Fast Company SA - July 2016

NETFLIX BINGES ON CHELSEA! 8 More Things You Need To Know About The World’s Hottest Media Company

R35.00

SA’S TOP 20

UNDER 30

THE MILLENNIALS SHAPING OUR FUTURE IN DESIGN, EDUCATION, DIGITAL AND MORE Moving Pictures Inside the booming SA animation industry Attack of the Drones?

Keeping people and property safe

JULY 2016 FASTCOMPANY.CO.ZA

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Chelsea Handler: Streaming may never be the same

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July 2016

Contents

C OVER FEATURE

NETFLIX BINGES ON CHELSEA

As part of its global expansion plans, the streaming company is giving Chelsea Handler total control over a bold new talk show.

What happens when a dauntless comedian meets a limitless opportunity?

BY BENJAMIN SVETKEY

Page 44

Next act After leaving E!, Handler was drawn to Netflix by the freedom to explore.

2 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A JULY 2016

Contents

S PEC IAL F EATU RE

Photo opportunities What does it take to be popular as an Instagramer?

“It really boils down to genuine engagement,” says Gareth Pon. (page 22)

TOP 20 UNDER 30

N EXT

How South Africa’s creative and innovative millennials are shaping media, fashion, education, photography, filmmaking, social development and more

16 Blurred Lines

Begins on page 20

18 The Halo Effect

Religion scholar and TV host Reza Aslan shares his advice for straddling academia and Hollywood

BY KAREN VALBY

A new compact device uses electrical pulses to give athletes an edge

BY CHRISTINA FARR

F EATU RES

54 Making Movie Magic

Why the booming South African animation industry is drawing the interest of international studios

BY CASEY ROCHE & EVANS MANYONGA

62 Flight Risk?

New applications for drones are being developed almost daily. How companies can manage the new danger to people and property

BY COLIN FORD

70 Scrumming Down to Business

Former Springbok star turned entrepreneur Bob Skinstad is the Glenfiddich Fast Company SA Maverick for July

MAS T E RCL AS S

14 Hitting The Target

BrandsEye’s JP Kloppers helps businesses learn what people are saying about them, when they are saying it, and why

BY CHRIS WALDBURGER

42 Sound Advice

When he’s not working on a new Jay Z or Mariah Carey album, audio engineer Young Guru makes time for the upand-comers

BY KC IFEANYI

REG UL ARS

08 From the Editor 10 The Recommender 61 Cybersecurity Snapshots

How to ensure your business— and your security partner—is digitally safe

BY SCHALK NOLTE

68 Stars in Her Eyes How Kerrin Black has simplified the process of finding talents for film and advertising

BY RIYADH KARODIA

74 The Great Innovation Frontier Uber, Lyft and Waze have taken the world by storm—but in the rush for market share, it seems ethics have been left behind

BY WALTER BAETS

76 Fast Bytes & Events 80 Modern-day Musings

Why do we continue wondering why things didn’t go as planned when we look back on them?

BY ANNELEIGH JACOBSEN

Home-grown hits Animation talent in SA has always been fantastic, but it’s only recently that the industry has gained more exposure internationally. (page 54)

JULY 2016 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A 5

PUBLISHER AND EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Robbie Stammers

robbie@fastcompany.co.za

ART DIRECTOR

By Digital Publishing

CHIEF SUB-EDITOR

FINANCIAL MANAGER

Charles Burman, Catherine Crook

Tania Griffin

Sarah Buluma

ADVERTISING SALES DIRECTOR

PRINTER

Keith Hill

keith@insightspublishing.co.za

ADVERTISING MANAGER Kyle Villet

ADVERTISING SALES EXECUTIVE

Mandla Mangena

OFFICE MANAGER

evans@fastcompany.co.za

DIGITAL PLATFORMS

Stacey Storbeck-Nel

stacey@insightspublishing.co.za

EDITOR Evans Manyonga

RSA Litho

DISTRIBUTION On The Dot

SUBSCRIPTIONS

taryn@insightspublishing.co.za

PUBLISHED BY

Taryn Kershaw

EDITOR

Robert Safian

DEPUTY EDITOR David Lidsky

EXECUTIVE EDITOR Noah Robischon

EDITORS-AT-LARGE

Jon Gertner, Rick Tetzeli

SENIOR ASSOCIATE EDITOR

Jill Bernstein

DIRECTOR, EDITORIAL STRATEGY

Louise Marsland, Anneleigh Jacobsen, Prof. Walter Baets, Pepe Marais, Alistair King, Koo Govender, Abey Mokgwatsane, Kheepe Moremi, Herman Manson, Ellis Mnyandu, Thabang Skwambane

Lori Hoffman

DIRECTOR, EDITORIAL & NEW BUSINESS ENTERPRISES Bill Shapiro

EDITORIAL CONTRIBUTORS

CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Chris Waldburger, Karen Valby, Christina Farr, Gabriella Rego, Schalk Nolte, Nicole LaPorte, KC Ifeanyi, Benjamin Svetkey, Claire Dodson, Casey Roche, Colin Ford, Riyadh Karodia, Walter Baets, Anneleigh Jacobsen, Weekend Argus, Melanie Peters, Evans Manyonga

Adobe Stock, Stacey Storbeck-Nel, David Giesbrecht/Netflix, Elizabeth Weinberg, Ryan Todd, I Love Dust, Emily Berl, Jasper James, Celine Grouard, Peter Hapak, Afternoon Express, Lauren Randolph, Lauren Kim Photography

Joe Mansueto, Mansueto Ventures

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

SOUTH AFRICAN EDITORIAL BOARD

Cover: Peter Hapak

CHAIRMAN

JJ McCorvey

taryn@insightspublishing.co.za

ARTISTS

FAST COMPANY INTERNATIONAL TEAM

Florian Bachleda

PHOTOGRAPHY DIRECTOR Sarah Filippi

ART DIRECTOR Managing Director: Robbie Stammers

Alice Alves

Physical address: 176 Main Road, Claremont, 7700, Cape Town Postal address: PO Box 23692, Claremont, 7735 Telephone: +27 (0) 21 683 0005 Websites: www.fastcompany.com www.fastcompany.co.za www.insightspublishing.co.za

PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Carly Migliori

CHIEF DEVELOPMENT OFFICER Quentin Walz

CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER Mark Rosenberg

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 2016

From the Editor

Screw it, let’s do it!

The young generation of today is a reflection of tomorrow.

This is what motivated us at Fast Company SA to produce our second instalment of the Top 20 under 30. The list reminds us that age should not be a limitation on what one can achieve, and it assures us that the world is shaping up to be a very exciting place, indeed.

Sir Richard Branson, one of the most celebrated entrepreneurs today, entered the business world at a very young age. He dropped out of high school at 15 to start his first company: a magazine for young activists, titled Student.

Four years later, in 1970, he began selling records by post, and in 1971 opened his first record store and a recording studio a year thereafter. In 1973, he launched his own record label. All these endeavours ultimately led to the Virgin business empire being founded before Branson turned 24.

Today, Virgin is a well-oiled global machine. One could even argue that his brand still embodies a touch of youthfulness.

For those who would aim to feature in our future Top 20 under 30 lists, here are six business lessons Branson recently set out on the Virgin blog for aspiring entrepreneurs:

Think about what drives you.

When you’re considering which idea to turn into a business, think about the subjects and problems that interest you most. Is there an industry you love?

A talent you have? A cause that you are 110% behind?

Don’t start a business just because you think it’ll turn a profit; if you’re not in love with the idea, you won’t move mountains to make it happen.

8 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A JULY 2016

Bright young things Age should not be a limitation on what one can achieve.

Start at your doorstep.

S tay f oc u s ed — a n d m o t i va t ed .

Now that you’ve decided on the area to focus on, look around: What’s the market missing that it desperately needs? Which services do you and your friends use that are lacklustre and could be hugely improved? Think about how your business could help your street, your neighbourhood and your city. From there, you may someday expand to bigger markets.

You need to dream big and have lofty goals; but in your first year, concentrate on establishing your business and surviving. Keep your eyes on the prize and on day-to-day operations, setting small targets for each day, then each week, each month, each quarter and each year. Write them down and then tick them off. You’ll be amazed at how much satisfaction you get from this.

S h a ke t h ing s u p.

L ove w h a t yo u d o.

As you design your product or service, remember your resolve to serve the public—business is about improving other people’s lives. Hopefully, once you’ve done that, more money will come in than goes out. From Virgin Records and Virgin Atlantic to Virgin Money and Virgin Active, our team has always launched businesses out of a genuine desire to disrupt the status quo and improve things for customers.

Whatever you’re doing in business, it should be fun. That has always been a priority at Virgin, and it’s a vital component of our success. I love what we do, our employees love what we do, and so our customers love what we do too.

Listen to advice, not to naysayers.

When you’re just starting out, you should ask advice from those with experience in your field, especially your parents. But be careful not to confuse discouraging comments for good advice. Lots of people will tell you that your idea won’t work, or that it has been done before. When I started out, I lost count of the people who told me that I wouldn’t succeed.

Well done to our Top 20 under 30— we applaud your tenacity and ambition.

The future is certainly in good hands.

And we hope you, our readers, enjoy this edition. It has been particularly significant for me, as I’ve reached my own 30 mark this month. Things can only get better from this point!

Evans Manyonga evans@fastcompany.co.za @Nyasha1e

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The recommender What are you loving this month?

Favourite restaurants

Pieter Beyers

GM, Insight Vacations

Geet Indian Restaurant, Brooklyn: When

my wife and I book our seats, we ask for one of the two cubicles; we sit slightly apart from the other diners, on cushions on the floor with the table at ground level. It makes for a wonderful, authentic atmosphere. We always start our meal with the Punjabi samoosas, and my favourite

dish is the Jaisalmar: a traditional northern Indian dish of deboned meat spiced with chilli and coriander, served with creamy gravy and naan. My wife loves the chicken dishes, and will always try a different one each time we visit.

Wine pairings are recommended for the mains, which really round off a great dining experience.

Brett Rogers

TV presenter, Food, Booze & Tattoos

CHE Argentine Grill, Maboneng: While there’s a definite trend in Joburg toward Argentinian restaurants, this one has really captured my taste buds.

I love sitting at the bar, watching the men and women cooking delicious (yet often thought of as ‘icky’) dishes like veal mollejas (sweetbread) and insanely rich roasted marrowbones. Fresh chimichurri is handchopped, which you can then slather over everything you eat. The atmosphere is welcoming, with warm woods and classic Argentinian design features.

10 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A JULY 2016

The recommender

FAVOURITE BOOKS Ebraheem Davids Street-style fashion photographer

Luke Marthinusen

MD, MO Digital Agency

Scrum by Dr Jeff Sutherland: Scrum is a revolutionary methodology used by organisations such as Google and the FBI to transform the standard approach to project management and team building—cutting costs and working hours, and leading to massive productivity improvements.

Favourite brand adidas Originals: This brand fuelled my love for street style and fashion. Growing up, my mom introduced me to the brand when she bought me adidas Originals clothing. The brand has so

much variety that it made me see fashion in a new light; always adapting, always relevant, and always founded in quality. It’s part of the reason I became a street-style photographer.

Favourite destination

Sandile Mkhize

Darrin Thomas

Memories by Lang Leav: This book can only

Marketing & communications manager, Virgin Atlantic SA

London: Call me crazy, but London is one of

my top holiday destinations. Maybe it’s because I go there more times in a year than I can count on my fingers. It’s a city that makes you feel at home from the minute you land.

The amalgamation of cultures roaming the streets makes everyone fit in and stand out at the same time. The late sunsets, the history, the markets, the smiles, Pimm’s or a pint, the eclectic and eccentric mix of old and new…

Brand ambassador, OCAL Global

be described as simple yet sophisticated poetry that resonates with its readers at different points in their lives. It reminds us that we shouldn’t appreciate one emotion over another—we should welcome them all, as this affirms our humanity.

It’s heart-wrenchingly beautiful.

JULY 2016 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A 11

The recommender

App Alley Pranita Ranchhod

Senior manager: Improvement Projects, Standard Bank Group

OrderIn: In a society

Fast Company SA staff

5217: If you want to increase your productivity, then this app’s for you. You use it to set time intervals of 52 minutes each in which to work, followed by a 17-minute break—this routine

supposedly helps one work better. The app will also log the number of cycles you’ve gone through during the day. It’s simple, with a clean, colourful design; recent updates have added Android Wear support.

It’s inexpensive and has no in-app purchases.

that’s so time-strapped, nothing beats the convenience of ordering and having food delivered within 30 minutes—at the click of a button. This recently launched South African app delivers meals from common chains all the way to fine-dining establishments. It’s like Uber for food, enabling me to view the menu, place my order, choose between pickup or delivery—all the while allowing me to track the progress of my muchanticipated meal.

Ernest Nkosi

Creative, The Monarchy Group

Jordan-Lee Garbutt

Photographer

Trigger: A must-use

app for any photographer and cinematographer— whether a complete novice or professional. It’s very user-friendly, simple and intuitive. It opens up a world of creativity: from creating time-lapse photography to triggering the camera via a noise or facial recognition.

I couldn’t have created some of my work without it. It’s a game changer.

12 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A JULY 2016

Spreaker Studio : “It’s a

broadcasting studio in your pocket,” according to the description. I downloaded it and have been coaxing my creative friends to do guest appearances on my fictitious radio show, C&H Radio. It’s my platform to get to know why and what drives my friends in the creative industries.

The interviews are never published for the public, but shared with the community of people who’ve been guests on my show.

Fast Company promotion

A constant connection

BitCo sales director Michael Colin (left) and MD Jarryd Chatz

Bit Co prov ides innovati ve Interne t, voice and connec ti v it y solutions for businesses

Telecommunications has become essential for the survival of businesses in today’s techno landscape. One of the leading innovation companies contributing to the network is BitCo. MD Jarryd Chatz gave Fast Company SA some insights into his world of telecoms.

Fast Company: Did you always want a career in communications?

Chatz: I’ve always been fascinated by communications technology. It’s constantly evolving, which keeps me on my toes. I love the pace of the industry.

I always knew that I wanted to build my career on electronic communication. I, however, didn’t want to corner myself in by specialising in only one branch of it.

This is why BitCo is such a good fit for me: I’m exposed to all aspects of Internet and telephony. 

 What are the core principles of BitCo? BitCo was founded on the belief of using the most innovative technology to deliver the highest quality IP PBX and voice services. While our service offering has grown to include last-mile fibre and wireless Internet solutions, the principle has remained. We’re always striving to better the technology and push the envelope. We then marry the integrity of the technology we offer with the integrity of the business and our dealings with subscribers. If I had to summate it, I’d say: “Innovation with Integrity”.

In an ever changing techno landscape, what can consumers foresee from BitCo that will stand out from other telecoms companies?

We strive to innovate. We’re constantly refining our existing products and 

developing new ones. We currently offer wireless Metro Ethernet over licensed spectrum: We can offer wireless Internet that’s less vulnerable to interference and harsh weather. There are still many businesses in South Africa that would benefit most from wireless connectivity, but these historic weaknesses have been a deterrent.

Now we have a solution. We also aim to keep our business functioning with agility, no matter how big we may grow.

We want to continue to act fast, where our larger competitors are so sluggish they appear not to care about their consumers.

What visions do you have for the future of telecoms?

Bigger links and no more minutes.

I think traditional ‘landlines’ will fall away entirely. Calls are going to migrate over to VoIP, and that will be the standard. Voice will be data.

Mobile operators are reporting reduced volumes of airtime, with an almost proportionate increase in data demand.

International bandwidth rates are decreasing. Operators are expanding their networks. Consumers’ demand for bandwidth keeps growing. This makes me believe that 1Gbps links will soon be the norm. I also believe that a byproduct of our major metropolises needing to be better connected will result in faster, more affordable connectivity 

for rural areas. We may finally see a fully connected South Africa.  Do you believe fibre network is the way forward?

Definitely. I don’t foresee another medium better than fibre being developed any time soon. The full potential of fibre hasn’t been reached yet. Fibre’s current speed and bandwidth capabilities are a fraction of what we’ll see in future.  Will the fibre network be affordable for startup businesses?

As more fibre is deployed around the country, the costs for the operators will decrease. This will certainly translate into savings for the end users. Even premium products, like ours, will become less expensive over time. To choose your Internet connection based on price alone, though, is dangerous. Fibre operators are not all offering the same electronic services. That’s what influences price!

There are already incredibly cheap fibre packages out there, but the reliability and quality are questionable.  What are your goals for the company?

In a nutshell: to take BitCo to its rightful place as the premier provider of superior last-mile fibre and wireless Internet, telephony and IP PBX solutions.

See bitco.co.za for further details.

JULY 2016 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A 13

Shoot from the hip BrandsEye helps its clients better understand “why people love them and why people hate them,” says CEO JP Kloppers.

Hitting the target The first crowd-integrated media intelligence company can tell you what the world’s saying about your brand and business

BY CHRIS WALDBURGER

“We believe that what people say and how they feel matters too much to ignore. In a world where consumers are publishers and can elevate or crush brands—listening to them, tracking relevant topics and learning from them is no longer a luxury.”

This is the rationale behind BrandsEye, an online reputation management company that’s making international waves from its base in Cape Town. Under the chairmanship of internationally renowned South African businessman Etienne de Villiers, CEO Jean Pierre (JP) Kloppers is taking the business onto the world stage via its chief innovation of combining the digital combing of social media

14 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A JULY 2016

GUTTER CREDIT TK

N E X T

Masterclass

platforms with the local knowledge and contextualisation of crowd ‘raters’.

The data is then converted into a customisable digital interface by BrandsEye software.

Kloppers describes what makes BrandsEye so innovative: “We have built a globally unique crowdsourcing platform that is able to rapidly, efficiently and accurately make sense of unstructured data.

Through our tech, we’re able to help our customers understand why people love them and why people hate them. It’s like an always-on, real-time focus group giving you insight into what is driving consumer sentiment in your industry.” These locals review social data from feeds like Twitter and Facebook, then compete with one another and earn money when they independently agree on the sentiment and relevancy of an online conversation.

BrandsEye, with its expansion into African and European markets, exemplifies the value of basic problem solving: in this case, the problem of knowing what a world in constant communication is saying about your brand and company. In a digital economy, solving universal problems immediately allows you to play on both a national and international stage.

In May this year, the company launched a service that added print and broadcast media monitoring to its existing platform—allowing users to track real-time social, editorial and multimedia engagements within their brand. “Despite the global move toward social engagement, ‘traditional’ news still has a key role to play in the management of one’s brand,” says Kloppers.

“As a business, you need to know what people are saying, when they are saying it, and why.”

Kloppers has had an interesting journey to his

“A big shift in my leadership style came when I realised that our success will only be achieved through the success of the people I’m leading.””

position at the helm of this exciting South African company. He studied mechatronics at the University of Cape Town, and straight after graduating he secured funding from Mark Shuttleworth’s venture capital fund to set up a tech incubator at the varsity. From there he springboarded into his own endeavours, eventually linking up with founder of BrandsEye, Craig Raw, who offered him the CEO role in 2013. Since then he has moved the company from the online reputation management space to that of business intelligence and research.

Fa s t C o m p a ny S A : W h o i n s p i r e s yo u , a n d w hy ?

Kloppers: Inspiration comes from many places. The internal inspiration comes from a deep conviction that I have been created with purpose, and that my best gift to the world is to live in the fullness of that purpose. My wife and kids inspire me to be a better human being. They are a real-time barometer of my leadership, and I’ll look to

them to see at first hand if I’m becoming a better or worse version of myself. As our chairperson Etienne de Villiers always says, “Children are great mimics; are you worth mimicking?” I’m privileged to work with an incredibly smart, curious, kind and tenacious group of people. A big shift in my leadership style came when I realised that our success will only be achieved through the success of the people I’m leading. I care deeply about this country and the people in it. It concerns me to my core that racial tensions, social inequality and unemployment are at an alltime high. As I’ve wrestled through my privilege, I’ve come to the conclusion that one of my best contributions to South Africa at this moment in history is to build a global company that will inspire, employ and equip thousands of people.

I like to get up at 05h30 to have 20 to 30 minutes to read, reflect and quieten my soul.

I’ll take time out about once a month to draw a big mind map on a whiteboard of everything going on, and then to prioritise work from there. I like to start early in the morning, so will often hit a wall by 3 p.m. or 4 p.m. I’ll often leave the office at that time, go for a run, watch my kids play sport, or hit the gym. That’ll refuel me to get in a few more critical pieces of work in the evening. I’ll very rarely book anything on a Saturday. I reserve that for time with my boys, time with close friends, and time to build things in my garage (which I actually find incredibly relaxing). I have a weekly conversation with our chairperson in London who is incredibly sharp in asking the right questions to keep me both focused and free.

I n w h a t w ay s d o yo u t a ke time out to reflect and strategise?

What is one thing about yo u r j o b t h a t w o u l d surprise other people?

I have a few habits that help to keep me fresh and focused.

I really love coffee, so I don’t let anyone else make it for me!

JULY 2016 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A 15

Next

How I get it done

pre­sent it this way: “If you walk into a meeting with Disney or the Weinstein Company and say, ‘You should do this because it will make Middle Easterners feel better,’ no­­body will listen.” Instead, Aslan got investors to sign on by reminding them that the average median household income for Muslim families in America is higher than for non-Muslim families.

Ke e p i t f u n Aslan enjoys the connective magic of storytelling. He modelled Rough Draft after the poetry readings he and his wife used to host in their home. On the show, he goes deep with top Hollywood writers such as Norman Lear and Transparent’s Jill Soloway, in a nightclublike setting complete with backing musical guests and cocktails. Aslan and his guests settle in like it’s one of his old house parties.

Renaissance man “We used to celebrate people who were good at many things,” says the genre-defying Aslan.

Be a compar tmentaliser

Blurred lines Religion scholar and television host Reza Aslan on not picking a lane

BY KAREN VALBY

Photograph by Elizabeth Weinberg

16 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A JULY 2016

Though Hollywood draws plenty of multi-hyphenates, only a few can claim the title “scholar-producer-host”.

Reza Aslan first landed in the klieg lights as an academic with his 2013 best-selling book, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, aided by a viral video of his exchange with a Fox News host who questioned if a Muslim scholar could credibly write about Jesus. His next move?

Step into the interviewer’s chair. His talk show, Rough Draft With Reza Aslan, premiered on the Ovation network in February, and he’ll soon appear as host of CNN’s six-episode Believer series exploring world religion. Through his

BoomGen Studios, he’s also the executive producer of the (now cancelled) ABC biblical drama, Of Kings and Prophets. “My whole life, people have been telling me I have to choose,” says Aslan, “but I never wanted to do one thing.”

Here’s how he made the transition into Hollywood.

C h a n g e u p yo u r p i t c h Frustrated by the lack of fully realised Middle Eastern characters in pop culture, Aslan launched BoomGen Studios in 2008 to create and incubate content about the region.

But he knew better than to

Forget multitasking. Aslan’s strategy is streamlined focus. “When I’m a professor, I’m only a professor,” he says. “When I’m writing, I’m only writing. People know not to call me about other things on those days.” And no one messes with his role as dad to his 1-year-old son and twin 4-year-old boys. “I insist on being there when my kids go to sleep and wake up.”

Project confidence “I tell my students, ‘Always say yes,’ even if you think you can’t do it,” he says. “Say yes and figure it out later.”

Aslan says he’s as plagued by insecurity as the rest of us. But when CNN asked him to host Believer, he quickly agreed—and saved the anxiety about making the transition from producer to on-air talent for later.

Fast Company promotion

Looking ahead to the future bank The team at Enter sek t has a v ision of bank ing and pay ment s unencumbered by securit y concerns

With phishing horror stories permeating the media, and financial institutions issuing scam warnings left and right, online banking can sometimes seem a rather daunting chore. Consumers hoping to simplify their lives using the Internet and mobile are increasingly aware of these risks.

Meanwhile, the businesses that serve them over these channels are fearful of the consequences of data breaches and theft. They often err on the side of caution, slowing down their customers with layers of cumbersome security.

Software provider Entersekt addresses these challenges with a range of authentication and mobile app security solutions that assist banks to secure their digital services in real time, while offering a streamlined and intuitive user experience.

When he met up with the company’s founders in 2009, CEO Schalk Nolte was immediately taken with their dream of becoming a global leader in authentication.

Having a professional background in telecommunications himself, Nolte’s interest in entrepreneurship and the company’s unique approach to establishing digital identities convinced him to take on the challenge.

With the use of mobile technology maturing fast and consumers becoming more reliant on their devices, Entersekt wants to assist banks in enabling a whole new range of mobile capabilities. “The sky is the limit when it comes to convenient selfservice, personalisation, collaboration and sharing,” Nolte believes.

Entersekt’s vision for the future increasingly centres on a concept it calls “future bank”. “We already offer banks

an advanced digital security platform, but we are now building on that foundation in order to better assist them in fast-tracking their future,” says Nolte.

The Entersekt team believes strongly that the trust relationship banks share with their customers is underutilised, especially given the opportunities for deeper engagement opened up by advances in mobile technology. Mobile, in Entersekt’s view, can be leveraged to a much greater extent to secure interactions right across the digital world—not just to protect secure financial management and transacting services.

In this regard, banks have a huge advantage over non-traditional fintech market entrants: They inspire trust, which has been earned over the course of generations. Banks have traditionally served as the most trustworthy stores of money, and these days personal information is nothing if not currency.

Millennials, however, may have a different outlook

Imagine banks becoming disrupting forces themselves: expanding services beyond their traditional remit and engaging their customers several times daily, in all sorts of new ways.

owing to the changed landscape of technology in which they have grown up. Services such as Apple Pay may be more appealing to young people than conventional banking. “Banks must capitalise on their special position now in order to secure their future. We can help them,” stresses Nolte.

From inception, Entersekt has taken a visionary approach to anticipating future security threats. In a way that sets it apart from other companies, it avoided simply registering new fraud trends and tweaking long-established technologies to counter them. Instead, it built something entirely new.

“Entersekt has kept ahead of the fraud curve with world-first launches as well as a strong and growing IP portfolio— and that is what sets us apart,” says Nolte. “This approach has propelled us ahead of the pack in the race against cybercriminals, where I think we can conservatively say we have a 12- to 18-month lead.”

Confident that its security technology will not be compromised, Nolte states: “Entersekt’s one job is to ensure our customers remain protected from the ‘bad guys’. Our record is unmatched in this regard.

With the team I have behind me, and the technologies we continue to evolve, I honestly can’t imagine the bad guys outsmarting us.”

For further details, visit www.entersekt.com.

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Next

Tech Forward

The Halo effect A new device gives athletes an edge

BY CHRISTINA FARR

Illustration by Ryan Todd

The Navy SEALs have a high-tech secret weapon. From a distance, it looks like a regular pair of headphones. But as its wearer exercises or navigates unfamiliar terrain, the Halo Sport device beams a flow of electrical pulses to the brain’s motor cortex. The result, its creators claim, is a supercharged ability to learn new skills and build physical strength—a brain primed for performance.

Daniel Chao, a Stanfordtrained neuroscientist, and Brett Wingeier, a biomedical engineer, founded Halo Neuroscience in 2013. After 10 years of working on a surgically implanted pacemaker for the brain (the Neuropace, which is now used to treat epilepsy), they turned their attention to less invasive technology. Halo Sport uses

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electrodes to stimulate the brain’s motor cortex, which controls planning and voluntary movements. Energised motor neurons send stronger signals to athletes’ muscles, which Chao says allows them to reap greater rewards from every rep.

With an injection of over $9 million (more than R130 million) in funding from backers including Andreessen Horowitz, Chao and Wingeier are partnering with the US military and professional athletes to build evidence that supports their claims. The initial results are promising: Members of the US Olympic ski team have reported a 31% improvement in their propulsion force, and the Air Force noted a 50% reduction in training time for drone pilots.

Select NBA and MLB players are also testing the device.

Despite encouraging results, Chao is careful not to overstate Halo Sport’s benefits.

He’s concerned that grandiose claims may one day trigger questions about the fairness of some athletes using technology to stimulate the brain, which has been referred to as “neurodoping”. For now, he’s focused on expanding the user base beyond professional athletes.

He and Wingeier are testing potential medical applications for Halo, including as a stroke rehabilitation tool. They’re also working on making it available to amateur athletes. A first wave of devices, released in February for $750 (just over R11 000) per unit, sold out in less than a week. Chao hopes that the early consumer demand will draw attention to the still-nascent field of neurostimulation. “It’s a lucrative opportunity that no one has heard of,” he says.

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Top 20

under 30 S O U T H A F R I C A’ S Y O U N G G E N E R AT I O N I S P R O V I N G T H AT I N N O VAT I O N A N D C R E AT I V I T Y C A N C H A N G E L I V E S .

HOW THESE TOP MILLENNIALS A R E S H A P I N G FA S H I O N , E D U C AT I O N P H OT O G R A P H Y, F I L M M A K I N G , SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT AND MORE

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I, phone

Pon says he’s always been one to try and find new outlets for creativity, and the novelty of mobile photography quickly grew on him.

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For making mobile pictures worth a thousand words Gareth Pon CREATIVE CONSULTANT, FILMMAKER, PHOTOGR APHER, INSTAGR AMER

Gareth Pon thinks everyone should have at least one ridiculous dream they believe can come true—and since he can remember, his has been to go to space. Growing up, he maintained his dream of space travel but avoided it becoming a career, opting out of becoming an astronaut and choosing to be a filmmaker and photographer instead.

“Once you, as an individual, see that dream becoming a possibility, it pushes your belief into a place where any other dream you have just seems attainable. Because every other dream fails to compare to your ‘ridiculous’ dream,” he says.

“Personally, I’ve always had a fascination with space, science fiction and the stars. Unfortunately, when I left school, South Africa didn’t have an active space programme—which is sad, because I would’ve

Photograph by Lauren Randolpf

loved to have studied to become an astronaut. So, believing all things are possible, I made that my dream: to one day go to space and see the curvature of the Earth.

Now, with huge leaps being taken in private space travel, I believe my trip to space could be just around the corner!”

Apart from his passion for filmmaking and photography, Pon has spent the last few years pursuing the potential of mobile photography, and developing a network of friends and creatives all over the world. As a result of his unique approach to creativity, he has been featured by various platforms including CNN, MTV, Huffington Post, DailyTekk, Art.Mic, Mail & Guardian, Resource Magazine and Instagram’s official blog; he also partnered with tech giant Samsung South Africa in 2015 as the company’s digital-imaging brand ambassador for its NX range. Most recently, he presented at this year’s MojoCon in Ireland.

Pon was named Best Instagrammer in Africa for 2014, 2015 and 2016 by the African Blogger Awards, and is the founder of Instagramers South Africa: a passionate Instagram community with international relationships and recognition.

With more than 265 000 Instagram followers, Pon has worked

hard at building a brand and reputation within the digital space. In combination with his knowledge of film, photography, community and brief dabbling in fashion and architecture, his experience serves to give a unique approach to creative, innovative ideas.

A BA graduate in Visual Communication, he offers creative consultation on maximising the use of Instagram, building communities, and expanding awareness of product and brand across digital platforms in a creative way, through the mediums of film and photography.

How did Pon get started on Instagram? “Instagram started off as a fun alternative way to share photos of my city, Johannesburg,” he says. “As a filmmaker and photographer, I’ve always been one to try and find new outlets for creativity, and the novelty of phone photography grew on me and was also very convenient. I was literally taking photos of everything I could, just so I could apply that Instagram filter and post it.

“A few friends and I began meeting up to shoot photos of the CBD. In a unique way, I guess it was our way of reclaiming and capturing the beauty of Johannesburg that’s so well hidden under its grit and grime. These little humble meets grew and more people started joining us; this was when I

realised that Instagram could have the potential to do much more than just live as an online social media platform. Seeing people come together and the [sense of] community are what started my passion, and it’s continued to fuel my love for the platform.”

What does it take to be popular as an Instagramer? “It really boils down to genuine engagement. I built up my audience and popularity from being as approachable as possible. I really enjoy meeting people and bringing people together.

In early 2013, I founded a national South African Instagram community, which was a privilege and great opportunity to pioneer Instagram in this country. This really translated into becoming ‘popular’ and getting my personal brand out there.

I also travelled as often as possible. I met the most amazing people overseas and networked wherever I could. I’ve met some of my closest friends and biggest inspirations through the platform.”

Until Pon can one day fulfil his dream of space travel, he will continue making pixels, appreciating the simple things in life, inspiring others, loving the colour yellow, and refusing to live a mediocre life—while keeping up the hope of one day meeting a girl whose dreams are as ridiculous as his.

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Sister is doin’ it for herself

Frustrated that she couldn’t find work at any of the major digital agencies, Bisset decided to back herself and start her own business.

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For stirring up the digital marketing space Kirsty Bisset FOUNDER, STIR SOCIAL, DREAM REPUBLIC CO-FOUNDER, BR A AI FREE

Few people’s journey to success is as interesting as that of 28-year-old tech entrepreneur Kirsty Bisset. Originally from Johannesburg, she worked as a model and actress during her business studies, appearing regularly in TV commercials and magazines, and being selected as one of FHM’s Hot 100 most beautiful women in South Africa as selected by the publication’s readers.

Upon completion of her postgrad in management, Bisset was hired by Aurik Business Incubator where she worked under CEO Pavlo Phitidis, a regular commentator on entrepreneurship on Talk Radio 702 and 567 CapeTalk. Through her exposure to the incubation process, she found a passion for entrepreneurship and began exploring opportunities. At the same time, the digital industry was exploding and her passion for digital was ignited. At the age of 24, she decided to pursue a career in this space, but couldn’t find work at any of the major agencies. “I just didn’t have the right experience or qualifications to land a job with any of the agencies that I wanted to work with,” Bisset recalls. “I knew that I could add great value to any agency, but it would take a leap of faith by one of them to hire me. After four months of emails and phone calls and interviews, I had exhausted almost every major opportunity and was at a crossroads.”

Frustrated, she decided to take the leap of faith that the agencies wouldn’t, and backed herself. In August 2012, she opened STIR, a digital marketing agency. “Social. Targeted.

Integrated. Relevant. That’s what STIR stands for, both in meaning and in ethos,” she explains.

In an interesting twist, STIR was launched on the back of Talk Radio 702’s R1000 Challenge: an experiment in which Phitidis and The Money Show’s Bruce Whitfield each

attempted to open a business and turn a profit with just R1 000 in startup capital. STIR became Phitidis’s entry into the challenge and he introduced Bisset to several clients and brands. In the first month of operation, STIR took on the marketing of six of Aurik’s incubator clients and then began consulting to brands such as MTN and Anglo American— turning over R54 000 in that period.

From there, STIR has grown year-on-year into a formidable digital marketing agency, working with the likes of Edcon, Serta, Accenture, Toys R Us and more. In July 2016, the company launched its first US-based client into the digital space. Bisset, who lists her job title as “Big Spoon”, says: “We’re still a relatively small team compared to many of the big boys out there, but we’re dynamic and nimble, allowing us to deliver worldclass work and service at a fair price.”

With STIR thriving, the ever restless entrepreneur began looking at other opportunities in the digital space—companies and/or concepts that she could plug into STIR’s infrastructure.

“We’re great at marketing,” she says, “so I thought it would be ideal to begin developing our own platforms that we could market. With the growth in e-commerce, I felt the time was right to make a move into the space.”

To mitigate risk, Bisset began looking for partners who could provide the infrastructure and logistical support she needed to begin opening online stores. Her first venture, Dream Republic, is an online bed store that sells an exclusive range of Serta mattresses.

“We will grow our product range with time,” she says, “but for now we are looking to compete on price and service. Without the overheads of bricks and mortar, we can work on smaller margins, plus we offer a unique white-glove service. With regard to our top-end beds, we will bring the bed a customer has

ordered to their house in three different firmnesses—soft, medium and hard. Thus, we accommodate people who want to test the mattress first, but allow them the comfort and convenience of doing so in their own home.”

With the success of Dream Republic, Bisset looked for further opportunities. She was approached by a pair of Gauteng businessmen who owned a large meat distribution business.

They felt there may be an opportunity to sell meat online, and a few months later Braai Free was born. It delivers AAA-grade quality meat across Gauteng to one’s door, at very competitive prices. “I think we’re only just scraping the surface at this point, but sustained organic growth is good for now,” Bisset says. “We have just built our own processing plant, so going forward we have even greater control over quality and costs.”

The marketing for both Dream Republic and Braai Free is handled by STIR, giving Bisset the opportunity to drive strategy and creativity while keeping marketing costs to a bare minimum.

“The way I see it, if we can make people passionate about other people’s products, why not make them passionate about our own? But watch this space: I’m currently looking at several other opportunities that will be rolling out in the latter half of 2016 and early 2017.”

Aside from her tech and digital ventures, Bisset is a prolific writer, featuring regularly on Women24 as a columnist. She has her own blog and writes on entrepreneurship, digital innovation and women’s issues for a wide variety of websites. Bisset is regularly called upon to speak at conferences and events, specifically about driving thought leadership in the digital industry. She’s very outspoken when it comes to gender inequality, and is committed to growing awareness of this imbalance to drive change.

“ If we can make people passionate about other people’s products, why not make them passionate about our own?”

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For being smart about mobile education Doug Hoernle FOUNDER, CEO, RETHINK EDUCATION; CO-FOUNDER, JUGGL COMMUNICATOR

“My journey over the past few years feels like I climbed aboard a high-speed freight train and the train keeps gathering momentum as time passes,” says the young serial entrepreneur. At the age of 16, Doug Hoernle sat daydreaming in maths class about starting a business before leaving school. He made his first profit selling rubber bracelets to his mates at St Stithians College in Johannesburg.

It was his first taste of entrepreneurship, but his parents and teachers made sure it would also be his first taste of social entrepreneurship —they encouraged him to donate his profits to charity. He ended up doing a little bit more than that. With the help of some friends and Habitat for Humanity, he built a house for a woman in Ivory Park, a township outside Joburg. The experience left an indelible mark, and the joy of making a difference is still what motivates him years later.

“I gave no thought to studying further until my path crossed with the Allan Gray Orbis Foundation,” says Hoernle. “The idea of entrepreneurship as a life of taking risks and embracing thrills resonated with me, and I applied for the fellowship.” Once he was awarded a fellowship, he elected to study business science finance at the University of Cape Town. Set on making the most of his time in the Cape, he signed up for wine-tasting courses and launched The Wine Society at UCT. In time he became the go-to guy on campus for affordable wine, with personalised labels and glasses.

The businesses he started during his varsity years laid the foundation for the future he was attempting to shape. “I have a huge passion for making Africa a better place and using clever technology to help solve our many issues.”

Over the past few years, he has been growing his education tech business: “Rethink Education was established in 2012 after I started a tutoring company targeting private-school students. We soon realised that many of the fundamental building blocks were missing, even for some of the most wellresourced students in the country. Due to the

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Time for a rethink

Hoernle says “Africa can no longer afford a socalled ‘lost generation’ of learners.” They want, and deserve, quality education.

recent arrival of technology in some of the top schools, my team started building educational content that was specifically designed for consumption on a computer and, more recently, mobile devices,” he explains. The initial software was a web-based platform that broke down the maths and science syllabi into relevant topics, and within each topic broke the concepts down into bitesized chats.

In 2013, they deployed an application hosted on the instant-messaging service Mxit—at that stage the largest mobile social network among South African students.

An impact study convinced Hoernle and his team of the potential for mobile learning.

“We realised that most learners need to spend hours on public transport to and from school each day. In the past, this was dead time, not used for learning. It had now become productive time, motivated by the Rethink Education Mxit application,” he says.

When Mxit usage started declining across South Africa due to learners upgrading their smartphones, the team at Rethink Education had to look into other platform options for their application, and launched on WeChat in 2015. “With smartphone penetration today in South Africa above 90% and growing, this means phones have become the most significant tool we can use in our mission to effect widespread change in the education sector,” says Hoernle.

Today, Rethink Education is a leading mobile content and platform provider, having created CAPS–aligned content covering the entire Grade 8 to 12 maths and science curricula.

“I strongly believe that Africa can no longer afford a so-called ‘lost generation’ of learners, and the solution lies in initiatives such as Rethink Education’s mobile platforms that provide interested learners with what they want and deserve—quality education.”

For hitting the right notes Janice Roos SINGER-SONGWRITER

Janice Roos grew up singing in church, but she’s come a long way since then; today the 25-year-old’s single “Liar Liar” is playlisted on KFM. The vivacious singer-songwriter was born and raised in Athlone in the Cape, playing the lead in school performance groups, choirs and musicals. “It was always my dream to be a solo artist, but when I left high school I wasn’t successful at a famous singing competition and I quickly cancelled those dreams to pursue a business career in the corporate field,” Roos says. It was only after she started singing backing vocals in pop star (and childhood friend) Jimmy Nevis’s band that she felt her career come alive. Her debut single “Extacy” was cowritten and produced by Nevis. Apart from singing, Roos also owns a makeup and hair business. Her short-term goals involve releasing her debut album, but she also aspires to create a plus-size fashion line and to host an annual conference promoting positive body image.

For feeding his passion for the culinary arts Ofentse Mathope CHEF AND FOUNDER, KUBU

He’s only 24, but Ofentse Mathope already has his own gourmet restaurant, Kubu, located at the V&A Waterfront’s Market on the Wharf—and billed as “the gateway to great African dining”. Originally from Joburg, he came to the Cape in 2010 to study the culinary arts at the College of Cape Town,

and acquired a diploma in Professional Cookery.

After qualifying, he worked in several restaurants as a junior manager, until he decided to head off on his own with Kubu in 2014. His great-grandmother was a chef, and each time she tried out new cakes, Mathope would get

involved. “My family played a huge role in my success, but my main influence has been the people I met after graduating—people who have been chefs for 20 to 50 years.” He also co-ordinates social events such as Table5, where five people with different

careers gather to socialise and raise funds, as well as Dine With Khayelitsha, where a diverse group of people come together in someone’s home in this

township to discuss social issues. One of Mathope’s short-term goals is to establish a research centre where he can help teach aspiring chefs.

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For not labelling herself Tara Courtené Stewart FASHION DESIGNER AND FOUNDER, TAR A COURTENÉ

Miss Stewart is a creative of note: Not only is she a fashion designer but she is also an intern at Independent Media, is a whizz at makeup and photography, dabbles in graphic design and blogging—and she dances! The 24-year-old studied fashion design at Cape Peninsula University of Technology, then founded her own fashion label, Tara Courtené, in August 2011. Her grandmother was a designer—and that’s where it all started, she says. “I decided I wanted to do fashion in Grade 9. At first my parents said it’s not a career, but then they took a liking to it.” Stewart got her first sewing machine when she was in Grade 11 and started making her own clothes.

“Looking at fabric and colours is a major

inspiration, as I love to just browse in fabric stores. I tend to work backwards a lot of the time: fabric first, design after!” She says one has to be impulsive in the fashion industry, and always prepared. Stewart also has a

street-wear clothing label, Cawta, together with her boyfriend. Her advice to young people is that if they have an idea, they should pursue it. “Start at the bottom and make your way up.”

For showing some township style Eudean Tokwana & Raymond Mntumni CO-OWNERS, KASI AUTHENTIC WEAR

Kasi Authentic Wear (KAW) is a local streetwear brand rooted in the young designers’ home of Mfuleni in Cape Town— providing locally produced clothing that caters for students and the working class. The brand is a fusion of trendy street elements with the essence of ilokishi (location/township), as

emphasised in their slogan: ”Understood in the ghetto”. Their passion for fashion, says Tokwana, stems from growing up in a township and observing people who always look good and presentable.

Adds his business partner Raymond Mntumni: “We started out small, printing T-shirts for ourselves with our names on. A lot of

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people liked the idea, and after a few months of brainstorming, we started the brand with one design

that I had in my sketchbook.” The KAW label was launched in 2014 with only T-shirts, but has since

been expanded to include headwear, sweaters, hoodies and dresses.

For keeping his finger on the pulse of music Index R AP ARTIST

Dedication and discipline, says the 24-year-old rapper, have secured him a chance to share the stage with famous acts like Teargas, AKA, DJ Zintle, Oskido, Pro, as well as Tumi and the Volume. Index, whose real name is Nkululeko Dlomo, says he discovered his love for poetry and music when he was a teen. Born and raised in Khayelitsha township on the Cape Flats, the young man decided he had something to say to the world and wrote his first

offerings. Social ills and everyday life are what inspire his rapping. “I regret studying graphic design, which I could’ve learnt from home. If I’d paid attention to my music career at that time, I would’ve been very far by now,” he says.

In 2012 he was chosen to be the brand ambassador of Mos Native, a clothing line in Cape Town. In the same year, he was hailed as among the best rappers in the township. He also performed on a daily youth show Hectic Nine-9

in 2013. He describes his home as loving, despite not having much, and says the love and wisdom he got from his parents made him who he is today. Index released his first single “Ebumnandini” and his mixtape Blood Sweat and Tears in 2015. This year, he released his hit single “Kuyafiwa”, which is gaining popularity on social media.

“Through hard work and determination, I believe I’m [going to be] the next big thing.”

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In the engine room Atagana says working for Google gives her an opportunity to be involved in helping to solve problems using technology.

For searching for innovative African tech Michelle Atagana HEAD OF COMMUNICATIONS & PUBLIC AFFAIRS, GOOGLE SOUTH AFRICA

With a good dose of creativity in her veins, Atagana went from writing tech-related articles for numerous publications to holding a top media position at one of the world’s biggest companies.

Since she was just 11 years old, Atagana was fascinated by the workings of the Internet back in the Netscape days. After achieving a master’s degree in New Media and Journalism from the University of KwaZuluNatal, she acquired a position as managing editor at Burn Media, where her responsibilities involved handling the editorial direction of the Memeburn, Gearburn, Motorburn and Ventureburn websites.

Fuelled by her passion for tech and innovation, Atagana spent 18 months exploring Africa to learn how tech is changing people’s lives on the continent. This venture led to her looking for ways in which entrepreneurship and

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technology could help solve some of Africa’s pressing problems and how women could play a role in this development.

Along with supporting a number of other causes, and spending her available time working on the final draft of her PhD thesis, Atagana writes a regular column for CNN and Venturebeat, and judges occasional startup competitions.

The busy lady took time out of her schedule to join Fast Company SA for a quick chat about the future of technology on the continent.

Fast Company SA: What sparked your interest in tech at a young age?

Atagana: I used to go with my dad to his lab when I was a kid and, to keep me away from the dangerous chemicals and experiments, he would let me play on his computer and learn about the world. Since then I’ve always wanted to learn more and do more with technology.

What was the determining factor in your decision to study journalism?

I started out life wanting to be a theoretical physicist, but soon

realised that mathematics was required—so I promptly let go of that dream! I then decided that law may be the best place for my talents, but with too many litigation classes missed in favour of feminist prose, that too had to end. Like all true dreamers, writing was the backup plan, and I ended up living it like it was plan A. What, then, made you decide to leave journalism and eventually end up working for Google?

I’ve always loved Google (I introduced all my friends at

university to Gmail when it first launched!) and the work the company was doing in Africa.

Working for Google gives me an opportunity to be involved in helping to solve Africa’s problems using technology.

Is that what motivated you to travel around Africa for 18 months?

It wasn’t one long exploration, by the way—it happened in bits.

I’m very interested in the startup ecosystem in Africa, and how entrepreneurship and tech can solve some of the continent’s pertinent problems. Travelling around Africa gave me an opportunity to learn about it.

Did you travel alone?

Yes. I prefer it that way, to be honest.

For being inspired by the streets Ebraheem Davids FASHION PHOTOGR APHER AND FOUNDER, EBEN PHOTOGR APHY

What was the main highlight of your travels? And what was the hardest part?

I think it was seeing how passionate Africans are and the incredible resilience we have as a people. Having to confront my own prejudices about places was difficult. It’s hard to travel in Africa, but it’s harder when we go in expecting the worst.

and even tougher to leave—but it’s been worth it.

The most important lesson you learnt in Africa?

Never underestimate a 15-yearold with access to the Internet— they could change lives, or even save them.

What do you believe needs to be done to promote technology in Africa?

We don’t need to promote technology in Africa— technology IS in Africa, and Africans are reaching out and using it and taking it and making it their own, and coming up with uniquely African solutions to African challenges. We need to make technology more accessible and affordable so more people can do that.

What has been the biggest challenge you have faced in your career?

Leaving the love of my life, Memeburn, to face new challenges and to learn and grow at Google. It was tough realising that I wanted to go,

How are you contributing to this?

By telling Africa’s stories and speaking for it when no one else will. There are so many people doing great things on this continent, and we need to have their backs—all day, every day.

Combining his two passions—photography and street fashion—has been key to Ebraheem Davids’s newfound success. The former Schotschekloof Walmers RFC player has transformed himself into a talented street-style

photographer and founded his own company, EBEN Photography. Davids (22) played rugby for 15 years, but says his photography became his full-time job last year. Born and raised in Colorado Park in

Do women have a special role to play in the technological landscape?

They should have the same role as men do: bringing the best of what they have to the space— and rocking it! It’s not about women in tech or men in tech; diversity is about inclusivity, and we need to stop talking about ‘women in tech’ as a special thing. If you have the talent, skill and dedication, get in there and do it.

How can this be achieved?

Through talking to the men, and making the conversation about inclusivity. And through making available the tools needed to learn tech skills to all Africans who have an interest in getting into the space.

What are your future plans?

To do great things, of course!

Mitchells Plain, his love for the camera was sparked when he photographed his sister’s wedding. Davids’s goal is to shoot not only in his hometown of Cape Town but also in South Africa’s other big cities such as Joburg and

Durban. He urges youngsters to not be lazy; if they believe they can achieve something, they should never give up. He’d also like to see young people come together to enjoy themselves without any hidden agendas.

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Make it count

“There’s many a good idea out there, but it’s in the execution where a business succeeds or fails,” says Louw.

For taking account of new business owners Louw Barnardt CO-FOUNDER, CEO, OUTSOURCEDCFO

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Passionate about entrepreneurship and venture capital, the head of OutsourcedCFO is a man of many talents. In addition to being a chartered accountant and business owner, Barnardt is a mentor and coach for various enterprise development programmes including Microsoft BizSpark, Bandwidth Barn Business Incubator and Barclays’s Tech Lab Africa, as well as a judge for the Western Cape Premier’s Entrepreneurship Recognition Awards.

Currently the youngest entrepreneur on the SA Institute of Chartered Accountants’s Top 35 under 35 CAs in South Africa list, he also holds directorships in real estate, venture capital and

tourism. Barnardt sat down with Fast Company SA to talk about his current ventures.

Fast Company SA: What inspired you to start OutsourcedCFO? Barnardt: While working in the audit industry, we’d bring out a set of financial statements for young companies a few months after year-end.

The entrepreneurs who didn’t have strong financial backgrounds and who didn’t yet have a strong finance department were making the same mistakes year in and year out, and getting none the wiser. This, coupled with the fact that there are so many new companies starting in Cape Town around technology and

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innovation, was our inspiration. These entrepreneurs normally had the skills, qualifications and experience to deliver their product or service, but lacked the business and financial skill set needed to build a fast-growing company. We knew there was huge value that young chartered accountants—with their extensive finance, tax and systems backgrounds—could bring to the table to help such business owners.

OutsourcedCFO was an extension of the passion for entrepreneurship shared between me and my co-founder Dana Pretorius, as well as our CA skill sets.

Has entrepreneurship always been a passion of yours?

Absolutely. We have war stories from the age of 6 when my sister, the neighbour’s son and I made and sold surprise crackers and home-made cookies. Entrepreneurship days at school were the highlight of the year. Starting companies and making investments were the topics of most of our varsity friends’ group discussions— whether over coffee while bunking auditing class, or over wine at night. The seven-year chartered accountancy route was a tough but very valuable diversion from a lifetime of entrepreneurship.

Who or what has been your greatest motivation in life?

My parents played a big role in shaping my thinking and entrepreneurial spirit.

My father was the managing partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers Kimberley for many years, focusing on its tax and entrepreneurship division. Supper discussions were normally packed with business and real estate investment stories. I absolutely loved it! This, along with the written thoughts of business heroes like Robert Kiyosaki, Dr Dolf de Roos and Napoleon Hill were what started my curiosity. Being newly married, my wife now plays a huge role in motivating me to follow my dreams and also to keep the balance.

How do you manage your busy schedule?

However much I love the principles of “The 4-Hour Work Week”, I’m not there yet! But an exceptional team with a shared vision is the key to keeping your schedule manageable. Our board shares the workload and big responsibilities.

Our project management team helps us stay focused. Our admin engine helps us

manage our diaries and all else. Our creative team helps us communicate our message and vision. Our CFOs help us over-deliver on client expectations. Our business coach keeps us accountable.

A great, focused team is critical for any entrepreneur who wants to scale his or her business.

What do you believe is an important factor in creating a successful business?

Execution and perseverance. There’s many a good idea out there, but it’s in the execution where a business succeeds or fails. The ability to persevere throughout those lean years—while putting in heart and soul but not seeing the results yet—is critical.

What drove you to choose this career option?

A gap in the market that I believed we could fill, which looked a lot more exciting than some of the more conventional career choices for a

“ There’s nothing like the feeling when one of our clients raises a massive amount of growth funding that impacts their lives dramatically”

young CA. It was an opportunity to use our technical skill sets and was a great match for our entrepreneurial dreams.

It also sounded very stimulating to be able to consult to various high-growth technology and innovation businesses while building a company of my own.

What have been the biggest challenges you have had to face in your career thus far?

Establishing and educating the market was our first major challenge. When we started, almost no one had heard of CFO

services. Driving home the concept of appointing a part-time CFO into one’s business and getting entrepreneurs to understand the value thereof was our biggest initial challenge. Once we had mastered that to some extent, managing rapid growth was the next big challenge.

Getting the right people on board in the right positions fast enough and building the systems to ensure the delivery of quality service while running a current client portfolio was tough.

How did it feel to be the youngest entrepreneur on SAICA’s Top 35 under 35 CAs in South Africa list for 2015?

Wow, it was humbling and exciting.

It was an incredible experience to be part of the judging and ceremonies with SAICA and Investec in Sandton last year.

You also learn a lot about yourself in the judging process. Meeting and networking with the other Top 35 finalists was such a privilege. Many of them are now close contacts. I have also just learnt that I’ve made it into the Top 35 again in 2016, which is something big to look forward to toward August!

What do you love most about what you do?

Seeing South African entrepreneurs succeed and young professionals flourish. There’s nothing like the feeling when one of our clients raises a massive amount of growth funding that impacts their lives dramatically, as well as the lives of their staff, their families and their communities. It’s also incredible to see our team grow throughout these processes, as each one strives to create their dream job and make an impact in the lives of business owners.

What are your future plans?

Soon we will be spreading our wings to other major entrepreneurial hubs on the continent and beyond. We’re also working on some exciting tech of our own that you’ll see launching soon, and establishing our new co-working office space called OSpace (Outsourcedspace. co.za). Lastly, we have just set up a jointventure company (Glenheim.com) with entrepreneurial genius and ex-councillor of economic development for the City of Cape Town, Garreth Bloor, through which we’re looking at international funding and expansion facilitation for our clients, as well as an SME investment fund that’s in the pipeline. Keep watching this space!

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For keeping South Africa entertained Danilo Acquisto TV PRESENTER, AFTERNOON EXPRESS R ADIO HOST, GOOD HOPE FM

Acquisto never wanted simply to fit in, and always tried his utmost “to be different”, he says. Upon completing high school, he was hungry for change and set out to challenge himself. “I think it partly had to do with this need all kids have to be noticed and accepted.

As a youngster, I was quite confident that I wanted to be a pilot. But not any sort of pilot— a helicopter pilot! Again, I trace this back to my need to be different. I guess the performer was always in my spirit, but it was suppressed by the self-conscious fear of not making it or not being good enough.”

But good enough he certainly was. While studying law and sociology at the University of Cape Town and hosting the afternoon drive show on UCT Radio in 2010, he entered a talent search competition for a TV show host on SABC2’s Hectic Nine-9. He went on to win the coveted role of lead presenter for the live youth programme with an audience of more than 3 million viewers daily. (He also produced for the show on a regular basis.) In 2015, he was chosen

For using sport for social upliftment Bonga Ngqobana FOUNDER, MD, BONGA.ORG CYCLING ACADEMY

as one of the three winners of SABC3’s #PresenterSearchOn3, being named the new addition to the Afternoon Express team alongside Bonang Matheba, Jeannie D and Bonnie Mbuli.

In between his gig on Hectic Nine-9 and the #PresenterSearchon3, Acquisto was employed as a development producer to create new concepts for a production company, and acted as production assistant on an international cooking show for Food Network.

He hasn’t left behind his beloved radio, either. He currently hosts The Music Lab on Good Hope FM every Saturday and Sunday.

The 25-year-old media star says there’s far too much energy and passion filling in the time between his two jobs. He is also a social entrepreneur with an interest in digital media.

Advocating the power of hope in the youth, he’s an official ambassador for Iris House Children’s Hospice, and a director at Life Choices. He has recently created TheCuriousCatholic.com, a platform for young people to explore the Christian faith, listen to music, read inspiring testimonies, and get links to some pretty cool websites and videos.

Acquisto’s confidence, outgoing nature and authentic on-air personality stand him in good stead when it comes to MC’ing events and doing voice-overs for advertising campaigns and corporate work. “I really love entertaining. I will always love it. But TV [and my radio career] are stepping stones toward finding ways for me to influence and help millions of people globally,” he says. “Every day I learn new things, I meet new people,

This young Khayelitsha cyclist is proof that sport transcends racial stereotypes. As the founder of the Bonga.org Cycling Academy, the 25-year-old Ngqobana has made great strides since his youth in the Eastern Cape, raised in a singleparent family. He began cycling in 2005 while in Grade 7 in Khayelitsha.

He saw a group of riders passing by his school during lunchtime and couldn’t wait for school to end so he could go to the clubhouse to find out about enrolling. Ngqobana says he was inspired to break the stereotype that cycling is a “white sport”. Lack of funding was a factor, as cycling requires much

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Afternoon Express

TOP 20 UNDER 30

I explore various loopholes in our systems— this will all guide me toward one day being able to know I’ve left my mark on the world in a positive way. I want a legacy to be left behind: a legacy of openness and kindness.

“Does that mean I’ll be leaving TV any time soon? Hell no! I love it! But when doors present themselves to me, I will open them. I almost have too many dreams and desires to be able to let one project become my end goal.”

equipment, travelling and accommodation. But Ngqobana went on to become part of the first all-black team to take part in the gruelling Absa Cape Epic in 2015.

His academy is a sustainable sports development programme that

provides children with opportunities to participate in recreational and competitive sporting activities—in particular cycling—while also contributing to the social upliftment of their communities.

A good investment

Msibi would like to see more people reach their financial summits. “I want to see the gap between the haves and the havenots significantly decrease over time.”

For empowering citizens with education Lungile Msibi BR AND MANAGER, EMPEROR ASSET MANAGEMENT

Having started her career as a marketing intern at the Premier Soccer League, Msibi had the privilege of doing some work with the communications team during the 2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup in South Africa. From there, she went on to become a brand consultant, developing strategic communications for leading South African companies such as Anglo American and Sasol.

Her journey with the Purple Group began in 2013 when she was appointed as brand manager for Emperor Asset Management, a division that gives investors access to a range of fully managed, traditional and alternative investment strategies and solutions, including tax-free options. Msibi is responsible for current and potential clients,

client lead generation and relationship management, as well as developing and managing marketing campaigns for the brand.

More so than this, she is heavily invested in driving awareness around the fact that investing is not for an elite few but for all South Africans. “Not many careers are as fulfilling as mine,” she says. “I work for an organisation that truly understands the role that investing can play in people’s lives. Not only do we focus on our high-net-worth clients but a vast majority of our time and energy is spent on introducing the world of investing to people who have never invested before.

This is particularly fulfilling for me, because I feel like I genuinely change lives and help people

grow from a financial perspective.

So many people could benefit from investing if they had the right information communicated to them early on.”

Msibi is a firm advocate of education, both personally and professionally, and is intent on harnessing it on her quest to empower ordinary South Africans to become better investors. “Education in general is important to me—yes, I’m a little bit of a nerd—and is a powerful tool. I want to see more people reach their financial summits. I want to see the gap between the haves and the have-nots significantly decrease over time. With the right tools and education, I believe our generation is the generation to spearhead this in the form of JSE market participation. And

I genuinely believe it all starts with education.”

In 2015, she was named Employee of the Year at the Purple Group. “This is no ordinary achievement. The Purple Group is full of innovative and vibrant staff who are all incredibly ambitious and passionate about what they do, so this becomes a very tough award to win. This achievement is a reflection of my work as a brand manager who not only represents her brand well but someone who is accountable, embraces collaboration, is innovative and has integrity,” she says.

Together with her team at the Purple Group, Msibi is on a journey to educate and empower people about investing, and help South Africans of all walks of life to take control of their financial future.

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Shaking things up

Batista says that because the cocktail culture in South Africa is underdeveloped, there’s so much growth to be had—and he feels like one of the pioneers.

TOP 20 UNDER 30

For raising the bar(tending) in South Africa Dino Jose Batista CO-FOUNDER, MOLECULAR BARS

At 27 years old, Dino Batista has travelled the world and tried his hand at many crafts; has represented South Africa at some of the world’s biggest professional bartending competitions (he placed second globally in the Angostura Global Cocktail Challenge in Trinidad & Tobago earlier this year); and is one of the co-founders of a successful mobile bar company, Molecular Bars. He also has a pretty impressive list of worldrenowned people to whom he’s served drinks during his career as a bartender and mixologist—Bill Gates being one.

Not many people truly know what they want to do while they’re studying, and often never truly find themselves in a place or career for which they planned—Batista was no exception. Straight out of school, he went on to study

toward a BCom in Marketing Management at the University of Johannesburg—which felt like the right choice, since he had always been a creative individual.

Although a three-year degree, he decided to stroll through it leisurely over five years while finding time to work and travel through Europe over nine months, covering nine different countries and finding himself bartending at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland for the Microsoft and Google events (which is where he met Bill Gates).

Batista found himself getting more and more intrigued by the bartending industry.

Something that was seen as an ‘unskilled’ or ‘lower class’ job in South Africa was revered as a respectable profession that allowed one to reach celebrity status in the cocktail capitals of the world: London, Tokyo, New York City. Chefs had found their place in the eyes of the world, and bartenders were slowly making their way there too.

Bouncing around between bartending for mobile services, clubs and

bars, he found himself in the early startup phase of his own company, partnered with three of his good friends. With no money, no capital or assets, and no idea of how to run a business, they started the mobile Molecular Bars—fuelled by passion and a love for their craft. Opening a business when you’re 21 years old is a difficult task when no one takes you seriously and you have to go to McDonald’s every morning—not for the great breakfast but for the free Wi-Fi. Five years down the line, Molecular Bars has found its place and Batista hasn’t looked back. The company has gone from strength to strength and has catered to some of the most prestigious events and brand functions in the country while gaining a noticeable foothold in the global bartending and cocktail scene. This has been aided by the business partners’ personal interest in the competitive bartending scene. Competitions are hosted by spirit brand companies in their most lucrative markets globally, putting out a challenge to find the best bartenders. Batista and his partners have competed and represented South Africa on several occasions around the world, from London to Mexico.

What began as a parttime job has ended up becoming a career about which Batista can honestly say holds true

to the age-old saying: Do what you love and never work a day in your life.

He says the good thing about the underdeveloped cocktail culture in South Africa is that there’s so much growth to be had, and he almost feels like one of the pioneers of better things to come.

“The South African bartending scene is slowly but surely picking up pace and getting recognised on an international level.

This is thanks to our bartending stars being sought by overseas companies to join their teams, the passion of the growing talent we have in our country, the great spirit of brand ambassadors who put in a helluva lot of work to get our market recognised, as well as the brotherhood of the entire bartending industry. I know I have a home in a lot of countries around the world just from meeting others from foreign places—and, quite simply, just because I’m a bartender.”

There’s a lot on the cards for Batista and his partners at the moment: the development of their training and consultancy division (&Ratio); expansion to Cape Town markets by year-end; a possible cocktail bar in Jozi in the next year or two; as well as ensuring South Africans are sipping on the best of the best at all their events. No compromise.

Oh, and Bill Gates drinks Coke Light, on the rocks, in a tall glass with a slice of lemon.

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TOP 20 UNDER 30

For investing in small business Gladwyn Milano Leeuw CHIEF INVESTMENT OFFICER, CCI SOUTH AFRICA INVESTMENT MANAGER, SEBENZA FUND

CCI South Africa, the largest international outsourcer in the country, specialises in the operation of outbound, inbound and blended multichannel contact centres that improve clients’ business operations and call-centre effectiveness. Gladwyn Leeuw is responsible for expanding the business and developing Careerbox: the company’s skills development and youth employment catalyst that was established to source, recruit, train and place inexperienced, unemployed, unskilled and previous disadvantaged youth into gainful employment within the digital economy and services sector.

But this isn’t Leeuw’s first role with such great responsibility on his shoulders. He was previously a director at Zimele, the corporate enterprise and development arm of mining giant Anglo American. The initiative trains and provides mentorship for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in previously disadvantaged communities.

During the same period, Leeuw was fund manager of Zimele’s R5-million Olwazini Fund that provides preferential interest loans to disadvantaged individuals—particularly women, the youth and the disabled. “We made 71 microfinance investments to businesses with low barriers to entry,” he says. “I learnt that the same amount of effort that goes into a R20 000 deal goes into a R20-million transaction.”

Leeuw’s next assignment within Zimele was with the Community Fund, managed through a network of 26 small business hubs based within the communities where Anglo American operates. It provides both financial and non-financial support to SMEs. His role as Gauteng hub manager and later corporate

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portfolio manager involved generating and guaranteeing quality deal flow and investment opportunities.

These functions culminated in his being appointed as business investment manager for the Sebenza Fund, a public-private partnership between Anglo American and the Development Bank of Southern Africa. It is designed to create meaningful and sustainable employment in poverty nodes and areas with

high unemployment throughout South Africa.

In addition to loans, it also provides mandatory mentorship to assist the growth and development of the investees. Leeuw facilitated the creation of 8 000 new sustainable jobs, and provided support and mentorship to 1 600 SMEs over a period of 60 months.

He adds, “My time at Zimele enabled me to identify challenges with local economic development as well as obstacles concerning

access to finance for SMEs. Consequently, my accumulated work experience in enterprise and supplier development has allowed me to successfully assist over 300 SMEs and disburse approximately R200 million in small business finance.”

Outside of work, Leeuw guest-lectures and has speaking engagements at local community business forums and business schools such as Wits, where he imparts knowledge regarding access to finance, business development initiatives and inclusive growth, among other topics.

“Through these platforms, I have started mentoring young entrepreneurs in the agricultural and agro-processing, film and retail industries.”

He also finds time to be involved in other

projects such as the Tyathumzi Advisory, a youth development agency that provides opportunities through education and sport; Empowerment Capital Investment Partners, a private-equity business that transforms lives through investments in supply chain–linked companies; and Investment in SME SNAPSHOT, an optimisation tool for all SME business-critical information through a

“My dream is one day to establish a boutique smallbusiness bank that can assist entrepreneurs and businesses”

one-page business management dashboard.

“All my entrepreneurial endeavours and studies have allowed me to gain experience and expand my knowledge in the commercial finance and business banking sectors, specifically the development space,” says Leeuw. “My dream is one day to establish a boutique small-business bank that can assist entrepreneurs and businesses with innovative financial and non-financial products tailored to the various stages of their business life cycle.”

For taking her stories to the world Jessie Zinn FILMMAKER

The 22-year-old film director, based in Cape Town, recently travelled to Cannes to feature her graduation short film Into Us and Ours. It’s about two Born-Free South African women, and charts their differing experiences in the wake of a car accident. “The film grapples with how the new, or ‘Rainbow Nation’, South Africa has been built upon a fractured and very tenuous foundation that affects young South Africans on a daily basis,” Zinn explains. This year, the film has already been screened at several international festivals such as CinemAfrica (Sweden) and the National Film Festival for Talented Youth (Seattle), and was selected for the Cannes Short Film Corner in May this year. It also won the 2016 award for Best International Short

Film at the prestigious Ivy Film Festival, based at Brown University in the US. “Attending Cannes, perhaps the most prestigious film event in the world, was an incredible experience and I hope to attend the film festival next year with another, new project—hopefully a featurelength one,” says Zinn. She has always been a natural storyteller, but it was only in her first year studying toward a BA degree in Film Production at the University of Cape Town that she started taking more of an interest in writing and directing films. “The programme was very open in allowing young filmmakers to explore their artistic voices on their own terms,” she says.

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TOP 20 UNDER 30

For putting people and brand first Kurt Solomon CO-FOUNDER, COMMUNICATIONS ‘BOSS’, CN&CO

If you’re familiar with the annual Daredevil Run, chances are you’ll recognise the name Kurt Solomon.

For three years (2012–2014), he was the national organiser and main driver behind the event: accumulating over R1 million for cancer initiatives and encouraging ballsy men to strip down to nothing but a Speedo to run through peak-hour traffic in a bid to raise awareness for the disease (cancer is a cause very close to his heart).

Solomon is a lover of life, family and friends; is a dreamer and an optimist; a Burner (the name for those who participate in the Burning Man Festival in the US); and an informal adventurer with small biceps and a big heart. He is also a partner in the lifestyle business and consultancy, CN&CO, where his main role is that of “head of people and brand”: a niche he has carved for himself within the insurance and finance industry and which is expanding into broader industries.

What does that mean, though?

In essence, companies and brands bring him in to harness the power of their people to make a brand great.

“We work with brands to entrench them within a market, make sure that the right people and companies are talking about the brand—in a good way—and, most importantly, ensuring the people inside the business or brand are all singing off the same hymn sheet and are constantly reminded why they love working there and what the brand stands for. Employees who are happy and appreciated will always do more than is expected, and that’s good for

40 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A JULY 2016

business. At CN&CO, we’re passionate about building brands from the inside out. It’s the people who make the brand, not the marketing budget or annual financials.”

Much of what Solomon does (and the success he sees) within his people-and-brand role comes down to the type of person he is: charismatic, confident, able to laugh at himself and able to make those around him laugh. He’s genuinely an incredibly likeable guy—which is an important characteristic for what he does, as he’s able to engage with people in an authentic way, gaining their trust, translating that into enthusiasm, and ultimately getting the best out of them for a brand.

“I don’t take myself seriously; I take what I do seriously,” he says.

“When it comes to harnessing the power of people and brands, there’s no ‘perfect formula’. Each brand and context is completely different, and requires a different approach. For me, I hate doing the ‘typical’ or ‘normal’ stuff when I delve into the people and brand element. The crazier, more fun, more out-of-the-box, the better. Fun doesn’t mean less productivity; it actually increases it if done right.

I often challenge the status quo and tradition, and I try to punt change in the best way I can—be it in a client or personal context. The change element is not always welcomed at first, but in the long run it works.”

Solomon’s career journey is an interesting one, filled with many chance encounters. “I’ve always been intrigued and interested about business. I started my first car-wash business at around 9 years old, getting the kids in my suburb to wash cars. That led to other smaller and exciting ventures.”

But, as it goes, life happens. When his mom was diagnosed with cancer, he realised he needed to take on a few more responsibilities and look at earning an income more seriously. At 14, he became a runner at a franchise restaurant in Durban. After finishing school, he received a phone call from the owner, asking if he needed a job; he put Solomon’s name forward for a position at Vitamin Water—a new

Not business as usual

Solomon says he hates doing “typical” stuff when delving into the people and brand element. “The crazier, more fun, more out-ofthe-box, the better.”

brand launched by the Coca-Cola Company. During his employ there, while driving to a gig for Vitamin Water, he heard an advert on the radio for one lucky listener to win a trip to a secret overseas destination with Etana Insurance. Solomon’s colleagues prompted him to enter just for fun—and he won the prize trip to Hong Kong. There he met a founder of Etana Insurance, Carel Nolte. While waiting for their flight back home, Nolte offered Solomon a job. “He didn’t really know what job I was going to do, but said that he wanted me to work for him. This proposition happened over shooters in the airport lounge, so I punched him in the gut, asking if he was joking. He wasn’t, and later he became my boss.”

Solomon spent three and a half years at Etana, driving internal communications (and later, people and brand) for the 600-strong insurance company that went on to win numerous industry awards.

Following that, he consulted to other brands within the insurance and

financial services industry. In August 2015, he founded CN&CO along with Nolte and a bunch of other likeminded individuals.

The 26-year-old is a big believer in the power of people and relationships, and the incredible effect this can have in both a personal and professional capacity. He is also a big advocate of mentorship. “I can’t even begin to explain the importance of mentorship, particularly for young people, and how big a role it has played in my life. My mentor Carel has had such immense faith in me since day one, and has provided insight, expertise and experiences on a range of issues. More than that, a mentor is a shoulder to cry on, a cheerleader, a door opener, and the kick-in-the-pants when needed.”

Beyond business, Solomon is one of a few people to have received an award at the annual Burning Man Festival for his ability to influence and make a positive change. As long as he’s pursuing his passion for people and relationships, it’s inevitable that magic will follow.

previous head illustrator of Supa Strikas, a monthly football-themed comic attached to local newspapers and magazines, he founded his own visual arts and communications company, Loyiso Mkize Art. When he’s not illustrating, he’s usually painting; his latest exhibition, “Reflections Eternal”, opened in late 2015.

Fast Company: What made you choose comics?

Mkize: My chosen field is largely linked to my skill set. I’m both a painter and illustrator, and consolidate the two into visual arts, as I feel it encompasses the full range of my expertise. I was born a visual artist and, luckily enough, I was able to carry that talent through my youth and into the professional world.

Home is where the art is

“I noticed very early in my career that fully embracing our local identity is key to creating compelling and exciting material.”

For creating a local hero Loyiso Mkize ILLUSTR ATOR, GR APHIC DESIGNER, FINE ARTIST

Cape Town artist Loyiso Mkize launched his own comic book earlier this year at Exclusive Books, with three collectors’ editions. Now available nationwide, it sees a typical social media–crazed South African, Kwezi (meaning ‘star’), embarking on a journey of self-discovery with one difference: The 19-year-old hero, born under a specific alignment of stars, enjoys the powers of flight and superhuman strength.

Veering away from the usual superhero struggles of fending off monsters and other super beings, Mkize’s approach was to be more relatable to South Africans: Kwezi goes up against the likes of cash-in-transit robbers and such.

Originally from Butterworth in the Eastern Cape, Mkize moved to Cape Town after his schooling career. In addition to being the

Would you say the launch of the comic has been your biggest achievement to date?

Yes, definitely. That’s because the entire endeavour is completely new in the South African arena. There are so many firsts that we can celebrate: Kwezi is the first South African superhero comic book series. It is the first South African superhero comic book series to be distributed at major book retailers nationwide, at Exclusive Books and more recently Bargain Books. But, more importantly, it is created narrative, where readers young and old can reimagine themselves through characters who look like them, speak like them and share the same environment as them.

How do you feel about the success of the comic book?

It’s an increasingly overwhelming experience, because only two years ago this entire project was just an idea. Somehow, though, I knew there was a market for this in South Africa; almost immediately after the first print run in 2014, it was clear that I was onto something big.

It’s been a gradual process of growth. Now that it’s reached this point, I’m more excited about what’s to come more than anything else.

There’s a lot more work to be done, lots of growth and expansion.

How far do you see the book going?

I’m looking to take this project further— increasing distribution even further locally and definitely across the continent. It’s become clear to me that making the book available in our languages will go a long way to reaching our diverse reader base. This belongs to our youth; with more episodes being released regularly, we’ll begin a trend—and if we are constant, a culture will be created. That’s huge! Not only for my brand but also for other creators, as that will fuel the growth of our industry.

How have you managed to pull off such a big project at a young age?

A lot of exhaustive hours! I’m really committed to seeing this project to its fullest potential, and that’s a full-time job in itself. I was also lucky to get assistance from young professionals who have contributed so much since the beginning, namely Clyde Beech, Rolilhlahla Mhlanga, Peter Phillip and Viwe Mfaku.

What is your vision and long-term plan?

I have my sights set on animation at the moment. It seems like a natural progression to have people able to tune in to watch their favourite superhero battle it out on screen.

Expanding the project into branding will also boost our power, so selected merchandise is also on the short-term list. Establishing these two pillars while maintaining the comic book’s consistency and integrity will be what I’m concerned with short term. Then once the ‘household name’ status is established, I believe a feature film adaptation will be a viable venture.

How do you keep the creative juices flowing?

I noticed very early in my career that fully embracing our local identity is key to creating compelling and exciting material. I love keeping up with local trends, music, culture, youth—the entire terrain is rich with content waiting to be cultivated. The end result is products that resonate with people on a personal level, and that makes all the difference when you’re trying to create a commercial entity.

As an artist and creative chief, what elements did you need to bring together to ensure this comic would be a success?

I needed to make sure the comic book was proudly South African, that the quality met international standards, and I needed the characters to stand out from everything people knew about superhero comic books.

The underlying tone constantly had to be positive, progressive, and exude a brave African aesthetic and identity.

What can we expect from you in the future?

The flagship project Kwezi has a well-defined destination and so my duty is to guide that along from animation to merchandise and eventually feature films. That also means expansion for my company in terms of capacity as work from clients emerges subsequent to Kwezi’s success. Many young talented individuals out there need opportunities to express themselves creatively, and so I hope my company will be able to provide those opportunities.

JULY 2016 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A 41

Next

Masterclass

Sound advice Top recording engineer Young Guru on how he keeps things fresh

BY KC IFEANYI

Photographs by Celine Grouard

Gimel “Young Guru” Keaton, one of the music industry’s best-known audio engineers, has helped craft tracks that have been recorded by the likes of Beyoncé, Drake, Rihanna and Jay Z, whose hits he’s most closely associated with. As an expert in the recording studio’s technical intricacies who’s also deeply steeped in hip-hop culture (he has a side gig as director of operations for indie rap label Jamla Records), Guru has worked closely with producers such as Pharrell Williams and Just Blaze to

help bring their sonic ideas to life.

“We’re problem solvers,” he says of his role in the recording process.

“Anytime there’s a problem, an engineer is supposed to perk up and be like, ‘Oh, wow, this is a challenge for me. I have something to design and build to figure this out.’ ” After spending more than 20 years and countless hours behind the soundboard, here are some of the ways that Young Guru has found to keep himself inspired and continue doing his highestcalibre work.

Chairman of the board Young Guru says technology has made his job both easier and more difficult.

42 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A JULY 2016

Te a m u p w i t h t h e b e s t Young Guru and Jay Z met in 1999 after the engineer was hired for an album by Jay Z’s protégé Memphis Bleek, who was signed to the rapper’s Roc-A-Fella Records.

They’ve collaborated closely ever since, and Guru has helped create huge tracks such as “Empire State of Mind”, “Izzo (H.O.V.A.)”, and “Dirt Off Your Shoulder”. “I’m lucky in that Jay completely gets the whole process,” says Guru. “He comes in, tells you what he wants, and lets you work. He either likes it or doesn’t, or he’ll give notes. My job is to translate his layman’s terms into audio terms.”

B u t a l s o m a ke t i m e f o r up-and-comers When you’re at the top of your profession, it’s easy to fall into routines. Working with young, unestablished artists can push you in unexpected directions. “With Jay [Z], it’s like, how do we continue to grow and not fuck up the legacy?

But it’s very hard to sit in a room after that many albums and be like, ‘What haven’t we talked about?’ ” Guru is always looking for the next sound, a new source of inspiration.

“I tell Jay sometimes, ‘You’re so up in the clouds that sometimes you miss ground-level shit, or you can’t start messing with it until it gets to a certain level because of who you are and your reputation.”

R e m e m b e r : I t ’s n o t a b o u t yo u An engineer’s job is to make the artist and producer sound their best. Though Guru is now relatively well known, he’s careful to keep in mind that he is not the star. “When you go to a live show, you’re not sitting there like, ‘Yo, the engineer is killing it! What preamps did he use?’ The only time you think about [an engineer] is when it sounds

horrible. Our job is to be out of the way and make the artist shine.”

P r o t e c t yo u r c r e a t i ve s p a c e With today’s studio technology, artists and even producers aren’t necessarily in the studio while Young Guru is working on tracks.

In some ways, that can be helpful.

“I don’t like someone over my shoulder,” he says. “It’s like you’re cooking and someone’s constantly sticking their finger in. When they’re like, ‘This tastes nasty,’ it’s like, ‘No shit, I just started. There’s no sugar in it yet! Let me finish cooking.’ ” But there are downsides too. In the old days, everyone would sit together in a room until a track was complete. “It was me, the producer and the artist, and at the end of the day all of us were there; we made a decision. We went, ‘Yo, the record is done. It sounds good.

Print that.’ [Now] I rarely mix a record with an artist in the room.

I’m in here by myself. I get my mix where I think it’s comfortable, and I email it to them. A little fivesecond [tweak] now can turn into days, because if they’re on the road or whatever, they may not listen to it right that second. I’m in here sitting, and they may go, ‘I’ll get to it tomorrow.’ ”

T R A CK S TA R A few of the familiar artists with whom studio whiz Young Guru has worked over the years

Jay Z

After more than 16 years of collaboration, Jay Z and Young Guru are a well-established team. Many of the superstar’s hits bear Guru’s studio touch, from “Girls, Girls, Girls” to “99 Problems” to the Jay Z and Alicia Keys smash “Empire State of Mind”.

Mariah Carey

Young Guru helped Carey turn Cam’ron’s “Oh Boy” (which he had also worked on) into “Boy (I Need You)”, from her 2002 album Charmbracelet. He also worked on the album’s “You Got Me”, on which Jay Z appears.

Beyoncé

The engineer contributed to her song “Welcome to Hollywood”, from 2006’s B’day, as well as the Jay Z hit “ ’03 Bonnie & Clyde”, on which she’s prominently featured.

Kanye West

Guru helped record “Never Let Me Down” from Kanye’s debut, The College Dropout.

Vince Staples

The rapper’s well-regarded 2015 album, Summertime ’06, includes eight tracks mixed by Young Guru.

T h r o w s o m e M c D o n a l d ’s i n i t Great artists don’t always find wide audiences; if your goal is to reach a lot of people, sometimes you have to tailor your approach. “I’m the super-underground hip-hop guy— I want to hear intricate shit,” says Guru. “Jay’s like, ‘Gu, I can rhyme for you all day—that’s not going to sell albums. I have to make this interesting enough for the people who don’t care about that as well as for you.’ That’s our challenge—it’s a balance. The audience doesn’t buy pure art, so I got to throw some McDonald’s in it. There’s a reason McDonald’s sells billions.”

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44 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A JULY 2016

CHELSEA DOES NET FLIX By giving comedian Chelsea Handler free rein with her upcoming talk show, Netflix is opening itself up to new risks— and new opportunities for growth

By Benjamin Svetkey

Photographs

by Peter Hapak

NET FLIX DOES CHELSEA

“T H I S P L A C E I S S O V A S T !”

SAYS CHELSEA H A N D L E R, N E A R L Y BREAKING INTO A MARY TYLER M O O R E–L I K E TWIRL INSIDE AN EMPTY SOUNDSTAGE ON T H E S O N Y L O T.

46 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A JULY 2016

“There’s so much room to manoeuvre!”

In a few weeks, carpenters would begin construction on the set of her new Netflix talk show that began streaming in 190 nations on May 11. But for now, on a warm February afternoon in Culver City, as Handler takes in the 1 500m2 space for the first time, all she has is her imagination.

“I’ve never actually been in here before,” she says. “I’ve only seen where the green room and the guest rooms are going to be. And”— she pauses for effect—“where they’ll be putting the bar.”

If all goes according to plan—and things usually do in Handler’s world, even if she insists she never has a plan—the 41-year-old stand-up comedian turned E! network star turned streaming pioneer will be spending a large chunk of the next several years inside this soundstage. The programme, called Chelsea, streams three nights a week— Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays— and features interviews with a variety of guests about often touchy topics: “abortion, parenthood, the electoral college . . .” she says, by way of examples, plus a regular dose of Handler’s bawdy, transgressive humour. It also features taped field reports: mini versions of the four hour-plus Chelsea Does documentaries that debuted on Netflix back in January. There’s a live audience and lots of wild-card elements; earlier in the day, Handler held auditions for a child correspondent (“I’m looking for a 10-year-old with attitude,” she says). All of this is packed into a running time of 30 minutes, more or less. In the world of streaming video, no one’s watching the clock too closely.

Right now, she’s in the middle of a series of creative meetings. “People come and pitch me ideas,” she says, gesturing vaguely toward where a lazy Susan–style stage she’s proposed may go (“There’ll be a section if I’m interviewing three or four people, the way Dick Cavett sometimes did, and another if I’m interviewing one of the show’s correspondents,” she explains). “That’s how I’ve always worked.

Give me options. I’ll tell you what I like and don’t like. I know what the show is. I just can’t put it in words. But it won’t be regimented. You’re not going to turn it on three nights a week and have an opening monologue, a guest and a band. It’ll be completely different.”

In one respect, it already is: It’s on Netflix.

Talk shows on broadcast airwaves have censors, commercial breaks and nightly

Set design: Anthony Asaro; hair: Bryce Scarlett; makeup: Quinn Murphy

CONTENT WARS

GUTTER CREDIT TK

Working blue Handler looks forward to being free from traditionalnetwork restrictions.

Art credit teekay

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ratings. Talk shows on basic cable—such as Samantha Bee’s Full Frontal on TBS—get away with racier conversations but still have to cut to ads (and deal with jittery advertisers).

Even pay-cable talk shows, like John Oliver’s on HBO, follow relatively traditional formats—a guy behind a desk—and exist within an old-fashioned corporate bureaucracy. But a talk show that runs on a streaming service—especially one that prides itself on giving talent virtually unlimited creative freedom, that is intent on rewiring the viewing habits of the whole world, and that has a $6-billion (R90.4billion) budget with which to do all of this—can be pretty much whatever its host wants it to be. On Netflix, there are no ads, no ratings (the company has never revealed how many people watch its shows, much to the annoyance of its competition) and no network notes, at least none that Handler can recall. The company “is amazing”, she says.

Netflix’s laissez-faire attitude toward talent has resulted in some groundbreaking programmes including Beau Willimon’s presidential soap opera House of Cards, and Jenji Kohan’s women’s prison dramedy, Orange Is the New Black (as well as a few stinkers like the recent Full House reboot, Fuller House). Even so, Handler’s show will mark a major departure. For one thing, the company that popularised binge viewing will be releasing episodes in a radically oldfashioned way: one at a time. Each will go live at 12:01 a.m. and remain on servers indefinitely, for subscribers to stream as they please—but it’s as close as Netflix has ever come to traditional appointment television.

What’s even more unusual for Netflix is that the show covers current events in some degree of real time. This is a move that CEO Reed Hastings and chief content officer Ted Sarandos had hinted at during an earnings call last October. “On the news side, we are definitely being more adventurous,” Sarandos told reporters, somewhat cryptically.

When Hastings responded by asking Sarandos, “What’s the likelihood that we compete with Vice in the next two years?” Sarandos answered, “Probably high.” The Internet immediately lit up with talk of Netflix’s grand new plan to expand into news, and the streaming service quickly backpedalled. In a follow-up email, a corporate spokesperson attempted to clarify these remarks by telling reporters, “We’ll leave the news business to folks like yourself.”

Handler, of course, isn’t a newsperson. But talk shows are by nature tethered to the stories of the day, and having her on the air discussing them marks a shift for Netflix— transforming the media company from a simple streaming service, such as Hulu or Amazon Prime Video, into a living, breathing part of the news cycle. “It doesn’t have to be ripped from the headlines every episode,” Sarandos says of the show’s content, back-pedalling a little bit more. “If Chelsea is picking the right topics, the conversation is going to be around for a few weeks. But, yes, it’s definitely more topical and timely than what we usually do.”

There are risks for Netflix. After all, the company is putting its money and reputation (and 90-minutes-a-week of bandwidth) behind a button-pushing, controversy-prone comedian who once dressed a little person as Adolf Hitler to celebrate Germany’s World Cup win, whose sharp tongue has

48 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A JULY 2016

CHELSEA L A T E L Y, A N D N O T S O LATE LY A guide to the comedian’s say-anything career

Chelsea Lately

CABLE TV Girls Behaving Badly Oxygen

2002–2005

Handler appeared as a practical joke–playing cast member on the all-female show, positioned by the network as Sex and the City mixed with Candid Camera. Her first TV opportunity, Girls Be­ having Badly, helped rescue a flailing Oxygen and quickly gained the baw­d y Handler a fan base that would propel sales of her first book, My Hori­z ontal Life: A Collec­t ion of OneNight Stands, in 2005.

programme marked the debut of Handler as herself and further introduced audiences to her blunt comedic style.

Chelsea Lately E!

2007–2013

The second woman ever to host a latenight talk show (after 1986’s The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers), Handler infused each half hour with irreverent humour and raucous celebrity interviews, and turned the show into a surprise hit—drawing close to a million viewers per episode.

The Chelsea Handler Show

After Lately

E!

E!

The half-hour variety

The semi-scripted

2006

2011–2013

behind-the-scenes mockumentary aired weekly and followed Handler (the show’s creator and executive producer) and her staff during the making of Chelsea Lately episodes, parodying the petty and ridiculous sides of show business.

OTHER APPEARANCES 2002–2015

Handler has gueststarred on numerous programmes including Reno 911!, This Means War, Web Therapy, In the Motherhood, The Bernie Mac Show and My Wife and Kids. In 2015, on an episode of ABC’s The Muppets ti­t led “Too Hot to Handler”, she was asked out on a date by Scooter.

PRODUCTION WORK Borderline Amazing Productions 2009– PRESENT

The Chelsea Handler Show

In addition to most of Handler’s own

Chelsea Does

programmes, Handler’s production company created and produced Love You, Mean It with Whitney Cummings, a short-lived reality show called Pretty Wild (featuring the members of the Bling Ring celebrity-home-raiding posse), Are You There, Chelsea? (based on Handler’s 2008 memoir Are You There, Vodka?

It’s Me, Chelsea and starring Orange Is the New Black’s Laura Prepon), and CMT’s first late-night programme The Josh Wolf Show.

Times best-sellers, with four reaching the No. 1 spot. The confessional writings explore similar themes of sex, alcohol and the embarrassments of her youth in New Jersey. Her comedy tours, which accompanied the books’ releases, have grossed more than R450 million.

DIGITAL T V Uganda Be Kidding Me Live Netflix 2014

A Chelsea Handler Production 2015– PRESENT

In Handler’s follow-up to Borderline Amazing, the company produced her four-part Netflix docuseries Chelsea Does and is also creating her talk show.

To promote her most recent book, Uganda Be Kidding Me, Hand­l er performed a live comedy show in Chicago produced by Borderline Amazing that was recorded and

NON-FICTION My Horizontal Life: A Collection of OneNight Stands 2005

Are You There, Vodka?

It’s Me, Chelsea 2008

Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang 2010

Lies That Chelsea Handler Told Me 2011

Uganda Be Kidding Me 2014

Handler’s essay collections, five in less than 10 years, have sold more than 2 million copies combined— and were all New York

released exclusively on Netflix.

Chelsea Does Netflix 2016

The four-part docu­ series, with each episode devoted to a single topic (marriage, racism, drugs and Silicon Valley), served as a teaser for her new three-times-aweek talk show that debuted in May. —Claire Dodson

made enemies of everyone from Angelina Jolie to Nick Cannon, and who has posted more topless photos of herself than Vladimir Putin (which may explain some of her 5.8 million Twitter followers and 2.1 million Instagram followers). Talk-show hosts function as brand identifiers: Jimmy Fallon is in many ways the face of NBC, just as Jon Stewart was for Comedy Central. Placing an unpredictable force like Handler in a talkshow position could put Netflix in awkward situations.

At the moment, though, Handler is just looking for a place to sit down.

After winding through hallways and taking some stray turns (“Is this an office?” she asks after opening a door into what looks like a closet), Handler finally finds the only part of the soundstage with furniture—a large backstage lounge with a couple of old sofas presumably left behind by a previous tenant. As the star settles into a couch, the production assistant asks if he can fetch her a bottle of water.

“No,” she says, deadpan. “Just bring us a condom.”

Ted Sarandos was chatting with his wife at the Vanity Fair Oscar party in February 2014 when Handler crashed their conversation. “She asked me if I was the Netflix guy,” recalls the exec, who’d never met the comedian before. “She asked a lot of questions. She was really tenacious about it. She wanted to know how things worked, how Netflix was different. It was a real deep dive. It was almost as if she were on a fact-finding mission.”

Which, in fact, she was.

At the time, Handler was in the middle of her seventh year hosting Chelsea Lately, the entertainment-news channel E!’s popular five-day-aweek, late-night talk show in which she engaged in gossipy banter with Hollywood celebs and poked fun at her little-person sidekick, Chuy.

The gig had made her rich (the network reportedly paid her between $8 million [R120 million] and $12 million [R180 million] a year) and famous (each episode drew upward of a million viewers) and even “I never something of a groundbreaker: really have the first female comic to succeed at late-night-TV hosting—something epiphanies,” not even Joan Rivers was able to Handler says. do. Reruns of her show aired so “I just have many times a day that it sometimes seemed like the only thing on the thoughts network. There was even a spin-off, and act on After Lately, a semi-fictitious reality them. I’m series in which the cast and crew of Chelsea Lately were shown bickering impulsive.” and engaging in other backstage shenanigans. That drew a million viewers per night as well.

But after taping more than 1 000 episodes (and interviewing almost as many Kardashians), Handler was miserable and ready for a change.

She was tired of celebrity gossip, appalled at the audience’s hunger for it—and, most of all, fed up with being on the network that produced programmes like Leave It to Lamas and Bridalplasty. “It was incredibly frustrating,” she says. “You’re a reflection of the company you keep, and I wasn’t impressed with anybody. The people I was working with on the network side, they never could think big. I just wanted to leave, to be somewhere else.”

Handler has trusted her instincts ever since she was a kid in suburban New Jersey. “I never really have epiphanies,” she says, “I just have thoughts

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50 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A JULY 2016

Kevin Spacey in House of Cards

8 THINGS YOU NEED TO K N O W AB O UT NETFLIX RIGHT NOW 1

It’s shelling out the bucks.

Netflix currently has a programming budget of R9 billion in cash, making it the second-biggest content spend­­e r after ESPN. The money is going toward original fare such as Master of None and Orange Is the New Black, and licensed TV shows and movies like Parenthood and Breaking Bad. 2

It’s doubling its original content... . . . to more than 600 hours. That means that each week this year, more than one new TV series, movie, documentary, stand-up special or kids’ show will begin streaming, including Baz Luhrmann’s

hip-hop drama, The Get Down, and Brad Pitt’s satirical military film, War Machine.

3

It’s investing heavily in young-adult and family programming... . . . such as the recent Fuller House reunion show and an upcoming revival of Gilmore Girls. Family shows and ’80s movies are popular on the site— and users, via surveys, have expressed a demand for youngerskewing fare.

4

It’s poaching YouTube stars.

Execs at Netflix understand the value of YouTube cele­ brities’ enormous, built-in fan bases and digital marketing savvy. In January, it

ordered a scripted series based on the YouTube character Miranda Sings, and it streams all the episodes of Freddie Wong’s YouTube show, Video Game High School.

6

It has its sights on the entire world.

The streaming service is quickly expanding its global reach and is now live in more than 190 countries including Russia and India.

The only major nation missing is China, due to government regulations. CEO Reed Hastings has said he is not giving up and will be “patient” with that market.

7

It’s helping make TVs smarter.

5

It’s going all out at film festivals.

Netflix is looking to jump-start its nascent originalmovie business and nab some Oscars. At Sundance in January, the company spent lavishly on seven films including Tal­ lulah, starring Ellen Page and Allison Janney, and the Paul Rudd road movie The Fundamentals of Caring. The company also made a R301-million bid for Nate Parker’s Birth of a Nation, but lost out to Fox Searchlight.

Through its Netflix Recommended TV initiative, the company gives a Good House­ keeping–like seal of approval to television devices that meet certain performance and functionality criteria.

8

It’s challenging HBO. Netflix added five new comedy series last year, plus high-profile docs such as the truecrime thriller Making a Murderer, which sparked a national dialogue about systemic flaws in the justice system.

—Nicole LaPorte

David Giesbrecht/Netflix

and act on them. I’m impulsive.” Her dad was a used-car salesman and Jewish; her mom, a German-born homemaker, was Mormon. (“We celebrated both Christmas and Hanukkah, but I consider myself Jewish,” she says.) The youngest of six children, she was raised without much supervision, and it clearly left her with an independent streak. After about “10 minutes” of community college, Handler says she left for LA to become an actress, moving in with relatives who had nine children, three dogs and a parrot. Living in what she calls a “disgusting” environment, she waited tables between auditions for commercials and sitcom parts, growing more and more restless. “I just wanted my life to begin,” she says. “I wanted everything to start. I wanted my break.”

It came soon, in the unlikely form of a DUI conviction. On the eve of her 21st birthday, while driving home from a bar with an equally sloshed friend—“midway through [singing] the second chorus of Whitney Houston’s ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody,’ ” as Handler describes the incident in her 2008 best-selling memoir (the second of five), Are You There, Vodka?

It’s Me, Chelsea—she was pulled over by the police. After a night in jail, she was sentenced to DUI classes, and it was there, while regaling fellow offenders with the details of her arrest (like how she called the white cops who busted her “racists” and drunkenly complained about being “racially profiled”), that she realised her calling. “You ought to do stand-up,” her DUI classmates told her.

“Stand-up was my entrée into the entertainment world,” she says. “I didn’t have to act out somebody else’s words. I could just stand there with a microphone and nobody would interrupt me. It’s the most narcissistic thing you could probably do.”

Within about six years, she had landed development deals with Paramount and NBC. She scored her first regular role, on an Oxygen network sketch-comedy programme called Girls Behaving Badly (sort of an oestrogen-infused Punk’d), and started getting invitations to appear on the E! network’s “countdown” reports, in which various comedians riff on news and celebrity gossip.

Ted Harbert, who was then the head of the Comcast-owned network, spotted her and saw potential. In 2005, he

offered Handler her own sketch-comedy programme, The Chelsea Handler Show, which tanked. A year later, he tried again, giving her Chelsea Lately. Around this time, Handler began a relationship with Harbert (now chairperson of NBC Broadcasting) that had E! employees gossiping around watercoolers for four years, until they broke up. “Now that I look back on it, it was very odd,” she admits. “It was tricky.

But my mom had just died. And he was the president of the network. He was this older guy who thought I was the greatest thing in the world. So I returned the favour.”

As she says: She has thoughts and acts on them.

Handler did so again in March 2014, a month after chatting up Sarandos at that Oscar after-party, when she decided to leave E! and broke the news to her bosses in a way that only Handler may think was a good idea—by all but announcing it on The Howard Stern Show. “E! has just become a sad, sad place to live,” she said on the air. “They don’t know what they’re doing, they have no ideas . . . everything they do just is a failure.” Handler says she was surprised when E! execs assumed it was a ploy for a fatter contract. “Because I felt unhappy, I just assumed that they knew,” she explains.

“But they thought I was negotiating. I told them, ‘You don’t have to give me more money. It’s not about that. I don’t care. I don’t want to be on this network anymore.’ ” An E! spokesperson says, “Chelsea called E! home for seven years, and it’s disappointing that she continues to criticise the network that launched her career.”

Handler’s next move became a subject of intense speculation in the TV world. Around that time, the late-night airwaves were in flux. At CBS, Letterman had announced his retirement from Late Show, and Craig Ferguson’s contract with The Late Late Show was about to expire. Once Handler left E!, rumours began to circulate that she was after one of those jobs. An Instagram photo that she posted showing a packet of papers with the CBS logo on them and a caption reading “business meeting” didn’t do a lot to dispel this talk. But Handler was merely stirring the pot. “Those were just meetings that people wanted to take,” she says. “I was offered several jobs. I was offered syndication late-night shows. But they were all conversations that didn’t get far, because there was no point. I was never interested. I didn’t want to step into somebody else’s shoes. I didn’t want to be on some other late-night show doing the same shit again.”

What she was interested in—and why she sought out Sarandos at that party—was Netflix. “House of Cards was on, and I just thought it was cool,” she says. “I thought they were smart, that they knew what they’re doing, and that I could do something different there. I thought, I want to work at that table.”

She asked her manager Irving Azoff to set up a meeting with “the Netflix guy” at the streaming service’s Beverly Hills headquarters. (Azoff did nothing to dissuade her. “He never tells me what to do—he knows better,” she says.) Sarandos, who attended the meeting, along with Netflix’s VP of content acquisition, Lisa Nishimura, and VP of original content, Cindy Holland, was “stunned that Chelsea hadn’t signed with one of the CBS shows,” he says. “But it wasn’t like we were looking to make a talk show. It wasn’t like, ‘Let’s find a host.’

She came in, and we met, and it was more like one of those we-don’tknow-if-we-should-do this-because-we’ve-never-done-anything-likethis-before kind of things.” Turns out those are Netflix’s favourite types of meetings. “We’re all about experimenting,” says Nishimura. “And the timing was terrific.”

Although Netflix didn’t do any formal crunching of Handler’s numbers—there were no focus groups or analyses of her ratings on E!—the company had detected signs that the streaming audience was receptive to a Netflix talk show. “Anecdotally, if you look at what’s happening in late night, increasingly people want consumer control,” says Nishimura. “Whether it’s digital clips of Fallon’s celebrity lip sync or [James] Corden’s singing with celebrities in cars, you’re starting to find that consumers aren’t watching late night as appointment TV.” Though Netflix is a closed system, it plans to share video clips via YouTube and its social channels to drive viewers to the show.

“Near-live,” is what BTIG Research analyst Rich Greenfield calls this new form of entertainment consumption. “People love the late-night conversation, but they want to watch it on their own terms. And Netflix wants to be a part of that.” Near-live programming, he explains, fits with the company’s push to keep people paying $7.99 (R120) a month.

“That’s the most important thing for Netflix. They don’t care about nightly ratings—they care about subscribers coming back. And with Chelsea Handler, they see a talent with a passionate fan base and a person who knows how to use social media to drive awareness.” When Handler isn’t posting risqué photos of herself (“I think nudity is funny, especially when it’s inappropriate,” she says), she’s tweeting out a cascade of zingers, put-downs and comedic observations. “I found a piece of pretzel in my underwear this morning,” she tweeted recently.

“Conclusion: I was intoxicated, unsupervised and abstinent.”

Surprisingly, Handler says social media doesn’t come naturally to her. “Would I do these things if I wasn’t famous?” she ponders. “No. If I didn’t have something to promote, I wouldn’t. It’s just something you Handler says have to do right now. But once I got the hang of it, it has been fun social media to interact with fans. As silly as it doesn’t come sounds, it feels good to do it.” It naturally to also makes smart business sense, undoubtedly providing leverage her. “Would I in negotiating with, say, major do these things streaming companies. In June 2014, Handler and Netflix signed a deal if I wasn’t reportedly valued at $10 million famous?” she (about R150 million)—or five ponders. “No.” times what John Oliver is said to be paid by HBO—for the show, the docuseries and a stand-up special for Netflix (Uganda Be Kidding Me Live, released in October 2015). Then she acted on impulse again, announcing that she’d be taking a break. She didn’t come back for 18 months.

Handler is lounging poolside at her Bel Air home, getting high.

And then doing leg squats.

She’s filming one of her talk show’s field reports, this one focusing on a personal trainer who believes that inhaling marijuana before a workout enhances the exercise experience. He’s brought complicatedlooking vaporising devices that Handler needs help operating—“I’m more of a drinker,” she says apologetically, after coughing up a lungful of cannabis—as well as some brutal-looking sports equipment. A camera

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crew is capturing it all, as Handler’s two furry mutts, Chunk and Tammy, watch with weary detachment from the other side of the pool.

Handler has shot a number of these mini docs, not all of them in the comfort of her tastefully decorated home—which happens to be American swimmerturned-actress Esther Williams’s old mansion, remodelled with ultramodern conveniences including a guest bathroom with an electronic toilet control panel so high-tech you need a degree in physics just to flush. Last week, she had flown to Moscow (“a horrible place”, she notes, making a face) to do a segment on young girls in the Russian figure-skating programme.

Next week, she’ll hop over to Las Vegas to watch a hypercompetitive youth baseball tournament. There will also be segments on a vocal coach who teaches trans women how to sound more feminine and a visit to the home of a polygamist family. Judging from what’s going on around her pool—Handler, high as a kite, swinging a kettlebell so clumsily it’s a wonder she doesn’t accidentally propel herself into the pool— these taped segments will be pretty hilarious.

But like her four heavily promoted Chelsea Does docs, which premiered on Netflix in January, they’ll aim to be more than merely amusing. One reason Handler was drawn to Netflix was that she could express a smarter, more intellectually curious side of her personality.

“When we were on the network, I can’t tell you how many times we had to take jokes out because of advertisers,” she says. “It was constant bickering back and forth. You can’t do this, you can’t do that.

There was no creative licence.”

But with Netflix, if she wants to get high and do push-ups, it’s not a problem. If she wants to spend 30 minutes discussing presidential politics, that’s cool too.

If she wants to take an epic hiatus before starting the show—travelling the world, buying a house in Spain, and having a brief fling with a crew member aboard a ship—no one’s going to complain. “I sat down at Netflix and told them I want to take [time] off, and then I could come back and do some documentaries, if they would hook me up with some of [the filmmakers] they had access to,” she recalls. “And they were like, ‘Great!’ ” The Chelsea Does docs—about racism, marriage, drugs and Silicon Valley—were Handler’s idea, but from Netflix’s point of view they were a savvy segue into a talk show, a tone test for a new sort of Chelsea. They’re not exactly Ken Burns–level productions, but they are certainly more intelligent and thought-provoking than anything Handler ever did on E!. In the Silicon Valley episode, she ventures to the tech capital to “talk to them about their algorithms—and find out what an algorithm is.” She rides a hoverboard, interviews an AI robot (“Are you trying to annoy me?” it asks her), and pitches her own app, an iPhone program that fakes an incoming call or text so that you can sneak out of meetings (Gotta Go! went on sale on iTunes the week the doc was released).

52 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A JULY 2016

“The docs gave us the opportunity to try a new format,” says Sarandos.

“The interview style, the round tables, the outside segments—all of those are things that will be in the talk show.” As Handler puts it, they “served as a great bridge. I wanted to show people that I’m taking a real big jump into something new, that I was reinventing myself.”

To continue that evolution on the talk show, Handler has enlisted Bill Wolff, the producer who, in One reason 2005, discovered an obscure Air America Radio host named Rachel Handler was Maddow and turned her into drawn to MSNBC’s No. 1 star (he left in 2014 to Netflix was help launch Vice for HBO). “Chelsea and Rachel are actually similar that she could people,” Wolff says, “smart, funny, express a more hard-working, and transparent. intellectually When you meet Chelsea or Rachel, they’re just as they appear on TV.” curious side of Handler spoke with several her personality. potential producers before connecting with Wolff. (“We met at a hotel bar for one drink—and that became 10 drinks,” she says.) Wolff for his part, appreciated Handler’s creative instinct. “The vision was essentially in place,” he remembers.

“She told me that she wanted to put together a show in her voice, but that was about the broader world.”

The process of creating a talk show is always the same, Wolff says, whether the host is a wonky Rhodes Scholar with an Elvis-like ’do or a community college dropout (who says she reads 75 books a year and who has written five best-sellers of her own). “You spend a lot of time together,” he explains. “You find out what she’s interested in, what she likes to do, the things she finds funny. And over the course of weeks and months, you piece together a proper form for her self-expression. You try to exploit the things that make that person special.” (Sadly, Wolff parted ways with the show at the end of May.) What’s tricky about Handler is that the very things that make her unique—an instinct to push buttons and a fearlessness about offending— aren’t traits typically associated with talk-show schmoozers. Netflix has content deals with other stars—Adam Sandler, the Duplass Brothers, Brad Pitt—but the person the company has chosen to beam into subscribers’ bedrooms, night after night, in 190 countries, happens to be the one capable of insulting entire nation-states with a single zinger (she still hasn’t apologised to Serbia, after an offhand remark about that country being a “disappointment” sparked a nationwide boycott of her E! show).

Still, Chelsea—and Chelsea—may be a gamble worth taking. “Neflix is about reaching all four quadrants,” explains analyst Greenfield. “Fuller House is very different from House of Cards, which is very different from Orange Is the New Black. And Chelsea is different, as well, which is what Netflix wants. If you think about what a video bundler does,” he goes on, “it provides a little bit of food programming on a food channel, a little comedy on a comedy channel, a little drama, a little bit of everything.

And that’s what Netflix is doing with Chelsea Handler—it’s providing a totally different type of content. Because, remember, Netflix doesn’t really want to be a network—it wants to be a video packager. Its goal is not to replace HBO—it wants to replace Comcast.”

That stoned woman by the pool, lurching around with a kettlebell?

She’s merely its latest secret weapon. loop@fastcompany.com

54 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A JULY 2016

MAKING MOVIE MAGIC W H Y T H E S O U T H A F R I C A N A N I M AT I O N I N D U S T R Y I S D R AW I N G T H E I N T E R E S T O F I N T E R N AT I O N A L S T U D I O S

BY CASEY ROCHE A N D E VA N S M A N Y O N G A

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“OUR ANIMATION IS WORLD-CLASS, ABSOLUTELY . . . WE DID A TOUR LAST YEAR TO LONDON, AND STUDIOS WERE BOWLED OVER BY THE WORK THAT’S COMING OUT OF SOUTH AFRICA. WE HOLD UP ON A GLOBAL STAGE.” Dianne Makings is the director of the annual Cape Town International Animation Festival (CTIAF), which hosts workshops with a wide range of leading international and local animation experts while bringing the world’s best animated films to South African screens—from as far afield as Ireland and Brazil, among others. Previously known as Kunjanimation, the partners had grown and rebranded the festival for 2016. “We really wanted to put South Africa onto the global calendar of animation festivals. There are so many animation festivals right throughout the world, and not one yet representative of Africa,” Makings told SABC’s Morning Live.

She added that, according to the National Film & Video Foundation’s Audience Research Project conducted last year, the one piece of content audiences are looking for in South Africa is animation. “There’s a huge demand for it, and our industry can supply that . . . We’re perfectly positioned as a growth sector to be able to start providing people with the content they so desperately want.” In addition, the survey showed that most NFVF employees consider animation as the second-most popular genre of successful South African films.

Animation has evolved over the years: from the traditional process

The Western Cape Department of Economic Development and Tourism approached Sea Monster to create a series of educational animations to teach firsttime users how to connect to Wi-Fi hotspots.

Daniel Snaddon, co-director and animation supervisor at Triggerfish, helped bring Stick Man to the screen.

that saw up to 700 drawings needed to create a 75-second scene, to puppet animation and claymation. No matter the medium, it is still a much-loved art form for all ages. According to the NFVF survey, children watch more animations or cartoons than any other age group, as these often create a world they can relate to.

Cape Town–based Triggerfish Animation Studios, founded by Stuart Forrest (top right), established the Story Lab to develop African writers and directors. A Dogshow with Cat (bottom right) is the first animation short produced by the Lab.

At this year’s CTIAF in February—with partners Animation South Africa, the NFVF, Nickelodeon, Wesgro and Institut Français SA—audiences were given the opportunity to see some of the best animated films from around the world as well as those produced right here. Makings said the festival exceeded expectations: “The workshops were sold out,

with attendance figures tripling since the previous festival. We also had three times the entries for our student awards, with international studio delegates commenting about the high standard of the finalists.

The screenings also proved popular: Over 450 tickets were sold to our outdoor cinema and screenings at the Labia. It’s testament to

the fact that audiences are looking for animation content.”

Curating the festival is Animation SA, a non-profit organisation mandated by industry to develop and represent animation in the country. In addition to the CTIAF, it creates new business opportunities by coordinating export missions to key markets

JULY 2016 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A 57

including the Annecy International Animated Film Festival, the London Film Festival and the Durban International Film Festival, among others. “Our objective is to become a resource for anyone within and outside of South Africa to source service suppliers or solutions, development, production and co-production partners, freelancers, employees etc.,” said national chairperson Nick Cloete. Through the organisation’s efforts, animation in South Africa is reaching new frontiers, with films competing on a global scale and producers participating in pitch sessions.

The CTIAF has contributed to the building of social capital within the country’s animation industry to allow for South Africa to become more globally competitive in this market.

“It’s just, unfortunately, South Africans who don’t get to see [the films] that much, because they get exported,” said Makings. “Generally the work gets sent overseas, so it’s overseas audiences who are enjoying the content that’s created here. But definitely, in terms of the industry and what is being created here, our talent is world-class.”

The festival comprises various mediums including scriptwriting, character animation and production, and offers a rare opportunity for locals to engage with global leaders in the industry. “The festival’s programme is designed to inspire and build both the local industry and audiences, by exposing them to talent and content through screenings, talks, workshops and master classes,” stated Makings. Highlights this year included a workshop hosted by famous producer Mark Shapiro, who has overseen films such as Corpse

MOVING PICTURES A G L I M P S E O F T H E C R I T I C A L LY A C C L A I M E D A N I M AT E D F I L M S F E AT U R E D AT T H I S Y E A R ’ S C T I A F

Stick Man (South Africa) TRIGGERFISH ANIMATION STUDIOS

An Odyssey-like journey of a stick dad trying to get home to his family in time for Christmas.

Song of the Sea (Ireland) CARTOON SALOON

The story of Ben and his little sister—the last Seal child—who find their way home across a fading world of ancient legend and magic.

Boy & the World (Brazil) FILME DE PAPEL

A ‘breath of wind’ enters Cuca’s bedroom window and takes the little boy to a distant, magical place.

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“GENERALLY THE WORK GETS SENT OVERSEAS, SO IT’S OVERSEAS AUDIENCES WHO ARE ENJOYING THE CONTENT THAT’S CREATED HERE.” 58 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A JULY 2016

The Farmer’s Llamas (UK) AARDMAN ANIMATIONS

A Shaun the Sheep TV special, Shaun tricks the farmer into buying three prank-pulling llamas, but is forced to help get rid of them when things go too far.

Lost and Found (UK) STUDIO AKA

Based on the best-selling children’s picture book by Oliver Jeffers, a little boy helps a penguin find its way back to the South Pole.

Bride, ParaNorman and Coraline; Oscarnominated Christine Ponzevera from French independent production company, Nectarious Films—advising attendees on how to pitch to European studios; as well as Nedy Acet, well-known 3D character animator at DreamWorks. In addition Adobe, Chaos Group, The Foundry and CelAction offered technical talks and demonstrations. Attendees were also treated to Q&A sessions with top overseas directors Tomm Moore and Adam Elliot.

Southern African head of film and media at the Institut Français SA, Frédéric Chambon, looks forward to exciting new ventures in the years to come. “We have supported Kunjanimation, now the Cape Town International Animation Festival, since its inception; we have seen it grow, and [seen] the partnership with the French animation sector leap from strength to strength. There have been many success stories as a result of this collaboration, and we look forward to expanding on this for the next year.”

Over the five years in which the festival has been running, a number of mutually beneficial partnerships have been concluded. In 2013, the attendance of a group of French producers led to the strengthening of ties between the French and South African animation industries. In the same year, a three-year contract was offered for a partnership between The Animation School in Cape Town and Gobelins, the world-renowned school of the visual arts in Paris. In 2014, a special platform at the Annecy film festival in France was created, allowing several South African studios to pitch their animated movies. The 2015 pitch led to history being made with the first ever African/French co-production between Johannesburg’s Bugbox Animation and Folimage Studios on a preschool series, Musi & Cuckoo.

In June this year, Cape Town–based Triggerfish Animation Studios (a Fast Company SA Most Innovative Company of 2014) accepted the overall Annecy Cristal Award for Best Television Production. Competing against a multitude of other entries, the TV special Stick Man—produced in collaboration with Magic Light Pictures in the UK—won by unanimous jury vote. Winning a Cristal was the fulfilment of a 20-year dream, said Mike Buckland, head of production at Triggerfish. “It’s an incredible feeling of achievement and validation that our film has won against such strong international competition, at one of the most prestigious animation festivals in the world.”

Buckland believes the animation talent in South Africa has always been fantastic, but it’s only recently that the industry has begun

gaining more exposure on an international level, while taking on more challenging projects. “Stick Man winning at Annecy reaffirms that we have a strong and capable talent base here in South Africa, and that Triggerfish is providing a platform for the very best to develop and showcase their skills.” With two feature films internationally distributed, the company is also working with its Berlin office to screen two short films in the UK late this year, which will be based on Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes.

Stick Man had its African premiere at the 2016 CTIAF. It was the fourth most watched programme in the UK on Christmas Day 2015, with 9.27 million viewers. The Telegraph described it as “spell-binding, witty and wise”.

Co-director Daniel Snaddon told Expresso, “We don’t have a big tech industry backing us up, so we’re using off-the-shelf tools.

The quality of Stick Man is really down to the fantastic team we have at Triggerfish.

The look of the movie is very much sort of a handcrafted/hand-sculpted look. We’re essentially using digital tools to try to create something that looks handmade.”

More international partnerships are being forged as the quality of animation in South Africa increases. Triggerfish’s Story Lab initiative has attracted top industry players, including the likes of the Walt Disney Company, to offer support and input in developing the next generation of directors and scriptwriters. Currently working on a number of projects—including the development of four TV series ideas, the incubation of four feature film scripts, and a feature film scheduled to start pre-production late this year—Triggerfish is confident of the future of animation in South Africa. “It’s looking like it will be a busy few years for the studio, and we expect to be creating a lot more opportunities for talented South African artists and animators to become part of increasing our footprint in the global animation arena,” said Buckland.

Animation is not limited to providing television entertainment; Sea Monster Entertainment, another Cape Town–based company, teases customers with the enticing wonders of the virtual world. This “animation and gaming business with a difference” creates “serious games”—or games with a purpose—that seek to enhance a sales objective or an internal customer engagement process.

“We’re using our skills in animation to really get the message across, and [using] games to deepen engagement and understanding,” explained CEO Glenn Gillis. As everyone is now competing in an “attention economy”,

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Phantom Boy (France) FOLIMAGE STUDIO

An 11-year-old boy’s illness causes him to gain superpowers, which he uses to foil a criminal mastermind.

Ernie Biscuit (Australia)

STICK MAN , WHICH HAD ITS AFRICAN PREMIERE AT THE 2016 CAPE TOWN INTERNATIONAL ANIMATION FESTIVAL, WAS THE FOURTH MOST WATCHED PROGRAMME IN THE UK ON CHRISTMAS DAY 2015, WITH 9.27 MILLION VIEWERS.

ADAM ELLIOT CLAYOGRAPHIES

In this black-and-white claymation short, a deaf taxidermist’s life is turned upside down when a dead pigeon lands on his doorstep.

Adama (France) NAIA PRODUCTIONS

A young boy from a remote village in Africa goes in search of his older brother in Europe during World War 1.

Sita Sings the Blues (US)

NINA PALEY

A musical interpretation of the Indian epic, the Ramayana, about prince Rama and his wife Sita—gods incarnated as human beings.

he believes “stories are how people make sense of the world around them.” Therefore new ventures into the gaming market need to inform and keep people engaged. “Animation is the storytelling element, and gaming is the engagement to drive and measure the business outcome,” Gillis added.

Sea Monster is not just about creating simple animation and ‘pretty pictures’; it needs to understand business objectives, employees and customer behaviour. The games collect various forms of data that allow businesses to determine fact-based outcomes. One such successful augmentedreality process was done in collaboration with The Foschini Group’s @home brand. The Your Space app allows customers to place items from the store into their virtual home before completing their purchase. While customers enjoy the convenience of their shopping experience using the app, analytics tools provide TFG with useful information about their decision-making process. “South Africa is very well positioned globally to create digital learning products, to change the way that people learn and innovate with technology in a very unique environment,” said Gillis.

In the timeless industry of animation, South Africa is exposing the talent of creatives on a global scale. Looking to the future, new technology and innovations seem inevitable from local companies within the sector.

Animation is a promising venture to further declare South Africa as being on par with the rest of the world in the entertainment industry.

That’s all, folks!

JULY 2016 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A 59

Next

Motoring

Innovation, beauty, class, power If your aim is to be noticed on the roads, then the new Ford Fusion is the car for you REVIEW BY EVANS MANYONGA

Sleek lines

The Fusion was a finalist in the SA 2016 Car of the Year Awards, and came a close second after serious testing by the motoring fraternity.

Having driven it, I can certainly see why.

Exterior aesthetics The vehicle has an eye-catching grille that you’d normally associate with the Maserati. The stretchedback, laser-cut headlights enhance the overall luxury yet affordable look that the car manufacturer was after. These features are part of Ford’s global One-Ford Strategy: a family DNA that gives the Fusion an elegant yet technical front end.

And even though it’s a sedan, the Fusion’s sporty coupé silhouette is a stand-out, with its sleek lines and low roof. And… well, you just have to look at it.

The Fusion’s sporty coupé silhouette is a stand-out feature.

you go, the heavier the steering feels—so you always feel in control.

Performance This car is fast. The 2-litre EcoBoost Titanium model is turbocharged and produces 177kW: enough to push you back into the seat, put a smile on your face and still ensure you’re fully in control. You can change gear with the paddle shifters behind the steering wheel, or you can let the automatic gearbox do the work. The Fusion also comes in a 1.5-litre EcoBoost (132kW), a 2-litre EcoBoost Trend (149kW) and a 2-litre TDCi (132kW).

Handling and dynamics

Safety and technology

Whether on the neighbourhood roads or the highway, the Fusion is fun to drive and simply exciting around corners. It seamlessly goes through the tightest bends at high speeds. The vehicle’s electronic power-assisted steering adjusts the weight of steering based on changing conditions such as crosswinds and speed. The faster

The Fusion displays the highest safety standards—essential features of any modern car. Ford simply went the extra mile in terms of the technology. All-round airbags (front and back), electronic stability and traction control, plus radarcontrolled pre-collision assist with pedestrian detection are just the beginning. It’s also one of the most

60 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A JULY 2016

well-equipped and technologically advanced Fords available in South Africa. With the Fusion’s SYNC®2 voice-controlled connectivity, you can make calls, listen to messages, play your favourite music, and even change the air-con settings— all without lifting your hands off the wheel. Don’t like parallel parking? The Enhanced Active Park Assist function will take over; you simply control the brake and accelerator, and the car steers you in. The Fusion will also let you know if there’s someone in your blind spot, or if you’re drifting out of your lane.

Interior design and practicality An elegant dashboard, leather seats and 8-inch colour touchscreen can be found inside the vehicle. While the Fusion is a sporty coupé on the exterior, space in the interior has not been sacrificed—there’s plenty of room in the back for three adults.

It’s practical too: The boot is big enough for more than one set of golf clubs or luggage for an extralong weekend away.

E f f i ci e ncy Key to the Fusion’s technology is its range of EcoBoost engines.

These 4-cylinder petrol engines are designed to reduce CO 2 emissions by up to 20%, while offering combined fuel efficiency as low as 7.4 litres/100km. The turbo-diesel option is even more economical, offering 5.1 litres/100km.

Value for money With prices starting at a low R367 900, the Fusion is one of the best bang-for-your-buck cars on the market. Picking the frugal EcoBoost engine could save you more on petrol, while adding great performance.

The spacious, well-equipped and attractively styled sedan offers an alternative choice in a segment dominated by German models, and beats them all in the features-formoney stakes. Well, at least in my humble opinion.

Ultimately, this is one car in which Ford seems to have got everything right.

Next

Cybersecurity snapshots

Schalk Nolte

It’s all about trust H O W TO E N S U R E Y O U R B U S I N E S S — A N D YO U R S E C U R I T Y PA RT N E R — I S D I G I TA L LY S A F E

I

Global experience matters.

’VE BEEN FOLLOWING online readers’ thoughts

on recent news about data theft and cyber fraud. Not all are very edifying, but they capture the frustration, even fear, many South Africans feel as they question whether digital service providers have their best interests at heart.

Take financial institutions, for instance. They are purveyors of trust. And a lack of trust is a serious opportunity cost that can threaten a bank’s future by damaging its reputation and retarding innovation, especially in self-service functionality.

So how does a digital service provider protect and nurture the trust relationship? How can it remain competitive in an ever more crowded field by launching exciting, convenient new services while still keeping its clients safe? It all comes down to whom you choose as your security partner. Here are some pointers to keep in mind:

Concentrate on your core business and leave security to the experts.

While it may be tempting to go it alone and build your own security solution, this isn’t a once-off project. Digital security—mobile security, in particular—is a neverending arms race. As you’re reinforcing your castle gates, fraudsters are devising a higher-calibre cannon.

A specialist vendor offers the benefits of experience, focus and scale, and it will be paying constant attention as attack vectors and mobile platforms change. With security sorted, you can concentrate on expanding your digital services to meet and surpass your clients’ expectations.

In a fastevolving security ecosystem, the speed at which you grasp a problem and resolve it is vital

Ever heard of mobile SIM-swap fraud? If you’re South African, you probably have, just by listening to talk radio. In Europe and North America, however, this kind of attack is only now beginning to concern the security professionals. Fraud schemes work that way: They’re devised in one region, perfected in another, then quickly circle the globe. That’s why it’s essential that you select a technology leader with an international footprint.

Your enterprise’s operations are expanding beyond national borders, and so too is cybercrime. The best strategy is to find a partner that not only lives and breathes security but which, through its operations in multiple territories, can counter new lines of attack wherever and whenever they emerge, and build appropriate protection into its products before you even know you need it.

Don’t play catch-up.

In a fast-evolving security ecosystem, the speed at which you grasp a problem and resolve it is vital, which means you need a true innovator on your side. There are few things as pointless as a reactive security vendor that promises new features are in development while its competitors are already plugging the gaps with the latest technology. We saw the results at first hand in this country: As the majority of banks here chose to deploy push-based authentication and app-security solutions, fraudsters focused their attention on the remaining few institutions.

No online service dealing in sensitive information will win on cost and functionality alone. Success rests on an intangible but priceless asset: trust. Protect it by choosing your security partners very carefully.

Schalk Nolte is CEO of Entersekt, a provider of advanced consumer authentication and mobile app security systems.

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FLIGHT RISK?

NE W A P P L IC AT ION S F OR DR ONE S A R E B E ING DE V E LOP E D A L MO S T D A ILY. HO W C OMPA NIES C A N M A N A GE T HE D A NGE R TO B OT H P R OP E R T Y A ND P E OP L E

By Colin Ford

62 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A JULY 2016

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“T h e d r o n e i n d u s t r y i s i n c r e a s i n g e x p o n e n t i a l l y, and the range of applications is practically limitless,” says Bryan Verpoort of I t o o , H o l l a r d ’s d r o n e insurance division.

“Every day we read reports about new and interesting uses for drones in a commercial c o n t e x t, r a n g i n g f r o m anti-poaching operations to shooting porn movies.”

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Right now, the first passenger drone is being tested in Nevada in the US. It can purportedly carry a human passenger for 23 minutes at a speed of 100km/h. “As soon as the battery life is extended, these passenger drones will become a reality,” says Verpoort. “Soon our focus will be on droneports, passenger- and cargo flight paths, and— who knows?—perhaps even floating cities. The future is here!”

Says Subash Devkaran, acting senior manager of the Airworthiness Department at the South African Civil Aviation Authority (SACAA): “[Drones] are already being used for everything from mining surveys and forestry conservation to power-line inspections and checking the moisture content in crops. They can fly as well as swim, and experiments are being conducted as to how they could be used to paint homes or ships, deliver packages or even take the dog for a walk, as the power source, robotics and automation in them become increasingly more sophisticated.”

Of course, today’s run-of-the-mill organisation is probably far less exotic, using drones to perform functions such as inventory control, small-parcel delivery, infrastructure inspection and machine maintenance. But whatever they’re used for, drones are expensive pieces of equipment, with a price tag that could run into hundreds of thousands of rands. “Using drones as part of your business operation presents a number of risks that need to be carefully managed,” says Verpoort, “and the best place to start managing this risk is at operator level.”

He believes all drone operators should be licensed, especially in a commercial environment. “You would never send one of your drivers out on a delivery unless he and the vehicle were properly licensed,” he says. “In the same way, it’s unthinkable that a company would allow a drone operator to fly without a licence.”

The number of risks companies face when operating drones is extensive. Apart from damage to the drone itself, there’s also the chance of causing damage to property or injury to people—even death. “There are so many things that could go wrong for so many reasons,” says Verpoort. “Having an experienced pilot and a flightworthy drone helps to reduce those risks significantly.”

Straighten up and fly right Hollard’s Bryan Verpoort believes all drone operators should be licensed. “You would never send one of your drivers out on a delivery unless he and the vehicle were properly licensed.”

Apart from being highly risky, it would also be contravening the regulations by the SACAA that came into effect in July 2015.

Accordingly, anyone who operates a drone for commercial purposes has to have a remote pilot licence, and the drone itself has to be registered with the aviation authority. Says the SACAA’s director of Civil Aviation, Poppy Khoza: “We are not claiming that these new regulations are static.

Given the rapid pace of technological development in this area, we treat this [remotely piloted aircraft system] regulatory framework as a continual work in progress, and hence we will continue to engage with industry to refine the regulations when, where and as deemed necessary . . . Until then, I urge all operators and airspace users to observe and comply with these new regulations. We should always remember that in aviation, there is absolutely no room for errors— as errors usually result in loss of lives.”

A group of 14 certified trained pilots graduated in March from UAV Industries (UAVI), the Western Cape’s only drone pilot training centre. They are the first pilots authorised to fly drones in the region. UAVI chief instructor Greg Donaldson says, “People think that drones are just good for Cape Town’s booming film industry, but there’s a wide diversity of industries that will need, and employ, certified drone pilots: agriculture, infrastructure and utilities, for

example. Anything that manned aviation does today . . . will be taken over by drones over the next five to 10 years, so there are huge opportunities for the industry.”

From poaching t o porn Keeping rhino poachers at bay and working interesting angles on porn sets are just two of the out-of-the-ordinary applications for which drones have been used recently in South Africa.

Ian Melamed, CEO of ProWings Training, which offers SACAA– approved training for drone pilots, was part of the team who set up a project in the Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Game Reserve to curb rhino poaching. “As a team, we flew 3 804 hours in Hluhluwe-Imfolozi, 24 hours a day for three days before the new moon, during the new moon, and then three days after—which are the major poaching periods,” he says. “In three years we reduced the number of poaching incidents by 92%, and the number of rhinos killed was reduced by 69%.”

He adds that the project team included retired game rangers and experienced airline pilots. “The retired game rangers did the monitoring,” he explains. “Because of their skills, they were able

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to spot any suspicious activity and get a team on the ground immediately. Our head of operations was an airline captain with more than 27 000 hours of flying.

“We followed strict aviation protocols in terms of flight checks and maintenance, and there were no incidents at all in relation to the drones. This goes to show that if you follow the rules of aviation, you will minimise your risks substantially.”

Melamed says he heard rumours of drone porn being filmed on beaches in Cape Town last summer. “We don’t know if any of the pilots who flew those drones had a remote pilot licence or a remote operator certificate from the SACAA,” he says. “I don’t know how the SACAA would even process an application for a drone porn production company. I guess it would be okay, as long as they weren’t breaking any other laws.”

It’s a bird…

It’s a plane…

It’s super drone!

A few innovative ways in which UAVs are being used in SA Drones with I N F R A R E D C A M E R A S helped police arrest fleeing drug dealers and gangsters during nightly raids in Cape Town.

Breeding int elligent drones Researchers at the University of Johannesburg recently completed a study into genetically evolving control systems for drones in searchand-rescue operations. In computer-simulated experiments, drones are released into an environment with the objective of finding a stranded person.

“These drones start off having a completely random behaviour,” explains Entelect’s Kevin Downs, one of the researchers on the project.

“They start off moving randomly, colliding with the environment, moving outside the search area, or running out of power before meeting their objective.”

Sensors in the drones record their performance, and the results are represented as a string of characters. “These strings effectively

After ordering via a smartphone app, drones D E L I V E R E D B E E R S via parachute to concert-goers at the 2013 Oppikoppi outdoor music festival.

Drones provided A E R I A L V I E W S of proceedings on the day of the verdict in the Oscar Pistorius trial.

A new sport called FPV ( F I R S T- P E R S O N V I E W )

racing sees contestants vying with miniquads that transmit live video and are flown with the aid of either goggles or a small screen.

“WE SHOULD ALWAYS REMEMBER THAT IN AVIATION, THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO ROOM FOR ERRORS—AS ERRORS USUALLY RESULT IN LOSS OF LIVES.” 66 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A JULY 2016

Mikhail Wertheim Aymes, co-founder and director at Cape Town-based startups WhiteBison and eLabs, has developed the specialised Guardian Drone with a L I F E S A V I N G B U O Y A N C Y A I D that can save people from drowning.

make up the genetic material for each drone, in other words, their chromosomes,” explains Downs. “Once all the drones have either collided with the environment, have run out of power, or moved outside of the bounds of the environment, they are given a score based on their performance.

The population is then bred together to create ‘children’, with the bestperforming individuals from the previous generation being given more of a chance to have their genetic material progress to the next generation.”

During this process, the ‘children’ undergo mutation at a very small rate, which results in changes to the drones’ behaviour. This next generation is then allowed to execute its behaviours before being ranked and combined, and then the next, and the next . . .

Downs says each new generation displays increasingly complex behaviours. “Through this evolutionary process, we were able to develop a drone control programme that could theoretically navigate an environment to reach a person in distress and report back on a location, which could be used to narrow the search area for rescue workers.”

The programming takes place in a simulated environment, which drastically reduces the costs of R&D and all but eliminates the chances of damaging or losing a drone in a real-world search-and-rescue operation.

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My way

Stars in her eyes How Kerrin Black has simplified the process of finding talents for film and advertising

BY RIYADH KARODIA

“After watching an episode of Oprah, featuring young Americans who turned their startups into million-dollar businesses, I was inspired to begin my own journey into entrepreneurship right away.”

Kerrin Black’s dreams of starting her own company began at a young age, influenced by her entrepreneurial father and the family business. She was quick to spot an opening: “When I had freelanced for a film production company, I witnessed at first hand the difficulties of successfully sourcing a suitable candidate for each role, due to the inadequate casting process used at that time. I saw that as an opportunity to start a

68 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A JULY 2016

business, which is how Talent Finders came about.”

Talent Finders promotes various talents, and connects them—via a user-friendly online platform—with companies seeking their skills. “My vision was to create an online service that provided an affordable and reliable substitute to the existing process for both celebrity and lesser-known talents to market their skills and present their portfolios within the industry, and for talent seekers to have easy access to this,” Black explains.

TalentFinders.com has since listed actors, dancers, musicians,

writers and even business coaches, among others.

The website allows these talents—both agency-represented and freelance—to create a comprehensive profile detailing their skills and experience. Talent seekers registered on the website are able to view the profiles and contact the people required.

“There are many undiscovered talents who often don’t know where to start marketing themselves,” Black says. “The platform is useful for both talents who are new to the industry and looking for opportunities that match their skills, as well as

Market yourself

Black educates talents on how to invest in themselves, as their skills are a service and, essentially, a business.

“All businesses need good marketing,” she says.

talents who already have a successful career in the industry but with the desire to market themselves further.” The website also carries an auditions noticeboard where talents can find suitable opportunities that match their profile.

Black credits her success as a businesswoman to her exposure to entrepreneurship while working at the family company, as well as the world’s most successful and creative people in business, including Oprah Winfrey, Steve Jobs and South African–born entrepreneur and inventor Elon Musk. “Each of them has inspired

me with their stories of great challenges and risk taking. They have created multibillion-dollar companies from little more than an idea, and are recognised as the world’s greatest leaders of today.

Their pushing of boundaries and admirable persistence are such remarkable qualities.”

Talent Finders also focuses on educating talents on the significance of investing in themselves through the successful branding and marketing of their skills, and positions itself as an ideal platform for doing so—regardless of how far into a career the talents may be. “This is a challenge, because many talents out there don’t realise that they are offering a service in the form of their skills, which is essentially a business. All businesses need good marketing,” Black says.

The Talent Finders platform is user-friendly and can be updated easily at any time. Each user is able to promote multiple skills on their profile, offering them an affordable and convenient option to market all their skills at the same time. Black explains, “By creating a direct line of communication between the talent seekers and the talents they’re searching for, Talent Finders makes it possible to eliminate unnecessary

KERRIN BLACK

Tit l e Founder, director, Talent Finders

30-SECOND BIO

Black advises female entrepreneurs to stay firm on their path, regardless of how crazy they—or others— may think they are.

H o m e tow n Johannesburg Favo u rite q u ote?

Sir Richard Branson: “Life doesn’t have to be a game where some lose so that others can win. Everybody stands to gain if we work together.”

Favo u rite boo k ?

Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future by Ashlee Vance Favo u rite p l a ce to b e?

New York City H ow d o yo u u nw i n d a n d re l a x?

Working out, running, and spending time with friends.

Favo u rite a p p?

Uber O n w h at it m ea n s to b e a n e nt re p re n e u r : “To me, being an entrepreneur is not just about having a vision or great idea; it’s about taking those ideas, actioning them, and turning them into success stories.”

markups by various intermediary agencies, which often lead to talents losing out on potential work opportunities. Talent seekers using the platform have a much wider choice of candidates to select from. The search option allows users to specify requirements and can reduce the complex nine-step casting process to a few minutes.”

Black had to sacrifice personal income for long periods of time but, together with her experience in the film industry and the family business, she has brought Talent Finders to where it is today. “I often contributed my time and effort voluntarily—and it was all worth it in the end.” She advises female entrepreneurs to stay firm on their path, regardless of how crazy they—or others—may think they are. “All of the greatest female entrepreneurs today are those who did not deviate from their journey to success even when they were faced with having to make great sacrifices to get there.”

This power entrepreneur is significantly involved in philanthropy, and has founded two of her own charities. “The Faces of Hope Foundation aims to provide financial assistance to select cancer patients unable to afford oncology treatment. It also aims to educate the general public on less-common cancers.” The second foundation is involved with entrepreneurial upliftment: “Faces of Inspiration provides funding for entrepreneurial development activities, aiming to create a movement for change.”

Black’s determination to find solutions and get things done in the most effective way has brought her much acclaim in the industry, allowing her to become ever more successful.

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Next

Maverick of the month

Scrumming down to business Bob Skinstad is the Glenfiddich Fast Company SA Maverick for July

Every month, Glenfiddich and Fast Company SA honour a visionary leader in South Africa: a pioneering man who has shown relentless determination in his path to success.

Every South African rugby fan knows the Bob Skinstad who enjoyed a Springbok career of 42 Tests, 11 tries and the appointment as youngest captain of the national team. But he also has a killer business instinct that has reaped rewards in sports broadcasting, executive directorships and an ambassadorship, along with adventurous pursuits of diverse ingenuity.

Skinstad is also the founder of the Old School Group, which bills itself as “a really cool little sports and lifestyle business” specialising in festivals, live events, travel, sportswear, sponsorship, brand creation and all-round sport commercialisation; as well as cofounder and venture partner at Knowledge Networks Funding.

individual and team leadership, true grit, and an ability to see a vision through.

What experiences have contributed to your success in life?

I’ve had the privilege of working with great quality individuals, people who have been larger than life and have allowed me to come along for the ride—starting with a

“Being nice to people is more important than just making money, or winning.”

Fast Company: Would you class yourself as a maverick?

great set of parents in a loving home environment, to rugby allowing me a toe in the door to meet some of SA’s great business leaders.

B o b S k i n s t a d : A maverick is

The biggest challenges so f a r, c a r e e r- w i s e ?

someone who refuses to play by the rules, who’s not scared to cross the line of conformity, and whose unorthodox tactics reap the results. I’m probably not a traditional maverick, but I love the concept and feel honoured to be in the company of mavericks; in business leadership, their qualities are a complex blend of

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Lack of focus; building a business portfolio while playing sport is tough, and the previously amateur environment in South Africa meant that people had to do just that.

How have you contributed to making a difference in South Africa?

I’ve started charities and businesses, and have represented my country. It’s been a great privilege to learn how all of that works and what it means for our Rainbow Nation.

What does your role in Old School Group entail?

I was the marketing director at Seartec, and I’ve set up a small business to do the role of the marketing team. We can be more agile and smarter about what we lead the business into, without the unwieldy structures that usually come with corporate systems.

How do you plan to move forward as an entrepreneur?

I have some incredible opportunities to contribute

with a unique skill set. Luckily KNF understands that, in the South African context, network is important, and I’m able to marry that with other investment teams in a global context too.

What contributed to your transition from a successful sportsman to a successful businessman?

It’s still in its infancy—I still get people asking if I play! Many things will make it work (or not), and I’m trying to concentrate on the simple things that make the biggest difference. Being nice to people is more important than just making money, or winning; I’m lucky that, during my career, I was nice to people . . . I’ve been divesting and concentrating on the things I can effect, often in partnership with quality people.

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Sheer Driving Pleasure

Fast Company event

Glenfiddich , Auric Auto and Fast Company SA held their second Maverick experience at De Grendel Wine Estate in Durbanville, down in the Cape—with former Springbok star turned entrepreneur, Bob Skinstad, honoured as Maverick on the occasion.

Guests were whisked away to De Grendel via helicopter for a lavish afternoon of food, whisky and networking.

1 3

4

5

gutter credit tk

2

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Photographs by Lauren Kim Photography

Fast Company event

6

7

8 • 1. Guests arrive in style at De Grendel Wine Estate • 2. Shane Beary and Bob Skinstad • 3. L uthando Tibini, Chris Baird, Editor Evans Manyonga, Adriano Folsch, Venessa Lees, Publisher Robbie Stammers, Bob Skinstad • 4. N ic Haralambous, Chris Baird, Evans Manyonga, Shane Beary, Robbie Stammers, Wayne Bebb • 5. Mark McChlery and Bob Skinstad • 6. Robbie Stammers, Bob Skinstad, Chris Baird • 7. Sue Anderson and Bob Skinstad • 8. B ob Skinstad, Venessa Lees, Robbie Stammers, Evans Manyonga, Adriano Folsch, Shane Beary

JULY 2016 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A 73

Next

The Great Innovation Frontier

Walter Baets

Shady business?

U B E R , LY F T A N D WA Z E H AV E TA K E N T H E W O R L D

BY STO R M — B U T I N T H E R U S H F O R M A R K E T S H A R E , I T S E E M S E T H I C S H AV E B E E N L E F T B E H I N D

I

N JUNE 2016, Industry Leaders Magazine reported

that Uber was, to many, a “sure thing”. “What began in 2009 as a luxury car service in San Francisco is now valued at $62.5 billion [R927 billion] and operates across 71 countries and 438 cities,” read the feature. In fact, at Disrupt NY 2013, Bill Gurley of Benchmark—investor in both eBay and Uber—claimed: “Uber is growing faster than eBay did and is probably the fastest growing company that we’ve ever had.” But, the magazine was careful to stress, at the centre of all this is “the ever growing list of ethical leadership controversies”.

In South Africa, the picture is being drawn along parallel lines. The service has fast outstripped local metered taxi services and is even drawing the ire of minibus taxi drivers, and there are currently several thousand Uber drivers employed locally. There’s a waiting list to become an Uber driver—but, say drivers, once one is doing the job, the picture changes dramatically. Uber drivers have clashed repeatedly with management, claiming decisions are made that directly affect their safety or income—for example, the decision to experiment with using cash or offering lower prices— without consultation. And, they say, because they are independent contractors rather than salaried employees, they have little or no recourse.

From a business perspective, if profit is what you’re after, it’s genius. But is it a viable long-term strategy, and does it build shared value? Already in South Africa, Uber drivers have been involved in strike action, protests and potentially life-threatening clashes with other taxi drivers. Surely this pattern is not sustainable.

Uber is not alone, and the pattern is not localised.

Despite their overwhelming growth globally, gamechanging platforms such as Uber, Lyft and Waze are increasingly coming under fire for what critics call somewhat shady business practices. Waze has been criticised for its ‘cop-spotting’ feature, which Los Angeles police chief Charlie Beck has implored Google to shut down on grounds that it may help criminals to evade arrest and actually allow those wishing to harm police

74 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A JULY 2016

Ethical business can be a strategic advantage, so it’s a little perplexing that obviouslysavvy businesspeople aren’t bothering to get it right.

officers to plan their crimes more efficiently. In the US, attempts by Uber and Lyft to reach voters have stirred controversy. And the aforementioned Industry Leaders op-ed referred in particular to Uber, citing the hiring of undercover ‘brand ambassadors’ to order Lyft rides to poach drivers to join Uber; the admission of senior executive Emil Michael that the company was willing to spend millions of dollars prying into journalists’ personal lives (including the intimidation of a BuzzFeed reporter into finding the source of a news story about increasing instances of sexual assault related to Uber rides); and the alleged pushing of drivers into subprime loans and lawsuits over tip skimming.

Grant Martin recently wrote in a top US business magazine about the four things that would make him switch from Uber to Lyft (or vice versa, one supposes).

Apart from the cute moustaches in the Lyft branding, he said, a key point would be better business practices. “Both Uber and Lyft have serially proven their questionable ethics, and there is, no doubt, more to come. If Lyft can quantifiably prove that they have a better management team that isn’t led by petulant executives, then they should start to win consumer sentiment.”

Of course, shady ethics is not something that’s unique to high-tech, high-growth companies, but I think their meteoric success is shining a particularly bright light on the issue. Wouldn’t it be great if these innovation powerhouses channelled some of that energy into advancing robust ethical business models too?

Ethical business can be a strategic advantage, so it’s a little perplexing that obviously-savvy businesspeople aren’t bothering to get it right. There’s more than enough literature on the advantages of ethical leadership, so one hopes Silicon Valley’s execs are reading. The late Steve Jobs reportedly once said—when asked in which direction he saw the world moving in the new millennium—that he believed most human beings wanted to do the right thing.

It was a belief that underpinned the success of many of his business ventures, including iTunes: the idea that people would choose ethical, legal options if they could, and if it were an easy process.

So come on, innovators of the new millennium, do us a favour. Make our options simple, ethical and available.

It shouldn’t be that hard.

Walter Baets is the director of the UCT Graduate School of Business and holds the Allan Gray Chair in Values-Based Leadership at the school.

Formerly a professor of complexity, knowledge and innovation as well as associate dean for innovation and social responsibility at Euromed Management—School of Management and Business, he is passionate about building a business school for ‘business that matters’.

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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

TIME TO CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD Microsoft has announced it will be banning simple passwords that are not secure enough to prevent hackers from infiltrating accounts. This move is in light of the hackers who have been selling 117 million passwords from a hack on LinkedIn in 2012. A list of unsuitable passwords has not been released yet, but speculation and common sense determine that passwords such as “password”, “12345” and “qwerty1234” will not live up to Microsoft’s standards.

The tech company fends off attacks on 10 million accounts on a daily basis.

ABSA BANKS ON TWITTER

APPLE TRAINING CENTRE FOR THE BLIND In conjunction with Absa, Kaleidoscope (previously the Institute for the Blind) in June launched a world-first tech training centre that aims to teach the visually impaired important skills—including the use of social media and customer relations management—on Apple devices to increase their chances of finding jobs. Executive head Freddie Botha states: “Considering the fact that currently 97% of

76 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A JULY 2016

persons who are visually impaired are unemployed, there is an enormous need among blind and partially sighted people in South Africa to be trained in affordable, accessible, modern technology”.

Absa recently launched its new ChatBanking feature on the Twitter app—making bankingon-the-go even more accessible.

Users are able to check bank balances, buy airtime or data, and view mini statements.

Absa assures this new form of banking is private and secure, as all personal details will not be displayed to other users; if your phone is stolen, no one will have access to sensitive information.

Absa aims to extend services to other social media platforms in the near future.

Fast Bytes

UBER FOR UGANDA Kampala joined the ever growing Uber African network in June. The Ugandan capital hosts one of the world’s youngest populations according to The World Bank, which estimates 700 000 new people enter the workforce each year.

As stated by Alon Lits, GM for Uber Sub-Saharan Africa, the company is really excited to be a part of the rapidly growing economy of Kampala, which has been described as an innovative entrepreneurial hub. To mark the launch, Uber offered free rides for all Ugandans in the city.

INTERNET ACCESS IN SA DIGITAL AMBASSADORS TO TRAIN JOBURGERS The Digital Ambassadors programme, which began last year, has partnered with Harambee Youth Empowerment Accelerator to bridge the digital illiteracy gap in communities within Joburg. Young citizens are trained in a digital space in order to pass on their knowledge to their communities. The University of Johannesburg is also recruiting young ambassadors with matric or higher. Free online services are made available to the ambassadors through the Maru a Jozi (“Jozi clouds”) portal; they all receive tablets with which to train community members; and digientrepreneurs are mentored in business intelligence.

Over the last year, the number of South Africans who have some form of access to the Internet has increased by 4.8%, according to Statistics SA, as part of its General Household Survey conducted last year. The survey found that, “Half of South African households (53.5%) had at least one member who used the Internet either at home, workplace, place of study or Internet café,” up from the previous year’s 48.7%.

OTHER KEY SURVEY FINDINGS:  Most people accessed the Internet at work – 15.1%.  The lowest number of connected households was in Limpopo – 39.3%.

The highest (65.7%) was in Gauteng.  Only 1.2% of households in the rural areas of Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal

(1.1%), North West (0.9%) and Limpopo (0.5%) had Internet access.  85.5% of households had access to at least one cellular phone, while 10.9% had access to both a landline and a cellular phone. Only 0.1% of households had only a landline.

JULY 2016 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A 77

Fast Events Upcoming events Fast Company will be attending

The Future of HR Date: 20 & 21 July Time: 07h45–18h30 (Wednesday); 09h15–16h00 (Thursday) Location: Gallagher Convention Centre, Midrand, Johannesburg futureofhr.co.za/summit This summit will A D D R E S S T H E E X C I T I N G T R A N S F O R M AT I O N O F T H E H U M A N R E S O U R C E S function in the business environment: F O R E C A S T I N G T R E N D S for the following year; S H A R I N G I N N O VAT I V E A N D S T R AT E G I C A P P R O A C H E S to overcoming challenges; and D I S C U S S I N G P R A C T I C A L M E T H O D S O F E M P L OY E E E N G A G E M E N T , talent acquisition and E M P O W E R I N G L E A D E R S H I P. An inspiring day filled with L I V E W O R K S H O P S , B R E A K AWAY S E S S I O N S , FA S T-T R A C K N E T W O R K I N G , T O P S P E A K E R S , engaging debates and an U N F O R G E T TA B L E AWA R D S C E R E M O N Y where T H E P E O P L E A N D C O M PA N I E S who are making an I M P R E S S I V E I M PA C T in human capital development will be C E L E B R AT E D A N D R E WA R D E D .

I Code Java Conference Date: 21 & 22 July Time: 08h00–16h30 Location: Focus Rooms, Sunninghill, Sandton, Johannesburg www.j-sa.co The A N N U A L C O N F E R E N C E is intended to bring together W E L L- I N F O R M E D D E V E L O P E R S from around the world to S H A R E T H E I R K N O W L E D G E W I T H A F R I C A .

It invites both B E G I N N E R S and the M O R E S K I L L E D and E X P E R I E N C E D J AVA D E V E L O P E R S to come experience exciting I N N O VAT I O N , I N S I G H T S A N D T O O L S to expand their skills sets.

78 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A JULY 2016

Modern Alchemists: Sound & Interactive Audio Art Date: 27 July Time: 18h00–21h00 Location: KAT- O, Caledon Street, Cape Town www.kat-o.net or www.facebook.com/groups/ ModernAlchemistsZA A G R O U P O F M A K E R S calling themselves the M O D E R N A L C H E M I S T S meet regularly in Cape Town. It’s a S H O W - A N D -T E L L O F M A K E R P R O J E C T S —from A R T, G R A P H I C S , B O A R D G A M E S , C O D E T O E L E C T R O N I C S —and brings together all S K I L L S E T S E . G . A R T I S T S , G A M E R S , A R T I S T S , E N G I N E E R S A N D C O D E R S into one physical space to make and create. In this session, R O BY N FA R A H will be discussing the P H Y S I C S O F S O U N D , “the most missed and beautiful thing that constantly surrounds us”, and H O W O N E C A N C R E AT E A R T F R O M I T.

Inspiration Session with Phuti Mahanyele Date: 28 July Time: 17h30–20h30 Location: Allan Gray, 1 Silo Square, V&A Waterfront www.acceleratecapetown.co.za Accelerate Cape Town is a B U S I N E S S L E A D E R S H I P O R G A N I S AT I O N representing T O P -T I E R C O R P O R AT E C O M PA N I E S . The I N S P I R AT I O N S E S S I O N S are large N E T W O R K I N G E V E N T S for young P R O F E S S I O N A L S , F E AT U R I N G A N I N S P I R I N G S P E A K E R and followed by a C O C K TA I L F U N C T I O N for maximum engagement.

These sessions aim to A D D R E S S K E Y N E E D S E X P R E S S E D

BY B L A C K P R O F E S S I O N A L S living in the Cape Town region. The next I N S P I R AT I O N S E S S I O N W I L L F E AT U R E P H U T I M A H A N Y E L E , executive chairperson of Sigma Capital: A P R I VAT E LY H E L D , M A J O R I T Y- B L A C K O W N E D I N V E S T M E N T G R O U P.

Fast Events

Cape Town Electronic & Gaming Expo Date: 29–31 July Time: 10h00–19h00 (until 16h00 on Sunday) Location: Cape Town International Convention Centre www.egesa.co.za G A M E R S W I L L O N C E A G A I N be treated to a S P E C TA C U L A R E X P E R I E N C E O F T H E V I R T U A L W O R L D at this year’s expo, with various activities I N C L U D I N G C O S P L AY C O M P E T I T I O N S , TA B L E T O P G A M E S , memorabilia for sale, C O M P E T I T I V E G A M I N G , C R A F T M A R K E T S and an I N T E L H A C K AT H O N . Some of South Africa’s G A M I N G I N D U S T RY E X P E R T S will also be AVA I L A B L E T O C H AT T O V I S I T O R S . For the first time, the expo will see a 4 0 0 - S E AT E R L A N T O U R N A M E N T R U N N I N G T H R O U G H O U T THE WEEKEND.

Africa MBA Indaba Date: 1 & 2 August Time: 07h30–17h00 Location: Sandton Convention Centre, Johannesburg africambaindaba.com Come join us for T W O D AY S O F I N N O VAT I V E I D E A S , new insights, N E T W O R K I N G and P R O V E N S T R AT E G I E S to help A C C E L E R AT E Y O U R C O M PA N Y for profitable growth. Interact with E N T R E P R E N E U R S and I N T E R N AT I O N A L I N V E S T M E N T- B U I L D I N G B U S I N E S S E S poised to grow across Africa. The I N C R E D I B L E L I N E - U P of business schools attending include H A R VA R D , INSEAD, GORDON INSTITUTE OF BUSINESS SCIENCE, S T E L L E N B O S C H , O X F O R D , W H A R T O N , W I T S A N D S TA N F O R D ,

among many others. Panels will focus on the A R T A N D S C I E N C E O F E N T R E P R E N E U R S H I P , raising venture capital, the A F R I C A N C O N S U M E R M A R K E T , technology, financing SMEs, and the benefits of J O I N I N G A N A C C E L E R AT O R / I N C U B AT O R .

Open Design Festival Date: 10–21 August Location: In and around Cape Town www.opendesignct.com Cape Town will host its F O U R T H O P E N D E S I G N F E S T I VA L , showcasing D E S I G N A S A T O O L to rally social

change and transformation. Core events will take place at the C I T Y H A L L F R O M 1 0 T O 1 6 A U G U S T , while other events will be held T H R O U G H O U T T H E C I T Y B E T W E E N 1 7 A N D 2 1 A U G U S T. There will be TA L K S A B O U T D E S I G N in various sectors, C O N F E R E N C E S E X P L O R I N G I N N O VAT I O N I N B U S I N E S S , and open studio tours that reveal H O W D E S I G N E R S A C T U A L LY W O R K . The festival’s aim is to P R O M O T E D E S I G N A S T H E M I G H T Y T H R E A D that binds solutions to a better future world. T H E MAJORITY OF THE EVENTS WILL BE FREE TO THE PUBLIC.

Cape Town High Impact Series Date: 16 August Time: 08h00–17h00 Location: Cape Town City Hall innovationsummit.co.za This day session, focused on “ C R E AT I N G A C I T Y O F O P P O R T U N I T Y F O R A L L“ , is one of the lead-up events to the S A I N N O VAT I O N S U M M I T taking place in Johannesburg in September. F U T U R E W O R L D , City of Cape Town, M Y A F R I C A N C I T Y and many other I N F L U E N T I A L D R I V E R S O F C H A N G E A N D I N N O VAT I O N will G U I D E T H E C O - C R E AT I O N S E S S I O N . The insights captured on the day will be S H A R E D W I T H C I T I E S A C R O S S T H E G L O B E with the help of the Futures Institute of Africa. In addition, a 24 - H O U R H A C K AT H O N will be held on 19 and 20 August at the L O O KO U T C E N T R E I N K H AY E L I T S H A , where developers can S H O W C A S E T H E I R TA L E N T BY P R O D U C I N G A P P L I C AT I O N S and solutions T O M E E T N E E D S identified by T H E L O C A L C O M M U N I T Y.

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Next

Modern-day musings

Anneleigh Jacobsen

The future is so . . .

WHY DO WE CONTINUE WONDERING WHY THINGS DIDN’T GO AS PLANNED W H E N W E LO O K BAC K O N T H E M ?

A

CLOSE FRIEND OF mine recently lost her

mother to cancer. Around that time, this friend was performing on a famous stage in London, and the Saturday morning papers brought showers of praise to both the show and her wonderful words—but back here in South Africa, her mom was dying.

Even though cancer allows some measure of preparation, death is still unexpected, and the shock will set in after the logistics have been done. It was not the weekend my friend had planned. She had no way of knowing that either of those significant moments would occur, despite being somewhat prepared for both.

Over the same weekend, I read an article posted by my lovely, planet-saving mother-in-law about the “climate departure” predictions for the world. Essentially, these are indicators that point to the date on which the climate in each place will have actually changed— shifted. A point at which we in Cape Town, for example, will no longer be able to say, “It’s so warm for May!”, because a warm May and a stinking hot January will be the new norm.

There were many fascinating and scary consequences discussed in this article, but my response was a little more prosaic: I worked out how old I’ll be in 2038, the predicted climate departure date for Cape Town. And the answer is 64. All things being equal, I’ll be 64 in that year.

And I realised, as I used the phrase in my head— “all things being equal”—that this is really the crux of the matter. We believe, for some reason, perhaps evolutionary, that we can predict the future based on all things being as they are now, or things as they have always been. Many smarter people than I have said this before: The future is not a logical extrapolation of the past. And yet, we continue to behave as if it were. We continue to create 10-year business visions. We continue to ask in interviews, “Where do you see yourself in five years?” We continue to build 18-month brand plans.

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Dwight Eisenhower said, “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.”

And we continue to anticipate how our weekends will turn out, and then wonder why things didn’t go as intended when we look back on them.

Is it simply that our capacity to really see and understand the present, to discern what’s happening in the here and now, is so poor that there’s no way we could ever know what’s coming on its heels? Or is it that there are so many random, unpredictable impacts on every single second of our lives that it would be impossible for anyone to be able to compute the variables and predict an outcome? Perhaps quantum computing will get us there—but will that help?

I’ve no idea who I will be when I’m 64, or even if I’ll remember that once, when I was almost 42, I wondered about it.

But I do think that despite everything I’ve penned, it’s still a good idea to plan ahead. It seems counterintuitive in such a massively unpredictable world, but where would we be if we couldn’t conceptualise of a time ahead of us, and to think through what we may need to do then?

Dwight Eisenhower said, “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything. There is a very great distinction, because when you are planning for an emergency you must start with this one thing: The very definition of ‘emergency’ is that it is unexpected, therefore it is not going to happen the way you are planning.”

While not all of us are planning for possible emergencies (even though life on occasion can feel like that), I think the truth of it is that we need to imagine and do some planning for our future so that we make better decisions today. But we also need to remember that future was never real, and learn to graciously let go of it in order to open our eyes to the totally surprising, unexpected, sad, beautiful tomorrows that do come our way—whatever climates and ages they bring with them.

In addition to being on the editorial board of Fast Company SA, Anneleigh Jacobsen is the founder of The Brand Conservatory, a nominally published poet (in Afrikaans no less), aspirant novelist, tentative trail runner and maintainer of the (mostly) monthly Branded Blog.

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