Get the yams
Yams is a free platform for South African founders. It starts with the money already in the system for you: dtic cost-share, SEDFA grants, SARS incentives, corporate B-BBEE budgets and national awards, most of which goes unclaimed because the rules are scattered across thirty websites.
Then it carries on where a funding list stops: a data room holding the documents funders ask for, a calendar of every window and SARS deadline, legal templates drafted for South African law, and tools for every stage from the first customer interview to the first board meeting.
One platform in three parts. The funding finder is public and needs no account. The workspace and the growth tools sit behind a sign-in, so your documents and numbers stay yours and follow you between devices. Every South African figure carries its source and the date it was last checked.
1. Find
Answer 21 questions and get a ranked shortlist of the grants, tax incentives, B-BBEE mechanisms, awards and loans you qualify for, with the criteria, deadlines and catches. Download it as Markdown for your AI, or the ones you pick as a PDF.
What it covers2. Get ready
Track the applications you are making, keep the documents each one needs in a data room, see every funding window and compliance deadline on one calendar, and fill contracts and registers from a company profile entered once.
What is inside3. Grow
Guided tools for validating the idea, building the product, selling it and scaling the company: interviews, runway, pricing, a 24-month financial model, a pitch outline, a hiring plan, OKRs, an investor pipeline and a board toolkit.
See the toolsIt will not apply for you, and it is not legal, tax or financial advice. Amounts, windows and rates move every Budget Speech. Every result tells you what still has to be confirmed with the administering body, rather than pretending to a certainty it does not have.
A matching tool built on one carefully compiled research document, covering the five categories of non-dilutive support available to a South African business. Nothing here is scraped, guessed or generated.
Money you do not pay back. BBSDP, SPII, THRIP, the Manufacturing Support Programme, EMIA, TIA seed calls, SEDFA vouchers and Asset Assist.
Money you keep by paying less tax. Small Business Corporation rates, turnover tax, the section 11D R&D deduction, learnership allowances and the Employment Tax Incentive.
Private-sector money and contracts, unlocked by ownership. Corporate enterprise and supplier development budgets, the YES Programme, and the free affidavit that is the key to both.
Prize money via a pitch. SAB Foundation, EDHE Absa InnoVarsity, Hult Prize and the Anzisha Prize, with the age bands and windows that decide whether you can enter at all.
Shown separately and clearly marked, because a loan is a liability and equity is permanent. NEF funds, IDC Gro-e Youth, the SEDFA Women's Entrepreneurship Fund.
Founders lose funding to sequencing, not eligibility. Costs spent before approval usually stop qualifying; windows close in February and December; the free document that unlocks half the list takes an afternoon nobody books. This is the order that works.
Ownership, turnover, assets, headcount, stage and what the money is for. 21 questions, about four minutes. "Not sure" is a valid answer and is treated as something to confirm, never as a no.
Each programme's criteria are checked one at a time. You get three groups: what you look eligible for, what is worth checking and exactly which fact is missing, and what is ruled out and why.
A B-BBEE affidavit costs nothing and unlocks SEDFA support, corporate ESD budgets and most tender preferences. The Employment Tax Incentive cuts your PAYE bill from the first payroll run with no application at all. Do these before you write a single proposal.
Across most dtic instruments, money spent before the application is submitted or approved stops qualifying. Work the calendar backwards from each window, and keep a note of which costs sit under which application: most instruments refuse to fund a cost already claimed elsewhere.
Download the shortlist as Markdown. It carries your profile, the full criteria for every match, the open questions, the judgement calls and the sources, so an assistant can rank the list, draft eligibility sections and build your application calendar without inventing the parts it was not given.
Finding the funding is half of it. The other half is being ready to apply when you do. Sign in and the workspace holds your applications, your documents, your deadlines and the paperwork you will be asked for.
Your shortlist, with a status and notes for each application, the documents each programme still needs, and a one-click application pack holding exactly those documents.
The 33 documents South African funders, banks and investors ask for, with what each one is, how to get it and when it expires. Upload them once, download the lot as a zip whenever somebody asks.
Funding windows, SARS and CIPC deadlines (annual return, EMP201, EMP501, IRP6, ITR14, VAT201) and document expiries in one place, with reminder emails before they land and an .ics file for your own calendar.
Give a funder read-only access to the documents you choose, through a link that expires on its own or that you can revoke at any time.
Registration number, directors, address and the rest, entered once and reused by the templates, the website brief and the calendar.
Three questions: do you have a registered company, a business bank account and a domain? Answer no to any of them and you get a step-by-step guide with the real costs, covering CIPC, Bank Zero and buying a domain.
A structured brief covering what the site is for, who it talks to and what it must do. It goes to the build service in a format they can work from, and you keep a copy as Markdown.
13 contracts, agreements and statutory registers drafted against South African law: NDAs, employment contracts, IP assignments, a founders agreement, a POPIA privacy policy and the registers the Companies Act requires.
22 guided tools, arranged by the stage your business is at. Each one asks only what it needs, does the South African sums for you (VAT, company tax, UIF, SDL, the Employment Tax Incentive), and builds on what you have already entered elsewhere. The whole workbook downloads as Markdown, or as a Notion-ready zip.
Check that someone has the problem and will pay to have it solved, before you build much.
Build the smallest thing that works, and know what each customer costs and how long the cash lasts.
Find out whether customers would miss you, tell the story to funders, and put numbers behind it.
Hire, sell further afield, raise a round and set up a board, without the costs catching you out.
Habits that matter whatever stage you are at.
Nothing here is collected for analytics. Every question exists because at least one programme's eligibility turns on it, and each one tells you which. Your answers stay in this browser unless you sign in to save them.