Data & Donuts: Can You Make a Buck With Your Data?
Tue Mar 24, 13:00 - Tue Mar 24, 14:30
Innovation City
ABOUT
Data & Donuts: Can You Make a Buck With Your Data?
24 March 2026 | 13:00–14:30 | Innovation City Cape Town
Data is fast becoming one of the most valuable assets in modern businesses. Yet many founders still treat it as something their systems produce rather than something their company owns, protects, and builds value from.
The reality is that data increasingly shapes valuation, defensibility, and long-term scale. The question is not whether your business generates data, but whether you understand how to structure it, protect it, and ultimately extract value from it.
Join us for the second session in our Food for Thought series in partnership with Finance Isle of Man, as we explore what it actually means to treat data as a core business asset from the earliest stages of building a company.
This conversation brings together experts working at the intersection of data collaboration, governance, and international structuring to unpack how businesses can responsibly unlock the commercial value of data while navigating privacy, ownership, and regulatory complexity.
Together, the panel will explore questions such as:
- When does data become a real business asset?
- What makes a dataset commercially valuable?
- How do governance, IP, and structuring decisions affect company valuation?
- What does privacy-preserving data collaboration actually look like in practice?
What you’ll take away:
- How to think about data as a strategic business asset, not just a technical output
- What strong data foundations look like in practice
- How governance, IP, and structuring decisions affect valuation and defensibility
- Where data collaboration can unlock new commercial opportunities
Who it’s for:
- Founders and co-founders building tech-enabled businesses
- CTOs, product leaders, and data teams responsible for data strategy
- Investors evaluating defensibility and long-term value creation
- Operators thinking about scale, fundraising, or cross-border expansion
Limited seats available.
SPEAKERS
Anton Gritzmacher is a sales leader and entrepreneur with over 20 years’ experience in guiding businesses to greater profitability using technology and data. Early on in his career, Anton gained valuable experience and global market insights in the UK as Head of Innovation for global data analytics and consumer credit reporting company, Experian.
There his focus was on increasing turnover through the development of new data solutions and identification of new sales channels. Over the years of working for various businesses focused on providing data to businesses, Anton has developed a keen ability to devising innovative use cases for data to improve decision-making and bottom-line results for businesses.
His passion for the creation of exponential value from data through collaboration combined with his strong belief in data protection and consumer privacy led him to co-found Omnisient.
As Chief Revenue Officer, Anton co-leads the business in building the world’s biggest source of consumer intelligence on Africa’s first privacy-preserving data collaboration platform.
Having completed her LLM in International Business Law at King’s College London, Andea has worked at global law firms in South Africa and England. She has vast experience in South African, English and international tax as well as cross-border transactions, with a pragmatic and robust approach to international structuring and complex corporate transactions. Having worked with both large corporations and start-up businesses, she has a holistic take on the needs of businesses in various stages of growth.
FINANCE ISLE OF MAN X INNOVATION CITY
Innovation City has partnered with Finance Isle of Man to bring global perspective into our Food for Thought series - a founder-first platform designed to help businesses think earlier and more clearly about international growth, structuring, data, IP, and long-term scale.
Finance Isle of Man works with internationally ambitious companies looking to expand into the UK, EU, and broader global markets, offering a stable, business-friendly jurisdiction and access to established legal, financial, and regulatory infrastructure.
Through Food for Thought, the partnership creates space for practical, honest conversations around the decisions that compound over time — from corporate structuring and investor readiness to treating data and IP as strategic assets. The aim is simple: equip South African founders with the insight and relationships they need before complexity becomes expensive.
EVENT ATTENDANCE
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