Terms of participation

YEPI is run by To supply: registered legal name of the organising entity (“we”, “us”) as the entrepreneurship track of the Wisdom for Business Conference 2026. The final event takes place on Saturday 31 October 2026 in Johannesburg, South Africa.

• Founders aged 18–35 on Saturday 31 October 2026.
• Ventures at any stage — idea, pre-revenue, early revenue, growth, scale.
• Valid identification: a South African ID number, or a passport if you are living in South Africa lawfully on a visa or permit. We check it when you apply.
• A venture you can describe and pitch. A trading name is enough; a registered company name is not required.

No company registration required to enter. You do not need a CIPC-registered company to apply or to reach the final — a trading name is enough, and selection is on merit alone. You do need valid identification, and you must be living in South Africa lawfully. Citizenship is not required: a passport held with a valid visa or permit is accepted. The registration requirement in section 7 applies only once you have won.

People involved in organising, judging or mentoring the programme, and their immediate families, may not enter.

Apply through this site before applications close. One application per venture. If you start more than one, we will treat the most recent submitted application as your entry.

Everything you tell us must be accurate and must be your own work, or work you have the right to submit. Submitting someone else’s venture, materials or results as your own will disqualify you at any stage, including after a prize is announced.

Applications are assessed on the quality of the idea, the founder, the traction and the pitch. Nothing else — not citizenship, not registration status, not where you studied.

The committee scores privately and those scores and notes are internal. We will not share them with you or explain individual decisions, and the committee’s decisions at every stage are final. Finalists are selected directly from the applications — there is no intermediate shortlist round — and the finalists pitch live to a judging panel at the event.

A total of R170,000 is awarded on the day, across three places: 1st R100,000, 2nd R50,000, 3rd R20,000.

Prizes are grants to the winning venture, paid in South African rand by electronic transfer. They are not transferable and there is no cash alternative beyond the grant itself. You are responsible for any tax arising on what you receive.

You keep all intellectual property in your venture and in everything you submit. We claim no ownership of it.

You give us permission to read, copy and circulate your materials internally for the purpose of assessing and running the programme, and — if you are selected as a finalist, or win — to use your name, your venture’s name and a short description of it when we announce and report on the programme. Tell us in writing if you would rather we did not, and we will respect that.

We do not sign NDAs, and you should not send us secrets. We will treat your materials as commercially sensitive within the committee, and we will not pass them to third parties outside the programme. But we cannot offer confidentiality as a guarantee: files you upload are stored at web addresses that anyone holding the address can open, as section 7 of the privacy notice explains. Pitch what you do and why it wins. Do not submit source code, formulas, unfiled patent detail, or anything whose value depends on nobody else seeing it.

Before any grant is paid, a winning venture must show us that it is registered with CIPC — or that registration has been submitted and is in process, and that the person or entity receiving the money may lawfully do so in South Africa. If you applied on a passport that means a valid visa or permit. We will also need the banking and tax details our finance team requires.

Winners have 60 days from the date winners are announced to provide these. We say this up front, at the finalist stage, and again when winners are announced, so that nobody is surprised by it.

If a winner cannot meet the condition within that window, we may extend it at our discretion or reallocate the grant. No formal identity or registration check happens at any earlier stage.

We may disqualify an entry, at any stage, for dishonesty in an application, abuse or harassment of staff, mentors, judges or other participants, or attempts to interfere with the platform or the judging process.

We may change these terms, the dates, the format of the event or the structure of the prizes where we reasonably need to. If a change is significant we will email applicants and publish an updated version here. If circumstances beyond our control force us to postpone or cancel the programme, we will tell participants as soon as we can.

Taking part is at your own initiative. To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss arising from your participation, from a decision not to select you, or from any interruption to this platform. Nothing here limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited, including for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud.

These terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of South Africa, and the South African courts have jurisdiction over any dispute arising from them.

Questions about these terms: To supply: e.g. hello@yepi.co.za. Questions about your personal information go to our Information Officer at To supply: e.g. privacy@yepi.co.za, and are covered by the privacy notice.