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ERNA BASSON
, Serial entrepreneur and Fast Company SA’s 2017 Top Achiever under 30
FAST?
Top business coach, speaker and entrepreneur
ERNA BASSON
shares her formula for success
SA’s
TOP 20
UNDER 30 THE MILLENNIALS
SHAPING OUR FUTURE IN POLITICS, MEDIA, EDUCATION, MARKETING AND MORE
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JULY 2017 FASTCOMPANY.CO.ZA
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THE REAL STORY
What SolarCity means for TESLA’s—and the planet’s—future
ANOTHER INCONVENIENT TRUTH
Inside AL GORE’s climate-change sequel
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THE COURAGE TO GROW IS BUSINESS.
July 2017
Contents A bigger reward The more entrepreneurs she can help to succeed in their business, the more lives can be changed, says Erna Basson.
C OVER S T ORY
100% EFFORT, 100% RESULT
Erna Basson has built an empire of successful companies, become a leading business coach and motivational speaker, and is about to publish her first book—all before the age of 30. Everyday life is her motivation, and now she’s sharing her formula for success with other entrepreneurs to help them start and grow their own business ventures BY EVANS MANYONGA PAGE 20
2 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A JULY 2017
SP E C IAL FEATURE
SOUTH AFRICA’S TOP 20 UNDER 30 Meet our forward-thinking millennials who are shaping industries from law, media and politics to sport, fashion and architecture with their innovative minds and unwavering dedication Begins on page 36 H I GHL I GHTS
38 FOR THREADING A TOUCH OF AFRICA INTO HIS DESIGNS
With the rebranding of his fashion label, Rich Mnisi has grown aware of his “blackness and its greatness”— representing an African identity, a location and a presence
42 FOR GIVING AFRICANS A HERITAGE PRODUCT TO DRINK TO
With his craft beer, Khanyi Pupuma is building a brand that truly represents the African people and their cultural heritage, and reestablishing their identity as clan members
The bigger conversation “Our African heritage is multifaceted and, as creatives, we should all be exploring some part of it,” says fashion designer Rich Mnisi. (page 42)
44 FOR HAVING THE RIGHT INGREDIENTS FOR SUCCESS
Glen Foxcroft Williams, head chef and co-owner of Foxcroft Restaurant, says finding the right person to support and invest in him gave him a great advantage
52 FOR HARNESSING THE POWER OF THE WILD, WILD WEB
Launched by Nadav Ossendryver at the age of 15, the Latest Sightings website is an inspirational example of what a young entrepreneur can accomplish with the help of 21st century technology
Contents
FEAT URE
68 RAISING THE ROOF In his quest to wean the world off fossil fuels, Elon Musk merged Tesla with sustainable-energy company SolarCity. Now he has to make it work BY AUSTIN CARR
CREAT I VE CONVERSAT I O N
14 HEAT OF THE MOMENT Why former US vice president Al Gore is optimistic despite climate change BY ADELE PETERS
N E XT
10 LIFE’S A PITCH
The key to getting any startup off the ground is buy-in. How to market your innovative idea—and yourself—to potential investors BY TACITA MCEVOY
18 NIKE’S HEAD START
With the Pro Hijab, the company is outfitting millions of athletes for the first time BY ELIZABETH SEGRAN
28 NORWEGIAN AIR TAKES FLIGHT
How the low-cost carrier went from regional competitor to the envy of legacy airlines BY SARA CLEMENCE
30 THE BIG BUSINESS OF BODY CAMS A US–wide call for police brutality has companies scrambling for a piece of the $1-billion opportunity BY ALEX PASTERNACK
34 JUST THE RIGHT DOSE
Hmbldt offers an often-unpredictable substance, marijuana, a dash of precision BY CLAIRE DODSON 4 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A JULY 2017
REGULARS
07 FROM THE EDITOR 08 THE RECOMMENDER 82 THE LIST
Ten business podcasts that offer incisive takes on work culture, tech and economics BY CALE WEISSMAN
84 THE GREAT INNOVATION FRONTIER
88 FAST BYTES & EVENTS 92 NEW SCHOOL OF THOUGHT
How South African companies can beat the downgrade blues through design-led innovation BY RICHARD PEREZ
Inclusive economic growth will require collective action—which requires a whole new approach from innovators BY MILLS SOKO Modest movement Nike is offering women who dress conservatively a new style that’s chronically underserved by the athleisure industry. (page 22)
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EDITORIAL CONTRIBUTORS
Cover: Mardee Maree Photography Adobe Stock, Jensen Walker/©2017 Paramount Pictures (An Inconvenient Sequel), Mardee Maree Photography, Justin Chin/Bloomberg/Getty Images, Mark Mahaney, Samantha Casolari, Ben Wiseman, relajaelcoco, Giacoma
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No article or any part of any article in Fast Company South Africa may be reproduced without the prior written consent of the publisher. The information provided and opinions expressed in this publication are provided in good faith, but do not necessarily represent the opinions of Mansueto Ventures in the USA, Insights Publishing or the editor. Neither this magazine, the publisher or Mansueto Ventures in the USA can be held legally liable in any way for damages of any kind whatsoever arising directly or indirectly from any facts or information provided or omitted in these pages, or from any statements made or withheld by this publication. Fast Company is a registered title under Mansueto Ventures and is licensed to Insights Publishing for use in southern Africa only. 6 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A JULY 2017
From the Editor
Remember that you’re never too young to dream big.
AGE IS JUST A NUMBER Not so long ago, 30 was considered the age at which young adults come to maturity and start to be taken more seriously by their family and their peers. Today, things have changed; there’s no age limit on progress or world-changing ideas—you can start your own business at 17 (like Gift Lubele), or be the youngest ever MP in the history of South Africa’s Parliament at 24 (like Hlomela Bucwa). In the spirit of young entrepreneurship, I’ve decided to focus on two individuals who have pushed boundaries and lived up to the mantra of ‘age is just a number’.
MARK ZUCKERBERG One of the most notable young entrepreneurs of the current generation is Mark Zuckerberg (33), the American computer programmer and Internet entrepreneur. Co-founder of Facebook, he currently operates as its chairperson and CEO. This Harvard dropout pursued a project that ended up changing the world, creating the social media and social networking service that currently has more than 1.19 billion users and a net worth of $64.7 billion (R838 billion). By the time Zuckerberg reached the age of 30, he had influenced the new age of communication and redefined the way humans operate in the modern era, with Facebook providing a way for people anywhere in the world to communicate with each other and meet new friends. Zuckerberg saw a gap in the communications space, and transformed the way the majority of Internet users stay in touch. Facebook’s new mission statement, “Bring the world closer together,” says it all.
Frederator Studios, he soon set his sights on developing something big enough to capture the world’s attention. Which he did in 2007, aged 21—founding Tumblr from the bedroom of his mother’s apartment in New York City. Tumblr enables users to curate pictures, videos and text in one place online, and now reaches as many as 170 million people worldwide. Our cover personality this edition is Erna Basson: serial entrepreneur, top business coach and motivational speaker—and Fast Company SA’s inaugural Top Achiever under 30. A mover and shaker, she has made great strides in business since starting her first company at the age of 22. Now Basson’s showing other aspiring entrepreneurs how to succeed at their own ventures. Her story is not only compelling but inspirational and heartening as well. We celebrate and congratulate South Africa’s other game-changing millennials—bright sparks such as Lubele and Bucwa—in our annual Top 20 under 30 feature. The tenacity and focus of these young people is a ray of light, and a sign that the future of the country (and indeed the world) is in good hands. Read, learn, enjoy. And remember that you’re never too young to dream big.
DAVID KARP This 30-year-old is the man behind short-form blogging platform Tumblr. The American web developer and entrepreneur’s net worth exceeds $200 million (R2.5 billion), and Tumblr has been valued at $800 million (R10.3 billion). Karp taught himself to code, and dropped out of school at the age of 15 to be homeschooled. After receiving an internship at animation company
Evans Manyonga evans@fastcompany.co.za @Nyasha1e
FEBRUARY 2017 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A 7
The Recommender What are you loving right now?
Design Twins planters From A$140 (R1 390) designtwins.com
“I’m trying to surround myself with little luxuries that make me feel happier and healthier, especially fresh greenery. I like pairing these hand-painted pots from Design Twins with some fiddle-leaves, ZZ plants and cacti.” Mike Fuerstman Co-founder and creative director, Pendry Hotels
R. Murphy shucking knives R1 083 for knife shown www.importitall.co.za
“I’m always tasked with shucking oysters at parties. Of all the tools I’ve tried, these are hands down the best—they make the job look easy.” Mary McAuley Founder, Ripe Life Wines
TrackR From R389 each www.ubuy.za.com
The Resort at Paws Up Rates vary pawsup.com
“When I really want to disconnect and get away (it’s not easy, but everyone needs it and should do it!), I think of glamping in Montana. Paws Up is a great place for families to get a stylish taste of the outdoors.” Brett Schulman CEO, Cava Grill
8 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A JULY 2017
“I don’t have to think about my phone, wallet, keys, or even my Finis underwater dog with TrackR— MP3 player the app and R2 095 www.finis.co.za matching device let me locate them in seconds. That gives me the peace of mind to focus on work during the day, “Finis’s underwater MP3 player uses bone conduc- and not the minutiae.” tion audio transmission Eric Skae for incredibly clear CEO, Rao’s Homemade sound. It’s a game changer for swimming laps, and gives me an extra dose of energy.” Tom Klein CMO, MailChimp
Screen Time
Our pick of the most download-worthy art and design apps currently on the market
Adobe Illustrator Draw adobe.com
Prisma prisma-ai.com
Now you can turn your photos or videos into works of art, with minimal effort. Simply load your picture and select a painting or illustration. Styles vary from Munch to manga, and the results are surprisingly authentic (although occasionally terrifying— probably don’t try your own version of The Scream . . .).
Adobe Photoshop Fix adobe.com
This is a suitably impressive app if you’re in the habit of retouching and restoring photographs. The basics— cropping and adjustments—are available from most apps, but Photoshop Fix’s Heal and Liquify tools are just something else—respectively knocking out imperfections and enabling drastic effects. Load a portrait, and Liquify becomes face-aware too, so you can subtly adjust features (or give your boss a giant nose if you’re in a funny mood).
On the desktop, Adobe’s powerhouse Illustrator is most known for enabling creative types to fashion anything from logos to elaborate illustrative fare. Illustrator Draw brings much of the tech to Android, but is mostly concerned with creating freehand artwork. There’s a layer system for separating elements or tracing over an imported photo; a 64x zoom; multiple configurable pen tips; perspective grids; and shape stencils to temporarily plonk on the canvas when you fancy some accuracy. Export options are limited unless you subscribe to Creative Cloud, but that’s the only drawback.
Stop Motion Studio www.cateater.com
Fancy yourself the next big thing in animation? But lacking the money to buy any equipment or even an app? No matter. With Stop Motion Studio, you need only your Android device’s camera and some bits and bobs to shuffle about your desk. Although this is a trial version, and thus light on features, it still enables you to shoot individual frames, arrange and edit them, and then spit out the results into a movie or animated GIF.
Animatic animatic.io
One of the greatest things about smartphones is how the right app can make complex tasks far more approachable. Animatic is an animation tool designed for anyone: You scribble on the canvas, add a new frame, see the previous one faintly so you can line things up, and then scribble some more. A few dozen frames later, you’ll (hopefully) have an animation you can play and export as a movie or GIF. You probably won’t trouble Pixar, but the scribbly, sketchy quality of Animatic output is full of character—plus it’s far less hassle than doodling flip animations on a notepad. JULY 2017 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A 9
Brand Aid
LIFE’S A PITCH— JUST START! How to give your innovative idea the best chance at success By Tacita McEvoy
We’ve all had ideas about ‘the next big thing’, be it an on-demand service app or turning your kitchen into a chilli-jam factory. Most of the time these ideas just stay ideas, and at times come out at a dinner party after a few drinks. “That’s amazing! Why don’t you just start it!?” is the reaction you’ve probably heard
over and over again. But as the partygoers fade, so does your determination to bring your idea to life, for a number of reasons: from your full-time job to lack of vital skills needed for your business, especially if you have a tech idea with no development knowledge. The key to getting any idea off the ground is buy-in—from your target audience, the media, business partners and potential investors. An investment injection can be the boost you need to give your idea legs or take your current startup to the next level. But the biggest buy-in of all has to come from yourself: You need to back your idea 100%, even in the face of critics. When in doubt, remember that Steve Hartman, the inventor of the simple pool noodle, is now a multimillionaire. The first thing you need to do with your idea is write it down. Yes, simply write down your idea
or draw a picture of it, no matter how crazy it may seem. There you go, you’ve turned an idea into something tangible on a piece of paper. You’re already winning, compared to all the ideas floating in space. You should be able to write what the business does on the back of a matchbox, short and sweet. For example: DropBox— secure file sharing and storage. Airbnb—online marketplace that lets people rent out their spare rooms to guests. The next thing you need to do is formulate your idea into a document that will allow potential investors to see the value and scalability of your business idea. This can be done in the form of a pitch deck. At first, new entrepreneurs want to provide potential investors with as much information about their business as possible—which is the wrong approach. The detailed
information can be formulated into an investment memorandum once you have interested parties wanting to know more. Keep it simple, stupid. So simple that it’s clear as day for anyone to see your golden ticket, even if they don’t have a business degree. Keep it short, around 10 to 20 slides. Don’t try to stick to a template; adjust your content to what makes your business shine. For example, if your idea is a website, you may want to include more screenshots, and you don’t want to be limited to a template. Keep slides with minimal text, not more than 40 words, with data visuals to get your ideas across—try to stick to one or two concepts per slide. For your pitch layout, choose a software program you’re comfortable with; PowerPoint is a firm favourite, but if you want to get creative you can look into online tools/presentation software such as Prezi.com, or craft a
professional layout with InDesign. But also keep things simple here, with bright colours and visuals that keep the reader engaged and wanting to learn more. This is a chance to highlight that you’ve already thought about brand consistency and look-and-feel. But what counts more than design is the content. The good news is that there’s a set structure for how to present your content:
1. THE COVER The front page sets the tone for the entire presentation. Include your logo, slogan, and a visual that shows your product or services in action.
2. THE INTRODUCTION The first slide sets the tone for the entire presentation, so that the
JUNE 2017 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A 11
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reader feels he/she already understands the business while going through each slide. Your product/service offering needs to be reduced to one or two sentences—make it memorable. When you talk to this slide, you need to give an elevator pitch: If you were in a lift for one minute with a potential investor, what would you say?
3. THE PROBLEM Companies only exist because they’re serving consumers by fulfilling a need. What problem is your idea combating in the world? It can be more than one, but doesn’t need to be socio-economic to be meaningful. For example, the pool noodle: There were no affordable, long-lasting, fun pool toys in the market. Airbnb’s famous simple pitch deck also acts as a perfect example: Price is an important concern for customers booking travel online. Hotels leave you disconnected from the city and its culture. No easy way exists to book a room with a local or become a host.
4. THE SOLUTION The solution slide will directly relate how you plan to solve the problem. If we look at Airbnb again, we can see the solution clearly stated. A web platform where users can rent out their space to host travellers to: save money (when travelling), make money (when hosting); and share culture.
5. THE MARKET SIZE The market size is the number of potential buyers who will benefit from your solution. This is a great slide to include some statistics around buyers of a similar product or service and interesting facts
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Brand Aid
around the growth of your industry. It shows validation for what you’re offering and proves that you’ve spent time studying your target audience.
6. THE PRODUCT This is the drumroll moment when you present your product or service. If you’re still in the idea phase, you can show a prototype, drawing or MVP (minimum viable product). Include screenshots and show your product/service in action. A great way to showcase your product is through a customer journey of using your product: You can tell a story and get creative, but remember to have more visuals than text. Keep it real and engaging.
7. THE BUSINESS MODEL The most important aspect to present around your business is how you intend to make a profit: the costs to execute, and what your growth projections are for the future. Prove that your business has the ability to scale by providing a three- to five-year revenue and profit forecast.
8. THE ADOPTION So, you have an awesome product and lots of people ready and waiting for you to make their lives easier—but how are you going to reach them? This is your go-to-market strategy and any unique tactics you intend to use to market your business.
9. THE COMPETITION Most people cringe when they have to talk about their competition, but this is good; if there’s competition, there’s a need. Every industry is innovating every
The biggest buy-in of all has to come from yourself: You need to back your idea 100%, even in the face of critics.
day; no company is safe. Don’t be afraid of your competitors—learn from them and build on their foundation. Remember, for this slide keep it simple and list your competitors and what they’re doing right and wrong.
10. THE WOW FACTOR In Guy Kawasaki’s explanation of a pitch deck, he calls it your “underlying magic”. This is your competitive advantage that sets you apart from your competitors and wows readers just before viewing your financial standing and investment requirement. Get them hooked on this slide.
11. THE FINANCIALS If your business is operating, list your revenue to date and your estimated company valuation. There are many different formulas to determine your valuation, but you have to find the right one for your business. Calculations range from asset and liability formulas, future growth forecasts, to the rule of thumb being four times your company’s positive cashflow at the end of the financial year. So if you made R100k profit this year, your business is worth R400k. You can then work out how much equity you’re willing to part with, for how much. Be sure to indicate how you’ll be using the investment to meet your business model forecasts.
12. THE TEAM The investors on Shark Tank and Dragons’ Den have stated countless times that they’ve gone in on an investment not for the idea but for the founder or team. Your biggest asset is your team and the skills you bring to the table to grow a successful business. Don’t be shy—highlight your team’s strengths, experience, and their roles in making the company a success.
13. THE TIMELINES AND FORECASTS End off by showing you have a plan. You know what you need to do, when you need to do it, and where you want to get to. All guns are loaded, but you just need investment capital to pull the trigger.
14. THE CONTACT The back page is where you thank readers for taking the time to review your pitch and provide your contact details for any further queries. If you’re presenting in a meeting, you can open up the floor for questions. Don’t be hard on yourself if you don’t have all the answers; this is a chance to gain valuable feedback on your venture. Your initial deck is a snapshot into your idea and should leave readers feeling excited and eager to know more. It’s a taster, and not the whole course. You don’t want to give too much away about your venture before knowing your audience is serious about taking a stake in your business. Keep at it! No idea, no matter how crazy-good, is going to work unless you’re willing to roll up your sleeves and invest the time and do the work.
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Creative Conversation
HEAT OF THE MOMENT Former Vice President Al Gore, star of the upcoming film An Inconvenient Sequel, has a new message about climate change— and it’s not all bad Interview by Adele Peters Photographs by Mark Mahaney
A decade after the Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth made the threat of climate change real to millions of moviegoers, the film’s star, Al Gore, is back to make it even more so. In An Inconvenient Sequel, due in theatres in August, he shares an outlook that is both more dire and more optimistic: Last year was the hottest ever on record, but it also marked a high point for installations of renewable energy. Gore believes the momentum for positive change has become unstoppable, no matter what current politics might indicate. “We will solve this crisis,” Gore says. “No doubt about it.” What made you want to make a sequel to An Inconvenient Truth? Since we still have so much work to do, a lot of people over the past several years have asked me if I would be willing to make a sequel—in particular Jeff Skoll, whose company Participant Media made the first movie. I have to tell you that when the idea for the first movie was
The extended forecast “Among the lessons I’ve learnt is the importance of conveying realistic hope. Because despair can be paralysing.”
14 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A JULY 2017
Man on a mission Right: In a scene from An Inconvenient Sequel, Gore talks with typhoon survivors in the Philippines.
presented to me, over a decade ago, I was sceptical. I was consistent this time around and sceptical once more. I guess I was just worried because the first one was so well received. But I’m glad that wiser heads prevailed.
Jensen Walker/©2017 Paramount Pictures (An Inconvenient Sequel)
The movie balances a sense of urgency over the growing climate crisis with a great deal of hope. At one point, you visit a small, conservative town in Texas that’s now committed to being 100% powered by renewable electricity. That’s one of my favourite scenes. I think the achievements of Georgetown, Texas are especially important, because they demonstrate that all the wonderful work that has been done by innovators, by scientists, technologists, startups and CEOs has come together to produce a startling revolution in renewable energy, with solar and wind electricity now cheaper than electricity made from burning fossil fuels in many places. Georgetown, a very conservative community, took a close look at the economics of all the options available to them. Partly because they have a CPA as the mayor, they made the bold decision to follow the economics and break free from the patterns of the past. They’re enjoying the benefits of that decision now. Industry experts have argued that wind and solar power are now cheap enough that they will continue to grow regardless of what happens politically. Some corporations are also committing to ambitious climate action. How much do you think the business world can accomplish on its own without strong policy? Many parts in the business world are way ahead of most of the political world, at least in the US. However, the pace of change can be profoundly accelerated with the right government policies. We’re still putting 110 million tonnes of globewarming pollution into the Earth’s atmosphere every 24 hours—treating it like an open sewer—and much of it will remain there for hundreds of years. Some for thousands of years. If we don’t accelerate the pace of change, the damage done to the prospects for human civilisation would be quite severe. So it is important that we have the right policies. For example, the subsidies around the world for the burning of fossil fuels are 40 times larger than the meagre subsidies for renewable energy.
There’s a scene in the movie, filmed on November 10, where you call the 2016 election a setback and say that it’s one of a long line of setbacks in addressing climate change. How much damage do you think the new administration could do, or how much has it possibly already done? (President Trump announced in early June that the US would withdraw from the Paris climate accord.) It’s difficult to predict. Some of their early policy decisions have of course been discouraging, but it’s almost impossible to overstate the significance of what happened in Paris, a year ago December, when every nation in the world, save a
“Mother Nature has joined this discussion. Climaterelated extreme weather events are increasingly impossible for people to ignore.”
few exceptions hardly worth mentioning, agreed to go to net zero greenhouse emissions early in the second half of this century. Because that sent a signal to businesses, investors and local and national governments everywhere. And that signal has been received. The pace of change has accelerated dramatically. You have said that American leadership is necessary for climate action. Do you still think that? Yes, I do. There is a law of physics that has become something of a cliché in politics, and that is that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. There’s no doubt in my mind that the impressive surge of support for progressive organisations is evidence that there is an equal and opposite reaction to Trumpism that is now taking hold in American democracy. What happened during your meeting with President Trump in December? (The two also reportedly spoke by phone in May.) Well, I appreciate and respect the question. But I have followed a policy of not violating
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Creative Conversation
the privacy of those exchanges. I believe that any president who enters into a set of confidential exchanges deserves to have them treated privately. And so forgive me if I don’t violate that rule. It also safeguards the opportunity for a continuation of the dialogue. In order to fix the climate crisis, you believe we need to fix the democracy crisis. Do you think we can restore political discourse quickly enough to address climate change? I sure hope so. Already we see every important policy-reform movement living and breathing on the Internet. We see bloggers affecting policy debates. We see digital factcheckers blowing the whistle on these big lie campaigns that still flourish in television advertising—the climate deniers, for example. I’m optimistic that this trend will continue. And you know, the Bernie Sanders campaign last year: I’m not endorsing his platform—I agreed with some of his ideas and disagreed with others—but I want to give him all the credit he deserves for proving that a serious nationwide presidential campaign can be mounted without any special-interest money, relying exclusively on small contributions over the Internet from people who agree with the ideas a candidate expresses. Ideas, the best available evidence, vision, a sensible course for the future—that should count for a lot more than some fat cat’s contributions of money in return for special favours in policy designed to support their source of revenue. I’m very fond of the wisdom expressed by the late economist Rudi Dornbusch, whom I had the privilege of knowing. He once said that things take longer to happen than you think they will. But then they happen much faster than you thought they ever could. The civil rights movement, the women’s suffrage movement, the abolition movement long before, anti-apartheid, gay rights—all of these revolutions seemed at times almost hopeless to many of the advocates. But once the underbrush was cleared away, and the ultimate choice was resolved into a binary decision between what’s right and what’s wrong, then it began to happen with lightning speed. And I think that’s where the climate movement is now. We are right at that inflection point.
“Many parts in the business world are way ahead of most of the political world, at least in the US. However, the pace of change can be profoundly accelerated with the right government policies.”
Climate change is a topic you’ve been talking about for years. What have you found to be the most effective way to communicate your message? Among the lessons I’ve learnt is the importance of conveying realistic hope. Because despair can be paralysing, and the fear of these consequences is not necessarily the most effective way to change minds and motivate people. But when you can convey hope in a realistic way, that unlocks a higher fraction of the potential for change. How do you make climate change a priority for people worried about more immediate issues, such as their job? First of all, jobs in the solar industry are growing on an annual basis 17 times faster than average job growth in the economy as a whole. The single fastestgrowing job description over the next 10 years is predicted to be windpower technicians. Second, more people are actually beginning to make solutions to the climate crisis one of their top priorities. One reason is
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30-SECOND BIO
Al Gore TITLE
Co-founder and chair of Generation Investment Management; partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers; founder and board member of the Climate Reality Project; board member at Apple EDUCATION
Bachelor’s degree in government from Harvard University; studied philosophy and law at Vanderbilt University PREVIOUS JOBS
Former vice president of the United States and congressman from Tennessee; founder of the former Current TV network, which sold for a reported $500 million (R6.5 billion) in 2013 AWARDS
Nobel Peace Prize, together with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in 2007; Primetime Emmy Award for Current TV in 2007; star of the 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth, which won the Academy Award for best documentary in 2007
that Mother Nature has joined this discussion. Climate-related extreme weather events are increasingly impossible for people to ignore. After a while, people say, Wait a minute, this is not an abstract debate. This is affecting my life. You run an investment management firm that focuses on sustainability. How long do you think it will take for sustainability to be a standard consideration for all investment firms? I think there is a big movement now that is gaining speed. When sustainability is integrated properly into the investment process, the evidence indicates that returns can improve. There is voluminous academic research now showing that in most sectors of the economy, companies that fully integrate sustainability into their business plans are outperforming their competitors. For example, it helps tremendously in recruiting and retaining the best employees. Because people want to work for a firm that shares their values. What would you tell someone who wants to support climate action, but doesn’t know where to begin? Learn about it. Don’t let climatechange denial go unchallenged. Be a conscious participant in the marketplace, because your choices not only help incrementally but also exert leverage on businesses. And participate in the political process. The threshold for popular democracy making a difference may be higher in an age when big money contributions still play an unhealthy role. But that threshold can be crossed, and we’re seeing the impact of all the people showing up at these town hall meetings already. There are now 30 Republican members of the House of Representatives who have changed their positions to be supportive of solving the climate crisis. We don’t need many more before we have a working majority in Congress. And it never should have been a partisan issue anyway.
You see a Chartered Accountant
WE SEE RESPONSIBLE
Leadership
THAT KNOWS NO LIMITS TO GROWING A COMMUNITY Mose Kutadzaushe CA(SA), CFA, MBA Founding member of Supreme Brands & Investment Specialist: Investec Asset Management
Overall Winner
35 2016
UNDER
thirty five
The aptitude and discipline of CAs(SA) know no limits, because their continued professional development, dedication and ambition to seek opportunity is what drives them. Mose Kutadzaushe’s entrepreneurial spirit, backed by his technical training and global experience as an investment specialist, has influenced the success of his business, and has also provided opportunities to the community he serves. That’s why, when you partner with a CA(SA), you are harnessing a wealth of experience that knows when and how to seize an opportunity. To read about this story and other stories, please visit www.findacasa.co.za
responsible leadership.
Prototype
NIKE’S HEAD START With the Pro Hijab, the company is outfitting millions of athletes for the first time By Elizabeth Segran
Photograph by Samantha Casolari Modest achievement When it is released next year, the Pro Hijab (shown here on a model) will be the world’s first massmarket performance headscarf.
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While Amna Al Haddad, a weightlifter from Dubai, was training for the 2016 Olympics, Nike offered to help optimise her performance. At the company’s Oregon campus, scientists used motion-capture technology to study her movements. During the process, Al Haddad realised her real need was much more elemental. She had searched for a hijab suitable for weightlifting, but nothing stayed in place. She settled for a single, stretchy scarf that she hand-washed nightly. “We have so many tools at our disposal,” says Megan Saalfeld, a Nike senior communications director. “[We thought,] This is something we can solve.” With Saalfeld in charge, designers set to work on a hijab that employs Nike’s collection of lightweight, breathable materials and ability to create products that are secure yet comfortable. The hijab, which is being prototyped, will be released early next year. It has sparked discussion at the company about what else Nike can offer women who dress conservatively—a style chronically underserved by the athleisure industry and its affinity for skintight cuts. From focus groups, Saalfeld learnt the importance of balancing coverage and function: Testers asked Nike to hem one early hijab prototype, which hung below the chest, so that it would look more like something an athlete may wear. “They want the hijab to signal that they mean business,” says Saalfeld.
Makeup: Asia Geiger at Art Department
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“EVERYDAY LIFE IS MY M O T I VAT I O N .” How Erna Basson has built an empire of successful companies, become a leading business coach, and authored a book—all before the age of 30 By Evans Manyonga
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A FOUR-YEAR DEGREE COMPLETED IN THREE YEARS. WITH 18 DISTINCTIONS. WHILE WORKING THREE JOBS. SMART, G O A L- D R I V E N A N D DEDICATED, ERNA BASSON IS FLY ING THE FLAG FOR YOUNG SERIAL ENTREPRENEURS.
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“I sold my student vehicle to start my first company at the age of 22. It was a marketing and events agency. I had no investment capital or bank loans—I only had the R30 000 from selling my car and a bachelor’s degree. But I was hungry for success and I built that company into a multimillion-rand business and increased our profit by 100% year-on-year. I then started my second company at 26.” Basson has sold both these companies in the last six months, bringing the total in her business portfolio to eight. The three major entities are involved in hair extensions, business coaching and public speaking. She has also formed lucrative partnerships with world-renowned serial entrepreneur JT Foxx (who is also her business coach) and Ndaba Mandela, co-founder of Africa Rising and one of BET and ICON MANN’s 28 Men of Change. This year has been a groundbreaking one for Basson, and the apex of her career in terms of accomplishments as well as both personal and business growth. Among other accolades, she has been nominated for the 2017 Africa’s Most Influential Woman in Business and Government award; she was the first South African woman to be featured on the cover of Global Women magazine; and emcee’d one of the biggest events of the year, Tycoons of Wealth. And as from 2018, she will be a mentor for the Nelson Mandela Entrepreneurial Programme.
Fast Company: How has your background shaped who you are today? Erna Basson: I’m extremely blessed to come from a very loving family; not that I just got what I wanted, but my parents—especially my father—taught me that I need to work for what I want. He rewarded hard work and high achievements, and that has shaped me into the person I am today. From my university days, I knew I wanted to make a difference in people’s lives and that I was going to be an entrepreneur. My first experience in this was actually selling my study notes for a business law subject to my fellow students at Kovsies [University of the Free State], and I’m sure it’s making the rounds to this day! My background and how I was raised have shaped me into a person who’s hard-working, tenacious, always trying to see the positive side of life, and just being herself—no one can beat you at being yourself. Authenticity is something I value and will take with me throughout my journey.
You are Fast Company SA’s 2017 Top Entrepreneur under 30. What does this mean to you? I’m grateful, humbled and extremely blessed to have been named the Top Entrepreneur under 30 (just making it by four months, may I add). This is by far the top highlight of my career and I’m looking forward to using this platform to help and inspire other fellow entrepreneurs to realise that they, too, can achieve their goals if they set their mind to it. The sky’s the limit, so embrace change, look for opportunities—and, whatever you do, never give up! Failing is okay, it’s part of success and it’s temporary; quitting, however, lasts forever. How much value do you place on hard work, perseverance and just never giving up? Those are the firm fundamentals in my everyday life. There may be people who have more resources than I do, or come from privilege where parents can give them a hefty investment in their company, but no one can outwork me— I do whatever it takes to be successful. I firmly believe hard work gets rewarded, and that what you put in is what you get out. So if you’re giving an 80% effort, don’t expect a 100% result, because you won’t get it. I never give up; yes, I fail, but failing is part of success. What are your views on innovation, collaboration and thinking out of the box? Being innovative and thinking outside the box is what will set you apart from the rest and what will make you unique. You always need to think about your unique selling proposition. If you want to stay ahead of the market, you need to lead the market—and the only way to do that is to be innovative. You’re not merely selling a service or product, but you’re selling value; the more value you sell, the more you can help people and change their lives. You need to have a creative, strategic brainstorming session every day on how you can better your value, what you can add to your product line, and what can you do differently that your opposition is not doing. Having great ideas is good, but they’ll remain ideas if you don’t implement them quickly—speed of implementation is everything. How do you come up with innovative ideas? What’s your biggest motivation? Everyday life is my motivation. You need to look at what the market needs; the bigger the
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In good company Above: Emcee Basson with top wealth coach and her business partner JT Foxx (left) and Damien Elston, CEO of the JT Foxx Organization, at the 2017 Tycoons of Wealth event Left: With SA Olympic Gold medallist swimmer turned property developer, Ryk Neethling, at a charity event in Port Elizabeth
problem you’re solving, the bigger the reward you’ll get. It’s not about what you want, but what your customer wants and needs, and the value you can add to your customers. All the companies I’ve founded started with the fundamentals of helping people
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and solving problems and seeing a gap in the market. You need to see the gap in the market and establish how you can monetise it. Take the focus off yourself and start thinking of how you can service your customer in the best way.
You’ve coached several successful entrepreneurs and small business owners. How has your advice and influence made a difference? Most of my coaching clients are females in small and medium enterprises and startups, and the biggest difference I see in them after our coaching session is the increase in confidence and the mindset change afterward. They believe they can do it and they, too, can have the freedom to spend more time with their family and children. It saddens me to see so many women denying themselves success and their dreams because they feel they’re inadequate, or that they’re a mom and cannot do everything; this limiting belief is a huge problem, and that’s what I want to change and help with. Another thing I’ve seen is that these women are ‘too nice’ and don’t ask for the business. If you don’t ask for the business, you won’t get it. If I can give a tip on asking for business before going into a meeting: You need to visualise how the meeting is going to go, you need to know exactly what you want beforehand and, of course, you need to be prepared—proper preparation prevents poor performance. Teaching entrepreneurs the science behind building a successful company is your specialty. Tell us about your methods. My passion is entrepreneurship, as I’m a firm believer that entrepreneurship is the key fundamental to any country’s economy; the more entrepreneurs I can help in starting and growing their business, the more lives can be changed. Before taking on a new coaching client, I analyse the background of their business: how big it is, how many employees, annual turnover etc. and then I look at what they’re currently doing and why it’s not working. Once our session together is completed, my client is equipped with an action plan on how to increase revenue, and how to market and position their brand better. The biggest reward for me as a business coach is to see my clients succeed. I’m all about the results my clients get. You own several companies that you’ve started from the bottom up. How did you manage that? The first company I started at the age of 22 was an events
and below-the-line marketing agency. We serviced wellknown national and international brands, and the growth we showed was amazing. The biggest highlight for me was when we developed a state-of-the-art custom CRM and ROI system that increased productivity in the company by 400%. We also created so many job opportunities for young people (on some weekends, we had more than 250 youngsters working for us). This was the biggest reward, giving knowledge and experience to young people; they’re the future of our country. The other company I founded was an online wedding directory, purely in response to the frustration I felt when I myself was engaged and couldn’t find any service providers for my own wedding. I thought, Wouldn’t it be great if there were a website where I could find service providers on one platform? This company has grown into an online wedding planning platform where you can plan everything online: from the guest list to e-vites and seating plans. It’s also evolved into a monthly wedding magazine.
support structure that will enable you to achieve your goals. You need to surround yourself with like-minded people—people who share your vision. All great athletes and businesspeople have coaches, and you as an entrepreneur or small business owner should, too. You need to have that one person who holds you accountable and
who believes in you. You need to have the right mindset and attitude in order to achieve your goals. You need to believe in yourself first before others can believe in you. Success is all about creating opportunities and taking risk. Like Sir Richard Branson says, even if you don’t know how to do it, say yes to it and figure out later how to do it.
And your current venture, Erabella Beauty? It’s a hair extensions company with branches in Hong Kong and New Zealand, and soon to launch in the US, Australia, the UK and Europe. We currently offer clipin hair extensions in different colours, thicknesses and lengths—selling online and reselling to salons. It was initially created to make women feel more confident in themselves and to make them feel more beautiful by enhancing their inner beauty. We’re busy developing our content for our online hair extensions academy that will train people from around the world to become certified hair extensions specialists and enable them to stock our brand in their salon. Erabella will also be hosting one-day, one-on-one training workshops throughout South Africa where you can learn about hair extensions. Lastly, the company is developing its own range of wet haircare products that are sulphate-free and very nourishing for one’s hair, especially extensions. What is your key to success? There’s no ‘I’ in success. I wouldn’t be able to achieve my goals without the team I have. I truly am blessed to have an amazing group of people with whom I work, and my success is their success. You need to have a good team and great
Twice the knowledge Basson has partnered with Africa Rising co-founder Ndaba Mandela on an entrepreneurship educational programme to give current and aspiring business owners the tools for success.
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30 SECONDS WITH... UNDER 30
I’ve learnt to never quit, to never give up on what I want and what I want to achieve. Remember that it’s never about you—it’s about your audience/customer. Your main purpose is adding value to other people’s lives, what you can do for other people, how you can improve their lives.
As an international speaker, what has been your best experience? The best experience for me is to see the value I add to people’s lives after a speaking engagement: getting positive feedback from audience members on how my presentation inspired them to step it up, and how they feel empowered to achieve their goals and reach for greatness. But I think the highlight of my speaking career will be when I step on stage in LA in November in front of 2 500 people, sharing the platform with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Hugh Hilton of the prestigious Hilton hotel chain, well-known actors Charlie Sheen and Mark Wahlberg, and the world’s number-one wealth coach, JT Foxx. You’ve developed an entrepreneurship educational programme whereby you host workshops around the country, sharing knowledge and giving current and aspiring entrepreneurs the tools to grow their companies successfully. How has this endeavour been faring? This is something I’m very excited about, and I’ve partnered with Ndaba Mandela on this project. My passion is entrepreneurship, as that’s the future of the country. What is the biggest killer of entrepreneurship? Fear. And why are people afraid? They’re scared of the unknown! At the programme, we focus on educating: giving the necessary tools to aspiring entrepreneurs to start their new business, and to current entrepreneurs to increase the profits in their current venture. The more entrepreneurs we can help and educate, the bigger the success.
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You also have your first book in the pipeline. Can you tell us more about it? I’m actually busy putting the finishing touches on Make Your First Million. This will be the ultimate book to help you start and grow your first business or increase the profits and growth of your current company. It’s being written from my own experience, and will highlight what you need to do in order to make your first million: from concep-tualising your idea for a business, to identifying your niche, how to market and position yourself within your sector, how to brand yourself and, ultimately, selling your business. The book will be for everyone who wants to start a business or already has a business; if you feel stuck in your current situation or if you want something different, and seek the financial and time freedom that you deserve. What has been the biggest factor in your success? The biggest factor was getting a business coach. JT Foxx has played an enormous role in my success and I’ll always be grateful for the opportunities and support he has given me throughout my journey. I’m happy to say that not only is he my business coach but he’s also my business partner in a company in New Zealand. Having a business coach is so important, and I’d like to help others change their life so they, too, can earn what they deserve and create the freedom they want.
Erna Ba sson FAVOURITE QUOTE?
“When you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe, then you’ll be successful.” —Eric Thomas FAVOURITE BOOK?
Millionaire Underdog by JT Foxx FAVOURITE HOLIDAY DESTINATION?
“Definitely the Maldives; we stayed at the Baros luxury hotel on a private island, and it was magical and unforgettable!” FAVOURITE CITY?
“That’s an easy one— Cape Town. I’ve visited so many cities around the world, but nothing can compare to Cape Town.” FAVOURITE TECH GADGET?
“Everything Apple: iPhone, MacBook, iPad and iPod. Everything just connects so easily! I’m a total Apple geek.”
HOW DO YOU UNWIND AND RELAX?
“Spending time with my husband and beautiful children: getting ice cream at the beach and just walking, talking and laughing while we take a stroll. And, of course, finishing off the day in true South African style, with a braai and a glass of Beyerskloof Pinotage.” BIGGEST INSPIRATION?
“I’m inspired by people who defeat the odds and create a better life for themselves. People who take the necessary action and push aside all the excuses to achieve their goals.” ON HER FORMULA FOR SUCCESS:
“There is no formula for success, but there are principles you can apply to achieve success. My passion is the fuel to my success—I am extremely passionate about what I do.”
YOUR IDEAL DAY?
“Date night! Dressing up, making effort and spending quality time with my husband is really what makes me happy.”
WANT TO MAKE YOUR FIRST MILLION? 10 lucky readers stand a chance of winning Erna Basson’s e-book, Make Your First Million, upon publication! All you need to do is take a selfie with this edition of Fast Company SA, upload it on social media with the hashtag #getcoachedbyernabasson, and tag any of Erna’s social media handles: Facebook – ErnaBassonSA Instagram – ErnaBassonSA Twitter – @BassonErna Get in touch for business coaching or book Erna Basson for an event: www.ernabasson.com.
Fast Company promotion
34 steps to success Resolution Circle is your secret weapon to guiding your first foray into the world of business
So, the Top 20 entrepreneurs under 30 are making a dent in the universe, as Steve Jobs would say—while your dented universe consists of limited ‘job’ prospects and closed doors. How do they do it? And why can’t you? What talent and luck were magically bestowed upon them which totally side-lined you? What inside help did they get? What are they even smiling about? You’re trying to survive, while others seem to ride the sweet wave of success. Everyone you talk to says the journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step. But in which direction? What about the second and third steps? Why a thousand-mile journey, anyway? They say entrepreneurs have passion and commitment. Yet, you’re passionately committed to get out of the hole called ‘your prospects’. Your education provided you with enough skills to read, write and do some maths—but no experience, which everyone asks for. Accounting for poverty is actually extremely easy; surviving it is another story. Poverty tends to focus the mind on survival! You cannot build a wealth machine using the gears of poverty. You probably received an education in surviving poverty (even received a distinction), but playing the business game requires a new mindset and new rules, as well as a new education—one that most of our parents couldn’t give us. Neither could the school or university; their job was to prepare us for employment (now a scarce commodity, an almost extinct animal). You cannot be an entrepreneur with the attitude of a victim. You cannot start a successful business without having some hope for the future. Your attitude, hopes and dreams need a reset, too. Youth entrepreneurship is the new religion, with government its fiercest evangelist. But the wheels of fortune turn on technical skills, experience, resources and a track record.
Access to the fountain of opportunity is reserved for the people who sip water from a plastic bottle. The youth is slaughtered on the altar of assumptions. It’s time to pull your head out of the mud and imagine a brighter future—with you in it. Not staring at it from the outside looking in. It’s time to start your entrepreneurial education, take control of your destiny, and fight for your success (and not just survival). Poverty is the thing that must be sacrificed, not our youth. At Resolution Circle, we get it. We specialise in youth businesses and tech entrepreneurs: people who want to bring physical products to market. We see the youth and successful entrepreneurs as the country’s most valuable assets. We were born to serve you, the youth—it’s in our DNA. We employ more young professionals than most. And we train you, try to guide your first step into the world of business. We are your secret weapon, your fourpound hammer, to dent the universe. But we start with you, the entrepreneur. It’s personal. It has to be, because it’s your life, your education. What is your end goal? What does success mean to you? What will it take to be successful? Maybe it’s a business; maybe even more than one. Oh, the product, I hear you say? That, too. But don’t get distracted. The product is important, but you as entrepreneur are more important, and so is the business. Building a business is more than just developing a product: It’s about creating customers and making a profit, and slowly evolving yourself into an experienced entrepreneur. You can always create a new product, but it’s difficult to create an experienced entrepreneur. It will require a team. It will require changes. It may even take more than one try. It will definitely take hard work and sacrifice. We at Resolution Circle have developed a 34step process to take your product idea to market. A thousand-mile journey compressed into 34 steps. You provide the problem, solution, passion and commitment. And willingness to learn. We will help you define the idea, refine it and test it with customers. We will support you to do the business model and plan, get funding, make it into a product, create the box, the website and the exhibition stand. We will help you launch the product, and we will help manufacture it. We will be the 10-tonne gorilla behind you. Your success will be our success. But it’s your business, your responsibility. Your journey of blood, sweat and tears to become part of the exclusive club of the Top 20 under 30. And we will be proud of you. That’s Resolution Circle.
Building a business is more than just developing a product: It’s about creating customers and making a profit, and slowly evolving yourself into an experienced entrepreneur.
Professor Willem Clarke, CEO
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Behind the Brand
NORWEGIAN AIR TAKES FLIGHT The upstart carrier’s insanely cheap fares to Europe are just one more step toward world airline domination By Sara Clemence
Illustration by Ben Wiseman
Ninety-nine dollars (R1 200) isn’t enough to buy a month’s worth of rides on the New York City subway system. But it can get you a plane ticket across the Atlantic on Scandinavian carrier Norwegian Air—and that’s causing more than a little turbulence in the airline industry. The low-cost airline, which has long connected Scandinavia with destinations across Europe, has been making inroads into the US for several years, with direct flights from cities such as London, Paris, Copenhagen, and its home base of Oslo. But this year, after winning approval from the US Department of Transportation to use an Irish subsidiary for transatlantic travel, Norwegian is launching a massive expansion. In the first quarter of 2017 alone, the carrier announced a dozen new routes from US cities including Boston, Seattle and Denver—at prices
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that are often less than half those of legacy airlines. By year’s end, Norwegian plans to operate nearly 100 flights weekly out of 13 American hubs. “Three or four airlines have controlled the flights [over the Atlantic],” says CEO Bjørn Kjos. “We have disrupted this monopoly [with] our low fares.” A decade ago, Norwegian was a virtually unknown regional airline; today, it’s reinventing the industry. Transatlantic fares are just the beginning. In April, the carrier announced non-stop flights between London and Singapore for $199 (about R2 500) each way. And one route map the company recently shared with investors shows how Norwegian hopes to one day encircle the globe. “If they execute on their plan,” says Henry Harteveldt, a travel-industry analyst for Atmosphere Research Group, “Norwegian could be the 21stcentury-airline equivalent of Pan Am.” Norwegian isn’t the only carrier to offer budget flights across the Atlantic—Iceland’s Wow Air offers $99 fares to Europe, with a stop in Reykjavík, from 10 North American cities; Lufthansa offshoot Eurowings has plans to connect Munich to Orlando, Florida; Las Vegas; and Seattle. But Norwegian aims to beat them all in execution and scale. Like other low-cost carriers, it charges for checked bags, snacks, drinks and blankets. But its transatlantic experience is nonetheless remarkably comfortable. The service is cheerful, the food decent, and the in-flight entertainment options robust. Each seat has its own power outlet and USB port. The planes are next-generation Boeings with quieter cabins and pressure levels designed to reduce jet lag. The airline’s young fleet is the foundation of its success—and not just because it attracts passengers. “If you fly an old airplane, it’s like an old car,” Kjos says. “It uses a lot of gas and has high maintenance costs.” In 2007, Norwegian was a regional player knitting together 75 European destinations when Kjos made a bold purchase of 42 Boeing 737-800s for roughly $3 billion (R39 billion). The planes, which have become the airline’s short-haul European workhorses, have flierfriendly features such as high-speed Wi-Fi and lighting that adjusts to match the phase of flight. They also cut Norwegian’s fuel consumption by more than a fifth, while increasing its A sure sign that cabin capacity. Norwegian has In 2011, Kjos repeated the move, become a potent placing an order for the then-new industry force: Boeing Dreamliner, which has Legacy airlines even better fuel efficiency and can have been trying seat up to 290 people. He dedicated these planes to long-distance flights to thwart it. between major hubs such as Oslo, New York and Bangkok. It’s not just the aircraft that create efficiency but also how they’re deployed. While most major carriers are bound by existing networks and commitments—obliged to direct planes through their hub cities and those of partner airlines—Norwegian takes a blank-slate approach to its route map, flying where it anticipates it can create demand. This year, Norwegian will be the first airline to fly the speedy, fuel-saving, 189-seat Boeing 737 Max in the US. The new aircraft will connect second- and third-tier destinations like Providence, Rhode Island and Belfast in Ireland. Using smaller, even minuscule, airports means cheaper rent and lower landing fees—savings that Norwegian can use to attract travellers who have, until now, been unable to afford international airfares. Norwegian also spurns the traditional long-haul model of scheduling flights to carry waves of passengers in the morning and evening. Instead,
Illustrations by relajaelcoco
TA K ING OF F Four more pioneers of low-cost, long-haul air travel
Wow Air Iceland’s Wow routes transatlantic travellers through its Reykjavík hub, allowing it to use smaller, less expensive planes. It markets the stopover as a fun add-on for adventurous travellers.
Level International Airlines Group, owner of Spain’s Iberia airlines, is behind Level: a new Barcelonabased carrier that takes advantage of Spain’s reputation for low airport taxes.
AirAsia X Malaysia’s AirAsia X is the first low-cost Asian airline to fly into the US with a new route connecting Kuala Lumpur; Osaka, Japan; and Honolulu. The carrier hopes to roll out more Asia–US flights.
La Compagnie Flying between Newark and Paris, La Compagnie offers a single-class cabin with 74 near-lie-flat seats and complimentary French wine— at a fraction of the typical business-class airfare.
it focuses on keeping aircraft in the air as much as possible— even if that means inconvenient departures. Using a plane for a few more hours a day radically improves the financials, Kjos says. Containing those costs is essential. Kjos founded the airline in 1993 and stepped back in as CEO in 2002, when it was a bit player competing regionally with the dominant Scandinavian operator, SAS. He quickly deduced that to survive, Norwegian had to bring down costs by scaling up rapidly. “We were forced to become a much bigger player,” he says. That plan helped Norwegian post a net profit of $136 million (R1.7 billion) in 2016. (In the first quarter of 2017, the carrier boosted its passenger count, but took a bigger-thanexpected $174 million/R2.2 billion loss, burnt by higher fuel costs and exchange-rate fluctuations.) A sure sign that the carrier has become a potent industry force: Legacy airlines have been trying to thwart it. The US Department of Transportation, besieged with opposition from domestic airlines, labour unions and other interest groups, took three years to approve Norwegian’s transatlantic plan. Its competitors are also creating their own budget mini-me’s: International Airlines Group, which owns British Airways, has launched a long-haul, low-cost brand called Level, which operates out of Spain; Delta will soon offer its basic economy fare on long-haul routes. Kjos, meanwhile, is orchestrating his next move: a partnership deal with at least one other budget airline to create an alliance that would allow passengers to seamlessly book across carriers. Together, Ryanair and easyJet shuttled some 17 million passengers around Europe in April alone. Funnelling a portion of those travellers to Norwegian’s transoceanic flights would boost business—and bring Kjos one step closer to realising his vision of a world connected by affordable flights.
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Mind and Machine
THE BIG BUSINESS OF BODY CAMS Efforts to bring more transparency to law enforcement have unleashed a new, high-stakes market for police technology By Alex Pasternack
Illustrations by Giacoma Bagnara
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On a grey afternoon in February, 18-year-old Curtis Deal was shot to death by a Baltimore detective. Police said Deal had darted away and, after a foot chase, turned and raised a handgun toward the undercover officer, who responded with a volley of gunfire. Two months later, on a Saturday night in the Dallas suburb of Balch Springs, an officer shot and killed 15-year-old Jordan Edwards, a passenger in a car that the officer said was backing toward him aggressively. Normally, official accounts of police fatally shooting black teenagers rest largely on the words of the officers involved, a fraught proposition when public trust of law enforcement is lower than it’s been in decades. But because these two officers were wearing body cameras—and both had remembered to activate them—they weren’t the only witnesses. In the case of Deal, the body-cam video backed up the officer’s account. But with Edwards, the recording revealed something different: The car carrying him was driving away when the policeman opened fire. The officer was charged with murder. These vital records of violent encounters have become more common as police departments in the US strap on body cameras as part of an effort to bring new transparency to their interactions with the public. Urged on by citizen activists eager for accountability—and supported by initial funding from the Barack Obama administration—this embrace of video represents one of the fastest technological upgrades in policing history. According to the US Department of Homeland Security, 95% of the country’s police departments are planning to implement body cameras; 20% already have. That has catalysed a gold rush, with startups, legacy equipment
R OB OCOP S Beyond Axon, myriad companies are changing the way police do business. Here’s a look
RECORDS MANAGEMENT
CAMERAS
INTELLIGENCE
COMMUNICATIONS
CLOUD STORAGE
With investors like Jeff Bezos, Ashton Kutcher and former CIA director David Petraeus, Mark43’s cloud-based software aims to update and consolidate ageing records and dispatch systems. Seattlebased Socrata allows governments to run raw data through machine-learning programs that spit out easy-to-understand visualisations, maps and graphs on everything from crime to transportation. Motorola Solutions, which has been making police walkie-talkies and radios for decades, is now investing in body cams (with built-in radios). Safariland, a policeequipment supplier, acquired cameramaker Vievu in 2015, and recently launched its own AI–enhanced video platform. Dozens of startups—including Utility, Digital Ally and Wolfcom—have also released their own devices and software. Companies PredPol and Hunchlab design algorithms to find trends in police data, which can be used both for predictive policing and to spot officers who use excessive force. Startups like Babel Street, Dataminr and Geofeedia build social media monitoring software that helps police scan accounts for keywords during a major event or around a specific location. RapidSOS is building a database that can help send location data from our smartphones to 911 dispatchers, who often have difficulty pinpointing callers. The Shotspotter system, from SST, uses sensors around a city to triangulate the sound of gunfire in real time, and alert police when and where shots are fired. Police departments typically house their digital evidence on piles of hard drives and CD-ROMs, but a torrent of bodycamera video—as much as 15 gigabytes per officer per day—has pushed them to cloud providers including Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services. Both companies offer subscription-based storage that meets federal standards for legal evidence, along with AI–based tools for tagging objects and recognising faces in videos.
suppliers and tech companies including Microsoft and Amazon all jostling for share of a market that some estimate could be worth more than R13 billion by 2020 (see sidebar). And no company is in a better position than Axon, which makes the cameras worn in Baltimore and most of the country’s largest cities—and, until recently, was known as Taser. Though the two-decade-old firm still produces almost all of the world’s police stun guns, its name change, announced in April, signals an ambition to dominate police video as well. In 2016, the company pulled in $268 million (R3.4 billion) in revenue; its camera services were the fastestgrowing segment, leaping 85% to hit $65 million (R846 million) in sales, thanks to new contracts with agencies such as the Los Angeles Police Department, which has purchased more than 7 000 devices. “We don’t see any reason why you should send a police officer on the street with a gun and no body camera,” says CEO Rick Smith, who engineered the name change for the company he founded. And as this new arm of his business grows, so does its impact on the future of policing. Taser was an early mover into body cameras. It launched its first device and its Evidence.com videostorage platform back in 2009. But it took a national crisis for the products to gain traction: a series of high-profile deaths—many of them unarmed black men—at the hands of police in 2014. In response, the Justice Department seeded $41 million (R534 million) in grants to go to body cameras, and police departments began gearing up. Today, Axon sells cameras to more than half of the country’s 69 major law-enforcement agencies, along with cloud storage and tools to analyse and share videos. The business of cameras is bigger than it appears: The hardware is a gateway to even more lucrative
subscriptions. Axon’s newest camera costs $399 (about R5 000); a subscription for Evidence.com’s software and storage can run as much as $79 (just over R1 000) per officer per month. Axon’s pitch is aggressive, and rivals have accused the company of anti-competitive tactics, including cultivating financial ties with police officials and coaching departments on how to use no-bid contracts. Last year, both New York and Phoenix had multimilliondollar camera deals in the works with Vievu, a company founded by a former Taser executive. Axon responded by accusing Vievu of peddling faulty devices—and offered free cameras to both cities. The products were declined, but after a new police chief in Phoenix reopened bidding for its contract, Vievu sued Axon for interference. Smith, battle-hardened from fending off decades’ worth of wrongful-death lawsuits over his company’s weapons, barely flinched. He countersued, and then took his camera-giveaway scheme national, offering a yearlong trial to every officer in the country—a bold move aimed at drawing more police into Axon’s ecosystem. The company’s association with Taser stun guns hasn’t exactly endeared it to the public. It’s a different story with law enforcement. “Police, frankly, love the company,” says Hadi Partovi, a Silicon Valley investor and cofounder of Code.org, who sits on
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Axon’s board. Smith has been careful to avoid positioning his cameras as vehicles for calling out—or cashing in on—police brutality. Instead, he cites studies like one from 2016 conducted by researchers at Cambridge University that links body-cam usage to a 93% reduction in complaints against officers. Outcomes like this, Smith argues, can save departments millions
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Mind and Machine
of dollars in legal fees and lost officer-hours each year. Capturing and managing mountains of video does get expensive—a realisation that has led some agencies to pause their body-camera programmes. (A department with 200 cameras could spend as much as $15 000/R195 000 per month on storage and analysis.) Smith says Axon’s software can change those financials, and he’s
embedding it with algorithms that will eventually automate the laborious process of watching, tagging, transcribing and redacting videos. Earlier this year, he bought an AI startup to help bolster this vision, and touts possible future crime-fighting tools like “predictive policing” and real-time face recognition. (Other camera companies, including Vievu, are also embracing AI.)
A 2014 report from the US Justice Department expressed concern over such tech, but Smith sees it as inevitable. If a camera were able to identify a “known cop killer”, he says, “we can’t expect an officer to not get that alert.” So far, discussions of how body cameras should be deployed— including what kind of encounters officers should record and how they analyse the video afterward— have taken place largely out of the public eye. Axon is happy to leave these questions to its partner police departments, a fact that civil-rights advocates find troubling. “These are companies whose business is something that’s very connected to the public interest,” says Barry Friedman, founding director of the Policing Project at NYU School of Law. “But they have a conception of public safety that’s been developed [by working with and in] law enforcement.” If cameras are being acquired on behalf of, and eventually paid for by, citizens, shouldn’t they have more input in the tech’s development and deployment? One of the biggest unresolved questions is when police should share videos with the public. In Baltimore, where trust of cops is brittle, police uploaded video of Curtis Deal’s shooting to their YouTube channel within 48 hours, easing tensions in the city. But many controversial recordings— like the one that captured the shooting of Jordan Edwards in Texas—are kept private, frustrating citizen activists. Seattle—home to Axon and Vievu—and its police union are wrestling with these issues ahead of a long-awaited rollout of Axon cameras. Kathleen O’Toole, the city’s reform-focused police chief, says cameras will give the public a valuable perspective on police work. But body cams shouldn’t eclipse broader investments in better training and community outreach. “Body cameras are not going to be a panacea,” she says.
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JUST THE RIGHT DOSE A new company is bringing transparency to medical marijuana By Claire Dodson
Illustration by The Project Twins
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Leading Edge
Hmbldt, a startup based in Los Angeles, wants to make medical marijuana as predictable as Advil. Now legal in 29 states in the US, cannabis is increasingly used to treat conditions ranging from nagging headaches to Parkinson’s. But it doesn’t always deliver dependable relief: There are more than 700 strains, each producing a different effect, and taking the right amount can be tricky. “We know that [marijuana] has all these incredible benefits, but it’s really hard to tailor your experience,” says Hmbldt co-founder Matt Seashols. To create more consistent medications, Seashols began by hiring scientists to identify which of the 483 known chemical compounds in cannabis are responsible for specific physiological effects, such as euphoria or drowsiness. The result: Hmbldt’s six concentrated oil formulas, which mix and match compounds to target specific conditions including anxiety, insomnia and pain. To deliver a controlled and ‘repeatable’ experience, Seashols partnered with a team of engineers to develop a vaporiser pen that activates the formula and vibrates when a single, 2.25-milligramme dose has been administered. The device is an improvement on standard pens, which don’t regulate dose, and on other methods of taking medical marijuana, such as joints and edibles. On the back of each Hmbldt package, there’s even a food-label-style list of ingredients that details the formula’s concentration of active ingredients like THC (tetrahydocannabinol) and CBD (cannabidiol). The spare, earthy branding (courtesy of the design firm Anomaly, an early investor in Hmbldt) evokes the hypertransparent aesthetic you may find on organic packaged food. Since Hmbldt launched in September 2016, its products have been sold at more than 150 dispensaries throughout California. “People want something that resonates with them like the rest of the stuff in their medicine cabinet or kitchen pantry,” says CEO Gunner Winston. “For us, it’s not about getting high. It’s about health.”
Thought Leadership
It’s us against the machines
Think differently, think creatively True power will remain with those who truly understand what it means to be human, says Rob Stokes.
Robot s are going to take over all our jobs. Here’s w hat can you do about it B y Rob S tokes
Jeff Immelt, outgoing CEO at General Electric and employer of 330 000 people, has been very firm in pushing back on the hype, saying that the notion of robots taking jobs in the next five years is just plain “bullshit!” He’s most certainly right, but one thing we know is that humans tend to overestimate technology in the short term, and underestimate it in the long run. The next five years aren’t going to look that different from today, but over a generation—a 25-year period—we’re most certainly in for absolute carnage in the job market. According to a recent study by Carl Frey and Michael Osborne out of Oxford, up to 47% of the jobs we know today won’t be around in 10 to 20 years. As a youngster or a parent, particularly in South Africa where we already have massive unemployment, that is a terrifying thought.
So, what can we do about it? I’ve thought about this question a lot, and have realised one fundamental truth: There are so many things that artificially intelligent machines can do better than humans, but there’s at least one thing they could never be— ‘human’. This leads me to conclude that it’s these very uniquely human abilities that will distinguish successful careers in the future from those eliminated by automation. What are these uniquely human abilities? There are many, but central to all of them is creative thinking. In business, this is the ability to solve an unexpected problem, or discover an opportunity with a breakthrough idea by joining different dots. The ability to think creatively is, for the most part, a uniquely human skill, and it’s an incredibly valuable one. Breakthrough innovation is where the big money lies in business; as a result, an increasing premium is being paid for it. So, not only will the ability to think creatively
become important for job seekers, but it will also become even more valuable to companies as they strive to find a competitive edge in a dog-eat-dog world. People with creative thinking and problem-solving skills will be very well-placed for the careers we don’t even know about yet, and to become high earners over the next generation. Over and above creative thinking, future careers will demand logical business thinkers who have an understanding of human behaviour and can use the magic of creative thinking to lead and grow organisations. Skills like leadership, empathy, adaptability, social intelligence and cutting-edge persuasion science will allow these people not only to master themselves as individuals but also to influence the teams they lead—and, most importantly, the customers they serve. True power will remain with those who truly understand what it means to be human. While this may not auger well for careers such as lawyers, doctors or accountants, the young minds who think differently and who are able to combine commercial logic with creative magic—and apply it to business— will step out of the shadows and thrive in an AI world. This is their moment to shine, and the world ahead will be very exciting for them. Fortunately, most people have this creative side to them; many just haven’t yet figured out how to use it. The world is changing faster than most of us realise. We’re living in a time like never before, and that manic change represents both enormous challenges and exciting opportunities. One can either hide from the inevitable or hurtle oneself at it. The careers that were once safe and secure, as long as you were really intelligent, are going fast. It’s time to embrace creative thinking and our unique humanness to ensure we’ll be great creators, inventors, leaders or entrepreneurs of the 21st century.
The careers that were once safe and secure, as long as you were really intelligent, are going fast. It’s time to embrace creative thinking.
Rob Stokes is the chairperson of the Red & Yellow School of Advertising in Cape Town. Driven by his love of people, technology and education, he is always seeking the next innovative idea, and has founded a number of his own tech and software companies.
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WITH THEIR INNOVATIVE MINDS AND UNWAVERING DEDICATION, THESE YOUNG SOUTH AFRICANS ARE WRITING THEIR OWN DESTINY AND CHANGING LIVES IN THE PROCESS. HOW OUR TOP MILLENNIALS ARE SHAPING INDUSTRIES FROM LAW, MEDIA AND POLITICS TO SPORT, FASHION AND ARCHITECTURE.
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FOR THREADING A TOUCH OF AFRICA INTO HIS DESIGNS Rich Mnisi Founder, Rich Mnisi fashion brand
“Growing up, I was always in awe of my sister’s desire to make things and outshine her friends; she looked at a pair of jeans and saw a skirt. The way she reworked and altered clothing inspired me to experiment with fashion myself. By the age of 5, I was cutting up fabric, wrapping curtains around my body, and making clothes for my paper dolls from the pages of glossy magazines.”
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When Leaders in the Science of Fashion attended his Johannesburg high school’s career day, Rich Mnisi realised his childhood pastime needn’t be left behind, and convinced his mother that fashion was where he belonged. During his studies, Mnisi interned at prestigious design houses like Abigail Betz and Augustine, where he gained some of the first valuable industry experience that helped fast-track his career to the revered place it is today. “From the early days, Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week was my seasonal home. The models, the fabric, the proportions all excited me so much—and I fantasised about my clothes being on those runways.” Mnisi’s dedication and commitment certainly paid off when, soon after graduating with a BA in Fashion Design and Business Management, he was crowned African Fashion International’s Young Designer of the Year for 2014, which inspired him to start his first fashion label called OATH. He describes this young-at-heart brand as one that took pop culture as its
soul and inspiration to tell its unique African story. There’s always been a distinctly African aesthetic in Mnisi’s work, which is light and playful. It maintains a contemporary outlook while bringing together different worlds of artistic imagination inspired by film, music, art and nature. “It’s the idea of searching beyond the surface that appeals most to me. Our African heritage is multifaceted and, as creatives, we should all be exploring some part of it; in my work, this conversation may be serious, playful or even nonsensical at times— but it’s always honest.” OATH scooped accolades at the 2014 Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, which further propelled Mnisi’s career and helped him be selected for the Design Indaba Emerging Creatives Programme 2015. “Under the OATH brand, I collaborated with many other local designers who
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Fashion statement “I’m ready to take on the responsibility of being my own brand, which represents an African identity, a location and a presence,” says Mnisi.
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helped me forge my own aesthetic and style. I worked with [stylist and art director] Gabrielle Kannemeyer and [photographer] Kristin-Lee Moolman on OATH’s Spring/Summer 2016 collection, which was photographed in my late grandmother’s house in Soweto. This, for me, was both an emotional and inspirational time.” OATH was transformed into a sustainable business with the launch of the brand’s online store and blog. Although he was making a name for himself, after a while Mnisi felt that OATH was moving away from what he was trying to achieve as a young African fashion designer. Changing the brand’s name to Rich Mnisi at the end of 2015 was, says the 25-year-old, his first big step toward becoming a more self-assured designer and building his unique persona in the world of fashion. “I’ve grown aware of my blackness and its greatness, which OATH didn’t represent strongly enough. Rich Mnisi is part of a bigger conversation that goes beyond fashion. I’ve reached a point in my career where I’m ready to take on the responsibility of being my own brand, which represents an African identity, a location and a presence.” In the three short years since starting his own label, Rich Mnisi has become one of the most talkedabout fashion success stories that has grabbed the attention of both local and international media. Some of the qualities to which Mnisi attributes his success as a leading fashion designer are persistence, consistency and curiosity. But he says grit and determination to succeed cannot be underrated, either. Mnisi has high hopes for the future of South African fashion, and believes the industry currently finds itself in a very promising place. Most of all, he admires emerging designers for continuing to come out with fresh ideas and strong perspectives that challenge the status quo. “Among young designers, there’s consciousness, unity and a sharing of ideas. It’s because of that consciousness that we’re growing together and succeeding in the industry.”
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Not just a pretty face Chetty says it’s an exciting time in sport, as more women are taking up roles like referees and lines people, as well as sports journalists.
FOR LENDING A FEMALE VOICE TO SPORTS PROGRAMMING Chervon Chetty Radio producer, SABC
Being an ardent sports fan, it’s little wonder Chervon Chetty found herself a job as an intern at a sports show on SAfm. Since then, she has produced numerous other sports radio programmes at the SABC.
In 2011, she won the gsport Personal Account Writer of the Year award, and in 2013 she was part of the SAfm Sports Special team who won the MTN Radio Award (now the Liberty Radio Award) for Sports Show of the Year (public broadcast station). If you asked anyone in the radio and sporting industries, they’d affirm how passionate Chetty is about what she does. “Working seven days a week is hard, but I absolutely love my job and it makes it all worth it,” she says. “I love the rush live radio gives you—it’s addictive. There’s nothing more satisfying than an idea materialising on live radio, and being accepted as a success by your peers and listeners.” Being one of the few women involved in the predominantly male sports broadcasting industry is nothing short of satisfying, she says. “Sure, it’s hard to be taken seriously; however, I’ve noticed
a shift starting to happen with more and more women being recognised for their passion, knowledge and opinions in sport—and not their looks. It’s an exciting time where we get to see females being given the same opportunities as men (as referees and lines people), and the same goes for women in sports journalism. I’m so honoured to be a part of this movement,” Chetty adds. Some of her career highlights include watching rising stars—like reigning Moto3 champion Brad Binder from South Africa—achieve their goals, and meeting her ultimate sports hero, former Springbok captain John Smit. She has been involved in interviews with international legends such as racing drivers Alain Prost and Mark Webber, footballer Didi Hamann, and tennis sisters Serena and Venus Williams, among others. Beyond her career, Chetty adores travelling—not only for visiting beautiful places but more so to learn incredibly valuable life lessons. “We’re all so caught up in our own lives that we forget there’s an entire planet out there: new cultures to be exposed to and to indulge in; new people to meet, and new experiences to live through. All these things provide you with opportunities to see life in different colours and learn new things—and above all, to appreciate what you have back home.”
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FOR GIVING AFRICANS A H E R I TA G E PRODUCT TO DRINK TO Khanyi Pupuma Owner, Ekhaya Brewery
It wasn’t too long after being intrigued by the taste of his first craft beer at Cape Town’s BEERHOUSE that Khanyi Pupuma added beermaking to his list of successful business endeavours— all while studying toward a degree in quantity surveying at the University of Cape Town. 42 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A JULY 2017
As a young man in East London, Pupuma was already getting his entrepreneurial feet wet. His first business was a chain of hair salons in the city, and by the time he was onto his second startup running tuktuks in competition with the local taxi business, he had learnt that disrupting the market was the best way into any industry as an entrepreneur. The establishment of Pupuma’s craft beer business wasn’t any different. Soon after attending a beermaking workshop and homebrewing a few batches for friends, the commercial potential of his new hobby got the young man thinking of ways to break into the South African market. Without the necessary capital to go on his own, in 2015 he started out making beer
under contract at Stone Circle Brewery, where he was able to upscale his production and begin selling commercially. Craft beer, in both South Africa and abroad, is a beverage that almost exclusively targets the white middle-class, and Pupuma has brought his uniquely African product into the market to rectify this. He wants to remind black South Africans about the role of beer in their culture (like the traditional Xhosa umqombothi), and to create something of which they can be proud. Inspired to represent African heritage, particularly that of his ancestors, the first two beer varietals Pupuma produced were Jwarha African Lager and Dlamini Royal Ale, which both took their isiXhosa
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A taste of the past “I want my beer to restore pride in black African heritage and re-establish our identity as clan members,” says Pupuma.
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names from his father’s and mother’s clans respectively. “I’m building a brand that truly represents the African people and their cultural heritage. Clans are an integral part of our heritage—but with the influence of Western culture, they’re slowly dying out. I want my beer to restore pride in black African heritage and re-establish our identity as clan members,” he says. There may be hundreds of craft breweries in Cape Town alone, but what makes Pupuma’s stand out from the rest is his product’s unique position in a market saturated with American and European influenced products. He regularly promotes his brand at events such as the Cape Town Festival of Beer and Woodstock Winter Beer Festival, where consumers are able to taste and purchase his range and meet the brewmaster himself. Since bursting onto the scene just two years ago, Pupuma has made his brand’s presence felt in the craft-beer space and enjoyed a very warm reception. The Capetonian beerdrinking public has certainly found a palate for his beer, and today he supplies in excess of 3 000 bottles each month to restaurants and liquor stores all over the city. “The exponential growth of my business in less than three years has been the most exciting part of the journey so far.” Aside from an eye trained to spot opportunity, Pupuma also points to sheer hard work and perseverance in the face of adversity as qualities required to be a successful businessperson. He adds that it would benefit the youth immensely if lessons in entrepreneurship were part of the South African school curriculum. Since launching the Ekhaya Brewery brand, Pupuma has been in the process of moving his brewing operation to new premises where he will be able to produce beer on a much larger scale as he prepares for national distribution before eventually moving into the rest of Africa. “We have big things happening in the immediate future. As of almost right now, three new beers will be added to our range— and with the additional production capacity at our new premises, there’ll be a lot more noise being made about Ekhaya Brewery!”
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FOR H AV I N G THE RIGHT INGREDIENTS FOR SUCCESS
Glen Foxcroft Williams Head chef, co-owner, Foxcroft Restaurant
“My father used to do all the cooking at home. He grew his own vegetables and was always very creative in the kitchen. Having lived all over the world when he was younger, he was influenced by many different culinary styles that were evident in the dishes he made. As a boy, I would spend time in the kitchen with my father, which is when my love for cooking started.” 44 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A JULY 2017
From his home kitchen, Glen Foxcroft Williams began his culinary career as a trainee chef while studying professional cookery part-time at the Institute for Hospitality Education in Cape Town. He completed a pastry course in addition to a professional cookery diploma, simply because he thought it might be a worthy addition to his CV—but in his first job as a trainee, he discovered a passion for pastry that would become his forte. “I really enjoyed pastry, because everything I learnt was completely new to me. I was drawn in by the precision it required as well as the creativity it allowed me. Unlike in the hot kitchen where you have to rely on how things look in their natural state, with pastry everything that you put on the plate is manufactured in some way, and there’s more licence to experiment earlier in your career.” At 21, Williams was promoted to pastry chef at award-winning La Colombe restaurant, where he had begun working in 2010 under executive chef Scot Kirton. “Foxcroft actually started with the idea of me and Scot opening a bakery. I’d set my heart on owning my own business by the time I turned 26, and had spoken to him about these plans very informally. Scot showed support and agreed to back me financially. Once we started looking at premises for our venture, we agreed to open a
restaurant rather than just a bakery.” As a testament to their hard work and success, soon after the pair had opened Foxcroft at its Constantia venue in October 2016 they scooped the Eat Out/Mercedes-Benz Restaurant Award for New Restaurant of the Year. Williams explains that what he’s trying to achieve with his menu at Foxcroft is to execute food of the same calibre as its ‘sister’ restaurant La Colombe, but in a more casual setting. Although the cuisine is simpler, it’s made with the same quality ingredients and approached with a similar mentality. “We want Foxcroft to be a place that people visit every week— and we have plenty locals who do. Our guests should feel they can arrive in their shorts and T-shirt and just have a good time, get their hands dirty eating chicken wings without worrying about it.” When asked what helped contribute to his impressive accomplishments as a young restaurateur, Williams says the ties that Foxcroft has with La Colombe have definitely played a part in its immense success. “My association with La Colombe helped me in terms of the skills and values I learnt working there, but also having the well-established restaurant closely associated with Foxcroft meant we had all the right people visiting the restaurant and lots of
good publicity straight off the bat.” Kirton, who has become knowledgeable of the restaurant business through his many years of experience in the industry, has offered his unwavering support to the young restaurateur as a fellow chef and coinvestor. “I’ve learnt a lot from Scot, and he’s been a great mentor to me. The kind of financial backing I got from him is something that doesn’t happen very often for people of my age.” Looking back on his short but decorated career as a young restaurateur so far, what Williams values and appreciates most is having found the right person to support and invest in him. “Trying to raise the capital for a business is very difficult. If I’d approached the banks on my own steam, they would’ve laughed at me. Meeting someone who trusted in me has been a huge boost to my career and also helped to instil selfconfidence in my abilities.” So, what’s next on the cards for Chef Williams? “The doors of Foxcroft haven’t even been open for a year,” is his reply. “We’re still in the process of turning the business into a well-oiled machine and paying off the restaurant before we can think too far ahead.” That said, Williams still wants to open a stand-alone bakery, and he’s currently working on a pop-up concept that he hopes to launch at the beginning of next year.
Photograph by Claire Gunn
Winning recipe What Williams appreciates most is having found the right person in Scot Kirton to support and invest in him.
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Girl power Nkholise believes the biggest development of the fourth Industrial Revolution is going to be led by women.
FOR HELPING COMPANIES DEVISE I N N OVAT I V E IDEAS TO DISRUPT MARKETS
Nneile Nkholise Founder, iMED Tech Group, Likoebe Innovation Consultants
After being honoured as one of Africa’s Top Women Innovators by the World Economic Forum in 2016, Nneile Nkholise has made very impressive strides on her entrepreneurial journey. A creative spirit from an early age, she has always had an intuitive mind eager to explore; it came as no surprise to her when she could conceive ideas that were far better than those of her peers. Back in 1999, as a Grade 6 pupil, Nkholise took up the challenge of a school project that focused on an unpopular illness at the time: cancer. “The project was my breakthrough, because it sparked an interest that led me to start exploring what my role could be in the treatment of the disease,” she says. “Although I never chose to pursue the path of being a medical professional, I understood that engineering had a vital role in the treatment of cancer. During varsity, I exposed myself to additive manufacturing in prosthetic fabrication, particularly for people who have lost a body feature due to cancer.” The mechanical engineering graduate cut her teeth as a technologist in the construction sector with the Department of Public Works in the Free State. She was not completely fulfilled in that role, however, as she felt it was steering her away from innovative design and solutions for cancer patients. Nkholise then initiated a move to a reputable engineering consulting firm where she was excited by the passion of fellow mechanical engineers. “I was very fortunate to have spent time with people who taught me the value of building, and being part of
a corporate culture that every employee upholds while creating an environment where everyone is valued.” Nkholise felt strongly about blazing her own trail in the industry to align her passions for innovative design and mechanical engineering. So, armed with a highly technical background and a childhood dream, she founded her first company, iMED Tech, which uses additive manufacturing to design breast and facial prostheses for cancer and burn victims. She hires only young, female mechanical engineers, as she believes “the biggest development of the fourth Industrial Revolution is going to be led by women, and it’s important that we empower them and give them endless opportunities so that they can be skilled enough to push Africa forward.” But soon Nkholise realised she hadn’t been prepared for the management aspect of a business. “I found myself taking too many risks. By July 2016, I was penniless and my health had also taken a knock.” It was at that point that she grasped the importance of reaching out to other entrepreneurs with similar ideals, for their mentorship and collaboration.
She was able to apply the new lessons learnt in establishing her next business venture, Likoebe Innovations, as part of iMED Tech Group. “Likoebe was built from the realisation that different companies have a keen desire to innovate new products that could propel business growth exponentially,” she explains. “Part of our innovation involves staging moderate interventions to existing products, as well as selling product concepts to specific companies. In some instances, we have clients who commission specific specs.” Likoebe Innovations has a much broader focus than her first venture, as it incorporates new digital technologies such as artificial intelligence, robotics, nanotechnology and the Internet of Things. “Despite our passion for cancer treatment, we also have a deep passion for childhood development, and are currently creating children’s musical toys that play African sounds,” she adds. Nkholise recently won the 2017 South African Youth Award in the category Science, Technology & Innovation, as well as the overall Presidential Award for the contributions she has made through both her entrepreneurial endeavours.
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Back in action Only six months after defeating cancer, Brittain competed in the World Rowing Championships.
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FOR HOLDING FAST AGAINST THE CURRENT Lawrence Brittain
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Olympic silver medallist rower
Lawrence Brittain’s determination and passion are evident in everything he does. His unapologetic diligence at working toward what he wants to achieve has garnered an Olympic Silver Medal and a spot on South Africa’s firstever World Rowing Championship Gold Medal–winning crew. He has overcome many obstacles— none greater than stage-four cancer.
Brittain began rowing while at Parktown Boys’ High School, and in 2009 joined the South African rowing squad. The commitment that the sport demands at this level comes with a huge amount of sacrifice, but he has stuck to it without complaint— even after a slump in his rowing career following his failure to qualify for the 2012 London Summer Olympics. Despite training harder and better, he was just not improving his times. Then came a big blow in 2014: Brittain was diagnosed with stage-4 Hodgkin’s lymphoma which, the doctors said, he’d probably had for two years. While on chemotherapy, he had to battle nausea, bone pain, hair loss, weight gain and constant fatigue. Even during this period he was amazingly positive, despite the treatment having the potential to cause such serious damage to his body that he would unlikely be able to row again. Very soon, however, Brittain was in remission; he got in the boat and started the long journey back to the top. “He was amazing during this time, and he always talks about how he felt as if he had let go of a massive weight holding him down,” says his girlfriend Nicky Mundell. Only six months after defeating cancer, he competed in the World Rowing Championships in France. While his crew didn’t obtain a medal, Brittain had won indeed. By 2016, he was the fastest he had ever been, and after a few close losses earlier in the year, he and crewmate Shaun Keeling won the Olympic Silver Medal for their country in Rio. The young rower is a perfect example of what determination, passion and positivity can achieve. Tokyo 2020, here comes Lawrence Brittain . . .
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FOR C R E AT I N G CAREER OPPORTUNITIES IN TECH FOR YOUNG WOMEN Emma Dicks Co-founder, director, Code for Cape Town; co-founder, CodeSpace
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A shocking global statistic that keeps 28-year-old Emma Dicks hard at work is that only one in five IT company executives is a woman—meaning the critical strategic decisions within this space are predominantly made by men. Oddly enough, the reason Dicks’s successful enterprise, CodeSpace, actually exists today is only by virtue of her decision not to study computer science. While interning at a local tech company during her BCom degree, she was introduced to a team who was building software that would completely change how public healthcare was delivered. “It dawned upon me how misinformed I was about coding: how creative it can actually be, and the social impact it can have. At the same time, I realised I was capable of coding myself, and that computer science wasn’t as unachievable as I‘d been led to believe.” The same epiphany helped Dicks realise that careers in technology are not something to which young South African women are suitably exposed or even encouraged to consider. Code for Cape Town aims to ignite young women’s aspirations and bring new options to the table which might not have been in the realm of possibility. Code for Cape Town was born out of Innovate South Africa—an organisation co-founded by Dicks soon after graduating—which runs a series of youth innovation challenges aimed at helping young students prototype their most pioneering ideas. In 2014, she co-founded and launched her high-school girls’ programme, Code for Cape Town, as a means of empowering young women to leverage technology for social innovation and encourage greater diversity in the African tech industry. Just one year later, she was presented with the Queen’s Young Leaders Award at Buckingham Palace for her efforts. Code for Cape Town courses were initially offered exclusively in the Cape Town township of Khayelitsha before classrooms opened up across the city. They provide female students with an introduction to coding as well as problem-solving
Changing the Bro Code “Every time I walk into a company where there’s a bunch of white males building software, it motivates me even more to see my girls there, too,” says Dicks.
and lifeskills that will allow them to contribute meaningfully to South Africa’s innovation space. Code for Cape Town has since moved outside of the Innovate South Africa brand to form part of a new organisation called CodeSpace, which also comprises CodeSpace Academy, where 18- to 24-year-olds of both sexes can enrol in specialised training for industry placement as web developers. Contributing to the dynamic learning experience offered to students through CodeSpace’s programmes is the enterprise’s close ties with the IT industry. As part of the Code for Cape Town curriculum, students spend approximately 15 days in a local tech company, working under the supervision of a code coach. Throughout the programme, inspirational female guest speakers talk about their day-to-day experiences working in the industry, and give pointers to students about how to thrive in a 21st century working environment. In the years prior to 2017, Code for Cape Town classrooms catered to only non-white students from varied household incomes, “but this year we’ve enrolled students from a broader range of schools across the city and created truly diverse classrooms in terms of both income and race,” says Dicks. In 2017, Code for Cape Town was able to grant 60 young women (100% of its student intake) full bursaries for their course. “When a student shows potential for a career in technology, we want to remove the barriers that stand in their way by providing the necessary education and training. Ideally, we would like our courses to be free for everyone—and if we receive sufficient support from industry, that’s entirely possible.” In addition to the opportunities CodeSpace offers in terms of learning and resources for young South Africans, the company works hard to build partnerships with schools, Internet cafés and other tech spaces where students can use a computer should they not have access to one at home. CodeSpace also helps to initiate and run other coding academies for youth organisations, especially where adequate funding is available but not the necessary expertise to teach coding. As Dicks says, “Where help is required, we step in and provide our curriculum, methodology and software to these organisations. By increasing the capacity of other organisations, we hope to provide tech education on the scale that our economy requires”. Looking back on her own action-packed career so far, Dicks hasn’t had one particular role model,
but continues on a daily basis to meet people who use their skills for social innovation—something that inspires her immensely. “I really admire people who have the ability to identify a problem and use their unique skillsets to do something about it.” Through her organisation, Dicks aspires to increase the number of young African women creating technology, especially for social innovation. Her longterm plan is to have coding schools across
major African tech hubs, with interregional exchanges of young people who are all building technology. She believes that once this happens, we’ll start seeing all sorts of positive ripple effects, such as more female-led businesses and African-built startups. “Every time I walk into a company where there’s a bunch of white males building software, it motivates me even more to see my girls there, too, having the same strategic impact.”
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Keeping an eye out Numerous research and conservation projects in the greater Kruger area rely on information generated through posts on Ossendryver’s website.
FOR HARNESSING THE POWER OF THE WILD, WILD WEB Nadav Ossendryver Founder, CEO, Latest Sightings
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Launched in 2012 by Nadav Ossendryver at the age of 15, the Latest Sightings website is an inspirational example of what a young entrepreneur can accomplish with the help of 21st century technology. An obsessive Kruger Park visitor since he was just a small boy, his favourite pastime was asking his parents to flag down passing motorists to find out from them which animals they’d seen. When his parents tired of these shenanigans, Nadav looked to technology to solve the problem and established his website which today comprises a dedicated community of nearly 500 000 members.
Using the concept of crowdsourcing, Ossendryver created Latest Sightings by curating an online collection of photo and video content of wild animals in Africa’s national parks and other parts of the world. His loyal community of members upload their animal sightings onto the site to share their experience with other wildlife enthusiasts. Visitors to the website are even able to join a safari and experience real-time game viewing within the Kruger National Park from the back of a 4x4 vehicle. Ossendryver’s YouTube channel, Kruger Sightings, is the most watched South African–based channel, with over 15 million views per month. As an animal fanatic, Ossendryver thought he might one day become a game ranger or guide, but that’s about as far as he imagined his love for the bush would go—before Latest Sightings exploded. “When I first had the idea for my website, I never thought it would be anything more than something to help me and like-minded people see more animals. It’s really exciting to have the opportunity to build this hobby into a business.” His immense passion for wildlife, which is shared by his ever expanding online community, has played a significant part in the success of his site. “The wildlife fanatics in our online community are keen to share their passion with others. I think my own obsession with the Kruger has really helped the website to get to where it has
today. When I’m excited about having just seen a lion or a leopard, my enthusiasm comes across in the messaging of my posts. Long before we had the thousands of followers and contributors we do today, the community was still as dedicated to us and so grateful that we were helping them see more animals in the wild.” Members of Latest Sightings are able to earn money from videos they upload, which is dependent on the number of views their posts attract. If a video goes viral—as many on the website have already done—the creators can earn thousands of rands from a single one. “One of our members is a pensioner from Kempton Park who has earned more than R250 000 from his posts on our site. There was one video, in particular, that he uploaded—of a lion in Kruger that approached a vehicle and growled at it before walking off. The video has about 100 million views. You never quite know which ones will go viral, but when you have a dedicated community of a few hundred thousand people, this content tends to come around more regularly.” Since Ossendryver finished matric and returned home after two years of travel, he’s been able to focus more time and energy on his business. But since starting to study part-time toward a BCom degree, there has been added pressure. “I have an office to run and staff, so managing that as well as the app and online community means I’m working
from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day. There’s a lot more work to do now.” From something as simple as sharing wildlife sightings online, Ossendryver and his online community also contribute to the preservation of animals. Today, numerous research and conservation projects being undertaken in the greater Kruger area rely on the information generated through the sightings posted by his members. Through Ossendryver’s website, there are thousands of animal sightings being recorded all the time, which allows researchers to keep track of their locations and use the data generated. “In 2015, around 50% of all martial eagle sightings in Africa were made by members of the Latest Sightings online community,” he says with pride. “It’s incredible that half of the information gathered for this large-scale Endangered Wildlife Trust project came directly from our website. For example, it could take researchers weeks to track down a pack of wild dog, but with the information they get from sightings posted on our website, they’re often able to locate animals much faster.” The emerging conservation aspect of his business is something Ossendryver finds both exciting and rewarding. Injured or trapped animals are often reported through his website, which greatly benefits wildlife conservation. In many cases, rangers will follow leads from the Latest Sightings online community and go out to help
animals in distress. “Reports of injured animals are often seen first on Latest Sightings, and there have been many cases of civilians being directly involved in the saving of animals, which are documented on YouTube.” He’s currently working with developers to build technology that will place wildlife sightings posted through his website onto a geolocated map that’s accurate up to five metres, completely revolutionising the game-viewing experience. Users will be able to see which animals were sighted, as well as where and when they were last seen. When asked whether he has any concerns that posted sightings may help lead poachers directly to endangered animals such as rhino, Ossendryver says that in the interest of safety, videos and photographs of rhino are never shared on his website; he adds, however, that the aforementioned positives of geolocating sightings far outweigh the potential negatives. Ossendryver has prioritised the further development of the business side of Latest Sightings. He has started collaborating with game lodges, providing sighting boards for them where guests can use the Latest Sightings app to post their photos and videos. “In exchange for the content and exposure we give to these lodges, they offer our members discounts on their accommodation. Some of our members are earning from their content, and this is another area where we are trying to expand our business.”
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FOR TURNING A HOBBY INTO A COMPETITIVE SPORT Ashton Muller and Michelé Brondani Co-founders, Goliath Gaming
e-Sports—multiplayer video games played competitively for spectators, typically by professional gamers—is a hot topic, being one of the fastest growing markets in the world (almost 12% per year). It draws more viewers globally than the NBA, with an estimated 180 million-strong audience expected worldwide by 2019. 54 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A JULY 2017
In South Africa, e-sports organisations like Mettlestate host tournaments to unearth talent and to empower pro gamers. More brands are getting involved and throwing their support behind these tournaments and the industry in general. Telkom, for instance, in April this year rebranded its Digital Gaming League into a standalone subsidiary called VS Gaming. These developments will allow more South African players to compete professionally and turn their hobby into a career. Two such e-sports players are Ashton Muller and Michelé Brondani—or “Golz” and “Stickalish” as they’re known in the gaming world. The duo have
2-player Ashton Muller (Golz) and Michelé Brondani (Stickalish) are blowing up consoles around the world with their e-sports multigaming organisation.
been good friends since high school. Muller is a competitive Counter Strike player, while Brondani’s forte is Defense of the Ancients (DOTA). While Muller and Brondani compete in different e-sport titles and have been part of various teams over the years, in 2017 they created their own multi-gaming organisation, Goliath Gaming, comprising a Counter Strike and a DOTA 2 team. Muller’s gaming career spans more than a decade. “It all started when I was
about 13 years old, and my older brother was invited to a LAN session [a gathering of people with computers or compatible game consoles for the purpose of playing multiplayer video games]. When I found out about it, I obviously wanted to go and begged to join him. My parents decided that he could only go if he took his (annoying younger) brother with him.” It was at that LAN that he discovered Counter Strike and various other games. He played Counter Strike casually for two
years, and then realised he could actually take it “beyond just a hobby”. In 2015, the e-sports team of which Muller was a member secured an invite to the Electronic Sports World Cup (now known as the eSports World Convention) in Paris. It was at this international tournament that Muller and his team realised the vast difference in e-sports play between the international teams and those from South Africa. “It was clear they were getting paid to play e-sports competitively, and for us it was more of a hobby at the time,” he says. Muller was the one who introduced Brondani to the world of e-sports. Before getting into gaming, however, he was a soccer fanatic. He obtained national colours for the sport and competed in tournaments in Brazil, Sweden, the UK and Portugal, among others. Sadly, an injury forced him to take a break from the ballgame. It was during that period, still in high school, while “hanging out” at Muller’s house, that Brondani got his first taste of e-sports. “I woke up to Ashton playing a shooting game on the computer—it intrigued me. When I became more familiar with what exactly that game was all about, I got my own gaming rig and started playing CS with Ashton daily. I was later introduced to Ashton’s other gaming friends, who all played DOTA. I gave it a go and was immediately hooked!” It has been much debated whether e-sport can be considered ‘a real sport’. Brondani’s transition from soccer (a physical sport) to gaming (electronic) has provided him with the personal experience and perspective of both sides of the coin; he affirms that e-sport is indeed a real sport. There are different games, which are played in professionally run leagues; there are large numbers of both gamers and spectators; top players can earn upward of R15 million per year; and gamers train for long periods, and study strategy and technique. “It’s been about four years since I watched a game of soccer,” says Brondani. “I used to imagine that one day when I had kids, I’d encourage them to get into soccer at a young age—just as my dad did with me. But now, I’d give them the opportunity to play computer games as well!”
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With her writing, acting and inspirational community work, Buhle Ngaba wants to give agency to the disempowered black South African youth so that they can finally be heard. Provoked by the predominantly white narrative of popular children’s literature, her main prerogative is to encourage young people of colour to write themselves into existence.
FOR HELPING YOUNG BLACK SOUTH AFRICAN WOMEN FIND THEIR VOICE
Buhle Ngaba Founder, KaMatla Productions, author, actress
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“Writing began for me as soon as I started interacting with books, from the age of 6 when my aunt gave me my first one,” she says. “I was passionate about telling stories, and I don’t think I would be the person I am if I hadn’t come to love reading the way I did.” But how she came to be an author is a truly remarkable story in itself. Without enough money to buy her aunt a birthday gift, Ngaba wrote her a short children’s story loosely based on their relationship. Just minutes before printing the makeshift book at a local copy shop, she titled it The Girl Without a Sound and posted a photograph of its cover on social media. The response was overwhelming, to say the least. Ngaba told her audience at TEDxTableMountain in 2016 that people who saw her post were excited about the book and started asking where they could buy it, unaware there existed only one— almost accidental—handmade copy. Instead of admitting it didn’t exist, she told those interested that the book would be available in a month’s time, and went about writing it in earnest. The Girl Without a Sound was made available digitally for free download, which also received an incredible response. It tells the story of a voiceless girl of colour who’s helped by a mythical woman to find the beautiful voice trapped inside of her. The text addresses both the lack of black representation in children’s literature and recognises that the voices of young South African girls are often not heard in our patriarchal world that’s preoccupied with race. Ngaba didn’t anticipate writing
something that would become the catalyst for so much more. From a young girl who always dreamt of being an actress and sharing narratives, she now wants to write stories of her own and encourage others to tell theirs, too. But writing her first book was just one on a list of noble achievements. The 26-year-old Rhodes University graduate has performed in numerous National Arts Festival and television productions as a young actress. Throughout 2012 and 2013, she developed and starred in several theatrical pieces encouraging young women to develop strength, pride and identity. While studying processes of performance at the University of Leeds, she helped a group of women seeking asylum in the UK to create theatre for a refugee conference. She has also worked with the Bokamoso Youth Foundation on workshop programmes that encourage innovation in social development. Furthermore, Ngaba has collaborated with the Black Professionals Scholarship Fund to run drama workshops in Johannesburg, educating children about the law; now she’s working on staging similar workshops in the North West province with the Ruth Mompati Foundation, named after her great-aunt Dr Ruth Segomotsi Mompati. Ngaba has also written a script for a movie (in which she will star) about the life of this inspirational woman—one of the first to join uMkhonto we Sizwe. In 2015, Ngaba founded her non-profit organisation KaMatla Productions, which is focused on promoting the arts in under-
privileged communities and developing storytelling among young black South African women. KaMatla has also identified a need among schoolgirls—especially in rural South Africa—for safe, affordable sanitary products. Without access to these essentials, girls frequently miss days of school, which has serious implications for their education. Ngaba believes the manner in which menstruation is handled in these communities also has far-reaching consequences for the girls’ well-being. KaMatla plans to launch a campaign proposing that menstruation form part of educational policy planning and development. So, what motivates Ngaba to rally tirelessly for female literary representation and stick up so fervently for South African youth? Her goal is to create a world in which black women are protagonists in narratives written for them, by them. She believes that if people of colour can’t see themselves within unreal, imagined worlds, then they cannot realistically become doctors, lawyers, actors or singers. Ngaba is also of the opinion that South African literature does not include enough female writers—and the fact that some vital books penned by women are no longer in print is a dishonour to South African literature. She proposes that the best way forward in this regard is for female writers to saturate the industry with their stories until they are heard. Young people in South Africa today are mobilising and becoming proactive about creating a brighter future for themselves, and Ngaba is excited about the sense of urgency for change that characterises this generation.
FOR ADDING ANOTHER DIMENSION TO DRAWING
George Safi Architectural renderer
The young George Safi decided early on to pursue a career in information technology. A rigorous two-year international Baccalaureate diploma from a high school in Lesotho gave him the time to think about further studies in South Africa. “I thought that the field of IT, and specifically computer programming, was where I wanted to put my focus. However, as it turns out, I would eventually pursue a hybrid version of my initial goal,” he notes.
It was during his gap year that Safi took a trip through Europe’s major cities in Britain, France and Italy. Seeing all the classical architecture inspired him to pursue a degree that would allow him to explore this avenue. Upon his return, he joined the architecture programme at the University of Cape Town. “I love architecture itself, but my real passion was for architectural representation, which is producing architectural drawings using newer methods such as 3D rendering. My interest in IT allowed me to take a different approach to showing my work to lecturers, through 3D images as opposed to the usual 2D line drawings that are the norm for architectural work.” Safi now provides high-end 3D rendering services to several architectural, engineering and developer firms in the Western Cape. He points out that it’s incredibly important to ensure there’s a market for a development long before the first brick is laid on a project. “Even people building their first home want to be able to see exactly what their dream looks like before they commit to it. That’s where I found my niche. I provide people with a means to realise what it is they want to make and create, and to share and sell those ideas to others.” This makes projects much more viable, as it’s always easier to gauge the reception of a product and to catch any problems much earlier than, say, during the building phase. “The next platform that I have begun to explore is that of virtual reality, and how this can further immerse my clients in their dream designs,” Safi adds. “From 2017 onward, I will be looking to expand my business with these new technologies as well as hire other young individuals who wish to learn how to provide such services to the building and design industries.” Safi has learnt many valuable business and life lessons so far. “I’ve found that in the past five years, while technical skill is important, the most important abilities I’ve developed and come to rely on are those that deal with social interactions. I feel that as important as education in technical skill is, the most important thing youngsters can do is make the decision to work for themselves and cultivate the ability to find and convince people that there’s value in whatever service it is they wish to offer.”
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FOR H AV I N G A GREEN I N N OVAT I O N IN THE BAG
Thato Kgatlhanye Co-founder, Rethaka
In South Africa’s rural schools, the final ring of the bell not only signals the end of the day’s learning but for many children it also means the beginning of a long walk on busy and dangerous roads to get home and complete their homework before sunset. The Repurpose Schoolbag is an innovative solution that was developed by then-18-year-old Thato Kgatlhanye from Rustenburg. She combined the problem of plastic pollution with solar energy to increase access to education and improve the lives of underprivileged children. 58 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A JULY 2017
There can’t be more than a handful of manufacturing businesses in South Africa started by a young black female, and even fewer by an entrepreneur fresh out of Grade 12. Founded in 2013, Rethaka manufactures purpose-driven products that improve the lives of women and children living in low-income communities by using green innovations. Its flagship product is the Repurpose Schoolbag made from 100% recycled plastic, which has changed the daily lives of disadvantaged students around the country. Each satchel/backpack is fitted with a solar-powered lamp that charges while children walk to and from school, allowing them to study after dark regardless of whether they have electricity or paraffin at home. The reflective material of the satchels also increases visibility to motorists so that children can travel more safely between school and home each day. The idea for the ingenious schoolbagcum-night-lamp has earned Kgatlhanye worldwide recognition and numerous accolades (and praise from Bill Gates), but one particular submission—to the SAB Foundation Social Innovation Awards— earned her a cash prize of R300 000, which helped kick-start Rethaka’s production line of these life-saving satchels. Over the last six years, Kgatlhanye’s business has grown steadily as she continues to increase her
labour force and upskill staff, mainly women, whom she sources from the local Rustenburg community. Having started with only a handful of employees, Rethaka’s staff contingent has grown to 20 people, with CEO Kgatlhanye leading the management team who are all under the age of 25. Plastic pollution costs the South African government millions of rands every year. Through sourcing discarded plastic from schools, landfill sites and collection points, Rethaka helps to alleviate its financial burden on the country while contributing toward environmental conservation through the removal thereof. Aside from reducing pollution, the social impact of Repurpose Schoolbags on underprivileged communities extends to restoring dignity to schoolchildren who own something of which they can be proud. Their walk to and from school is also made safer, which encourages more regular attendance. And with the extended period of light their solar-powered lamp provides to do homework after dark, students can dedicate more time to schoolwork. What did it take for Kgatlhanye to get her business to where it is today? She’s quite frank when discussing the need for young entrepreneurs to take initiative and see their ideas through with determination and hard work. “We don’t rise to the level of our expectations,
but fall to the level of our execution. If you’re not willing to work 10to 12-hour days to get it done, then maybe entrepreneurship isn’t for you.” Once you’re putting in the hours, the recipe for success, she says, “is finding a balance between hard work and creativity, and having the courage to make mistakes.” In the early stages of a startup, Kgatlhanye emphasises the importance of being able to stand in front of people who will interrogate your business plan and product. “Have those tough conversations; get into rooms with people who ask questions and say things that force you to go back to the drawing board.” Looking ahead, Rethaka will be growing this year. On the repurpose side of the business, the company currently also manufactures bags for conferences and events— which it plans to expand— and will be introducing a new luxury range. Manufacturing capacity is top of mind for Kgatlhanye, and so her business is looking to add a further factory site to increase production dramatically. “We are trying to build a green empire,” she states. “Eventually, we plan to have production plants in provinces where the need is greatest. We have also started exporting some our products to Europe and Australia, which is very exciting news for our business growth and expansion.”
LEBO LUKEWARM
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FOR BOWLING OVER THE SPORTING F R AT E R N I T Y
Kagiso Rabada South African international cricketer
At this year’s Indian Premier League auction, 22-year-old Kagiso Rabada was sold for R9.8 million to the Delhi Daredevils—the third highest price tag put on a foreign player in the history of the tournament. But for a national talent with as many accolades as he has already managed in his brief sporting career, it shouldn’t come as a surprise. In just three seasons with the national side, Rabada has already established himself as the leader of the Proteas’s bowling attack and recently took the world’s top spot in the one-day international format of the game. Rabada is only the seventh black African to play test cricket for South Africa, and acknowledges the responsibility that comes with being a hero to millions of aspiring young cricketers. He stamped his authority on the sport right from the outset when he took six wickets for team and country in the semifinal of the 2014 ICC Junior World Cup before helping the under-19 side lift the trophy. He followed that up with breaking the South African record for the best bowling figures in a first-class match (14/105) playing for the Highveld Lions. When Rabada ran onto the field to represent the Proteas against Bangladesh in 2015, he was only the second player in history to take at least
three wickets on ODI debut. In July 2016, Rabada scooped a record six prizes at Cricket South Africa’s Annual Awards, where he became the youngest player in history to be named Cricketer of the Year. Ahead of the Proteas entering the 2017 ICC Champions Trophy as the world’s first-ranked ODI side, he went into the tournament as the world’s top bowler and the youngest to reach number one in the rankings since Pakistan’s Saqlain Mushtaq in 1998. The young sports star has said that with good performances on the field comes the added pressure and expectation to deliver consistently. He’s learning more about himself with every game, which helps him to play more freely; with every game and added
bowling experience, he becomes more conscious about every little thing that he’s doing—from the moment he breaks into his stride toward the wicket, to the moment he releases the ball. As this awareness grows, he says it’s easier to make the necessary tweaks to his action and improve. Cricket fans, especially those who admire fast bowling, will be excited to hear that despite regularly topping the 145km/h mark, Rabada is still keen to increase his bowling speed as his body continues to develop with age. With the necessary training and biomechanics, he should be able to pick up even more pace with the ball. One of his biggest bowling heroes is Makhaya Ntini, especially as a fellow black South African cricketer.
He also looks up to the greats of the game such as Curtly Ambrose, Malcolm Marshall, Glenn McGrath and Wasim Akram, who could swing the ball both ways and bowl excellent yorkers. Despite his mastery with the ball in hand, Rabada is also trying to improve his batting whenever he can, and develop into a solid cricketing all-rounder. He’s one of the very few players in international cricket who bowls with his right hand yet bats left-handed. In chatting about South Africa’s cricketing prowess in general, Rabada points out it’s not just the emerging talent that’s exciting at the moment but the generation from which he comes, which is now much more diverse. He’s convinced this diversity can only make South African cricket stronger.
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It all began with his love of soccer. Tyler Hollingsworth’s dream was to live and play his sport in America, so he started exploring international university options while in Grade 11 at St. David’s Marist Inanda in Johannesburg. “The head of sport at St. David’s, Shane Gaffney, had a reputation of placing pupils at colleges all over the US, and we had a great relationship,” Hollingsworth relates. “I asked him what was needed to study overseas and, without my knowing, Shane spoke to a couple of colleges. Two days later, Gannon University was interested. Gareth Ruh was a top soccer player whom Shane had already placed at Gannon, and luckily he was captain at that time. When Gareth heard I was interested, he spoke to the coach there and the rest is history. The scholarship I received was 80% sports and 20% academic.”
FOR GIVING STUDENTS A SPORTING CHANCE ABROAD
Tyler Hollingsworth Co-founder, Aspire Atlantic
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Gannon is located in Erie, Pennsylvania—a small town of about 200 000 inhabitants. Hollingsworth affirms how wonderful and friendly the Americans were. “My fellow students couldn’t believe that a South African would travel across the globe to study in a tiny college town on the border of Canada!” On the field, he was named Academic AllAmerican Soccer Player and ESPN Soccer Athlete of the Week, and made the Capital One All-District Team; while off the field, he gained a BSc degree in finance and went on to work in Pittsburgh for specialty insurance broker Research Underwriters Insurance, before moving back to South Africa in 2015. Hollingworth’s passion for sports and the desire to help others fulfil their dreams sparked the creation of USA Scholarships, an athlete
recruitment agency and student placement service. He and his team assisted students looking to pursue their sporting and academic dreams at top institutions by linking them up with the best coaches and universities in the US. “I believe South Africa has some of the smartest and best athletes in the world, and many simply don’t know they are good enough to study overseas. When I returned to South Africa from my scholarship, I mapped out exactly how this process worked and pitched the idea [of starting an athlete recruitment agency] to my brother. He loved it, immediately invested and became my business partner. With his financial backing, we built a small team of employees.” In April this year, USA Scholarships rebranded to Aspire Atlantic to broaden its scope and place students not only in America but in Europe and the rest of the world
as well. The agency now manages more than 60 South African students at international universities. Many students never get the opportunity to pursue their dreams overseas because they are deterred by the complicated and lengthy process. Understanding university academic standards, application requirements, contacting coaches, registering with the National Collegiate Athletic Association and preparing for the SAT standardised tests can be a daunting task. Students using Aspire Atlantic’s services are assisted through the entire process, and will be linked up quickly with international coaches and universities to suit their needs and abilities. “Students should focus on their academics and sports while letting our experts handle the applications, registrations and negotiations,” Hollingworth adds.
Hlomela Bucwa made headlines when she was sworn into South Africa’s parliament as the youngest MP in its history, shortly before delivering her powerful maiden parliamentary speech at the 2017 State of the Nation Address. That day, the House hung on her every word as she took the government to task on the fact that her generation has been left to eradicate the social injustices that have resulted from two decades of compounded government greed and corruption.
FOR REPRESENTING S A’ S Y O U T H IN THE GOVERNMENT
Hlomela Bucwa Member of Parliament, Democratic Alliance
Bucwa’s interest in politics began in history class at Riebeek College Girls’ High School in Uitenhage, where she learnt about South Africa’s unjust political past and was inspired to become a civil rights lawyer. But it was at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, where she is still completing her final year of law, that her political career took shape. As an activist for students’ rights on campus and a member of the Student Representative Council, she committed herself to giving a voice to the voiceless, particularly the many young people dismissed from university for financial reasons. While at university, she also joined the Democratic Alliance Student Organisation and was elected its president in 2014 before applying for a position as MP for the party. Today, the 24-year-old Member of Parliament and Portfolio Committee on Higher Education and Training is honoured to serve her country as one of many young people coming up through the ranks of the DA. Born and raised in Port Elizabeth, most of Bucwa’s childhood was spent in Motherwell with her hardworking parents, who instilled from a young age that she should never be defined by her circumstances. “My parents came from very humble beginnings and worked incredibly hard to ensure my life was different from theirs, but also never to forget where I came from. Because they grew up with so little, I was always encouraged to make the most of every opportunity they gave me.” As a member of the Portfolio Committee on Higher Education and Training, Bucwa’s role is to ensure the department carries out its duties effectively, that policies are implemented and targets met. Her responsibility includes bringing forward the issues and grievances of South Africa’s youth, particularly those pertaining to institutions of higher education, and ensuring these matters are handled appropriately. “Within my portfolio, I’ve been specifically tasked to deal with skills and training in higher learning institutions. Fundamentally, my job is to ensure young South Africans receive the
necessary education so they can become assets to the country and contribute meaningfully to our economy.” When asked what it’s like being South Africa’s youngest ever parliamentarian, Bucwa says she has to try especially hard to prove her merit and demonstrate to those with seniority that she’s capable of fulfilling her duties despite her age and relatively limited experience. “The added pressure of being the youngest MP is that many young South Africans look up to me as an inspiration, and I simply cannot afford to fail or let them down.” Bucwa herself is inspired by the many other young leaders within the DA who, like her, are helping to bring the liberal values of democracy into South Africa’s institutions of higher learning. She believes one of the fundamental issues with politics in South Africa is that the parties are divided according to race rather than the values they stand for and mandates they fulfil. The political landscape of South Africa is such that many parties try to divide and conquer along the arbitrary divisions of race. “I see the DA not as a white party but one of non-racism and non-sexism.” Bucwa admits it sounds clichéd, but the message she wants to share with South Africa’s largely disempowered youth today is never to give up. “Born-frees have an important responsibility to fulfil and, despite the social inequalities we see in this country that may discourage us, we are more than capable of changing the status quo. By becoming active participants in our democracy, we can eradicate social injustices and transform South Africa into a prosperous nation with equal opportunities for all.” She acknowledges that the future for South Africa’s youth may look gloomy right now, but having engaged in critical debates with many young people over the years, she’s adamant that “viable solutions to our country’s problems exist, and they can be found if we come together as human beings and refuse to be divided by race, religion and gender.”
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TOP 20
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FOR FINDING C R E AT I V E W AY S T O OVERCOME ADVERSITY
Bheki Kunene Founder, Mind Trix Media
It all began, he says, with Frank Sinatra’s words: “The best revenge is massive success.” Bheki Kunene’s triumph over adversity was driven by a desire to prove his doubters wrong. And that he did, having been selected as one of the 30 Most Promising Young Entrepreneurs in Africa for 2015, among other achievements. Growing up in Gugulethu, Cape Town, Kunene’s childhood was socially and economically difficult. It didn’t help, either, that he was a troubled teenager who found himself on the wrong side of the law more than once, and was even expelled from high school. In the struggle to get his life back on track, he grew a thick skin, plenty of resilience and, with the help of his mother and grandmother, learnt to channel his negative energy in a positive manner. “I discovered that I could use anger and pain to fuel my resurgence. I’d already hit rock bottom, and the only direction left to go was up. I began to find creative ways to overcome setbacks—and with each success, my own self-belief was consolidated.” In 2006, Kunene wrote and passed his matric exams, earning a scholarship to study graphic design at the Ruth Prowse School of Art in Cape Town. After graduating, however, he struggled to find placement as an intern, and so decided to start a business of his own. With a computer, R600 in his bank account, and
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no business management skills, in 2009 Kunene founded his branding and web development company, Mind Trix Media, from his bedroom, servicing just one client. “I completed jobs to the best of my ability, building processes around them. I hired staff to help with the work and refine these systems and structures. As sales increased, mainly through recommendations from existing clients, my credibility grew and the business continued to expand.” One approach to business that Kunene used in the early days of Mind Trix Media was to under-promise deliberately before overdelivering to clients, who were often surprised by the quality of work he produced for very reasonable rates. Eight
years later, the head office of Kunene’s flourishing business is still in Gugulethu. He employs a permanent staff contingent of a dozen people, and services clients from the US, Italy and Vietnam. Mind Trix Media is one of the top performers in South Africa’s digital space and boasts a cabinet of awards to show for its hard work. Kunene attributes the early success of Mind Trix Media to investing confidently in the right human resources. “I hired people who could do the job better than I could, paid them well, and didn’t draw a salary of my own for the first two years. It was tough to get through this period, but the growth I saw kept me motivated.” Market insight has also been key to the numerous accolades the business has
collected over the years. Kunene commends his team for understanding some of their clients’ markets better than they do, giving them the edge over their competitors. What he finds most rewarding about owning a business in the creative space is the happy clients after the completion of a project or once their business objectives have been met. From the outset, Kunene founded Mind Trix Media with the ethos of creating opportunities to change the lives of young people. Not only does the 29-year-old recruit staff almost exclusively from the local community, but he also founded a scholarship programme for aspiring designers and web developers which funds their studies and assists them in finding internships. Through his business, Kunene has forged partnerships with non-governmental organisations, and sponsors several initiatives that contribute to the community. Mind Trix Media is also involved with mentoring and helping local businesses in any way possible. Despite his remarkable success against all odds, Kunene keeps his feet firmly on the ground. “I used to believe that financial wealth was all that mattered, but over the years I’ve realised the importance of my health and personal relationships. If you spend your days chasing only money, you miss out on key relations with the people who love you and matter most.”
When asked how staff might describe his more admirable qualities, Kunene says that people often talk most about his tenacity, and nevergive-up attitude toward life. “I usually find my way out of anything, and usually perform at my peak when faced with
a serious challenge.” And for their loyalty and belief in him, he has duly rewarded his staff. In contrast to many modern business owners’ expectation that employees should work as if they have a vested interest in the company without monetary reward, Kunene
has given 25% of the business to his staff. “I believe that people only work for a business like it’s their own when they have a real stake in it.” Some of Kunene’s team have been with Mind Trix Media since inception, and he sees this equity as both a
token of appreciation and an incentive for them to keep giving their all to his business. “I would far rather own 75% of a business where every staff member is happy and feels motivated than own 100% of one where employees are working for nothing more than a
salary at month-end.” Next on the horizon for Kunene and Mind Trix Media is to scale the business for a bigger presence in both the local and foreign market; he’s in the process of developing an investor-ready business model that caters to this expansion.
Brown obtained her BCom (Law) degree in 2011, followed by a two-year postgraduate LLB. During each long university break, she would work or shadow at a law firm in order to observe how the theory she was being taught in class played out in practice. “I couldn’t wait to start my journey as an attorney. In 2013, I commenced with my articles at the law firm Cluver Markotter Inc. in
Stellenbosch. On completion of articles, I remained there and was appointed as an associate in the Litigation Department, specialising in evictions and labour matters, but also involved in general civil litigation.” It was here that Brown was provided with the best guidance and tools to shape herself into a success young attorney. “I was fortunate to have had a mentor who gave me enough leeway to run certain matters on my own—with his guidance and support, of course. I was always in my element when appearing in court, no matter how small and basic the instruction was. The feeling you get once you’re on your feet before the magistrate or judge, and that extra surge of confidence when putting on your robe, is exhilarating!” At the end of 2016, Brown made the bold decision to become an advocate. “Representing someone in court and putting the best possible version of their case to a presiding officer is something that I craved to do
daily,” she explains. Advocates are briefed by attorneys when a specialist skill is needed in a court case or in research into the law; as an advocate, she would be exposed to the courtroom on an almost daily basis. Brown was admitted as an Advocate of the High Court of South Africa on 3 February 2017, and is currently busy with the pupillage programme of the Cape Bar Society of Advocates. This programme is aimed at training and preparing pupil members to practise as successful advocates, and to pass the strenuous National Bar Examination. After the successful completion of the pupillage and Bar Exams, Brown intends to become a member of the Cape Bar. “My focus as an advocate will be on general civil litigation, commercial law, evictions, labour and family law. I’m blessed to truly enjoy what I do, and look forward to the day when I may accept briefs from attorneys and represent clients in the courtroom.”
FOR STAT I N G HER CASE
Bronwynne Brown Advocate
While studying at the University of Stellenbosch, Bronwynne Brown lived in the Metanoia Residence on campus and was elected chairperson of its First Years’ Committee. “Metanoia is a mixedgender residence, which prides itself on its diversity. Here, I was exposed to people from all different walks of life, both locally and international. It was at Metanoia where the principles of tolerance and compassion for others were instilled in me,” she says. This only strengthened her resolve to enter the legal field.
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TOP 20
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FOR TURNING TRASH INTO TREASURE
Gift Lubele Founder, CEO, GN Lub
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FOR GROWING CROP INSURANCE With his love of green innovation and solving worldwide problems, this 19-year-old entrepreneur is saving the planet, one recycled plastic bottle at a time. “I want to be more philanthropic in the world than Mr Bill Gates,” he says. And he’s well on his way.
Lubele’s business journey began as early as high school, when he registered his company GN Lub. This came on the back of winning the SA TeenPreneur Festival competition in 2015, where he had the opportunity to pitch his recycling venture that transforms plastic waste into environmentally friendly products. While still writing his matric exams, Lubele was accepted into the Awethu Project incubation programme where he received 22 weeks of practical entrepreneurship training and mentorship. Most recently, he has graduated from the Ignitor Accelerator (part of the Standard Bank Incubator) and sits on several boards such as that of the African Leadership Academy’s Student Enterprise Programme. GN Lub is a recycling tech company that believes in a world where trash can be seen as treasure. It collects disposed plastic and turns it into a wide variety of innovative products, many of which have been sold to large corporates such as MMI Holdings financial services group. Its first green product is the Smatt Holder, a carrying device made purely from disposed plastic which eases the pain and discomfort associated with toting a heavy shopping bag. Apart from speaking at impactful symposiums and conferences, and appearing on television and radio shows, Lubele has also found the time to start writing his first book: I am not an A+ student, but I am an A+ outlier. In it, he discusses how South Africa’s current school system stymies creativity and entrepreneurialism. His advice for young go-getters like himself? “Make mistakes, learn fast, and build solid relationships with clients to ensure you have fixed revenue.”
ON MOBILE
Kudzai Kutukwa Co-founder, CEO, Mobbisurance
Kudzai Kutukwa began working in sales and marketing, which introduced him to the online world and its potential for innovation in technology. So, after his farming parents experienced a loss on their crops due to being uninsured, inspiration struck. In 2014, he co-founded Mobbisurance: a mobile platform that enables emerging farmers to gain access to the market for their produce, critical crop health information throughout the planting season, as well as affordable crop insurance— all on their mobile phone. “In South Africa alone, there are an estimated 1.4 million emerging farmers, and over 80% of the food consumed in Africa is produced by these farmers. Globally, the number of smallholder farmers is estimated to be 500 million,” says Kutukwa. “The opportunity is huge both in Africa and beyond, as most of these farmers don’t have access
to crop insurance.” His company already has a database of more than a thousand farmers. Mobbisurance utilises satellite tech to monitor the weather for risks that cause crop failure. The satellites are owned by NASA and the European Space Agency, to which Mobbisurance has access via a partnership with the South African National Space Agency. “When the satellite picks up that the crops are exhibiting signs of irreversible stress due to a weather-related event, like too little rainfall, an automatic payout is triggered,” Kutukwa explains. The startup has partnered with Standard Bank for finalising applications and getting payouts. Mobbisurance was selected as one of the 10 African companies that competed in the 2017 SWIFT Innotribe Startup Challenge in Africa, which recognises these startups’ potential to provide important innovations in the financial industry. It was also a runner-up in last year’s Novel Applications of Earth Observation Data Challenge run by the SA National Space Agency and Airbus Defence & Space. Kutukwa is currently an incubatee at Resolution Circle, working with engineers and the business development team. (Read more about Resolution Circle’s incubation programme on page 27.)
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Fast Company promotion
Harnessing the power of technology The MTN Business Digital Entrepreneur Masterclass brought together entrepreneurs and mentors to share knowledge on succeeding in digital
The MTN Business Digital Entrepreneur Masterclass—held in Cape Town on May 23—focused on helping entrepreneurs to take their business to the next level, with technology as the enabler to their business in order to achieve operational efficiency, cost control and management. “MTN Business offers entrepreneurs the chance to hone their skills through useful insights and guidance from business experts. The masterclass is an annual, intensive one-day conference for small business owners which gives the stage to some of the leading experts in their fields,” explains Wei-Ling Chiu, senior manager for the SME Segment. “We acknowledge your business as the next generation of digital businesses, the economic growth of the future. Your business designs are digital in nature, blurring the line between the digital and physical worlds. We promise to strive to usher your businesses in an unprecedented convergence of people, business and things that disrupt and challenge the status quo of business models.” The event was hosted by CEO of Innate Investment Solutions, Lynette Ntuli. Recounting her experience of being a “digital savvy entrepreneur”, she noted that “the great thing about going digital is that it opens up your business to global customers. Digital ideas help elevate SMEs to the next level.” Claude Chetty, GM of regional business operations at MTN Business, gave the opening address and stressed the importance of going
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digital in the modern era; while Lindile Xoko, MTN Business’ head of the SME Segment, discussed the top 10 trends in digital entrepreneurship in the modern era. He assessed how entrepreneurs today could hone in on digital and ensure it serves the needs of their business. Chiu offered a detailed guide of practical tools for the modern digital entrepreneur, which was well received by the audience. Paulo Ferreira, director of enterprise mobility at Samsung SA, discussed the new era of productivity in enterprise mobility. CEO of Finfind Darlene Menzies gave the audience practical advice on securing finance in business. “I’ve simply solved problems that I had experienced as an entrepreneur; I myself wasn’t able to find easy-to-use solutions in the market to utilise. It has never been about brainstorming to come up with clever ideas or developing systems for systems’ sake. The easiest way to create a product that meets a market gap is to solve a problem you’re experiencing in that market—that’s essentially my creative approach. Entrepreneurs create the best solutions for entrepreneurs,” she explained. She also stressed the importance of syncing technology with business. “Technology is providing consumers with speed, choice and easy access, and finance is a vital service that is ideally suited to being delivered virtually. They are a marriage made in heaven in reducing costs, enabling easy access, overcoming geographical constraints, integrating the developing and developed world, and accelerating globalisation.”
“The great thing about going digital is that it opens up your business to global customers. Digital ideas help elevate SMEs to the next level.”
The afternoon programme featured two streams of focus for the audience. The first was on technology, and was subdivided into two sectors: Business on the go; and the Internet of Things and security. The second sector was the social stream, which was also divided into two categories: Kick-starting your digital marketing with Google; and LinkdIn as more than just a digital résumé. Fast Company SA editor Evans Manyonga hosted the final big conversation, a panel discussion on digital sustainability for entrepreneurs by 2020. Key participants were Darlene Menzies, Paulo Ferreira, Garth Manthé (head of Twitter Brand Strategy at Ad Dynamo) and Nivani Govinder from Google South Africa.
Key q ue stion s were: To what extent is technology the enabler to business operational efficiency, cost control and management in the modern era? Would you say an entrepreneur who is not harnessing the power of technology today is risking dying out tomorrow? Why? The economic growth of the future seems to be leaning toward the digital arena. At present, who would you say are great examples of harnessing technology to drive business in South Africa? And why? Security is a massive concern in the modern age, and legislation always seems to be a step behind. How will legislation and the rate of disruption and technology be able to operate in a world governed by bureaucrats? Is there enough space for newcomers in the technology sector? Any opportunities? The greatest benefit of MTN Business’ Digital Entrepreneur Masterclass was bringing together innovative entrepreneurs and mentors to share their knowledge on getting into the digital sphere.
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TESLA CEO ELON MUSK’S MULTIBILLION-DOLLAR ACQUISITION OF HIS COUSINS’ SUSTAINABLE-ENERGY COMPANY SOLARCITY IS TOTALLY LOGICAL— AND HUGELY RISKY. WILL MUSK PULL OFF ANOTHER MIRACLE? By Austin Carr
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E ELON MUSK STANDS IN THE MIDDLE OF A RESIDENTIAL STREET. IT’S SHORTLY BEFORE SUNSET AT A JOINT TESLA—SOLARCITY PRODUCT LAUNCH, HELD LAST OCTOBER AT UNIVERSAL STUDIOS’ BACK LOT IN LOS ANGELES, AND MUSK, WEARING A GREY SWEATER AND BLACK JEANS, IS PERCHED ON A PLATFORM ERECTED IN THE CENTRE OF THE MANICURED SUBURBIA THAT SERVED AS THE SET FOR DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES . MUSK BEGINS HIS PRESENTATION WITH DOOM AND GLOOM—RISING CO 2 LEVELS, THE CRISIS OF GLOBAL WARMING—BUT THE AUDIENCE OF 200 OR SO IS BEAMING. 70 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A JULY 2017
Tesla is betting that its Powerwall battery, combined with its Solar Roof tiles, will entice the design-conscious set.
They’re excited to see what fantastical invention he will unveil as a solution. As he stresses the need to transition the world to sustainable energy, an overzealous attendee yells out, “Save us, Elon!” Musk’s big reveal: “The houses you see around you are all solar houses. Did you notice?” he says, gesturing toward the homes with a grin. They appear to have regular shingled rooftops, but Musk says they’ve actually been retrofitted with a new product called the Solar Roof, a potentially transformative system that’s nearly indistinguishable from a traditional rooftop—and one, he promises, that lasts longer and costs less, all while generating electricity. “Why would you buy anything else?” he says. The crowd cheers. These roof tiles are the latest component of Musk’s larger plan to wean us off fossil fuels. Inside the garage of each of these homes, he points out, is a Tesla vehicle and next-generation Powerwall, the sleek rechargeable battery Tesla developed in 2015 to store energy for household use. During the day, the solar shingles can generate electricity and recharge the Powerwall. After the sun goes down, the battery takes over, providing power independent of the traditional utility grid. “This is the integrated future. You’ve got an electric car, a Powerwall, and a Solar Roof. It’s pretty straightforward, really,” he says with a big shrug and a smile. “[This] can solve the whole energy equation.”
Musk’s announcement is about saving the planet. But it’s also about saving SolarCity, the company his cousins Peter and Lyndon Rive—who are in the audience—launched with Musk’s support in 2006 to bring solar power to the masses. The business, an industry-rallying success for nearly a decade, had recently run into challenges. Its stock, once unstoppable, had dropped roughly 77% since its February 2014 peak. Its debt had mushroomed to $3.4 billion (R44.2 billion), sales growth had slowed, and it faced a cash crunch. Last June, Musk proposed that Tesla acquire SolarCity in a deal valued at $2.8 billion (R36.4 billion). Today’s event was staged largely to win over Tesla and SolarCity shareholders, who would be voting in three weeks on whether to approve the merger. There was a lot for shareholders to think about—and even more for corporate governance experts and company analysts to scrutinise. Tesla’s and SolarCity’s boards and investors represent a weave of overlapping interests, both financial and familial. Six of Tesla’s seven directors have clear ties to SolarCity. Tesla’s board includes SolarCity’s former CFO, a SolarCity director, and two VCs whose firms also have seats on SolarCity’s board, along with Musk’s brother Kimbal. Musk chairs both companies and is SolarCity’s largest shareholder. He has taken out $475 million (R6.1 billion) in personal credit lines to buy more shares in SolarCity and Tesla when advantageous. SpaceX, his aerospace company, has purchased $165 million (R2.1 billion) in bonds issued by SolarCity. Some analysts cautioned that Musk may be self-dealing, rescuing his own investments and his cousins’ company through this purchase. Hedge-fund manager Jim Chanos, who had shorted Tesla and SolarCity, called the acquisition a “shameful example of corporate governance at its worst”, a “bailout” of SolarCity that “strikes us as just the height of folly.” Musk’s investors, though, have grown accustomed to naysayers. They know his actions are often fraught with risk, but they believe in his mission—and his products. Three weeks after Musk’s presentation, 85% of shareholders approved the Tesla–SolarCity merger, an outcome even more impressive considering the first Solar Roof tiles wouldn’t be installed on a real customer’s home for at least another seven months. The ones atop the Universal Studios homes weren’t functional. But that’s the magic of Musk. Few entrepreneurs in his stratosphere could make such a grandiose pitch land so solidly. His cousins, the Rives, had struggled to sell
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a fraction of this vision to Wall Street during their latter years running SolarCity as a public company; Musk did it in 14 minutes. To him, this future—in which his combined companies will save us from destructive climate change—is simply “logical” and “quite obvious”, phrases he repeats to me a few months after the deal closed. “It’s totally logical that we’ll have sustainable energy in the long term, because unsustainable energy, by definition, is unsustainable,” he says. “So how quickly do we get there? And to what degree do we negatively impact the environment by getting there slower?” Musk has always approached innovation this way: as a massive bet on the inevitability of tomorrow, rather than what he can deliver today. He designs the future and wills it into existence, despite disbelievers. Tesla and SpaceX, which many viewed as the wild gambles of a stretchedthin entrepreneur keen to waste billions of his (and others’) dollars, have proved more risky to bet against. This year, Tesla became the most perilous stock to short, costing speculators billions—more than the combined losses of those trading against Apple, Amazon and Netflix. Musk has become the face of salvation to some, and motivation to others. “BMW is using a picture of me to scare their executives into taking electric vehicles seriously. I’m not kidding,” Musk says. “It’s sort of a backhanded compliment.” All this makes him the—to use his word—obvious person to lead the solar-energy industry forward: Lyndon Rive, SolarCity’s CEO, announced in May he’d be leaving the company. Even so, within Tesla, there were serious doubts about the merger. “There was almost no understanding for what SolarCity was inside the broader company, and that includes Elon,” says a knowledgeable source. “They didn’t understand the business.” Yet, Musk is famous for mastering information quickly—and again, who’s going to bet against him? If he’s wrong, SolarCity could prove to be a serious strain on Tesla’s resources. Solar power may be an undeniable part of our future—the industry created double the number of jobs as coal did last year and accounts for nearly 40% of electric capacity added to the grid, more than wind or even natural gas—but SolarCity itself isn’t. In its last reported earnings quarter before the merger, SolarCity saw a 26% year-over-year decrease in its megawatts installed, a key growth metric of solar power. If he’s right, however, he’ll move a big step closer to realising his vision for a cleaner planet. Not surprisingly, Musk says he isn’t worried. “Oh, it definitely will work,” he says. “It’s just a question of when.”
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Since the acquisition, Musk has been regularly making the 3-kilometre drive from Tesla’s factory in Fremont, California to SolarCity’s R&D centre to look at Solar Roof prototypes. I glimpse a number of designs myself, during a visit to Fremont in April. They’re installed on two model roofs sitting in the office’s back parking lot, like parts of a prefab house waiting for pickup. “When we think something is ready, we’ll bring Elon out here,” says Peter Rive, formerly SolarCity’s CTO and now Tesla’s VP of solar products, standing outside near the models on the cloudy afternoon. “He’ll tell us if it’s pass or fail.” When seen from below, the tiles appear to be opaque, like Tuscan or slate shingles. But from above, the glass covering the tiles is transparent, allowing the sun to reach the solar cell underneath. SolarCity’s engineers have received feedback from Tesla designers to refine the products, spending weeks, for example, experimenting with different shades of black. Musk’s reaction so far? “ ‘Not good enough,’ ” Peter says Musk told the team earlier this year. “ ‘Make this look better.’ ” Musk stresses that such collaborative engineering couldn’t have happened before the merger. Because they were previously separate public companies (with those many conflicts of interest), SolarCity and Tesla were required to operate at an “arm’s length”. Whatever partnerships they pursued had to be audited to make sure they were in each company’s interest. “Every time we wanted to do something, it had to go through two org committees. It was incredibly slow,” Musk says. “Now we can make decisions immediately instead of it taking a month.” Lyndon acknowledges that Musk, his and Peter’s older cousin (their mothers are twins), instantly brought much-needed product skills to SolarCity. “There are often technical challenges ahead where people say, ‘No, that’s impossible, a brick wall,’ ” says Lyndon. “Elon is smart enough to know how to go through that brick wall, to come up with solutions to address the problem. It’s very rare to encounter someone with his all-of-the-above qualities.” Musk feels that aesthetics, in particular, will be crucial for SolarCity, which hopes to win over the kinds of consumers who may baulk at installing traditional solar panels on top of their houses. After all, Musk has explained that Tesla grew from his view that electric vehicles were “ugly and slow and boring like a golf cart.” He created the Powerwall, he has said, because all existing batteries “sucked. . . . They’re expensive, unreliable, stinky, ugly, bad in every way.” If there was one implied criticism of his cousins during the product event last year, it was that they were never quite able to pull off this transformation, from the useful to the beautiful. “The key is to make solar something desirable,” Musk said onstage, so “you want to put it on the most prominent part of your house, call your neighbours over, and say, ‘Check out this sweet roof!’ ” Musk’s tiles may prove as sexy to customers as his vehicles. Gavin Baker, who runs a $13.8-billion (R179.4-billion) portfolio at Fidelity, increased the firm’s investment in SolarCity right before the acquisition, and he has said he’s bullish on the product. But the residential solar industry is still Byzantine and fragmented, involving things like building permits, regulatory roadblocks, and individual roof assessments. And then there’s the issue of price. The SolarCity roof requires a complete re-roofing job, unlike traditional solar panels that can be mounted on top of existing shingles. Apple sells its customers on a portfolio of products—iPhones, iPads, MacBooks—but that same kind of integration isn’t as feasible when you’re
“BMW IS USING A PICTURE OF ME TO SCARE THEIR EXECUTIVES INTO TAKING ELECTRIC VEHICLES SERIOUSLY. I’M NOT KIDDING,” MUSK SAYS. “IT’S SORT OF A BACKHANDED COMPLIMENT.”
dealing with a $70 000 (R910 000) Model S, a $6 000 (R78 000) Powerwall, and a Solar Roof that can cost $65 000 (R845 000) or more. The combined companies aim to develop financing models that will make the tech affordable, streamline the rollout process (thanks to SolarCity’s army of installers), and take advantage of Tesla’s retail footprint to sell the vision. While the up-front price for its Solar Roof looks high, SolarCity asserts that tax credits and the estimated value of energy created over the product’s 30-year power warranty will save customers money in the long run. Solar is a massive market, the company notes, with about 5 million new roofs built every year in the US alone, and SolarCity hopes to capture 5% of that business, or 250 000 homes annually—an ambitious goal, considering the company only made 325 000 solar installations in its decade of operation before the merger. SolarCity isn’t the first company ever to produce a solar tile, and most in that space have floundered (see “The Shingle Factor” sidebar). But the merger with Tesla allows the company to offer vertical integration, potentially meeting all its customers’ energy needs. “If you just created a solar shingle, you’re kind of fucked,” Peter Rive says. “I don’t think anybody but the combination of SolarCity and Tesla can pull this off.” When it was founded, SolarCity wasn’t concerned with product at all. The Rive brothers—who grew up with Musk in Pretoria, South Africa and built (and later sold) an IT software company in the Bay Area—were looking to make a bigger impact with their next startup. Musk, Lyndon recalls, suggested they look into solar. They launched SolarCity in 2006 with a $10-million (more than R100-million) investment from Musk. They devised a plan to drive costs down by controlling the experience from sale to installation (while third-party manufacturers provided the panels). They hired 150 employees, the majority construction workers, and by the next year were installing about 70 solar systems per month around Northern California. Having sold panels himself in the early days, Lyndon knew the biggest barrier to adoption was price: Customers didn’t have capital to purchase the system, which typically costs upward of $40 000 (over R500 000). What if they could lease it instead? Other companies had explored similar financing models in the commercial space, but banks told them it was impossible to bring that to the residential market. “But we just kept hammering and hammering at it,” recalls Lyndon. The company pioneered an arrangement that allowed it to offer systems to homeowners without any down payment. SolarCity would handle all the up-front costs—consultations, rooftop designs, panels and installation—and worked with banks to help front the capital, giving SolarCity longterm recurring revenue. The customer would pay back SolarCity and its financial partners over the course of a 20-year lease, ideally at a monthly cost lower than their traditional utility bill. (This financial model was feasible in part thanks to a 30% federal solar tax credit, which SolarCity could claim on the value of each installation.) Business began to grow, and the company eventually expanded to more than a dozen states. Musk, who was at the time busy building Tesla and SpaceX, wasn’t involved much beyond the board level. But the Rives—who share a passion for extreme sports such as mountain biking (Lyndon also plays underwater hockey, which involves holding your breath and shuttling a puck across a pool floor)—brought a Muskian intensity to their jobs. When SolarCity went public at the end of 2012, at $8 (about R100) a share, the stock surged 47% on its first day of trading, and the company effectively doubled its sales every year thereafter. In early 2014, it boasted more than 70 000 customers, and its stock hit $86 (R1 100) per share—an all-time high. Lyndon set a Musk-size goal for his employees: 1 million installations by 2018. Of course, as with any booming startup, there was also chaos. Peter and Lyndon were successfully bringing residential solar mainstream, but the company culture began to shift, especially with the ascent of two particularly polarising executives, Tanguy Serra and Hayes Barnard (the latter of whom arrived via SolarCity’s $120-million (R1.5-billion) purchase of his direct-marketing firm, Paramount Solar). The atmosphere, many employees felt, became testosterone-fuelled and
sales-obsessed. “It was a radical change, like the tree huggers got replaced with a fraternity house,” says a former sales leader, who describes the sales group demographics as becoming more male-dominated, filled with “guys who were used to selling mortgages in a boiler room.” SolarCity had made a number of smart investments in order to keep its product differentiated and reduce costs. Serra, who oversaw operations, was a driving force behind the company’s acquisition of Zep Solar, an innovative startup that had developed an industry-leading panel-mounting system that lowered SolarCity’s average time of installation from days to just hours. But Serra and Lyndon also launched a distracting expansion into Mexico and acquired a solar-panel technology startup called Silevo for at least $200 million (R2.5 billion), which would eventually eat up substantial capital at a time when solar-panel prices started plummeting to the point of commoditisation. (Serra declined to comment for this story.) If there was one sign that the company was flying too close to the sun, it was, many felt, an extravagant sales-team huddle in Las Vegas around March 2015. In a scene straight out of HBO’s Silicon Valley, Barnard, then SolarCity’s chief revenue officer, burst onto the stage in front of Lyndon, Peter and 1 300 employees (Musk would arrive later) at Hakkasan nightclub, rapping over Nicki Minaj and Drake’s hit “Truffle Butter” while surrounded by provocatively dressed dancers. At another point, he appeared dressed as Helios, the Greek sun god, wearing a green suit of armour designed by the same people who created the Iron Man costume for that movie. There was much for him to celebrate. SolarCity was the clear industry leader, owning a third of the residential market and handling more installations than its next 50 competitors combined. (Barnard explains that he was only trying to rally his troops, and strongly denies that the culture became bro-y. “I don’t tolerate that bullshit,” he says.) The company’s growth rate—it was hiring 100 sales reps a week to help hit aggressive targets—led to some dubious tactics when it came to marketing SolarCity’s zero-moneydown concept. Many sources felt the drive to hook customers often eclipsed concerns about whether they would follow through with the lease purchase. “You had all these poorly trained reps basically going, ‘Just sign here! Don’t worry, you can cancel any time!’ ” says a former sales director. “People were treating it like signing off on iTunes’ terms and conditions.”
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The company’s average cancellation rate increased to 45% or higher; its door-to-door sales team saw rates of 70%, multiple sources say. (The SEC is reportedly probing the lack of public disclosures around cancellation rates in the solar industry. A spokesperson for SolarCity says that rates have improved, and that the company reports on “installed assets”, rather than “preinstallation cancellation rates”.) With competition in the solar space increasing, SolarCity engaged in a pricing war with many of its rivals, a race to the bottom that hurt deal profitability. SolarCity’s business model had by then become more complicated. To help fund its ballooning installations, the company turned to an array of instruments such as tax-equity financing, bonds, and debt securities. Google, for example, invested $300 million (R3.9 billion) to fund some of SolarCity’s residential installations (in part for the associated tax credits). “The reality of solar financing was that most of the cash started coming from investors like Google months after installation,” says a source familiar with SolarCity’s financials. “We started having huge gaps in cash flow as the business grew.” SolarCity’s stock trended down in the second half of 2015. In August, Jim Chanos, the hedgefund manager known for predicting the fall of Enron, called it more of a “subprime financing company” than an energy company, comparing its solar leases to homeowners taking out second mortgages. “He [doesn’t] have his facts straight,” Lyndon said at the time, retorting that SolarCity’s customers defaulted on payments at a rate of less than 0.5%. Lyndon was increasingly consumed by a growing number of external pressures. The fate of several state policies that allowed SolarCity to operate had become more uncertain, thanks mostly to hostility from the entrenched utilities, and the company was forced to pull out of Nevada altogether after the state’s public utilities commission voted to significantly cut benefits for homeowners with solar. Worse, the 30% federal solar tax credit was set to expire. When it was unexpectedly extended in late 2015, it ironically weakened demand, since some of SolarCity’s customers realised they had more time to take advantage of the subsidy. With its solar installation growth rate lagging, the company started selling Wall Street on a different story. Rather than continuing to push for rapid expansion, which was becoming increasingly costly, Lyndon said SolarCity would pivot and concentrate on becoming profitable instead. “Looking at the last nine years, the
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THE SHINGLE FACTOR Here’s why Tesla’s new Solar Roof tiles may have an edge Tesla’s Solar Roof shingles are noteworthy for their design, but they’re not the first solar tiles on the market. Industrial behemoths like Dow and BP began selling them alongside typical solar panels as long as 15 years ago—before exiting the market due to high costs and low demand—and there are at least three competitive products being sold today. While traditional solar panels have consistently dropped in price, tiles have remained relatively expensive and don’t generate as much power. Chris Fisher, a product manager at roofing company CertainTeed, estimates that CertainTeed’s tiles convert about 16% of the sunlight they receive into energy, compared to 18% for traditional panels. But expense and efficiency will only be part of the equation for Tesla customers. Solar Roof tiles only became available for pre-order in May (they are due to market later this year), and high-end developers are already buying in. “The Tesla shingles look like something we’ll feel comfortable putting on our buildings,” says Marmol Radziner design principal, Ron Radziner, who’s planning to use them on the roofs of a small apartment complex in Santa Monica, California. “They’re clean and look well-designed, and that’s important.” —KIM LIGHTBODY
Tesla’s Solar Roof tiles will be available in terracotta style in 2018.
strategy of the company has all been about growth . . . to achieve scale,” Lyndon told shareholders in October 2015. It was becoming difficult to keep doubling the business every year as investors had grown accustomed to. “With this new focus, we’re going to reduce our growth rates to roughly 40% in 2016.” SolarCity shared more disappointing projections in its year-end earnings report posted in February 2016, and its stock dropped by nearly a third in after-hours trading. SolarCity had always stressed that it was generating long-term “retained value” from its leased rooftop solar systems, which it co-owned with its financial partners. The company essentially acted like a clean-energy utility that billed homeowners monthly. Now, in its pivot to profitability, instead of leasing panels to consumers, SolarCity’s core strategy would be to sell them, primarily through loans, which would lower SolarCity’s debt burden and generate interest. But that also meant customers would ultimately own their systems i.e. no more monthly payments. In May, Serra, then CFO, tried to explain this change on an earnings call. Some analysts expressed confusion about this seemingly existential shift, with one asking, “What exactly is the business model of SolarCity?” “This is a company that I regard in a first-class crisis that acts as if everything is fine,” TV anchor Jim Cramer said on CNBC afterward, calling it “the worst conference call of 2016”. In February 2016, Musk called Lyndon and suggested it was time they combined their companies. The previous year, Musk had made a splashy announcement for the Powerwall, a battery storage product that he called the “missing piece” in the framework that would reinvent how we consume energy alongside electric vehicles and solar panels. Tesla began ramping up production at the Gigafactory, its vast battery factory near Reno, Nevada. But, Musk says, he quickly realised that the sales and installation processes were “incredibly clunky and awkward”. To get a home equipped with Powerwall, customers had to rely on a local, independent installer, since Tesla didn’t have a field-services team. Worse, to get it linked into solar, customers would have to turn to an entirely different company, such as SolarCity or one of its rivals. “It was like having to buy your laptop and your laptop’s hard drive separately,” he says. Musk wanted Tesla to control the experience from start to finish. As it turned out, SolarCity was the real missing piece. When I ask why he didn’t have that epiphany until February 2016—especially given all SolarCity’s challenges—Musk acknowledges the acquisition should have been done “probably a year or two earlier”. It had become “quite obvious” where things were headed but, in his telling, Tesla before simply had “too much going on”. No formal offer was made on that February phone call, and they agreed to digest the idea before moving forward. Musk brought the idea to Tesla’s board at the end of February. Initially, the directors rejected the proposal: They felt it would strain resources, particularly as Tesla was dealing with manufacturing challenges with its Model X. (Separately, a month later, SpaceX purchased $90 million (R1.1 billion) worth of bonds from SolarCity—a move that reportedly raised eyebrows in Washington, with some lawmakers concerned that Musk was using his aerospace venture’s high-priced government contracts to buoy his solar company.) It wasn’t until May, when the board felt Tesla’s production issues were mostly resolved, that Musk raised the notion again. Tesla maintains that no one at SolarCity or on its board, including the Rives, had any idea that Musk was continuing to push for an acquisition during this time. On June 20, Tesla’s general counsel emailed SolarCity’s lawyers an offer valued at $2.8 billion (R36.4 billion). Normally, acquisition bids and due diligence are handled in private, but because of the conflicts of interest, Tesla had to disclose its intentions publicly before SolarCity could consider the offer—a process one source involved calls “dead-ass backward”. In a blog post, Musk described the plan as a “no-brainer”, but investors had yet to be convinced, and Tesla’s stock dropped roughly 10% on the news. Confusion around the pre-deal announcement and whether the merger would
go through led SolarCity’s financial partners to temporarily freeze its capital, creating a $200-million (R2.6-billion) monthly hole in its cash balance, already one of the more worrisome parts of SolarCity’s financials. In an early August story about the deal, Wall Street Journal columnist Spencer Jakab noted that SolarCity burnt through a “whopping” $6 (R80) of cash for each dollar of revenue in the past year, while Tesla burnt through 50 cents. “Tesla latching on to SolarCity is the equivalent of a shipwrecked man clinging to a piece of driftwood, grabbing on to another man without one.” To help persuade analysts and shareholders, Musk hopped on SolarCity’s August 9 earnings call to talk up the deal’s merits. He tantalised them with a big new “solar roof” product the company would reveal soon. “What if we can offer you a roof that looks way better than a normal roof? That lasts far longer than a normal roof?” he teased. “Different ball game.” Internally, the product was no-where near what Musk considered market-ready. According to nearly a dozen sources, later that month Peter
“WHEN WE THINK SOMETHING IS READY, WE’LL BRING ELON OUT HERE,” SAYS PETER RIVE, TESLA’S VP OF SOLAR PRODUCTS. “HE’LL TELL US IF IT’S PASS OR FAIL.” Rive and the head of Zep Solar, the subsidiary that developed SolarCity’s panel-mounting system, invited Musk to see their latest prototype. Code-named “Steel Pulse”, it was a standing-seam metal roof with solar integration. Musk hated it—telling the team, according to two sources, they were wasting his time with this “piece of shit”—but he liked the underlying concept. (A spokesperson for Tesla clarifies that Musk “very much liked the idea of Steel Pulse. He simply did not like the first iteration.”) Musk asked for more “stunning” concepts, and pushed the team toward developing a better-looking, glass-tiled version. Within weeks, SolarCity and Tesla teams had created the Solar Roof demos unveiled at Universal Studios.
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A month after shareholders approve the merger in November, I travel to Buffalo, New York to check out SolarCity’s new manufacturing plant which, once completed, is expected to be the largest solar-panel factory in the western hemisphere. When I arrive, the city is buzzing about what it could mean for Buffalo—locals talk about SolarCity as if a new theme park is opening in town—especially following the recent announcement of the Solar Roof, which the company will eventually manufacture here. The factory has become a symbol of opportunity for the area. “Now that SolarCity has been merged with Elon Musk’s company,” says Mayor Byron Brown, “it truly brings the eyes of the world to Buffalo.” At a series of SolarCity recruiting sessions held around the city, residents are clearly focused on one thing—jobs—but they also express pride in the possibility of being a part of the future, rather than stuck hoping for a revival of industries of the past. “I’ve been watching [the factory] since the first brick,” one job hopeful tells me. “I’ve waited and waited and waited for one of these jobs to come along.” The Gigafactory 2, as it’s now called, is a 10-minute drive south of downtown Buffalo, on a 35-hectare site once home to steel mills, billowing smokestacks and other totems of rust belt industry. The sprawling 111 500m2 facility lies along a sharp switchback in the Buffalo River, near a freight-train yard. Across the street is a fishand-chips shop, with a London-style telephone booth out front. SolarCity came to control the site through its acquisition of solar-panel startup Silevo, in June 2014, for $200 million (R2.5 billion) in stock plus an additional $150 million (R1.9 billion) tied to certain development targets. The company thought Silevo’s panel technology could achieve “a breakthrough in the cost of solar power”, as Musk, Lyndon and Peter wrote in a blog post at the time. They also touted a deal Silevo had inked with the state of New York to build a manufacturing plant in Buffalo, and sought to quintuple the factory’s output. Governor Andrew Cuomo soon committed $750 million (R9.7 billion) to fund the project, on the condition it would generate 1 460 jobs and $5 billion (R64.8 billion) in ongoing area investments, and Musk and the Rives targeted an annual production capacity greater than one gigawatt by mid-2016. But the project ran into challenges. The goal was to build what are known as highefficiency solar panels—which feature premium cells that can convert sunlight into energy at a materially higher percentage—at a cost on par with what SolarCity had been paying to Chinese manufacturers. But panel prices globally were plummeting, down more than 75% since 2009, and the Silevo team wrestled with creating an economically viable product. In early 2015, Silevo’s R&D team, working out of an old Solyndra building in Fremont, tried to develop a pilot production line that could eventually yield up to 1 000 high-efficiency panels per day—a process they hoped to replicate one day in Buffalo. But the team struggled to automate the process to produce more than a few hundred panels per day, according to people familiar with the matter. (A SolarCity spokesperson acknowledges there were issues with manufacturing.) Meanwhile, in Buffalo, SolarCity was burning through hundreds of millions of dollars of government funding to get the facility built as fast as possible. According to multiple sources involved, there were a series of delays and budget overruns. “Nothing was on track in 2015,” one says. The company purchased more than $250 million (R3.2 billion) in custom machinery using state funds, but much of it sat idle while the building was still being constructed and layouts were being reconfigured. On a call with shareholders in February 2015, Lyndon delayed the timeline: The factory, he indicated, would now be built and ready for equipment by early 2016 (while that onegigawatt production target wouldn’t be reached until the first quarter of 2017). But that deadline, too, came and went. As SolarCity’s financial pressures intensified, another source involved says, “It all just stopped. We were going to rely on SolarCity’s money to finish the Buffalo project, but our sales were so far down that all the money just stopped.” (The company confirms there was “limited activity” in Buffalo during this period, but explains it was due to shifts in strategy.) In November, the site was finally almost ready to accommodate machinery. But the building cost had gone over budget by $130 million (R1.6 billion)—and in order to pay for the remaining equipment, SolarCity would need to pony up an estimated $200 million (R2.5 billion) of its own. The following month, SolarCity, having
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determined Silevo would not achieve its production and technology goals, decided it had to bring in an outside partner, Panasonic, to help bear the costs and to take over solar-cell manufacturing. When I visit the Buffalo factory in December, there are barely two dozen cars in the massive parking lots. (SolarCity declined my requests to see inside.) The company had expected to be manufacturing 10 000 panels a day by now, on four to five production lines, but clearly nothing is running. When I pull into the long road leading up to the building, a man idling in a green SolarCity truck flags me down and tells me to leave. Since the merger, Tesla and SolarCity have been able to share manufacturing expertise and resources. But according to sources, with Tesla focused on ramping up Model 3 production at its other factories, Musk himself has yet to tour the Buffalo plant. SolarCity now doesn’t expect the Gigafactory 2 to reach one gigawatt of solarmodule production until 2019. In mid-April 2017, I make a trip to San Mateo, California to meet with Lyndon at SolarCity headquarters. When I arrive, I tell the security guard I’m visiting SolarCity, but he tells me there is no more SolarCity. “We are Tesla now,” he says. Clues of the absorption are evident all around the office park, from the Tesla charging stations to the signs on the surrounding buildings, once bearing the SolarCity name, now replaced by Tesla logos. Lyndon and I sit down in a plain conference room on the second floor near his cubicle, and soon his assistant brings us each a black coffee and a green smoothie concoction he calls “The Lyndon”, which is a blend of kale, celery and other vegetables. “Not bad, eh?” Lyndon says, eyeing my reaction as I take a foamy sip. “It’s healthy, and the juice is freshly squeezed. I have one or two every day, followed up with coffee.” He’s as energetic as usual today, swivelling frenetically in his chair and clicking the pen in his hand repeatedly. The narrative surrounding the company, however, isn’t quite as upbeat. SolarCity, in order to readjust for lower revenue forecasts, has laid off 3 000 employees—about 20% of its workforce—many in sales and marketing. While Tesla maintains the Gigafactory 2 is on track, these layoffs included employees in Fremont and in Buffalo, and SolarCity also parted ways with Silevo’s CEO and CTO. Serra and Barnard, SolarCity’s CFO and chief revenue officer, have since left too, as has the head of Zep Solar. Meanwhile, the company’s solar installations have dropped nearly 40% in the past few months, as it continues to transition away from the original lease-financing model Lyndon pioneered and more toward loans (which have leapt from representing 2% of its sales to 31%).
Musk later tells me that “SolarCity will fade away as a brand,” replaced by “Tesla Solar”. These types of post-merger changes have added to the perception that the business was headed toward bankruptcy until Musk stepped in to save it. Lyndon won’t stand for that characterisation. “It is crazy to think that we needed any type of bailout,” he says when I ask about criticism the company has faced. “We had massive recurring revenue and access to liquidity since we had one of the highest-volume traded stocks in the solar industry. If we needed to raise capital, we could have.” What’s more, he continues, SolarCity started to generate a “significant amount of cash” following its business-model pivot from leases to loans, regardless of what those betting against the stock said. “The people whose opinions don’t matter are the ones shorting the stock.” Lyndon does acknowledge the company endured some growing pains internally. He explains that the “leaders who can lead 1 000 people may not be the same ones who can manage 5 000.” If he could have redone things, he admits, he would’ve invested much earlier in better products and tried to manage growth expectations more effectively. But that’s only easy to see in hindsight, he says: Few could’ve predicted the wild swings of the solar industry over the past couple years. (After all, in the past 12 months, two of its larger competitors, SunEdison and Sungevity, have filed for bankruptcy.) When I ask Lyndon about how he and Musk compare as CEOs, he returns to that “brick wall” metaphor about how Musk can often break through the impossible. “I can punch through many walls,” Lyndon says, humbly. “Elon can punch through every wall. That’s the difference between us.” A couple weeks after our discussion, Lyndon announces he will be leaving the company. When I reach him by phone, he tells me that SolarCity is in a “place now where a strong operator can take over without much impact,” and that he plans to take a break before starting another company that may have “another large impact on humanity”. The news of his departure, coming just 170 days after the merger closed, was unexpected—and some have wondered whether his brother Peter may follow. (No, Lyndon says.) When I ask if he has considered how it may look that he’s leaving, particularly following the challenges SolarCity had faced during the previous year, he replies that the question sounds to him “like a broken record. This concept that it was a bailout is super annoying.” He prefers to see the bigger picture. “The vision will still play through,” he says. “The vision is working.” Four hours before Tesla is set to post its firstquarter earnings on May 3, Musk calls me. I ask how he’s doing. “Terrible,” he says. Is he referring to the upcoming earnings? He laughs. “No, no, I think it
will be a good call,” he says. Then he mentions Tesla’s stock, which recently hit another all-time high, making the company more valuable than General Motors: a stunning notion to some investors, considering GM sold 10 million cars last year compared with Tesla’s 76 000. Musk wonders aloud whether the market is “being a little too generous” and “putting a lot of faith in the future”. Musk had touched on a similar theme—faith—a few days earlier, at a TED Talk in Vancouver. As the host asked a series of questions about his many earth-saving ventures, Musk finally stopped him and said, “I want to be clear: I’m not trying to be anyone’s saviour.” It was an odd statement, considering his whole brand is built around that promise—whether it’s rescuing the planet or the transportation system and energy grid. Perhaps he realised there’s risk in making so many predictions that seem to imply god-like abilities. During our call, I ask if he ever worries that one day he’ll have to stop pushing himself into ever-more-ambitious projects, because if one of his efforts truly fails, people will lose confidence in him. He doesn’t. “I don’t think I’ve really upped the ante,” he adds. “The goals have been the same from the beginning.” It’s true that Musk outlined part of his broader mission long ago in his mad-genius manifesto, jokingly titled “The Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan”, which he published online in 2006. But I find the idea that he hasn’t upped the ante somewhat hard to believe, and even more so after the earnings call. Musk spends much of the session talking to analysts about the Next Big Things. Sounding subdued, almost bored by his own predictions, he speaks about advances toward the Model 3 rollout, as well as a new vehicle, the Model Y, scheduled for 2019. He gives clues about the potential for Tesla semis and pickup trucks, and even briefly discusses the idea for his side venture, the Boring Company—his blueprint to reinvent transportation infrastructure with underground tunnels. He says he wants to continue innovating at Tesla for the rest of his life, or at least until he becomes “senile or too crazy”. When an analyst asks if he anticipates that Tesla will one day boast the same market cap as Apple, which is valued at $770 billion (almost R10 trillion) to Tesla’s $47 billion (R610 billion), he pauses. “I could be completely delusional,” he then says, “but I see a clear path to that outcome.” SolarCity, which Musk had sold as Tesla’s Next Big Thing just a few months earlier, barely comes up on the 80-minute call, garnering just two brief questions. (The company would begin accepting orders for Solar Roofs the following week.) It’s easy to want to believe in the future Musk imagines. And the new Solar Roofs—combined with Powerwalls and Tesla cars—may truly be a key development in helping wean us off fossil fuels. But it’s just as easy, given how that future seems to grow more fantastical and distant with each word he utters, to become cynical. Musk understands this. As he frames it on the earnings call, there will always be “a group that says [this future] is obvious, and a group that says it’s impossible.” This distinction between believers and non-believers, between hope and hype, reminded me of my visit to Buffalo. On a frigid evening, days before Christmas, nearly 100 people braved icy roads to attend a SolarCity job fair at Mt. Olive Baptist Church, on the slight chance they might qualify for one of the few hundred positions available at the company’s solar factory. Residents of all types—laid-off factory workers, serviceindustry employees trying to switch professions, students looking for their first jobs— gathered to learn about SolarCity’s plans. They had come to hear a recruiting rep share the gospel of Musk who, a number of them told me afterward, is a “visionary” and an “innovator”. For many Tesla watchers, whether Musk succeeds or fails in his various quests will mean little more than whether there’s another cool product on the market, or a higher stock price. But for these people in the linoleum-floored church meeting room, the stakes are higher and more pressing. “Many years ago, we had the manufacturers—the GMs, the Fords, the Bethlehem Steels—[providing] good-paying jobs,” says Rasheed Wyatt, a local city council member. “But those have died off, and we’ve struggled to give our residents a new identity.” SolarCity could be transformational. “I’m hoping this is going to be a boom.” acarr@fastcompany.com
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An education for life How Standard Bank’s youth entrepreneurial development programmes assist in economic grow th and development on the African continent
The youth (14 to 35 years old) constitute 41.2% of the South African population, but the number of young people involved in entrepreneurial activity remains extremely low at 6% of the total youth population. South Africa’s Total Early-Stage Entrepreneurial Activity index, which currently stands at 8.9% youth, contributes a mere 10%—representing 0.9% of the total TEA index. With the country faced with a high unemployment rate, inequality and poverty, it’s becoming imperative that we invest in and develop the entrepreneurial mindset of our youth, equipping them for the future. Standard Bank, through its Business Incubator, is providing entrepreneurial development support as a way to prepare young people for success in today’s rapidly changing environment and enabling the next. It provides and supports programmes that firstly drive entrepreneurial awareness and, secondly, provide the tools needed to run a sustainable business. Standard Bank believes growth on the African continent will be driven by small businesses, and its entrepreneurial development programmes are a means to assist in economic growth and development. These programmes range from two-day boot camps that assist in the process of idea validation, to more structured acceleration programmes that run for about 12 weeks, unpacking the components of managing a sustainable business through mentor-led type learning. The Standard Bank Incubator also runs events centred around specific themes, with the hope of inspiring and educating the youth market about the journey of entrepreneurship and the endless possibilities it presents. Standard Bank understands the loneliness of walking the entrepreneurial road, and thus provides networking platforms on which people can connect and potentially find new customers or suppliers.
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Faith Tembe, programme manager for the Standard Bank Incubator
# SBIncu bator yout h activitie s Masterclasses delivered by various service providers have been designed for tackling specific business-related topics. Standard Bank will also be introducing more structured masterclasses once a month, focusing on challenges experienced by youth enterprises. Business Me Young Youth Workshop This half-day course is for 16- to 25-year-olds interested in entrepreneurship and who are struggling to get started. It will take place on June 17 at the Standard Bank Incubator in Rosebank, Johannesburg. The workshop was created and is hosted by Tiisetso Maloma, an entrepreneur and author of books such as The Anxious Entrepreneur and Forget the Business Plan: Use This Short Model. The course will comprehensively give answers to problems young aspiring entrepreneurs face in struggling with how to start and execute their business ideas: Determining possible customers Marketing activities to prioritise Attracting possible customers, acquiring them and maintaining them Building an internal public relations strategy Diagnosing business model weakness Testing if a product is buyable before releasing it and before investing a lot of capital
Through its Business Incubator, Standard Bank is providing entrepreneurial development support as a way to prepare young people for success in today’s rapidly changing environment.
GirlCodeHack Workshop This workshop walks you through the Business Model Canvas: getting you from just building an app, to building a business.
Bu si ne ss developm e nt prog ra m me s Two-day Boot Camps Two-day boot camps will take place at the Hatfield Hub and Rosebank Incubator once a month, in partnership with Liberty. Content could range from business modelling to business simulation exercises. For example, it could be delivered through a board-based business simulation designed to give entrepreneurs an understanding of the operations and key issues involved in running a small, medium or micro business. The simulation will give entrepreneurs the opportunity to face a range of issues that they would typically confront during business operations, such as: pricing in a competitive marketplace; the importance of record keeping in a small business; understanding the role of cash in a small business, and managing cash flow; measuring the performance of a
Above, and bottom left: The 24-hour Hackathon encourages young women to develop digital solutions that will benefit townships. Bottom right: The Business Me Young Youth Workshop helps aspiring entrepreneurs start and execute their business ideas.
business, and analysing problem areas; and entrepreneurial thinking skills. The focus here is trying out different ways of encoding knowledge as well as testing new ways of learning. It’s important that entrepreneurs go through the business validation process; it saves them time and money, and they leave the boot camp knowing exactly what they need to focus their energy on. Youth Digital Entrepreneurship Accelerator The Standard Bank digital and design accelerator is meant to help bridge the gap between the artistic, creative economy and the business of being an entrepreneur in a digital and or design-led firm. There’s a need to understand how to meet business objectives and ensure economic advancements within this space. The creative economy is a top employer in the country, therefore it’s important for Standard Bank to work together with creative entrepreneurs to support the creative ecosystem and walk the journey with them. This six-month accelerator programme provides a business-in-a-box solution to help the small business
accelerate its growth. The programme will provide the necessary business tools and equipment needed to take the small business to the next level. Township Accelerator This intervention will be specifically targeted at township businesses. It is important to instil creativity and innovation within the township space in order to drive sustainable business development. This programme will be run in partnership with AmaVerkykers for 3months focusing on personal, business development and providing continual mentorship sessions. ‘The strategy to accelerate or incubate entrepreneurial endeavour amongst young men and women built on a value-based approach that is inclusive, longitudinal, asset-based and integrated. It would be naïve to assume a young person growing up in an informal settlement should pull themselves up without due consideration of wider societal and economic challenges and realities.” So we believe it is imperative to support these entrepreneurs in their entrepreneurial journey. 24-hour Hackathon Technology is becoming ever more important in our everyday lives.
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and the half-day Web Design Masterclass. Standard Bank thanks its sponsors and partners: Samsung, Telkom, IBM, Mofaya, Geekulcha, KMC and Liberty. Standard Bank will continue em-powering youth entrepreneurs across the continent, because it believes Africa is our home and we drive her growth.
Educational mandate—infusing entrepreneurial spirit at high-school level
Standard Bank, together with its partners, believes that through its Women in Technology Programme, it can encourage women to explore the possibilities offered by technology as a sector for personal and business growth. Standard Bank hosted 32 women and presented them with an opportunity to test their IT skills during a 24-hour Hackathon. The women were encouraged to identify challenges and develop digital solutions that are focused on bringing benefits to townships. The focus was on creating IT applications and websites to promote businesses and broaden township economies. Participants with ideas on revolutionising the financial sector and education were also encouraged to put forward their proposals. On a broader scale, by highlighting IT and computer skills, Standard Bank believes the hackathon will encourage women to look at improving their technical skills so that they can take their business to new levels. The winners were offered free access to many of the business development courses and workshops, including the two-day Digital Boot Camp to validate their ideas; the two-day Agile Training Workshop;
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Clockwise, from top left: The winners of the Giving Wings programme were Harry Makobe, Gr11 at Steve Tshwete Secondary (2nd), Phiwokuhle Basi, Gr10 at Steve Tshwete Secondary (1st) and Esther Maduna, Gr10 at Olievenhoutbosch Secondary (3rd). Faith Tembe and Jayshree Naidoo from Standard Bank Incubator, with the three winners, Kefilwe Morobane and Thato Mboweni from Giving Wings, and Amanda Khoza from Liberty. The Giving Wings programme prepares learners for life after high school.
Giving Wings Youth Development Programme Communication skills training company Giving Wings, in partnership with Standard Bank and Liberty, launched the Giving Wings Youth Development Programme in May at Steve Tshwete Secondary School, located in Centurion’s Olievenhoutbosch Township. The programme provides grade 10 and 11 students with the support necessary to develop their leadership, communication and entrepreneurial skills. Now in its fourth year, Giving Wings targets learners from disadvantaged backgrounds, addressing any insecurities or anxieties they may have as they prepare for life after high school, while also empowering them to break out of the cycle of poverty and confidently take control of their future. In addition to students, the programme has provided an opportunity for unemployed youth in the community to gain valuable work experience as programme volunteers. After five consecutive Saturdays, a celebratory closing event took place on Youth Day to showcase the top 12 students, who pitched their business ideas to the community. The finalist created ideas that looked to impact the community at large—ranging from solving township litter problems through recycling, to businesses catering to the needs of the disabled. Also featured strongly were web and mobile-based interventions designed to assist learners with afterhour studies. The winner, Phiwokuhle Basi from the host school, had an idea to start a recycling business called Station Nation, which would help fight pollution by means of biometrics. “My Giving Wings journey was phenomenal. It taught me a lot and inspired me to make a positive contribution toward my community,” she said. In addition to its focus on youth entrepreneurs, Standard Bank recently launched a crowdfunding platform called Feenix.org, which is designed to help students access fees for their tertiary studies through donations from individuals, businesses and corporates. All donations are tax-deductible, and corporates can benefit from their SED for skills development spend.
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I T IS MORE THAN A M AG A ZINE, I T'S A MOV EMEN T
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The List
10 GREAT BUSINESS PODCASTS Spend your lunch break with these tasty takes on work culture, tech and other topics By Cale Weissman
Illustration by Peter Oumanski
1
StartUp Gimlet Media
No podcast better captures the thrills and struggles of launching a company. Created as a remarkably candid docuseries on the birth of podcasting business Gimlet Media, it now traces the surprising stories of other enterprises.
6
How I Built This NPR
Sample episode: The creator of the 5-Hour Energy drink goes from Princeton dropout to Hindu monk to beverage billionaire.
Sample episode: The inventor of the slap bracelet on why he made no money from the ’90s fad.
2
Planet Money NPR
3
Working Panoply
This show—launched in 2008 to help explain the financial crisis—offers fascinating explorations of the intersection between economics and culture. Sample episode: A look at why many Irish pubs are so similar. The answer? In the 1970s, one man defined the elements of a Dublin bar, created a kit, and sold thousands around the globe. Each instalment starts with the same question: “What is your name and what do you do?” Guests then reveal details of their jobs—whether they’re a neurosurgeon, a novelist, a pollster or a clown.
7
Eater Upsell Vox Media
Above Avalon Above Avalon
A giant bite of Apple. Hosted by analyst and technology writer Neil Cybart, this show goes deep into all things Cupertino, with some of the most informed analyses you’re likely to find.
8
Exponent Exponent
Brown Ambition Brown Ambition
Journalist Mandi Woodruff and personal-finance expert Tiffany Aliche chat about news, relationships and other topics, but they’re especially incisive when discussing their successes and failures in the business world. Sample episode: Aliche on overcoming almost R4 million in debt to build a financial-advice company.
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Tech watchers Ben Thompson and James Allworth tackle topics of the moment—fake news on Facebook, Uber’s scandals—and offer broader discourse on where the digital world is headed. Sample episode: Thoughtful debate on what tech companies are getting wrong about selfdriving cars.
9
I Hate My Boss Wondery
Sample episode: Apple is famous for its design. So why are products like Apple Music and Apple Watch so weirdly hard to use?
5
Editors from culinary site Eater glean insights from chefs and other industry pros, both famous (Anthony Bourdain) and less so (cookbook photographer Evan Sung). Sample episode: Wolfgang Puck explains how he built his empire, then rips into Eater’s restaurant critic who’d panned one of Puck’s steakhouses.
Sample episode: A professional Santa spills trade secrets: Don’t work shopping malls, wear a real fur suit, and never say “Ho, ho, ho.”
4
This series explores backstories of various big businesses, from AOL to 1-800-GOT-JUNK. The storytelling is simple and linear, leaving space for gripping personal tales to emerge.
Former Nike and Oprah Winfrey Network marketing executive Liz Dolan and executive coach Larry Seal offer advice on your stickiest workplace conundrums. Sample episode: Dealing with liars in the office, plus an interview with Airbnb’s head of talent management, Andrea Robb.
10
Loose Threads Loose Threads
Focused on innovation and technology in the fashion industry, this podcast digs into notable developments in manufacturing, design, retail and other areas. Sample episode: How online menswear retailer Proper Cloth is tapping data and digital tools to amp up its sales.
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Subscribe to Fast Company SA and stand a chance to win an Alcatel 2-in-1 Plus 10 hybrid laptop/tablet, worth R3 500! Fast Company South Africa is available in selected Pick n Pay and Exclusive Books stores. An annual subscription is for 10 print issues of Fast Company SA magazine (March/April and December/January double up as one issue each), at a cost of R240 (including 14% VAT and postage). Full payment must be made before the subscription is valid. This offer is for South Africa ONLY. If you would like to subscribe, email Susan Ball for more details: susan@insightspublishing.co.za.
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With its compatible 4G/Wi-Fi–connected keyboard, the new Alcatel Plus 10 offers a complete mobile desktop experience. It is compact and 40% lighter than an average laptop, which makes it exceptionally convenient to carry. The device can be used in laptop mode to type documents or create spreadsheets (it runs on Windows 10), and in dock mode to display presentations or slides. Dual front speakers with immersive 3D sound, coupled with the HD IPS screen technology, make film-watching and gaming an extra pleasure. When used in tablet mode, without the keyboard, it is an ideal companion for travel or commutes, to browse the Web, or serve as an e-book reader. With its multiple ports (rare in this device category), the Plus 10 enables connections to a hard drive, mouse, USB key, secondary screen and more. In addition, it has a default memory of 32GB that can be ramped up with an external SD card. The tablet and 4G LTE keyboard offer a total of 8 410mAh battery power, which lasts a full eight-hour working (or playing) day. What’s more, the unique keyboard serves as a Wi-Fi hotspot for up to 15 users. As an extra bonus, the Plus 10 has both a front and rear-facing camera, with front flash that’s ideal for video calls. Visit www.alcatel-mobile.com/za/en for further information. JULY 2017 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A 83
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The Great Innovation Frontier
M i l l s Soko
KEEP THE SPARK ALIVE South Africa’s ratings downgrade could spell the end of our fragile culture of innovation—unless we bridge the gaps between possibility and opportunity
South Africa’s fears recently materialised: The country was downgraded first by ratings agency Standard & Poor’s, then by Fitch, to junk status. Concerns for the implications are wide-ranging, not least of which is the possible effect on innovation. It is well-documented that innovation drives economic growth. This is, in fact, one of the most consistent findings by scholars in macro-economics— and according to the United States Chamber of Commerce Foundation, some 50% of US economic growth is attributable to increases in innovation. There’s a notion that the corollary is also true: that when times are tough, human beings rise like phoenixes from the ashes and begin to innovate faster than ever. But in order for a culture of innovation to truly take root and become transformative, there must be a certain amount of available R&D budget and an enabling environment that includes favourable policy, strong leadership and supportive legislation. India, for example, is aiming to make the country an innovation-driven economy via a major increase in investment—some $31 million (R417.1 million) in 100 incubators, supporting startups in innovation throughout the country. This, says Human Resources Development Minister Prakash Javadekar, is “the only way for sustainable prosperity for the country”, which currently ranks 66th out of 128 countries in the Global Innovation Index 2016. Canada, meanwhile, already one of the world’s most innovative countries, is angling for more venture-capital investment to boost the country’s innovation economy even further. The relationship between a strong economy and innovation is clear. Countries that top the 2017 Bloomberg Innovation Index—South Korea, Sweden and Germany, for instance—are not badly off. And, according to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, innovation intensity tracks development status; so when looking at regional statistics for 2016, innovation is lowest in Africa at just 20%, and highest in North America at 39%. Hopes for an African Renaissance depend on the entire continent’s ability to innovate, and it’s naïve to hope the
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The research is clear that co-operation between firms and external agents is considered by many to be one of the most important drivers of innovation.
extent of innovation required can take place without an environment conducive to investment. As International Monetary Fund MD Christine Lagarde said recently, even developed economies are reeling from the effects of the financial crisis, and governments will have to step up to invest in research and tech, and unleash the entrepreneurial spirit by “removing unnecessary barriers to competition, cutting red tape, investing more in education, and providing tax incentives for research and development.” For South Africa, a ratings downgrade and the resultant negative impact on the economy and growth will, if anything, result in less government spend on these things. Already in July 2016, former Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan warned that South Africa owed close to R2 trillion in debt, and that a ratings downgrade would increase the interest on those repayments significantly. At the time, R160 billion was being spent on interest annually. This figure is set to rise after the downgrades. For businesses that need to innovate to grow, the environment is set to get tougher as well. Higher interest costs on debt repayments and inflationary pressures will create an untenable situation for would-be entrepreneurs needing to borrow startup capital, and increased taxes will further exacerbate the problem. The 2016 GEM report found that entrepreneurial activity was on the decline in South Africa, with a low rate of perceived opportunity and an even lower rate of entrepreneurial intention. There is little good news that can be teased out of a ratings downgrade. What one hopes, however, is that active citizenry will bridge the gaps between possibility and opportunity. Academic institutions, policymakers, non-governmental organisations and businesses can all work together to help create a more supportive environment for entrepreneurs and innovators, through maintaining high standards of scholarship and ethical leadership, and not abandoning community outreach. The research is clear that co-operation between firms and external agents is considered by many to be one of the most important drivers of innovation. This will not make the economic impact of a ratings downgrade disappear—but it may make it possible for some of the country’s bright minds to find a niche where they otherwise would not, and keep the spark of innovation alive. Mills Soko is the director of the UCT Graduate School of Business and an associate professor specialising in international trade and doing business in Africa. With a career that has spanned business, government, civil society and academia, he is uniquely positioned to understand the role these sectors have to play—collaboratively and individually—in addressing the critical issues of Africa’s development and competitiveness.
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Motoring
NEED FOR SPEED With its innovative AWD and performance technologies, the all-new Ford Focus RS delivers the ultimate fun-to-drive experience
The new Focus RS hatchback pioneers the innovative Ford Performance All-Wheel Drive (AWD) system, along with numerous advanced performance technologies to deliver exceptional cornering speed, thrilling performance and unbridled driving enjoyment. With a specially engineered 257kW version of the new 2.3-litre EcoBoost engine, the Focus RS is the fastest ever RS model: sprinting from 0 to 100km/h in 4.7 seconds and hitting a top speed of 266km/h. This model is part of Ford’s effort to see more than 12 performance vehicles delivered to customers globally through 2020, including the stunning Ford GT ultra-high-performance supercar that competed at the 2016 24 Hours of Le Mans.
INNOVATIVE FORD PERFORMANCE ALL WHEEL DRIVE The all-new Focus RS features the innovative Ford Performance AWD with Dynamic Torque Vectoring to deliver a new level of handling capability and driver enjoyment, combining outstanding traction and grip with unmatched agility and cornering speed. To deliver optimum driving dynamics, the system was calibrated alongside the car’s advanced Electronic Stability Control, in particular the brake-based Torque Vectoring Control system that works in parallel with the torque-vectoring AWD. Other exclusive chassis features include sports suspension with stiffer spring rates and more efficient anti-roll-bars than those found in the Focus ST, as well as two-mode switchable dampers that offer a 40% firmer Sport setting for track driving. A carefully tuned electric power-assisted steering system—working in combination with an optimised front suspension knuckle design and shorter steering link arms—delivers responsive steering with outstanding feel.
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The vehicle’s exterior design has also been developed to support the driving dynamics. Careful aerodynamic optimisation of the front splitter, rear spoiler and underbody features eliminates lift forces, and the final design delivers a balanced performance with zero lift in the front and rear for optimum high-speed handling and stability.
ADVANCED PERFORMANCE TECHNOLOGIES Ford offers advanced performance and driver assistance technologies to help ensure the new model’s extreme driving capabilities are accessible to drivers of all skill levels. The driver can select four different drive modes to configure the vehicle to deliver optimum performance in a range of driving conditions: Normal or Sport settings for on-road driving, and Track or a special Drift Mode for circuit use only. Each mode has specific settings for the AWD system, damper controls, ESC system, steering and engine responses, plus exhaust valve. The industry-first Drift Mode features a specially developed calibration for the AWD system that modifies the torque distribution to help the driver achieve controlled oversteer drifts under circuit conditions. For ultimate performance off the start-line, Launch Control configures the vehicle’s chassis and powertrain systems to deliver the fastest possible acceleration, whatever the track conditions. A Performance Shift Light in the instrument cluster alerts the driver when approaching the optimum upshift point of 5 900rpm, and flashes if the engine hits the limit of 6 800rpm. For enhanced braking during hard-track driving, the new model features the most powerful brake system ever fitted to an RS, with 350mm ventilated front discs and aluminium Brembo four-piston monoblock callipers.
HIGH-PERFORMANCE ECOBOOST POWERTRAIN
With a specially engineered 257kW version of the 2.3-litre EcoBoost engine, the all-new Focus RS is the fastest ever RS model
The new 2.3-litre EcoBoost engine shares its fundamental structure with the all-aluminium four-cylinder engine in the all-new Ford Mustang. The engine has been specifically developed for the high-performance Focus RS to deliver 10% more power with a maximum output of 257kW. Meticulous calibration work has ensured the power unit delivers excellent low-end responsiveness with a powerful mid-range pull, while offering enthusiasts an exciting character and making the engine rewarding to rev up to the redline. Maximum torque of 440Nm is delivered between 2 000 and 4 500rpm, with 470Nm available for up to 15 seconds on transient overboost during hard acceleration. The 6-speed manual transmission in the Focus RS has been optimised for the enthusiast driver, with a shorter gear lever and revised mechanism to deliver faster and more accurate shifts. Ford Performance engineers have tuned the RS exhaust system to deliver a rewarding and sporty sound character during spirited driving, and developed a unique injection calibration in Sport Mode to provide the distinctive burbles and pops that are a signature of RS models.
A racy number The new Focus RS exterior design is both dramatic and functional, with a more powerful and muscular character.
The EcoBoost power unit is manufactured at the Valencia Engine Plant in Spain, where every RS engine is subjected to a rigorous ‘listening test’ at the end of the production line to pick up any tell-tale noises that may indicate a possible defect, which machines cannot easily identify.
STUNNING LOOKS WITH OPTIMUM FUNCTION The Focus RS exterior design is both dramatic and functional, with a more powerful and muscular character. Designers worked closely with Ford Performance to focus on the aerodynamic downforce and balance delivered by the design, as well as the cooling demands of the powertrain and brakes. Based on the new Focus, the RS features a powerful new front-end appearance with a bold upper trapezoidal grille above the deep front splitter, incorporating the largest possible apertures for engine cooling. A wide, muscular stance is emphasised by the lower wings and large outboard openings on each side of the car, which feed the brake cooling ducts and house vertically mounted fog lamps. At the rear, the fascia panel is dominated by the exceptionally large diffuser, which optimises air flow from under the vehicle to reduce drag, and contains the twin round high-performance exhaust outlets and a clear
central fog lamp. The distinctive rear roof spoiler is carefully integrated with the car’s silhouette through bodycoloured side panels featuring a subtle embossed RS logo. The dynamic side-profile is emphasised by sculptured rocker panels, and the bold wheel lips that house multispoke 19-inch RS alloy wheels, finished either in silver or optional Gunmetal dark grey. Five striking exterior colours include Nitrous Blue, a vibrant four-coat metallic finish exclusive to the RS; as well as Stealth Grey, Shadow Black, Magnetic and Frozen White. Standard Bi-Xenon HID headlamps feature Adaptive Front Lighting, which adjusts the intensity and angle of the headlamp beams according to vehicle speed, steering angle and distance to objects for optimal illumination. The high-performance character of the RS is reflected inside the car with heavily bolstered Recaro sports seats as the centrepiece of the cockpit. Signature RS Recaro shell seats, with authentic motorsport microfibre fabric panels, are available as an option. The interior features the redesigned Focus control layout, with SYNC®2 connectivity providing access to audio, climate control and mobile phones via voice control, as well as via an 8-inch colour touchscreen. The RS driving experience is reinforced by a new flat-bottomed steering wheel with a soft-feel leather covered rim, alloy foot pedals, and unique instrument graphics within the main cluster. An additional bank of gauges above the centre console displays turbocharger boost pressure, oil temperature and oil pressure. Throughout the cabin, the distinctive blue RS theme is echoed through stitching on the seats, steering wheel, floor mats and interior trim, the coloured graphic on the gear shifter, and via the RS logo itself—which is proudly displayed on the seats, steering wheel and door scuff plates.
PROUD HERITAGE—THE 30TH RS Developed by a small team of Ford Performance engineers in Europe and the US, the new Focus RS is the third generation of Focus RS cars, following models launched in 2002 and 2009. (Only the latter was sold in South Africa, in limited numbers, thus making it very exclusive and sought-after.) This latest model will be the 30th car to wear the legendary RS badge, following such technology trendsetters as the 16-valve 1970 Escort RS1600, the turbocharged Sierra RS Cosworth of 1985 with its radical aerodynamics, and the four-wheel-drive 1992 Escort RS Cosworth. For further details and price tags, visit www.ford.co.za.
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Fast Bytes Fast Company SA takes a look at the innovative new ideas, services, research and news currently making waves in South Africa and abroad
In every stitch a story “Denim Reworked” is G-Star RAW’s fresh take on classics this season. Celebrating the craftsmanship behind its beloved products, the brand followed three inspiring denim-lovers, their journeys and the denim stories behind each. The first features Daniel Werner, a Berlin-based collector and hunter of all things denim. The pieces he collects are mostly hidden treasures, each with its own story of craftsmanship. He can be spotted on any given day at either an old record shop or a vintage market. The second introduces Shanice Silva Cruz, the first female BMX rider to do a front flip. Suffering from dyslexia since she was young has taught her one of her most valuable skills: patience. “Guys will always be faster than you,” she says. “But that’s okay, you just have to follow your own pace and enjoy the journey.” Finally, covered in paint splashes and coloured stains, self-taught artist Ricky Lee Gordon uses the city as his canvas. Originally from Johannesburg, he always stands before an empty wall without a certain piece in mind—he experiences the place and lets it spark. The G-Star RAW Denim Reworked collection is currently available in-store and online.
The write stuff During the month of May, news broke about Isiseko Junior Secondary School in East London that faced a dire desk shortage. Majority of the pupils were forced either to use the floor or sacrifice their chair as a writing surface. An innovative solution to this predicament, non-profit DeskBags provides satchels that double as schoolbags and portable desks when folded open onto the child’s lap. The front flap is reinforced with ABS plastic, ensuring a hard and stable surface for children to write on. Mr South Africa 2016, Armand du Plessis, raised enough funds through a social media call-to-action to provide 100 DeskBags to the 260 students from Isiseko. DeskBags kindly donated the additional 160 bags, allowing all students to learn with dignity. 88 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A JULY 2017
Smells like innovative spirit One of the world’s top electronics companies, Panasonic has brought its expertise in televisions to the wardrobe—with its new deodorising clothes hanger. To be launched in September in Japan, the hanger uses “nanoe tech” to apply a highvoltage charge that creates nanoscopic water particles, which then collect moisture without harming one’s clothing. This not only gets rid of mustiness but could also remove cigarette and smoke odours as well as suppress pollen, the company claims. The hanger will retail for about $180 (R2 300).
Fast Bytes
A lifetime of video calls WhatsApp’s more than 1 billion users spend over 340 million minutes on video calls each day on the app—the equivalent of 646 years. The company recently revealed that 55 million video calls go through on the service each day. India has the highest number of minutes spent on video calls, at 50 million, which is the equivalent of over 95 years. WhatsApp first launched the beta version of video calling in May last year and made it available globally in November. At the time of launch, WhatsApp said it wanted to make the feature available to all users, even those in areas where connectivity isn’t very reliable, and to those who own low- to mid-range smartphones.
Pass and catch
Smart moves Apple and Samsung may be the world’s most popular smartphone brands, but they are fast losing market share to new entrants. Chinese smartphone manufacturers are driving sales with their competitively priced, high-quality smartphones equipped with innovative features. According to Gartner, the smartphone market grew 9% in the first quarter of 2017, with consumers spending more to get better phones—resulting in the rise in average selling prices. Samsung’s smartphone sales declined 3.1% in the first quarter of 2017, and sales of Apple iPhones were flat, which led to a drop in market share year-on-year. FastMobile is a new entrant that’s quickly capturing market share with its high-end, affordable TrendZ1 smartphone. And Huawei has edged closer to Apple, with sales amounting to 34 million units in Q1 2017. This has positioned Huawei as a dominant brand in the consumer market. However, “pressure is mounting as its counterparts in China are catching up,” added Gartner’s Anshul Gupta.
A weighted, half rugby ball is being hailed as one of the greatest new innovations in the sport. The ShadowBall has been engineered to rebound off any wall and come spiralling back to the passer—and for the first time ever, enables rugby players to train solo, passing and catching. Says inventor Gary Crookes, “The ShadowBall allows 300 solo passes and catches in just 10 minutes—that’s 10 times the repetition and reinforcement of fundamental technique.” He adds that ShadowBall is the rugby equivalent of the practice wall for tennis players and the driving range for golfers. Crookes came up with the idea in 2012 after seeing a similar concept being used in American football. He used cutting-edge processes and materials to design and create the ball according to World Rugby specifications, so that it equals the weight and diameter of an official match ball.
The best of the Internet of Things The winners of MTN Business’ second annual Internet of Things Awards were announced in June, celebrating the best of South Africa’s market-ready IoT solutions, applications and developers. This year saw “a proliferation of exciting solutions that have the potential to drastically transform the IoT space in the future,” said Mariana Kruger, MTN Business general manager for the private sector. Overall winner IoT.nxt has developed a world-leading framework that makes the efficiencies, cost savings and increased revenue from IoT a reality for business. 2017 winners Best Commercial IoT Solution IoT.nxt Best Enterprise Development Solution MCXTech I nnovative Hardware in IoT Digital Matters Most Disruptive IoT Solution Hear X Group Wildcard Proximity ID MTN Business Overall Award Winner IoT.nxt JULY 2017 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A 89
Fast Events Local conferences, talks and meetups we think are worth attending
Transformation Confx SA Date: 12 & 13 July Time: 08h00–15h30 Location: Zulu Nyala Country Manor, Fourways, Johannesburg Cost: R4 350 The Transformation Conference, hosted by MTN Business, will comprise both a conference and expo to give the public and private sector exposure and the opportunity to showcase their various transformation programmes and implementations toward achieving economic and social objectives, as founded on the National Development Plan 2030.
I Code Java Cloud Conference Date: 20 & 21 July Time: 08h00–17h00 (day 1); 09h00–17h00 (day 2) Location: Focus Rooms, The Core, Sunninghill, Johannesburg Cost: R1 850 j-sa.co This two-day conference is for coders—from beginners to enterprise skilled professionals. There will be some fantastic international and local innovative speakers who will cover topics such as Java, microservice and DevOps.
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Marketing Strategies for Low-Income Consumers Date: 1 & 2 August Time: 07h30–17h00 Location: TBC Cost: R4 100 www.kr.co.za Low-income consumers are struggling to survive, and face major challenges and social problems every day. However, this market still presents massive opportunities for brands—especially those able to deliver real value to these people’s lives. It’s crucial for marketers and businesses to understand the changing environment, shifting attitudes, new trends and the real needs and aspirations of this market. This annual conference will provide the latest insights that will change the way you think about the elusive low-income consumer.
Strategic Event Management Short Course Date: 7 & 8 August Time: 08h30–16h30 Location: ProComm House, Ferndale, Randburg, Johannesburg Cost: R4 500 www.provox.co.za This short course—endorsed by the Public Relations Institute of Southern Africa—is aimed at middle- to senior-level practitioners in the fields of marketing, public relations and communication management, who seek to gain a better understanding of events management and the tools used to plan a successful event. A wide variety of special events will be covered.
Fast Events
Decorex Joburg 2017
My Business Expo Cape Town
Date: 9 to 13 August Time: 10h00–18h00 Location: Gallagher Convention Centre, Midrand, Johannesburg Cost: R120 (adults), R100 (students and pensioners), R20 (kids under 12) www.reedexpoafrica.co.za/decorex
Date: 24 August Time: 09h00–17h00 Location: Cape Town International Convention Centre Cost: Free (pre-register online) www.mybizexpo.co.za
Centred around the theme, “Make your space your living dream”, Decorex Joburg is set to showcase trendsetting design products across seven exhibition halls. See this year’s most captivating trends in the Decorex SA Trend House, the Décor District, and the Designer Spotlight where one of Joburg’s leading interior designers will craft an aspirational home space. And at the Builders DIY Theatre, industry leaders will offer insightful and entertaining tips.
Standard Bank Top Women Conference Date: 16 & 17 August Time: TBA Location: Emperors Palace, Kempton Park, Johannesburg Cost: R9 900 topwomen.co.za/conference This annual event brings together decision makers and thought leaders who are serious about delivering results for gender empowerment: business experts, academics, government representatives and the most influential captains of industry. The conference comprises breakaway sessions, each with a different focus area; and a Fast Track Networking session that will allow delegates to introduce themselves and their business. The highlight will be the opportunity to hear, first-hand and close-up, from some of the most iconic South African women of our time.
With more than 40 000 visitors, 400 exhibitors and 200 top-of-the-line seminars and sessions throughout the day, My Business Expo is the most successful show in Africa for anyone starting or growing a business. It’s where business gets personal with knowledgeable speakers, business experts, incredible interactive exhibits, cutting-edge solutions, new trends, world-class networking, novel ideas and opportunities, and in-depth education.
Holiday Expo Date: 26 & 27 August Time: 12h00–22h00 Location: Montecasino Piazza, Fourways, Johannesburg Cost: R70 per adult (online, or R85 at the door); kids under 12 free www.holidayexpo.co.za Imagine a one-stop holiday and travel experience with a plethora of destinations and educational videos to sell the sizzle of your next holiday. Now imagine all of that in an authentic Italian piazza, engaging face to face with more than 35 exhibitors from different parts of the world. The Holiday Expo is the first independent consumer travel show in South Africa, providing a platform to inform, entertain and educate the public about holiday destinations.
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New School of Thought
R ich a rd Pe re z
STUCK IN A TROUGH OF SORROW? How South African companies can beat the downgrade blues through design-led innovation
Moody’s recently assigned a negative outlook to South Africa. This blow comes hot on the heels of the Fitch and Standard & Poor’s downgrades of the country’s investment rating to junk status, due to our president’s midnight cabinet reshuffle and firing of Pravin Gordhan as finance minister. To survive and thrive through this doom and gloom, it may be instructive to take a look at how some of the world’s leading companies lifted themselves out of their own ‘trough of sorrow’ (period of struggle after a setback, as coined by Paul Graham, co-founder of Y Combinator), using the engineering inspired tools of design-led innovation. Design is often misconstrued as relating to making things look good. On the contrary, design is—as Apple co-founder Steve Jobs said—“not just what [a product] looks like and feels like; design is how it works.” It was this philosophy that drove Jobs’s transformation of Apple when he returned as CEO in 1997, growing it through consumer-focused innovations like the iPod and iPhone into the world’s largest tech company in the world today. He focused on design from a holistic user experience— appealing to people’s emotional needs and desires. South Korea’s Samsung Electronics followed a similar trajectory out of the doldrums of manufacturing inexpensive, imitative electronics for other businesses. In 1996, Lee Kun-hee, chair of Samsung Group, recognised the need for expertise in design, which he believed would become “the ultimate battleground for global competition in the 21st century.” After great resistance from executives, who believed chasing short-term profits was more important than cultivating a company-wide design philosophy, Kun-hee transformed Samsung into a leading tech innovator. Even before creating new products, its teams of designers, engineers, marketers, ethnographers, musicians and writers research users’ unmet needs. The Design Management Institute and Motiv Strategies created the Design Value Index in 2013 as a means to “measure the value of implementing best-inclass design management practices.” It tracks the value of publicly traded company portfolios that meet a set of design-management criteria—monitoring the impact of
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“Design thinking and co-creation are a new way . . . to put the user at the centre of a problem to develop solutions from the outside in, rather than the inside out.”
these companies’ design investments on their stock value over a 10-year period, relative to the overall Standard & Poor’s 500 Index. The DVI found that from 2005 and 2015, companies that incorporated design thinking into their business strategy outperformed the S&P by 228%. Apple leads the pack, but also on the list are soft-drink giants Coca Cola and PepsiCo, family-friendly film producer Walt Disney, and home-appliance manufacturer Whirlpool. Jeneanne Rae, founder and CEO of Motiv Strategies, observes that those companies that thrive on the DVI have buy-in for design-led innovation, with designers sitting in top management structures and influencing organisational flows and structures—from HR to manufacturing. “Design thinking and co-creation aren’t fads, but rather a new way for all problem solvers to put the user at the centre of a problem to develop solutions from the outside in, rather than the inside out.” How would South African companies fare on the DVI? Not too well, if we look at a recent Stellenbosch University survey of South African managers who rated their companies’ innovation readiness. While 78% of respondents confirmed that innovation was a strategic priority for their organisation, and that innovation objectives appear in their organisation’s business plan, less than 70% believe their organisation has the right skills, processes and environments in place to ensure innovation success. This economic period in which we find ourselves is a perfect opportunity for local companies to develop these skills, processes and environments to bring their organisations up to speed with the complexity, flexibility and creativity a 21st century innovative culture requires. Old Mutual and Standard Bank are two local legacy companies that have taken the plunge. Both have partnered with the UCT Hasso Plattner Institute of Design Thinking (the d-school) to explore how design-led innovation could assist them in devising new ideas and products for their markets. Perhaps now is the right time for the tough to get going with design-led innovation that can beat the bad news out of S&P, Fitch and Moody’s.
Richard Perez is the founding director of the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design Thinking (the d-school at UCT). He focuses on design thinking as an enabler of innovation, to meet the needs of users in complex sociopolitical and economic contexts.
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