s start with the origin story. What problem were you trying to solve when you created Counder Conference?
Michel Weiss: For us, trusted connections have enabled everything. Throughout my personal and entrepreneurial journey, I’ve been fortunate to work with amazing families and individuals who opened doors and made so many things possible for me. That’s the philosophy at the heart of Counder.
I’ve also had the privilege of observing and seeing extraordinary builders in Africa — people creating massive tech businesses in Southern Africa, Western Africa, and beyond. They are now all part of our Counder collective: like Karl Westvig in South Africa building TymeBank to unicorn status. In Nigeria, founders like Shola Akinlade, who built Paystack and sold it to Stripe, or Kola Aina backing African tech companies through Ventures Platform. But I also observed that while all these remarkable people were coming to South Africa, they were not yet in dialogue with one another.
Leonard Stiegeler: That’s the origin. These local leaders and global visionaries — European family offices, Middle Eastern sovereign wealth, Silicon Valley funds — who should be meeting to spark new collaborations were hardly connecting and collaborating. While there are many valuable networking opportunities available, we wanted to focus specifically on trusted, peer-to-peer dialogue where deeper partnerships can form and investments into emerging trends & markets can happen. Our careers were made possible by extraordinary people who opened doors for us. Counder is how we scale that trust for others — by enabling new touchpoints between visionary leaders.
How is Counder Conference different from other platforms trying to connect global capital with African opportunities?
MW: The location itself is fundamental to how it’s different. By hosting this in Africa — specifically in Cape Town — we’re able to have a global dialogue in Africa that naturally includes Africa as part of the conversation amongst other top trends. We’re bringing the best and most influential people from Africa’s private sector together with international leaders to meet, to discuss not only African opportunities but also their global interests. That naturally integrates Africa into the global conversation as one of tomorrow’s most important opportunities, rather than treating it as a separate, peripheral topic.
We curate approximately 500 people, strictly invite-only, referral-led, organised as Top-100 cohorts per region. From the Americas, we’ll have Nick Davidov and Marina Davidova, leading tech investors in Silicon Valley, James & Andrew Stewart from Level One Fund, and Steven Grin, Managing Partner at al Frontiers and former Director in the Office of the President of Guyana. Europe brings Prince Christian zu Fürstenberg, 12th Prince of Fürstenberg, and Dr. Jan Deepen, co-founder of SumUp. The Asia-Pacific cohort includes Professor Claudia Zeisberger from INSEAD and a founding member of KKR’s Sustainability Expert Advisory Council, alongside Anuradha Das Mathur, Chair of IMA Policy Forum. From the Middle East, Sudeep Ramnani, founder of Sporty Group and PalmPay, and Mato Perić, a serial entrepreneur with operations across 35 countries. Africa’s representation includes Louis Norval, founder of the Norval Foundation, Cape Town’s leading contemporary art museum, and Nicholas Ackerman from the Pick n’ Pay founding family. That global balance, with Cape Town as the host city, is the perfect match.
With so many distinguished delegates attending, what does the conference programming actually look like? Are you organising traditional panels and presentations?
LS: We focus on intimate, participant-driven dialogue rather than lengthy panels. Together with our knowledge partners and the delegates, we shape the agenda based on what matters most to the people in the room — it’s what’s called an unconference format. We design programming around interactive settings like expert-guided breakouts and roundtables where top leaders sit in working groups, facilitating productive and meaningful conversations. The focus is on harnessing the collective intelligence of everyone present, creating spaces where people can meet, engage, and let their guards down.
MW: Everything operates under Chatham House rules, which creates an environment where participants can speak candidly without worrying about being quoted publicly. When you remove the performance aspect and the fear of misrepresentation, the quality of dialogue changes completely. People share actual insights, real challenges, and genuine opportunities. Our role is to curate who’s in the room, facilitate the right introductions, and create the conditions for those substantive conversations to happen — not to prescribe what people should think.
Counder Conference is invite-only, and you’re covering the attendance of 500 delegates. How do you make this possible?
LS: This is genuinely a collaborative effort on a massive scale. We’ve built Counder as an equity partnership with 25+ global family offices & investors who are committed to fostering meaningful global dialogue by bringing their networks together, with Cape Town as our anchor. We also work with strategic partners, including the German Federal Government and WESGRO, the official promotion agency for Cape Town & the Western Cape Province.
MW: Our Knowledge Partners are essential to this model. These world-class institutions bring deep expertise across critical sectors. Partners include Investec for global investment banking, TLcom Capital — one of the first VCs to deploy over $100M on the African continent, Norrsken22 leading pan-African venture investing, Ringier, Switzerland’s largest media company, for trends in new media, and 885 Capital for trends in sports as an asset class — with additional partners across other critical sectors. These partners co-create programming with us — leading breakout sessions, facilitating specialised roundtables, and ensuring delegates engage with cutting-edge insights. This Knowledge Partnership model allows us to keep the conference strictly invite-only and completely complimentary for all delegates.
What outcomes do you want to achieve with Counder Conference?
MW: Our mission is fundamentally about fostering collaboration. When you bring amazing people together in the right environment, they inspire each other and learn from each other. What we’re really focused on is creating meaningful collaboration that leads to new partnerships, co-investments, and deals emerging from these connections. Beyond the conference, we continue these global conversations through phenomenal experiences with our partners — from exclusive art fairs to VIP access at major international sports events. These shared moments bring the community together and keep strengthening the dialogue year-round.
LS: Our vision for Counder is to become the foremost leadership network embracing emerging sectors and trends. The outcome we want every Member to benefit from is amazing new connections that they’re genuinely interested in and inspired to collaborate with. We want people doing great things together, building future-forward solutions around tomorrow’s most important opportunities. That’s what success looks like.
With 500 global leaders set to convene in Cape Town this January, Counder Conference aims to facilitate cross-border conversations on tomorrow’s most important opportunities through its unconference format. The event’s emphasis on Chatham House rules and peer-to-peer dialogue reflects a growing trend of private capital seeking more substantive engagement opportunities in emerging markets, particularly as South Africa’s international profile continues to evolve following its G20 presidency.
For partnership opportunities and flagship conference information, visit www.counder.com/conference.
