Celebrating 11 years of Suits & Sneakers: "The Future Belongs to Builders" with Mark Sham (Cape Town edition)

Suits & Sneakers hosts several events each month in Cape Town, each featuring a different guest and theme. The idea is to create a space for ongoing learning that helps you broaden your thinking in a fast changing world. But this particular event carries a little more meaning than most.

On 23 July 2015, we hosted our very first Suits & Sneakers event. Eleven years later, on exactly the same date, we will be celebrating our 11th birthday with a special event at The Tryst in Woodstock. It also comes just one week before we begin the next chapter of our journey in Cape Town, as we prepare to bring all three floors of The Tryst building to life. It feels like the perfect moment to reflect on what we’ve learned over the last eleven years, and where we’re headed next.

WHAT IS THIS EVENT ALL ABOUT?

If you had told Mark Sham in 2015 that it would take eleven years to truly understand where Suits & Sneakers fits into the world, he never would have believed you.

Over the last decade, Suits & Sneakers has hosted thousands of events, built a community, opened clubhouses, made massive mistakes, and changed direction more times than anyone could have predicted. But the biggest lesson from that journey is that clarity rarely comes before action. It only emerges because you chose to start moving.

On the evening of our 11th birthday, Mark reflects on what building something for more than a decade has taught him about uncertainty, learning, relevance, and creating value in a world that is changing faster than ever. Drawing on ideas from his talks on the future of work, happiness, and human behaviour, this is a deeply personal conversation about the skills and mindsets that remain valuable regardless of how much the world changes around us.

Ultimately, this talk is about why Mark has come to believe that the future belongs to builders. Not necessarily entrepreneurs, executives, or people with all the answers, but ordinary people who care deeply about something and choose to act rather than wait. People who build communities, solve problems, support causes, create opportunities, and take responsibility for making the world around them a little bit better. As Suits & Sneakers enters its next chapter, our hope is that it can continue to serve as a gathering space for people who believe that small actions, repeated over time, can have an extraordinary impact.

MORE ABOUT MARK SHAM

Mark Sham is the founder of Suits & Sneakers and a vocal advocate for the power of informal, self-directed learning. At 41, he’s the first to admit he’s still winging it, learning through trial, error, and a relentless curiosity about what it actually takes to stay relevant today.

SPONSORS & PARTNERS

This Suits & Sneakers event is proudly brought to you by the many small business owners that are Suits & Sneakers members. Together, we have created a support structure for small business owners and our collective goal is to grow the economy, while lowering unemployment. More about that on the night.