Fast Company SA - November 2015

TOP 20 UNDER 25 2015 Lessons in disruption from inspiring young South Africans

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SECRETS OF THE MOST PRODUCTIVE PEOPLE H O W U LT R A- B U SY PR O F E S S I O N A LS L I K E O PR A H G E T SO MUCH DONE

15 EASY WAYS TO WORK SMARTER INNOVATION IN EKASI TO WN SH I P E N TRE PRE N E U RS

A RE SO LVI N G SO CI E TA L PRO B LE M S AT HO M E

November 2015

Contents C OVE R S T ORY

TOP 20 UNDER 25 IN SOUTH AFRICA 2015 From scientists and doctors, entrepreneurs and social activists, to athletes and musicians— meet this year’s selection of inspiring, influential and innovative trendsetters and disruptors under the age of 25 Begins on page 22

A sound investment Musician Jimmy Nevis’s Blue Collar Foundation aims to create opportunities for underprivileged youth to dream beyond their socioeconomic background. (page 24) 2 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A NOVEMBER 2015

Contents

S P E C IAL F EATURE

The O Team “I try to surround myself with people who really know what they’re doing, and give them the freedom to do it,” says Winfrey. (page 44)

Secrets of the Most Productive People

Ultra-busy professionals offer the best ways to break through all the clutter Begins on page 42

44 Owning It

Oprah Winfrey explains how she runs a complicated media empire while making time for a host of deeply personal projects

BY JJ MCCORVEY

58 15 Easy Ways To Work Smarter

From napping on the job (really!) to playing games in meetings, some ideas to help get more from your day

BY STEPHANIE VOZZA

FEAT U RE S

66 Uber Designs Its Future

Travis Kalanick created one of the most disruptive companies of the tech age. So now that Uber isn’t an underdog anymore, what’s next? And how did Uber convince South Africans to adopt this new way of getting around?

BY MAX CHAFKIN, EVANS MANYONGA

84 Innovation Begins At Home

How a new wave of black entrepreneurs are using their knowledge of the townships to devise solutions to local problems

BY STEPHEN TIMM

4 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A NOVEMBER 2015

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Contents

REG U LARS N E XT

10 From the Editor

16 Into The Blue

12 The Recommender

Chief product officer of Levi’s, Karyn Hillman, went around the world and back to find out what women really want in a pair of jeans today

BY LAUREN SCHWARTZBERG

18 Where Are The Numbers?

One of the first Silicon Valley companies to acknowledge its imbalanced workforce, Pinterest is now trying to engineer a solution

BY VAUHINI VARA

MAST ER C L ASS

62 Save our oceans, bru!

Wavescape founder Steve Pike’s surf film festival is creating greater awareness of the planet’s most important ecosystem

Staying ahead of the curves When Levi’s CPO Karyn Hillman noted that the first thing women did when putting on the jeans was check their backsides, the designers adjusted the pockets. (page 16) 6 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A NOVEMBER 2015

90 The Great Innovation Frontier

In the business of tomorrow, we need to think bigger—not only in terms of expansion but holistically in terms of purpose

BY WALTER BAETS

92 Fast Bytes & Events 96 One More Thing

Business leaders of the future, and future funders of those leaders, I have one request: Please take my money

BY BARATUNDE THURSTON

PUBLISHER AND EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Robbie Stammers

robbie@fastcompany.co.za

EDITOR Evans Manyonga

evans@fastcompany.co.za

Stacey Storbeck-Nel

By Digital Publishing

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SUBSCRIPTIONS

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OFFICE MANAGER

Joe Mansueto Mansueto Ventures

EDITOR

Robert Safian

PUBLISHER

Christine Osekoski

EXECUTIVE EDITORS Noah Robischon Rick Tetzeli

Taryn Kershaw

DIRECTOR, NEW BUSINESS VENTURES

SOUTH AFRICAN EDITORIAL BOARD

ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER OF GLOBAL MARKETING

taryn@insightspublishing.co.za

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

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PUBLISHED BY

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EDITORIAL CONTRIBUTORS

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From the Editor

O is for Organised If there’s anyone who can offer advice on how to be more productive, it’s definitely Oprah Winfrey.

The future’s in good hands A designer, an architect, an entrepreneur and an inventor are among our inaugural Top 20 Under 25 list. What has been very impressive is how the young people of today are full of life, optimism and untainted hope for tomorrow. Their ambition bodes well for South Africa.

While talking to these young people, it became clear that gender, the economy, and other aspects that are generally cited as key deterrents for business progression do not seem to be challenges for them. I dare say, this new generation is ushering in a bright era of innovation and disruption.

10 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A NOVEMBER 2015

In this edition, we reveal more Secrets of the Most Productive People. Our cover personality, Oprah Winfrey, needs no introduction. She has set herself apart in both television and enterprise. Her influence is also felt locally in South Africa through her school, The Oprah Winfrey Academy for Girls, and a host of other activities. It goes without saying that if anyone can offer advice on how to be productive, it’s definitely Oprah.

Her take on business and belief is interesting, to say the least, and the ‘interview with the world’s most famous interviewer’ brought up a lot of information and a few tears.

The poster child for disruptive technology, Uber, is also featured in this edition. CEO Travis Kalanick sums up what has driven the company to where it is today: “If you can predict where demand is going to be, and you can get the supply to match to that, then that’s a big freakin’ deal.” From happy clients to angry protesters against the new way of conducting business, to a new breed of empowered entrepreneurs—the story of Uber has been fascinating on a global scale. We also sat down with one of its Africa custodians, to find out how South Africans have gone along for the ride.

Our November edition is a reflection of our future, and an encouragement to be more productive. Hope you enjoy it, and as always we look forward to your feedback.

Evans Manyonga evans@fastcompany.co.za @Nyasha1e

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The recommender What are you loving this month?

FAVOURITE BOOKS

Favourite refreshment

Nandi Dlepu

Head of production at Thackwell+Whittaker, co-founder of The WKND Social

Anele Matoti

Actor, entertainer & voice-over artist

Kill Cliff: Keeping the

Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey: I have this custom of revisiting certain books, TEDtalks and movies a handful of times a year to reinvigorate and inspire myself when I feel I’m in a slump. One of those books is Mason Currey’s magical collection of autobiographical routines from the world’s favourite artists and thinkers—an amusing and inspiring account of creative people from whom we can all learn.

Like the author, I believe “a solid routine fosters a well-worn groove for one’s mental energies and helps stave off the tyranny of moods.”

crazy hours that I do in the entertainment industry is made easier by staying hydrated.

Right now I love Kill Cliff sports recovery drinks (and their protein bars), as they keep me energised without all the sugar and caffeine found in normal energy drinks.

Lulu Nongogo

CEO, Lulwazi Talent Specialists

Speak to Women by TD & Serita Ann Jakes: This book inspires me, especially when I want to reflect and get myself together after a long day. I’ve gained more confidence, and am better able to relate to and interpret various issues, particularly women-related.

12 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A NOVEMBER 2015

FAVOURITE CIGAR Shoni Makhari

CEO, Ambani Reputation Management

Romeo Y Julieta: This leaf transforms into a really affordable but fine cigar— great for anyone who enjoys a fine smoke every now and again with their downtime. Yes, all tobacco products are bad for you, but so are emissions from certain German-made diesel automobiles. The cigar makers, however, won’t lie to you about the quantity of the emissions.

The recommender

Favourite vehicle FAVOURITE RESTAURANT

Stacey Brewer

Co-founder & CEO, SPARK Schools

Cube Tasting Kitchen: My husband and I like to go to this restaurant as a treat or to celebrate special occasions. The passion and attention to detail of the bustling chefs make your experience at Cube unforgettable, and you leave wanting more. Dinner comprises 10 creative dishes eaten over a few hours, accompanied by great wine and great people.

Gareth Mountain

Founder & MD, Mountain Direct Solutions

150cc Vespa: Let’s face it: No one likes traffic, and everyone wants to know

how long it’ll take to get from point A to point B—never mind being on time for that all-important client meeting. I’ve lived in Joburg for six years, and have commuted everywhere almost exclusively on my 150cc Vespa (although I admit, hailstorms and freeways are not my thing). I’m sure the two-wheel revolution is coming, much like in parts of Asia; it’s crazy cheap on fuel!

FAVOURITE WEBSITE Claire Allen

Food blogger & MasterChef SA Season 3 finalist

CNC Products: Online shopping is my thing right now, and having the opportunity to buy a range of fresh produce quickly, delivered right to my home, is awesome. This is why I love using cncproducts.co.za. It’s a local distributor of a wide variety of food and snack products—from nuts and seeds to salmon, plus a banting-friendly range.

NOVEMBER 2015 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A 13

The recommender

App Alley Tania Griffin

Chief sub-editor, Fast Company SA

Pocket: I’ve just recently

discovered this nifty app, which allows you to save web pages for viewing later. Unlike bookmarks, Pocket’s optimised saved pages can be viewed offline on all your synced devices—which comes in handy when I’m all out of data and there’s no free Wi-Fi hotspot nearby! The Premium version has a permanent library and full-text search. Though I now constantly ask myself: “What has she got in her Pocketses…?”

Siyavuya Madikane

Senior account manager, Magna Carta

Capitec Remote Banking: I love this app Sam Wright

Editor, www.techgirl.co.za

Snapchat: This app has already become extremely popular in Europe and the US, and is steadily gaining traction here in South Africa. It now lets you share 10-second videos and photos on your public “My Story”, allowing you to create fun content and interesting stories for viewers around the world.

Your Snap story lasts 24 hours and then it disappears forever. You can also add friends and watch their own stories. I’m obsessed with it!

14 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A NOVEMBER 2015

that allows me to do my banking effectively and efficiently. It’s rather accurate, as it captures all my transactions in real time— unlike others that only update after a day or so.

Sibulele Siko-Shosha

Owner, Dumile Brand Boutique

Task Monkey: A hot

new app in South Africa, Task Monkey allows me to outsource all my chores through a safe and reliable website. I use it for everything—from changing light bulbs in my office to standing in the queue at SARS.

N E X T

How I get it done

Though Levi’s is practically synonymous with denim, the iconic brand has had to contend with increasing competition in recent years from boutique labels and­the rise of athleisure.

But Levi’s is fighting back with chief product officer Karyn Hillman, who spent the past two years updating the brand’s women’s collection. The project culminated this July with the release of Lot 700, a revamped line of jeans with new styles and more forgiving fabrics. Here’s how Hillman got the denim maker to stretch its boundaries.

S t r e a m l i ne t h e p r oc e s s Levi’s created a unique C-suite role for Hillman, who came from Calvin Klein and Gap. As CPO, she is responsible for both the design process and the production machine.

Maintaining communication across the innovationfocused Eureka lab, where new fits are dreamt up; the denim mills, where fabrics are made; and the designers and technicians who execute the final product, Hillman ensures the “signature Levi’s DNA” remains top of mind.

Making the cut “It’s an ongoing process,” says Hillman of creating a wardrobe staple for people whose tastes keep evolving.

Into the blue Karyn Hillman went around the world and back to tell Levi’s exactly what women want in a pair of jeans

BY LAUREN SCHWARTZBERG

Photograph by Damien Maloney

16 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A NOVEMBER 2015

A s s e s s t h e p r od u c t Hillman and her team began by giving the existing Levi’s portfolio a ruthless edit, going over everything from styles and cuts to smaller design details. They ditched stitching that had become “too modern and ornate” in favour of the more minimalist aesthetic of Levi’s jeans past. And fabric was vital. “Comfort and feeling good are what wearers expect now,” Hillman says. For skinnier styles, they developed a new fabric with up to 90% stretch that still has the look of true denim.

L i s t e n t o t h e cl i e n t Hillman’s team road-tested a prototype of their new collection on women in a half-dozen cities from Beijing to Chicago. When Hillman noted that the first thing women did when putting on the jeans was check their backsides, the designers adjusted the pockets, making them thicker and lower to accentuate the area. They also found that women wanted a style between a skinny and straight leg, along the lines of a slim cut. Back at Levi’s, they made a new set of prototypes, and went out on the road again. “We knew we had something when women didn’t want to give them back,” Hillman says.

Don’t g e t c om p l a c e n t Though Levi’s launched the collection with a campaign starring singer Alicia Keys, Hillman and her team haven’t stopped iterating in their quest for the perfect jeans. “Women’s expectations continue to change,” she says. “It’s a breathing, living item of clothing, and we’re going to evolve with it.”

Next

How I get it done

Doing the maths Pinterest engineer Tracy Chou kicked off the company’s diversity discussion with a blog post about gender imbalance.

Where are the numbers?

One of the first Silicon Valley companies to draw back the curtain on its lack of diversity, Pinterest is now trying to engineer a solution

BY VAUHINI VARA

Photographs by Ryan Young

This past July, Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann and co-founder Evan Sharp gathered the majority of their more than 600 employees in the office cafeteria to discuss how to make their workforce more diverse. Facing a room filled largely with white and Asian men, Silbermann and Sharp made a case for the importance of diversity in fostering creativity. More varied teams are more creative, they argued, and more creative teams lead to better products and greater success. With Pinterest rapidly expanding—it added more than 150 new employees in the first half of 2015—they had to move quickly to change the composition of the company.

The gathering should have been a celebration.

18 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A NOVEMBER 2015

Next

Nearly two years earlier, Tracy Chou, a female Asian-American programmer at Pinterest, had disclosed in a much talked-about blog post titled “Where are the numbers?” that almost 90% of her engineering colleagues were male. The Medium post, which was approved by Silbermann and Sharp, was one of the first times a major Silicon Valley business had so explicitly quantified the diversity (or lack thereof) of its staff. A chorus of calls for similar disclosure at tech companies followed, and Pinterest got credit for spurring discussion of an important topic. In July 2014, Pinterest published more specific statistics on its employees’ gender and race, with a plan to update the figures in a year’s time, and announced ambitious measures to improve the mix. Other companies, including Facebook and Google, did the same. It seemed like an auspicious start.

But as the 2015 ‘deadline’ rolled around, Silbermann and Sharp were forced to admit that Pinterest still looked too much like them: a couple of dudes.

The proportion of women in

As other companies unveiled their latest diversity figures, a pattern emerged. “We just hadn’t made any progress,” Sharp admits. tech roles at Pinterest (21%) remained unchanged from the previous year; same with the percentages of African-American and Latino employees overall: 1% and 2%, respectively. As other companies unveiled their latest diversity figures, a pattern

emerged. “We just hadn’t made any progress,” Sharp admits.

Chou had spent much of the year watching with disappointment as she received email after email introducing new Pinterest colleagues, most of whom did little to move the diversity needle. It wasn’t for lack of effort: Pinterest had mentored female programming students; recruited at events for female, African-American and Latino engineers; and instituted training in unconscious gender and racial bias. But none of it had made a difference.

What went wrong? Pinterest’s quest to find out is part of an uncomfortable self-examination taking place throughout Silicon Valley. Google and Intel have each begun multimillion-dollar programmes to investigate and address the diversity problem, with others launching more modest efforts. Like Pinterest, many of these companies assumed that training and mentorship programmes for engineers from underrepresented backgrounds would expand the pool of candidates, as would recruitment at these programmes and universities with high proportions of black and Latino students. Yet so far, the results have been unimpressive.

When Sharp saw Pinterest’s lackluster numbers for 2015, he was ready to overhaul their approach. “My reaction was just, ‘We have to do something more effective this year,’ ” he says. In retrospect, the flaws in Pinterest’s efforts were clear: Despite the fact that recruiters had brought in applicants from non-traditional backgrounds, managers often continued to prioritise people from places like Stanford and MIT, which have less broad student bodies. And while Adam Ward, Pinterest’s head of recruiting, and Abby Maldonado, its diversity-programmes specialist, had encouraged

FAST TALK PIN T EREST CO-F OUNDER E VA N SH A RP ON T HE COMPA N Y ’S DI V ER SI T Y P USH

W H AT ’ S D R I V I N G Y O U R N E W H I R I N G G O A L S ?

Having diverse points of view, diverse ways of thinking, diverse backgrounds—everything I’ve read says empirically that that leads to more creativity. So we really believe there’s an advantage in doing this well.

W H AT H A S I N F L U E N C E D Y O U R T H I N K I N G ?

Companies end up being a reflection of their founders, for better or for worse. So if we’re going to do this, I also need to find a personal mission in it. I just read Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me, and it’s devastating. Books like this have helped me understand the narrative of our country and its formation—the distorted, unfair systems that determine the course of people’s lives. It’s not a tactical book; we have plenty of tactics we can try. This is more about helping me reframe why this is important, and investing myself in it.

D O Y O U T H I N K Y O U R E F F O R T S C O U L D H AV E A B R O A D E R I M PA C T ?

It can’t be that hard to have an impact. We set these goals— they’re good goals, but it’s not like they’re amazing. They’re aggressive; they’re aggressive for any tech company. But the bar is so low, it’s insane, honestly.

NOVEMBER 2015 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A 19

Next

A HIRE PURPOSE HOW DI V ER SI T Y A DDS UP AT SOME OF T HE TOP U.S. T ECH COMPA NIES PINTEREST GENDER

42%

APPLE

37%

Women

63%

58%

Men

RACE/ ETHNICITY

AMAZON

49%

White

GOOGLE 31%

69%

60%

FA C E B O O K

30% 70%

32% 68%

54%

60%

8%

2%

18%

31%

INTEL

TWITTER 24%

76%

30% 70%

55%

54%

2%

4%

36%

32%

59%

1.3%

Black

43.4%

Asian

15% Source: Figures reflect the proportion of total employees and are companies’ own; all are from 2015, except Amazon and Twitter (2014)

13% 2.3%

Hispanic

9%

4%

3%

Other

colleagues to pass along résumés from a range of candidates, most of the referrals were still of white or Asian men (after all, that’s who people tended to have worked with in the past). In other words, Pinterest’s diversity campaign had remained siloed in its human resources department.

Pinterest’s experience resembled that of many other tech companies. Sharp says he and Silbermann realised that they had neither given employees enough reason to care about diversifying Pinterest nor defined their goals. As at many companies, their efforts just hadn’t received the same staff-wide attention and careful tracking that, say, launching a big product or meeting a sales target did. And while Sharp is personally passionate about the societal benefits of making Silicon Valley more inclusive, he had to make a case to employees that was less about ethics and more about the bottom line: “This is not a

11% 9%

3%

4%

4%

3%

charity; it’s a business.”

The first step was to use the creativity angle to sell employees on the diversity measures, which Silbermann and Sharp did in that July meeting this year. And they unveiled specific hiring goals: In 2016, they declared, 30% of their new employees in engineering roles would be female, and 8% would be from underrepresented ethnic minorities such as African Americans and Latinos. They took pains to emphasise that these

Sharp had to make a case to employees that was less about ethics and more about the bottom line: “This is not a charity; it’s a business.”

20 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A NOVEMBER 2015

2% 29%

3% 8% 2%

7%

numbers were guidelines, not quotas—but semantics aside, the priority was clear.

Pinterest is also partnering with consulting firm, Paradigm, on an unorthodox project called Inclusion Labs. The programme tests the effectiveness of various diversity measures, borrowing from Pinterest’s iterative approach to product building—repeatedly testing new ideas, continually making adjustments. The Labs takes a research-oriented approach to study how subtle changes in areas such as recruiting, hiring and promotion influence the success of female candidates and those of colour. This includes creating test groups and control groups, a logic that resonates with Pinterest’s engineers—and should help the internal credibility of any results. Since the research is ongoing and early, Paradigm CEO Joelle Emerson and others are not yet prepared to discuss it in detail, but Ward offers one basic

example: Given that some nontraditional job candidates aren’t as familiar with the quirks of Silicon Valley interviews, what if those candidates were sent an email, before their interview, describing what to expect? Would they then have a better chance of being hired?

Meanwhile, Pinterest’s existing, and more ad hoc, diversity efforts continue to search for footing.

In late August, a small group of employees convened to plan for the annual Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, in October—a high-profile gathering of female engineers. At last year’s conference, Pinterest hired 12 engineers and interns, all of whom were recent graduates. This year, they hoped to hire 24—some ideally with more experience.

Pinterest had already committed to sending nearly 50 employees to the event, yet most would be young and unlikely to connect with the higher-profile candidates. As the group brainstormed creative work-arounds, it was clear that Pinterest’s initial, instinctive approach to building diversity sometimes still prevails. There is lots of hope, but little certainty about what works.

Pinterest won’t, of course, be the only company camped out at the Grace Hopper conference.

Morgan Missen, an independent recruiter who has worked at Google and Twitter, explains that for senior-level positions, many Silicon Valley companies are going after the same small pool of non-white, non-male candidates.

“You can imagine how in-demand these candidates are,” she says.

That just intensifies the pressure on Pinterest. As Sharp points out, the company faces a simple maths problem: As the absolute number of employees grows, each new hire will have a smaller impact on Pinterest’s overall composition. The problem will only get harder to solve. Says Sharp, “It’s kind of now or never.”

Fast Company promotion

Be a Levi’s Pioneer Recognise oppor tunities, face the challenges and break new ground

The Pioneer Nation is a movement started by Levi’s to inspire a generation of entrepreneurs fuelled by their passions and committed to persevere in the face of adversity and challenge to build successful businesses.

The Levi’s Pioneer Nation festival brings today’s Pioneers together in a connected community to support, celebrate and collaborate with one another. This year’s event was a huge success. More than 30 young entrepreneurs joined the interactive daytime programme to share their diverse backstories in 15-minute presentations across three stages.

Each of these speakers had been selected because of their proven ability to identify a gap in the market and align their passion

with the future they want—regardless of the hurdles along the way.

There were no theories at Pioneer Nation—only truth, tips and tricks on how to make it. The great lineup, combined with the variety of interactive business-building workshops on offer, ensured all attendees walked out of the event tuned in and hooked up in a community of successful Pioneers.

Levi’s is now busy planning entrepreneur boot camps and

workshops for 2016 that will amplify the skills of those who are starting businesses. While the event was begun in South Africa, there are definite plans to roll it out throughout the continent.

Pioneers understand sacrifice.

They turn down the attractive salary and security of a corporate gig for the chance of creating something that reflects who they are and is true to their beliefs. They choose to live frugally in order to make a difference in the lives of others.

To really break ground, you need to be prepared to hit the ground. Failure comes with experimentation, and experimentation is critical for longterm success.

Pioneers turn down the attractive salary and security of a corporate gig for the chance of creating something that reflects who they are and is true to their beliefs.

For more details, visit www.pioneernation.biz or download the Levi’s Pioneer Nation app on Google Play and the Apple App Store to participate in the Pioneer Nation community and sign up for the 2016 festival.

NOVEMBER 2015 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A 21

22 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A NOVEMBER 2015

The Top 20 Under 25

S O U T H A F R I C A’ S M O S T I N S P I R I N G Y O U N G I N N O VAT O R S A R E D I S R U P T I N G T H E I R SECTORS—FROM SCIENCE TO MEDICINE, ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND SOCIAL ACTIVISM, TO SPORT AND MUSIC

By Thabiso Thantsha, Evans Manyonga and Miriam Mannak

Starting close to home “I think what inspired me to create the [Blue Collar] foundation was my community”

JIMMY NEVIS (23) MUSICIAN, PRODUCER, SONGWRITER

24 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A NOVEMBER 2015

For giving the youth something to sing about Photograph by Earl Martin

This award-winning artist describes himself as a strong, driven, ethical guy who loves inspiring others through everything he does. “I live for music, for the entertainment industry, and thrive in pushing myself to become a better person and be amazing at my craft.”

Apart from his musical talent, Nevis has a degree in sociology (BSocSc) and hopes to eventually get his honours, doing a research project on all his findings and experiences in the music industry.

Late last year, he started the Blue Collar Foundation philanthropic initiative, through which he aims to provide opportunities for South Africa’s underprivileged youth. The name was taken from the title of the first song he recorded for his The Masses album, the lyrics of which were inspired by a favourite quote from his mother: “I don’t know when, I don’t know how, but we have to believe.”

“We’re all about inspiring young people,” says Nevis. “We plan to create pathways through education, bursaries and learning programmes in order to lessen poverty. I think what inspired me to create this foundation was my community, and realising the responsibility we all share in uplifting and building our leaders of tomorrow. I also feel very strongly about creating more protection for prostitution in South Africa through decriminalisation. I think we have so many overlapping issues like rape, abuse and HIV/Aids.”

Although he enjoys a range of other interests, including fashion and television production, Nevis intends touring abroad next year. “I plan on working and living in three continents. I have a dream to headline sold-out world tours and have the world’s greatest vacation!”

He admits there are many challenges that young creatives face in the music industry. “I’ve found that it can sometimes be difficult to be true to your sound and who you are in an industry that has no rules and a million people who deem fit to tell you what you should do. In the end, it’s always transparency and honesty that relate the most with fans and the public. Sometimes, you try to listen to commercial radio, producers and your fans, but in the end it just comes back to you: You have to go back to the reasons you started in music in the first place.”

Nevis advises: “Work on yourself, work on your craft and work on your mind. Everything you want to achieve is up to you, so make sure you put in the work and have no regrets. Success is going to a new level in your career, and when your dreams become a reality. I’ve experienced this success, but I still believe I have a long way to go.”

HEIDI VAN EEDEN (24) ARCHITECT

For visualising the sustainability of architecture Van Eeden has always been fascinated by the idea that one can create something that will affect people and remain long after one is gone. “Architecture is one of the most permanent and social forms of art,” she explains. “The creation of architecture lies in a sensitive understanding of spatial experience, a reverence of narrative and memory, and the constant exploration of the never-ending complexities of context.”

The lauded University of Pretoria student has conceptualised various projects including a winery, the house of an art collector, sport and urban mapping, and brickworks among many others. She was the Corobrik 27th Architectural Student of the Year in 2014 for her thesis, “Machinarium: Architecture as a living machine”, and achieved third place in the Next

Generation category of the 2014 Global Holcim Awards for Africa Middle East. She also won the SA Institute of Architects Award in 2013.

Van Eeden’s dissertation focuses on the new ways in which architecture can make changes to a rapidly transforming, 21st-century world. “The project is an investigation of the potential of industry as urban catalyst: a mechanism

with which to regenerate urban environments and reintegrate fragmented socio-ecological systems.

In an attempt to redefine modern concepts of waste, and mitigate the flood of pollution emanating from 20th-century industrialisation, the investigation is focused on the restructuring of the textile industry and is contextually based in an ‘urban wasteland’—the Daspoort Waste Water Treatment Works [in central Pretoria].”

Holistic environment Van Eeden believes there is productive value in the resources people discard as ‘waste’.

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SAM BERGER (13) APP DEVELOPER

For getting with the programming at an early age

Sam I am “I don’t have a problem with my age,” says the young Berger. “I just want to do IT with others who share the same interest.”

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Hailed as a computer whiz-kid, the youngster from Milnerton in Cape Town has achieved much more in his early years than the average person twice his age.

Sam has been coding programs since the age of seven, and has created his own patented GeyCheck app designed for home insurance companies in South Africa. It calculates whether geysers are in or out of guarantee by using QR codes. The app is said to save insurers up to R300 million a year.

“I think I played around with my first computer when I was six or seven, and every second Saturday we would go out to the [local] science centre and program robots to make them do little tasks—I really enjoyed that. Just seeing how we could make the robots do small tasks made me realise we could do a whole lot more,” he says.

He has been receiving financial assistance from Cape Town-based investor and philanthropist Bennie Rabinowitz, who has formed the company Appsolutely for the purpose of getting the apps to market and developing new ones.

Sam has also developed a location-based healthcare app that the City of Cape Town is looking at.

Local software companies and universities have tapped into the youngster’s potential by asking him to impart his knowledge and experience to those studying computer programming. Builders Warehouse approached Sam to devise a warranty-tracking app, which will help the company maintain its products more efficiently and help clients make claims. His genius has not gone unnoticed in the international community, either. He was one of 3 000 delegates at the Python Software Foundation conference in Silicon Valley—at the age of 10.

Apart from coding and computers, Sam has ‘normal’ hobbies. “I enjoy playing games and listening to electronic music. I also play musical instruments, and my favourite is the keyboard.”

J O E N AWAYA ( 2 1 ) CO-FOUNDER, CR E AT IV E M IN D SPACE

For being animated about design

Nawaya’s natural entrepreneurial spirit was evident at the age of 19, when he dropped out of university to start an animation and design company with this brother and business partner, Elliot Sithole, in 2014. He reasoned that he could learn whatever was in the syllabus through work experience. “I have the perfect mix of creative and business skills, and I was inspired to start our company by the desire to change the animation industry in South Africa, and use our unique stories.”

The firm already boasts an impressive client list, which includes Cadbury Lunch Bar (for its 50th Golden Anniversary celebrations), Castle Lite (for the brand’s Platinum Edition) and SA Fashion Week. “Through more work, resilience and teamwork, I believe we are positioned to grow stronger in the future,” says Nawaya.

His journey has not been smooth sailing, however. The weak rand and clients cutting their branding costs due to the tough economy are two of his biggest challenges. “Clients can request to change the rates, and this affects our production costs and overheads. We usually work

around this by sometimes outsourcing and collaborating with other creatives in the industry.”

In the next five years, Nawaya plans to grow his team to include developers, and to assist young and talented innovators to sharpen their skills. “We would like to venture into the game-design industry, by creating games that South Africans and the rest of Africa can relate to.”

His advice to young creatives: “Follow your passion, and the money will follow you.

Define success as bringing ideas to life, having creative freedom, being original and seeing the satisfied smile on your client’s face.”

KIARA SCOTT (23) PROTÉGÉ, CAPE WINEMAKERS GUILD

For having grape expectations

Not all about the money “Define success as ... seeing the satisfied smile on your client’s face.”

The Cape Winemakers Guild Protégé Programme, a mentorship scheme that plays an active role in meaningful transformation within the wine industry, enrolled four new oenology interns at the beginning of this year. Among the promising graduates is Kiara Scott, who is also the youngest. She is working with David Nieuwoudt, owner and winemaker at Cederberg Private Cellar.

A determined and passionate woman hailing from Strandfontein in Cape Town, Scott has always been interested in winemaking, and studied cellar technology at the Elsenburg Agricultural Training

Institute in Stellenbosch.

She has set herself the goal of becoming a welltravelled winemaker within the next 10 years, and hopes to participate in numerous international harvests and possibly produce wine under

her own label. “For me, winemaking is all about nature and man working together. I believe I can bring new and innovative ideas to the wine industry while preserving its simplicity and authenticity,” Scott says.

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OYA M A M ATO M E L A ( 2 3 ) P I L O T, F L I G H T INSTRUCTOR

For reaching for the sky in a maledominated industry Sir Walter Raleigh once said, “The engine is the heart of an airplane, but the pilot is its soul.” These words truly epitomise Matomela’s passion and fascination for flying. “I remember going to Port Elizabeth International Airport with my family to watch in awe the airplanes take off and land, and this fuelled my unimaginable dire need to venture into aviation in my teen years,” she says with glee in her voice.

Plot your course “Pray more often, work harder, practise discipline and sacrifice your all. With passion, half the battle is won.”

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She is driven, goalorientated and ambitious— sometimes beyond her abilities, she adds. “I’m a perfectionist, and I always feel I have to be in control— always! This mantra has helped me to let go of most things that aren’t beneficial to my life. I’ve learnt to embrace change, and just accept things that are out of my control.”

In 2010, the Eastern Cape Provincial Department of Roads and Public Works awarded Matomela with a bursary to commence her initial pilot training (theoretical and practical) at the 43 Air School in Port Alfred. She was also nominated for the 2014 Africa’s Most Influential

Women in Business and Governance award from CEO Communications.

A selection process narrowed down the 9 000 nominations and entries to just under one hundred.

Says Matomela, “It was an incredible honour to be nominated for this role, and an overwhelming surprise to receive a finalist award in the aviation sector.”

She notes, “There are many facets to being a pilot in this day and age. I didn’t only have the best job of flying as a junior for SA Express at the age of 21, but I also became a flight instructor [she mentors and trains students] at Superior Pilot Services.

As a female pilot in a maledominated industry, you take stereotypes in your stride and pray more often, work harder, practise discipline and sacrifice your all. With passion, half the battle is won.”

The most critical problem faced by young people in the aviation industry is finding employment. “It’s difficult for a low-hour pilot [250 to 500 hours] to find a job in the aviation industry in South Africa,” says Matomela. “SA Express, being one of the only airlines whose main focus is transformation, has a cadet programme geared specifically for this vast group of inexperienced dreamers. Most lowhour pilots venture to neighbouring African countries for opportunities.”

The young pilot is working toward studying and achieving a degree in Aviation Management, among other things. “At 23, I still have plenty to learn.

I can’t say I have a definition of success, but a vague view of it. At this point, Success is Freedom.”

P E A R L P I L L AY ( 2 3 ) DIRECTOR, POLICY RESEARCHER, YOUTH LAB

For rewriting the rules of (youth) engagement This political studies master’s student at Wits says it is her “unshakable belief that young people are essential to South Africa’s future prosperity.” As the director of Youth Lab, a Johannesburg-based think tank, Pillay bridges the gap between policymakers and South Africa’s youth by urging the government to include their perspectives in its policies. This increases their understanding and engagement in socio-economic issues. “If we get them [the youth] engaged in providing input into policy, we are laying a strong foundation for a stronger country.”

The Youth Lab’s approach is empowerment, rather than “doing for”, she says.

Pillay is in the process of getting more private and public support for young entrepreneurs and for youth-led businesses.

“Everyone talks about how many young South Africans are unemployed, but instead of just talking, let’s support the youth to access the economy beyond the mere job market; let’s all help foster a culture of entrepreneurship, not a culture of handouts.”

In May this year, she was awarded the prestigious Mandela Washington Fellowship: the flagship programme of United States President Barack Obama’s

Don’t just employ—empower Pillay urges the private and public sector to help foster a culture of entrepreneurship, not a culture of handouts, among the youth.

Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI), which offers 500 outstanding leaders from subSaharan Africa the opportunity to take part in academic coursework, leadership training and networking at a higher education institution in the States. Although she thinks an undertaking such as the YALI is good, she told LotusFM’s News Break that more needs to be done internally on the African continent to find African

solutions by Africans themselves.

She urged young people— particularly women—to “remain unapologetic about what your passion is. I think we often get stuck into making compromises, because society dictates that we do. We short-change ourselves and we undervalue ourselves.

I think there’s nothing wrong with being able to pursue your passions, so most of us won’t fit the mould that society wants us to fit into, especially as women.”

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LEROTHODI MOLETE (24) AND BONGINKOSI LEEUW (24) F O U N DE R S, C UR ATOR S, TEDXUFS, TEDXYOUTH@NVH & S LY Z A . C O M

For creating a platform for sharing great ideas These two young entrepreneurs are “changing tomorrow, today”—a sentiment that reflects the mindset that led to the establishment of their TEDx ventures. Both are scholars at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein, where they curate the TEDxUFS and TEDxYouth@NavalHill events.

TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) is a global community of leading thinkers and experts from various fields who engage on a diverse range of topics and share their innovative ideas in short but powerful talks (maximum 18 minutes long). TEDxUFS brings together the local community’s progressive minds with those seeking knowledge to make a difference in the world.

Fast Company SA sat down with the inspirational leaders to find out how they have made TEDx work in South Africa.

Fast Company: What are your areas of specialisation?

Lerothodi Molete: I specialise in entrepreneurship, youth development and agriculture. I’m involved in various projects that basically add value to the innovation and technology sector of the economy.

I’m also a youth developer, leading a non-profit that aims to develop the youth to change the world. Our work is mainly focused on high schools, where we have established resource centres and where we do motivational sessions. I’m passionate about the youth; they are the future of our country. I’m also a qualified agriculturalist working with Santam Agriculture, specialising in crop growth for research purposes.

Bonginkosi Leeuw: I was schooled at WelkomGimnasium, and Beyond Adventure [Xtreme Gap Year leadership programme] where I did extreme sports and got an ARA [Adventure Recreation Association] level 2 qualification. I’m currently at the University of the Free State, studying toward a BCom in Economics.

Who or what has been your biggest motivation in life?

LM: I’m inspired by Thabo Mbeki and Elon Musk, both well-known South African-born global impact leaders—

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one a statesman and former president, and the other a massive entrepreneur and business magnate. Mbeki is particularly inspirational to me, because of the vision he has for the African continent: He believes Africa has the potential to become a self-sufficient, selfsustaining and flourishing continent through industry and nation building, brought about by unity among the African people.

Musk is a big influence because he believes in an ideal and pursues it until he accomplishes it. He doesn’t fear to dream and envision. What’s particularly impressive about him is that there are no boundaries to his dreams.

BL: My greatest motivation in life is my Christian beliefs.

I believe God is the custodian of our success.

But, most of all, I want to make poverty a thing of the past for many families.

What are your plans with TEDx in South Africa?

Up until now, we’ve perfected the TEDxUFS event that takes place in Bloemfontein annually, but in 2016 we plan to have the very first TEDxBloemfontein, and to host another successful TEDxYouth@ NavalHill—making us the official organisers of the only three, and biggest, TEDx brands in central South

Start small “The greatest accomplishment is the process of conceiving an idea, working on it, and seeing it come to realisation,” says Molete.

Africa. Our short-term goal with the TEDx brand is mainly to grow the platform locally, in Bloemfontein and Mangaung as well as the surrounding Free State region. Due to the fact that there are already organisers in Johannesburg and Cape Town—the bigger cities that would’ve been ideal to invest in—we will rather focus our strengths in our immediate region. We plan, however, to tap into the Durban market in the future, since it has not been catered for as yet. The

aim with TEDx in the country is to create and grow it into one of the biggest conference brands in South Africa—where some of the most innovative and cuttingedge ideas can be formed.

What drove you to explore this particular concept?

Our main concern was to revolutionise Bloem and the general way of thinking within the city. What drove us to push this initiative was the lagging mood in the area, in terms of performance and the establishment of small business.

We wanted to show everyone that even the most successful people, whether local or international, are normal people with hopes and dreams—just like you and me. An idea is the most powerful thing; it has the ability to change the entire world, but only if it is pursued with grit and determination. We also had the desire to know and meet the great entrepreneurs, thinkers and game changers of South Africa, to network and make them our referees and mentors, thus opening ourselves to some of the best possible opportunities.

We saw that this particular brand [TEDx] is the best one to explore, because it’s well-known and many people wish to speak on the platform.

Do you have plans to bring in any other ideas?

We’ve already begun with some of our other projects, for example, we’ve founded the BIT EXPO—a university gaming league that’s the first of its kind on the African continent. We also have a university e-commerce website, Slyza.com, which we plan to spread to all the big universities in the country. Added to that,

we’ve brought together likeminded people to begin a youth development organisation called Youth Nation NPC, which focuses on previously disadvantaged schools. We assist them with the establishment of resource centres; teach them how to do scientific research to participate in competitions such as the Eskom Expo; offer extra classes in maths and science; and present motivational talks.

Honourable intentions Leeuw’s ultimate goal is to “make poverty a thing of the past for many families”.

Who has helped you get to where you are today?

LM: We’ve been assisted by a number of people who have believed in our vision. The first ever person who assisted us greatly was Rudi Buys, former dean of Student Affairs at the University of the Free State; as well as Cornelia Faasen, who is now the acting dean; and Dr Glen Taylor, senior director of the Directorate of Research Development.

BL: Rudi Buys particularly assisted me when he put me in the F1 Leadership for Change programme. My father and mother have also played a pivotal role, by believing in my initiative and encouraging me when I felt like giving up.

What do you love most about what you do?

LM: The greatest accomplishment is the process of conceiving an idea, working on it and seeing it come to realisation. But the best part is meeting and networking with some of the brightest minds around the inner city and the entire country. It’s amazing how talented and creative people can be. Knowing, engaging and expanding one’s mind is the best feeling yet—it changes one’s life forever.

BL: I love everything about what I do, from the drama to the most successful moments, for I feel like I’m a part of a global movement to change the lives of many people around the world.

What have been the biggest challenges you have encountered?

The greatest challenge we’ve encountered in running our organisation has been financial support, for it’s a great difficulty raising funds and balancing time for this event. We’ve also faced a major challenge in getting strategic partnerships with many institutions, as many don’t have an open-minded approach to business in this city; for some reason, many companies look at the immediate sales-oriented partnerships and not the longterm, more qualitative partnerships. It becomes a challenge whenever we need to push our concept.

How has your approach made a difference in South Africa?

Many students in our province now want to host TEDx events and join the idea-spreading movement. We’ve also helped

students get the exposure they need with regard to scholarships etc. This is perhaps one of the biggest differences we have made in people’s lives.

What are your future plans?

LM: I plan to continue with TEDx, Slyza and BIT, which are still growing. But, ultimately, I plan to get involved in infrastructure development and become an expert in the field, because I’d like to launch a concept that many have been afraid to start, which is the refurbishment and ‘greening’ up of our cities, particularly the central business district.

BL: I plan to be one of the youngest self-made millionaires, through Slyza.com and BIT gaming league. I want to see these two companies dominate the gaming and student e-commerce markets, turning them both into large corporations.

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Self-motivation “I don’t have a CV, nor do I need an alarm clock to help me wake up early every morning to do what I love”

Women at work Ngwane is proud that her company can assist in job creation and the upskilling of her local community.

REABETSWE NGWANE (22) CO-FOUND ER, OPERAT I ONS & FINANCIAL MANAGER, RETHAKA TRADING

For making light work of repurposing plastic MTHANDENI MNCUBE (24) C E O , M Z A N S I D A I LY F X

For giving people new tools of the trade

As the owner and CEO of the country’s fastest growing forex institution, Mncube—a trader by profession—makes a living teaching ordinary South Africans how best to utilise the financial markets.

He has trained more than 60 persons since his company’s inception in 2014.

He says, “Despite growing up in rural KwaZulu-Natal, I’ve always had a dream of one day owning an organisation. The only visible educated people I knew were my teachers, and no one else in the community. This motivated me to work hard in order to complete high school and go to university. Even after high school, I knew I wasn’t born to work for someone else.

I don’t have a CV, nor do I need an alarm clock to help me wake up early every morning to do what I love—which is trading.”

One of Mncube’s biggest challenges in starting his company was getting capital. He chose to raise funds by saving and actively trading in forex. He began trading with R17 000, and worked his way up from there. “I vowed never to

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write a business plan, because that would’ve prompted me to approach an investor or go to the banks for a business loan.

One tends to do things differently when one’s own money is at stake.”

In terms of the future, he would like to diversify his portfolio in order to become a multimillionaire and an inspiring businessman who gives back to the community.

“I’m planning on soon venturing into property, fleet management and the hospitality industry.”

The community-driven Rethaka Trading produces the Repurposed Schoolbag, which is aimed at assisting underprivileged children to obtain a decent education, and allowing their parents or caregivers to save on electricity costs.

Ngwane and her business partner Thato Kgatlhanye (21) manufacture the bag from 100% recycled plastic, integrating solar technology to transform it into a light source for after-hours study or during loadshedding (for up to 12 hours). It also has reflective material to make the schoolkids more visible to traffic.

“I believe this will tackle environmental issues and the critical matter of education for the underprivileged. Moreover, it provides these children with a sense of dignity and pride.”

The waste plastic is acquired from landfills and recycling bins set

up outside a number of schools and churches. It is cleaned, debranded and ironed before being sewn into a stylish bag by the seven full-time women employees at the Rethaka warehouse in Rustenburg.

A social entrepreneur, Ngwane is inspired to continuously seek new and innovative ways to help solve current and future societal problems.

Her ultimate goal is to be operational in other developing countries, offering her experience to nations facing similar challenges. She is proud that Rethaka can assist in job creation and the upskilling of the community in which the business is situated.

SANDILE KUBHEKA (22) MEDICAL DOCTOR

Kubheka has always been ahead of his classmates academically. He made headlines as the youngest South African to qualify as a medical doctor—at the age of 20. Medicine was not his first choice at school, however. He excelled at computer studies and thought he would pursue a career in information technology. But in Grade 12 (he was 15 years old), some of his educators advised him to enter the medical fraternity. “I loved assisting people during my school holidays, and I believe this was what sparked or motivated my teachers to suggest medicine,” he says.

He used to lie about his age when he first started practising, telling patients he was 25, but he has since chosen to be upfront about it. “I didn’t like being dishonest about who I was. I decided to open up and tell the truth. Yes, I am young. But in disclosing, I ended up winning my patients’ trust and their confidence in my abilities.”

Currently serving his internship at Grey’s Hospital in Pietermaritzburg, Kubheka attributes his success and ability to handle pressure to the Batho Pele (‘people first’) principle he learnt at the Nelson R. Mandela School of Medicine at the University of KZN. It exhorts one to respect others, be humble and always do one’s best when assisting people. “I’ve realised that being professional, no matter the situation, goes a long way. As long as I’ve done an impeccable job, nothing else matters,” he says. These sentiments were recognised when he received the Yashiv Sham Bursary for being the most caring and compassionate student in his medical-school class.

One political issue close to Kubheka’s heart is the education

For treating patients with love and respect

Batho Pele “I’ve realised that being professional, no matter the situation, goes a long way.”

system in South Africa, and he believes the pass rate must be increased to 50% in order for students to do well at university.

“If you don’t know at least 50% of your work in high school, you most likely won’t do well in tertiary [institutions]; it will be a tough battle. Learning maths and science is vital in order to succeed in all areas of life,” he notes.

He does not have any plans to leave South Africa, as there is so much that still needs to be done in this country in order to alleviate the burden of HIV/Aids, among other things. “KZN is ranked high in the world in terms of [HIV]

infection. I want to be involved in the change and aid where I can. Nothing gives me more joy than working with rural communities who don’t necessarily have knowledge, and access to doctors and medicines.”

Kubheka volunteers at Happy Valley Clinic and Madadeni Hospital, giving free medical treatment and advice to rural patients.

His internship concludes at the end of this year, after which he plans to specialise in internal medicine “and, ultimately, end up in endocrinology,” he adds.

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MICHAELA MYCROFT (21) ABILITY ACTIVIST & CO-FOUNDER, THE CHAELI CAMPAIGN

For conquering her disability— and Kilimanjaro Michaela was nine years old when she took matters into her own hands and started a campaign to raise funds for the wheelchair she needed so badly. Eleven years later, she is an influential social entrepreneur and the first female quadriplegic to have summited Africa’s highest peak It all began in 2004, when Michaela—who was diagnosed with cerebral palsy as an infant—decided she needed a motorised wheelchair to be more independent. Unfortunately, no company in South Africa was manufacturing such a device for children.

The only solution was to import one. “They cost R20 000, which we couldn’t afford,” she recalls.

Refusing to throw in the towel, Michaela— supported by her sister Erin and three school friends—kick-started a fundraiser. Seven weeks later, the girls had sold enough cards and flowerpots to import the wheelchair Michaela needed. Donations, however, kept rolling in. “People still wanted to buy our stuff, so we formalised our campaign to help other disabled children in South Africa,” she says.

Since then, The Chaeli Campaign has grown from strength to strength. The organisation is currently helping thousands of children and young adults per year with wheelchairs, walking racks, hearing aids, food supplements and other assistive necessities. Then there is an extensive outreach and advocacy programme, a vocational skills initiative for young adults and a sports project, among other initiatives. “We offer nine different programmes for young people with disabilities,” Mycroft says. “Each of these programmes is aimed at a different aspect of someone’s life. We want to offer holistic services.”

For her sterling work, the social sciences student has taken home various awards including the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize for Children. This also happened to be the year in which the seed was planted for one of the most exciting, exhausting and daring endeavours she has undertaken thus far: climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, accompanied by a crew of some 63 people.

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True grit “You can only learn about yourself when you push yourself.”

“We summited Uhuru Peak on 3 September this year. It was an emotional moment. I was so relieved that we’d got there, and that everyone was fine,” she recalls, adding that the expedition has had a profound impact on her life. “It was not just a seven-day thing. I’m a lot more aware of myself now, more in tune with the people around me. I’m so happy that I experienced this. You can only learn about yourself when you push yourself.”

Mycroft is determined to use her

Kilimanjaro experiences in her work as an ability activist. “In terms of my activism, I will use our expedition to show that anything is possible when you surround yourself with good people, when you are positive, and when you believe in what you can do,” she says. “In terms of The Chaeli Campaign, I feel that our expedition is a great example of what the organisation represents. We are all about people working together, conquering mountains—and about ability.”

Social science Naicker intends to research parasite-borne diseases in animals, which could assist both small-scale farmers and large corporations.

PREVIN NAICKER (24) B I O C H E M I S T, POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHER, CSIR BIOSCIENCES

For putting complex health issues under the microscope Naicker completed Grade 12 in 2005, at the age of 14—having skipped grades 7, 9 and 10.

He took part in several maths and science Olympiads, and was awarded a full bursary at Star College in Westville, a privately funded school with a strong focus on those two subjects. “At Star College, a group of nine students, including myself, undertook a fast-tracked programme through which we increased our curriculum with after-hours and holiday schooling. This allowed us to be at a level with pupils in grades above,” he explains.

Having first specialised in biomedical science at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, he graduated last year from Wits University with a PhD in Biochemistry.

Naicker is currently employed as a postdoctoral researcher in the molecular diagnostics group in the Biosciences unit at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. “As a researcher, one doesn’t experience instant gratification often. With noble callings such as being an educator or medical doctor, your impact is not easily seen. Your intent may be genuine, but your work generally has an impact in years to come— and you don’t get to meet the people you’ve helped in some way,” he notes.

The most critical problems faced by young people in his field

include red tape, and being overworked and underpaid. “We are generally overloaded with a lot of administration that’s associated with our work. These are necessary tasks; however, a lack of support and efficient procedure leaves one feeling drained before one even starts one’s research. We often work on projects with a lot of ethical and safety considerations, which understandably result in a lot of red tape,” he explains.

Remuneration is a major issue in the pure science sector, which is evident when one compares salaries across industries, considering qualifications and the time spent working on

projects. “I’m especially disturbed by salaries earned by scientists with bachelor and honours degrees,” says Naicker. “These are highly skilled individuals who are, frankly, underpaid at the internship level and after. Open science forums can help bring some of these issues to the fore.

Instruments such as the relevant professional councils need to do more in assisting with addressing such issues.”

He keeps abreast with current affairs locally and abroad, but adds that he does not get involved in political debates. “I’m passionate about complex health issues that are affecting our nation”, adding that his career

choice was influenced in part by his desire to help solve socioeconomic problems. Currently researching ways to improve vaccination in livestock, Naicker intends branching out into parasite-borne diseases in animals. He feels this work could have a huge impact socially and economically, for both small-scale farmers and large corporations.

“I would like to grow my problem-solving abilities and complete a business degree within the next five years,” says the young scientist. “Selfdiscovery is life-long. Set goals based on personal desires and not on societal approval. These are the words I live by.”

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MAT T HEW PI PER (21) CO-FOUNDER, MD, MONEYTREE GROUP S IM AM K ELE DLAK AV U (23) S O C I A L A C T I V I S T, PRODUCER

For investing in the youth

For giving young Africans a voice

With his group of businesses servicing the media, education and recruitment sectors, Piper aims to unlock the potential of young people in Africa.

Few young people can boast about producing the popular current affairs talk show, The Big Debate; working for international broadcaster BBC on its Nelson Mandela special for Question Time; holding a full-time job as media and communications manager for Oxfam SA; writing for online newspaper, Daily Maverick; and being a One Young World Co-ordinating Ambassador—all by the age of 23. Simamkele Dlakavu has done just that. “I have worked in the developmental space since I was 15, and the idea of ‘service above self’ was ingrained in me”.

She holds a BA degree in International Relations and honours in Political Studies from the University of the Witwatersrand. In the next five years, she wants to work toward a PhD in either Political Studies or African Literature and Film. “I’m doing my master’s in African Literature. I want to tell stories that affirm African people and African women through books, television and film.” To aid her in this endeavour, she is a producer and scriptwriter at the Broad Daylight Films Foundation.

Dlakavu is a co-founder of the non-governmental organisation, Sakha Ulutsha Lwethu, which means “we are building our youth”.

It aims to develop periurban, rural and township

Putting others first Dlakavu has represented young people in various youth summits around Africa and the world. “You cannot lead them if you don’t love them.”

youngsters. “My favourite African leadership proverb is, ‘You cannot lead them if you don’t love them.’ I want to be of love, and reflect love in every interaction with my people,” says Dlakavu.

“Through my work, I’ve represented young people in various youth summits around the African continent and the world.

I was recognised by a Ghanaian-based NGO, the Moremi Initiative, as one of 28 Africa’s Most Outstanding Emerging Women Leaders for 2013.”

Our country’s economic inequality is one sociopolitical issue she feels passionately about. “In South Africa today, a person’s race, class and gender still determine whether he or she will finish school or be employed, and even determine their life expectancy. Furthermore, two white men own the same wealth as the bottom half of the population.

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South Africa is more unequal today than it was at the end of apartheid, and one in four South Africans goes to bed on an empty stomach [according to the Even It Up report by Oxfam].

I’m passionate about ending this inequality.”

In October this year, Dlakavu represented the South African delegation at the 2015 G(irls)20 Summit in Turkey. She spoke about how women in the world have little access to land, yet they are the majority of food producers— particularly on the African continent.

“I am an advocate for secure property and land rights for women to be empowered in agribusiness and agricultural purposes,” she states proudly. “I am also an advocate for more young women to be active participants in politics, so that their issues are mainstreamed into public policies.”

While studying toward a BCom degree at the University of Cape Town three years ago, Piper and his friend Tokologo Phetla devised the idea of training students at high school and university in investing, and thus improving their prospects in adulthood. It was there at UCT that they were encouraged as young entrepreneurs to think of inefficiencies in South Africa and come up with ways of “exploiting those inefficiencies to create jobs”. They set up a finance and investment education website, Moneytree.

Piper later founded the sub-brand Student Investor, as well as the quarterly business, investment and personal finance magazine, The MoneyTree, of which 20 000 copies are circulated in 100 high schools and 10 universities by appointed ambassadors in Gauteng, KwaZuluNatal, Eastern Cape, Free State and the Western Cape. He is also a director at the RED Foundation, which trains 500 aspiring entrepreneurs in the Free State every year.

Through entrepreneurial leadership, Piper aims to be at the forefront of change in South Africa. “I hope one day I will be able to create an African media empire, as well as develop socially responsible business and economic inclusion on the continent for the future of Africa and the world as a whole,” he says.

He advises aspiring young entrepreneurs: “You don’t have to have very extensive resources—only a telephone, Internet, cup of tea, transport, and a passion to persevere through hard times. Once you have mastered these, put yourself out there, network, and remember to go out with something practical, not fluffy ideas. Businesspeople get excited when they see young people working with concrete ideas, Make it count and tend to be “Go out with something prepared to help practical, not fluffy ideas,” says Piper. with connections.”

A bright idea It was Ngwenya’s mother who suggested he start selling socks, seeing as he had so many of them.

S I B U S I S O N G W E N YA ( 2 3 ) FOUNDER, HEAD DESIGNER, SKINNY SBU SOCKS

For pulling up his colourful socks This young entrepreneur turned his love of chic socks into a fashion statement among men who appreciate quality and the finer things in life. All his items are locally manufactured, which helps him contribute to the country’s gross domestic product and empower his employees, he says.

THABISO MSIMANGA (20) INVENTOR

For rocking electricity generation Msimanga does not have a background in mathematics, chemistry or any other science subject. Instead, he studied business and accounting at Springs Technical High School in Gauteng and got his inspiration to invent from television programmes. “I would see famous scientists working on experiments, but failing along the way. That’s when I got curious and wanted to continue from where they left off.”

A modern-day Tesla “I want other students to study my theories, and have my experiments used in science textbooks,” says Msimanga.

The young man from Mpumalanga won the House of Le Roux Science Competition in December last year—beating 50 other submissions—for inventing a new way of generating electricity using molten rock from Hawaii and aloe extract. The chemical reaction between the rock and the aloe extract powers a small electric motor.

He was quite surprised to be awarded first place and a dream trip to Chicago, where he presented his winning experiment and other inventions to US companies.

Msimanga is currently trying to complete an unfinished experiment

by Nikola Tesla, to prove that electricity could be transferred from one point to another without wires. This would certainly support his ambition of becoming a worldfamous scientist and inventor.

“I want other students to study my theories, and have my experiments used in science textbooks,” he says.

Ngwenya used social media to get celebrities to endorse his product—for free. He has been featured on CNN and Moneyweb, in the Financial Mail and on numerous radio shows.

His mother was the one who shaped his love of socks, he reveals. “When I was growing up, my mother used to instruct me to wash my socks inside out—at the time, that used to irritate me a lot. But what I didn’t realise was that it instilled a sense of attention to detail where my socks were concerned, and eventually I started becoming conscious of which socks I was wearing, how I was wearing them, and what I was wearing them with,” he explains.

At 1.9 metres tall, Ngwenya’s pants never reached all the way down to his shoes, and he always felt he needed to compensate for the space. He did this by wearing very colourful socks as part of his personal style and look. By 2012, he had collected over 70 pairs of socks, mostly by international brands, and

realised there was a gap in the South African market.

He decided to capitalise on the idea and pushed toward establishing his own enterprise.

“I had just bought 13 pairs of socks at a retail store and my mother asked me why I couldn’t just start selling the socks, seeing as I had so many of them.” On the very same day, Ngwenya repackaged the socks and resold them for R50 a pair.

Later that evening, he attended SA Fashion Week and was networking with a number of celebrities when they started tweeting about the “colourful socks” they had seen him wear. He continued repackaging, rebranding and reselling socks for the next two months, until former Top Billing presenter Tumisho Masha elected to help Ngwenya establish his own brand and business.

“We make a great product—a product of superior quality. I think that’s why we’ve been doing so well,” he says with pride.

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Changing futures

She believes it is through social entrepreneurship that there will be “an economic paradigm shift within communities”.

BONGEKILE RADEBE (24) FOUNDER, HER DESTINY

For uplifting women around a cup of tea Radebe describes Her Destiny as a “tea lifestyle and business network”.

“We offer human capital development—through hosting tea events and social media campaigns— which addresses our three pillars: connecting generations, financial literacy, as well as personal development.”

She has “always loved the notion of being a great leader, taking initiative and serving others for the greater good.” Having seen how a simple cup of tea brings together women of all kinds, she started Her Destiny to give young ladies the tools to combat sexism and ageism in order to take charge of their lives and be successful.

A shining example herself, in 2013 Radebe was selected as one of the top six national finalists on the second season of SABC1’s One Day Leader, where she tackled various socio-economic challenges and provided sustainable solutions for different communities across the country. As one of the contestants, she contributed to SABC Education’s subsequent leadership book, One Day Leader: Reflections on South Africa, writing a chapter on active citizenship and patriotism. “My involvements led me to become a mentor on SABC1’s

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Future Leaders programme, for SAB’s You Decide campaign, in order to assist high school learners in starting their own community projects in an effort to curb underage drinking.” She is also an ambassador for One Young World and Play Your Part (for Brand South Africa).

According to Radebe, the most critical problem faced by young people in her field is ownership. The tea business is still predominantly white, from a manufacturing and productownership perspective. “I believe skills and knowledge transfer are key to leading transformation in the tea industry,” she says.

“Knowing our audience better, and speaking to their holistic lifestyle and not just beverage consumption, desires great solutions in order to get the ball rolling.”

There is also a lack of true tea education, “not just from a consumption or product quality perspective but also different tea cultures and rituals.”

Radebe believes it is through social entrepreneurship that there will be “an economic paradigm shift within communities, from hopelessness and dependence on government to active and economically empowered citizens”. She desires to be a vessel for those close to her and, if possible, even those she may not know yet.

Her advice to young entrepreneurs?

“Start small—but continue thinking big!”

MIKEL MOYO (24) CO-FOUNDER, DEPUTY CEO, WOLF & LOOPER AND CEO, MOCHABE VENTSO PROJECTS ENERGY

For giving traditional financial advisers a run for their money With a BCom in Finance and Investment Management from the University of Johannesburg, Moyo is involved in a number of endeavours including his own startup, Wolf & Looper: a company and blog specialising in the financial education of students and the working youth.

He and co-founder Yami Swana, both financial planners, advise young people on how best to manage their finances, and offer the most effective ways of making the money work for them.

In an interview on CliffCentral’s Future CEOs, Moyo explained that his first “big entrepreneurial thing was private hockey coaching… I was never a big entrepreneur.

I’ve just always been passionate about teaching people stuff”. He brings a fresh way of engaging with young people, using ‘new media’ to reach them through blogs, podcasts and soon videos as well. Regulars on Wolf & Looper include the Daily Rant, Wolf Wednesdays and African Hustle; with quirky blogs such as “Lessons Learnt From The Lion King”.

Working in the financial-advice space can be tricky due to all the legalities, but Moyo says his website offers factual information. “Never will you hear anyone say, ‘Go buy an RA [retirement annuity].’

It’ll be, ‘What is an RA, and what does it do?’ ” He is also the CEO It’s in his nature of MVP Energy, which “I was never a big entrepreneur. I’ve just specialises in solar-power always been passionate solutions for the home to about teaching people stuff”, says Moyo. alleviate the energy crisis.

WAY D E VA N N I E K E R K ( 2 3 ) TRACK AND FIELD ATH LET E

For running rings around his competitors Van Niekerk is the first athlete from Africa to run the 400 metre in under 44 seconds.

He says the world record could be the next target in his mission to “tell his story”.

The South African sprinting sensation has been unbeaten over both the 200m and 400m in 2015.

Perhaps his greatest strength has been his belief in his personal ability and his strength of character after suffering a serious hamstring injury.

Van Niekerk first came to prominence in 2010 when, as a budding high jumper with a sideline in sprinting, he managed to qualify for the 200m at the 2010 IAAF World Junior Championships in Moncton, Canada. “I’d started training for the sprints at the end of 2009, having done high jump,” he recalls. “But the fact that I qualified for the World Juniors in the 200m meant the sprints chose themselves.”

His family have always been lovers of athletics, so it was no surprise when he decided to concentrate on the sport. “I’ve been active since my school days,” Van Niekerk says. “I’ve always taken part in athletics and rugby. My stepdad does long distance and marathons, and my father did high jump, as well as sprints and rugby now and then. My mother was also an athlete who did sprints and the high jump.

I just carried on the legacy.”

Qualifying for Moncton offered him not only his first taste of international competition but also his first experience of travelling

Zero to hero “The fact that I’d come from being a nobody to being fourth at the World Juniors ... told me I could do well on the world stage,” says Van Niekerk.

outside South Africa. It made him realise, for the first time, the extent of his talent. This initial taste of competition at the highest level filled Van Niekerk with pride and determination. “The fact that I’d come from being a nobody to being fourth at the World Juniors and performing that well, told me I could do well on the world stage.”

In 2011, however, at the SA national championships, he tore his hamstring (grade 1). “After that, I kept getting niggles and scares, and it’s taken all of these years [to get back to top form].” With limited training, he managed only five appearances in 2012. Yet, Van Niekerk’s positive outlook meant that rather than despair, he—along

with his veteran coach Ans Botha— took the opportunity to put in place a programme that, in 2013 and 2014, began to pay dividends. “After my injury, I slowed down quite a lot, so I tried to get the fundamentals right,” he comments.

It wasn’t just physically that Van Niekerk felt the benefits, as the time spent in rehabilitation allowed him to reflect on his priorities in life.

“I was questioning myself a lot— but it ended up being a very good thing,” he says with a smile.

In 2014, he made a strong comeback: He set a South African record (44.38) at the IAAF Diamond League meeting in New York— one of three occasions on which he broke the 45-second barrier in the

calendar year. There followed a brace of silver medals, at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow and the African Championships in Marrakech, Morocco.

This year has been his most successful season yet. IAAF Diamond League victories over 400m followed in New York, Paris and London, including a short-lived African record of 43.96, as well as Van Niekerk’s first-ever sub-20second 200m (19.94 in Lucerne, Switzerland).

The quiet marketing student, who likes nothing more than to relax by playing video games, has emerged as one of the most talented all-round sprinters to grace the sport.

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Fast Company promotion

Fit for royalty Louis X III cognac is delicate, re fined and complex—enjoyed by k ings and connoisseur s

South Africa is one of the fastest growing cognac markets in the world, and the undisputed top of the crop is Louis XIII. Created by the house of Rémy Martin in 1874, Louis XIII embodies the best traditions and taste that the prestigious Cognac region in France has to offer. Fast Company SA had a conversation with Phil Voget, South African marketing manager of the Rémy Cointreau portfolio at Edward Snell & Co.  First off, what ’s t he d iffe re nce betwee n b ra ndy a nd cog nac?

Both cognac and brandy are spirits derived from grapes; however, the end results differ vastly based upon the regional nuances and production processes that the two undergo.

Cognac is an Äppelation d’Órigine Contrôlée (a guarantee of quality), which means it must come from the specific region of Cognac in France and confirm to minimum ageing and quality requirements.

Cognac stems from white grapes that are distilled twice in copper

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“An increasing number of people request it upon their return from Europe. As such, focusing on Africa makes excellent business sense for Louis XIII.”

pot-stills according to the traditional process. The obtained eaux-de-vie are then matured for a minimum of two years in French oak barrels from Limousin or Tronçais for a minimum of two years. Any deviation from these requirements means the spirit is not worthy of being called a cognac, and the quality this guarantees.  How i s cog nac m ade?

Cognac is made by distilling very specific white-grape varietals—of which Ugni blanc is the most wellknown—into eaux-de-vie (“waters of life”). In the case of Louis XIII, only the best eaux-de-vie are selected to be matured in special barrels, called tierçons, for a minimum of 40

scents change to spice notes along with vanilla and honey. When it comes to the actual tasting, I like to recommend starting with one small drop, allowing it to coat the taste buds where it will explode into a burst of fireworks of more than 200 aromas and flavours—which can linger on the palate for up to an hour.

Raise the glass The dazzling hand-crafted Louis XIII decanter was inspired by a humble flask unearthed on a 16th-century French battlefield. No two decanters are exactly alike.

The Louis XIII Spear pipette (above) measures out the perfect quantity of cognac with just the lightest touch.

 Cou ld you pair Lou i s XIII wit h food? If so, wit h what?

Louis XIII is great anytime, but most cognac drinkers prefer to enjoy it after a good meal. As long as the food isn’t too spicy or creamy, you can eat anything before enjoying Louis XIII. In fact, a good meal made from fresh ingredients will likely enhance the flavour of the cognac.  Ré my Coi nt rea u is focu sing on Africa a s t he next big m a rket for cog nac—why i s t h i s so?

years—but some are left to age for up to a century. Since its creation, Louis XIII has had five cellar masters, each carefully nurturing eaux-de-vie for a blend of Louis XIII they will never even live to taste.  Doe s t he cog nac contin ue to ag e in t he bottle?

Unlike red wine, cognac stops ageing once it’s been bottled; if stored correctly, a decanter of cognac will still be enjoyable decades later. Due to this, many wealthy investors have started collecting rare cognacs.  What sets Lou i s XIII a pa r t?

Every bottle of Louis XIII is blended from a selection of 1 200 eaux-de-vie, all aged up to 100 years—meaning that one’s holding a century in a glass!  Lou i s XIII i s often referred to a s t he

King of Cog nac s . U pon what do you ba se t hat state m e nt?

Louis XIII has literally been the drink of kings including King George VI as well as various famous world leaders such as Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle.

Today, Louis XIII is enjoyed by a number of celebrities including Karl Lagerfeld, Jay Z and Usher, to name a few. You’ll find Louis XIII in the best bars and restaurants around the world.  How doe s one properly ta ste Lou i s XIII?

Louis XIII is delicate, refined and complex; at first whiff, you smell a delicate perfume of fresh flowers, and jasmine wafts up from the glass—transforming into prune, fig and nutty flavours like hazelnut.

Just before tasting the cognac, the

Cognac still has a relatively small market share in Africa, but it’s growing quickly as more and more people develop a taste for it. We’ve also realised that an increasing number of people request it upon their return from Europe (where they were first introduced to Louis XIII). As such, focusing on Africa makes excellent business sense for Louis XIII.  Where ca n people find Lou i s XIII in Sout h Africa?

Louis XIII is available in many highend hotels, bars and restaurants.

If you’re looking to purchase a decanter, you’ll find one at Norman Goodfellows stores and Makro Liquor nationwide.

NOVEMBER 2015 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A 41

42 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A NOVEMBER 2015

Secrets of the Most Productive People U LT R A - B U S Y P R O F E S S I O N A L S — I N C L U D I N G O P R A H W I N F R E Y, D J S T E V E A O K I A N D T O P E M P L O Y E E S F R O M G O O G L E A N D M I C R O S O F T— O F F E R T H E B E S T W AY S T O B R E A K T H R O U G H A L L T H E C L U T T E R Illustration by Jamie Cullen

Winfrey juggles an impressive list of endeavours with the help of her deeply trusted team.

Styling: Kelly Hurliman

Not on her OWN

OPRAH WINFREY CEO, OPRAH WINFREY NETWORK

“I only do what I want to do.”

A F T E R R E VA M P I N G H E R O N C E - S T R U G G L I N G T V C H A N N E L , OPRAH WINFREY HAS FIGURED OUT HOW TO MAKE TIME FOR THE PROJECTS SHE CARES ABOUT MOST

By JJ McCorvey

I’ve come to interview the world’s most famous interviewer, and she has already caught me off guard. “So, what’s your intention here with me?” Oprah Winfrey asks, her legs crossed, a serious look on her face. We’re talking in Winfrey’s office at the Los Angeles headquarters of her television channel, the Oprah Winfrey Network (aka OWN), and the flowing white drapes, gilded light fixtures and flocculent, cloud-like sofa make the room feel more like heaven than Hollywood. A floorto-ceiling oak bookshelf behind her immaculately tidy desk is full of intimidating mementos including one of her 18 Emmy awards and a photograph of her with Nelson Mandela.

Photograph by Herring & Herring

Winfrey has invited me to spend some time watching her run her media empire and, so far, my visit has been going well. Despite her massive celebrity (and the fact that she met me just an hour ago), she is warm, huggy and—true to her spiritual-guru persona—immediately invested in teaching me something I can use to improve my life. We have already bonded over Mississippi, where we were both born (“What a wowzer that is for me!” she says). But then she drops this oddly blunt question about my intent, and I’m unexpectedly stumped. Finally, after a bit of rambling, I come up with an answer. “I’m here,” I tell her, “to learn how Oprah gets stuff done.”

“Okay, great!” she replies. “I can help you with that.”

Winfrey is one of the most powerful and influential people in the world, as well as one of the busiest. With a net worth of $3 billion (more than R40 billion), she is one of just two black billionaires in North America (the other is Michael Jordan). Her 25-year run as host and producer of The Oprah Winfrey Show—which, in a brilliant business move, she solely owns through her production company, Harpo Studios—changed the TV business and has left a void since its finale in 2011.

As the chairperson and CEO of OWN, she oversees an expanding channel that’s now available in 82 million homes. Jointly owned by Winfrey and Discovery Communications, OWN has nearly doubled its prime-time

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viewership since it launched four years ago, driven by hits such as the reality show Iyanla: Fix My Life and the Tyler Perry drama The Haves and the Have Nots. OWN has now grown into a cable success story, and the first quarter of 2015 was the network’s most watched yet, with an average of 539 000 prime-time viewers—not too far off from CNN and Comedy Central.

Winfrey is also the founder, publisher and monthly cover subject of O, The Oprah Magazine (which boasts a circulation of 2.5 million), as well as an Oscar-nominated actress (The Color Purple) and film producer (Selma). This October, OWN aired Belief, a seven-part docuseries that explored faith and spirituality, which she executive produced. She is the creator of a hugely influential book club, has nearly 30 million Twitter followers, and in general holds such sway over public sentiment that her influence has a name: The Oprah Effect.

Oprah Winfrey has a lot going on. And, as I discover, she is on the same arduous and perpetual journey as everyone else: trying to find a way to get everything done while maintaining some kind of balance. “I am aware that there is a finite amount of time and energy in every day,” says Winfrey, who’s wearing a breezy cream cardigan with chocolate trim, dangly pearl earrings and a pricey, 18-carat rose-gold Apple Watch. “So what is really important? What do you really want to do?” She leans toward me, stretching an arm across the back of the couch, then whispers, as if confessing a secret: “Now I’m in a position where I only do what I want to do.”

OWN’s headquarters are located in a five-storey contemporary glass office building in West Hollywood.

Spread over four floors, it’s full of luxe touches like walls of moss, exposed grey brick, neon signs projecting Oprahisms (“Look ahead in a new direction”), and huge mounted photos including one of Winfrey interviewing Beyoncé. The building’s second level is occupied by Will Ferrell’s viralclip factory Funny or Die, which can make for some odd encounters: At one point I watched an FoD employee cruise into the parking lot with a car full of piñatas.

Though Winfrey famously ran her talk show and Harpo Studios from Chicago, these days she’s moving her whole operation to LA, making this expansive complex the centre of her empire. By the end of the year, she will have shut down her Chicago studios entirely.

The closing of Harpo is both pragmatic and symbolic, marking a shift in Winfrey’s career and in her lifestyle. “The hardest thing to get accustomed to when I left [my talk show] is that I get to order my own time,” she says. “In Chicago, when it was like, windchill-factor 42 below, sometimes I went from one garage to the next garage and never saw daylight. I had this whole little world that was just my little Harpo world.” But today? “I’m at a point where I am like, ‘Whoa, my God!’ The birds are tweeting, the sun is coming up. I mean, I appreciate every thing. I’m like a person who’s been let out.”

This newfound freedom didn’t happen by accident.

Winfrey has structured OWN so it can run without her

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Winfrey’s World

6

I N S I D E O P R A H ’ S E N D L E S S LY E X PA N D I N G A R R AY O F P R OJ E CT S

4

2

8

CEO Oprah Winfrey hit the media-mogul big time in 2011, when she launched her TV network, OWN—a joint partnership with Discovery Communications that’s now available in 82 million homes.

TV producer How much does Winfrey believe in Belief (1), the seven-night documentary series about faith that premiered on OWN on October 18? She financed the ambitious programme herself, shepherding it through a three-year development process. She is also the executive producer of Oprah’s Master Class, a biographical series that features celebrities recounting life lessons.

programmes, is currently developing two films: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, which will premiere on HBO and is based on the best-selling book, and The Water Man, a sci-fi family drama that will star and be co-produced by David Oyelowo (Selma).

Curator

Movie producer

Nearly 20 years after launching her best-selleranointing book club, Winfrey still makes each selection. Her most recent pick is Cynthia Bond’s Ruby (2), the rights to which have already been snatched up by a movie production company.

Which one? Harpo Films, of course.

Harpo Films, a studio that produces movies and scripted television

Celebrity interviewer Nobody coaxes intimate confessionals quite like Winfrey. With Oprah Prime (3), she steers news makers

A scene in Belief captures the Hindu Holi festival in India.

1

5

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through revealing (and sometimes teary) conversations. Memorable gets include Neil Patrick Harris and his husband, and Lance Armstrong, who for the first time publicly confessed to doping.

inspiration with Super Soul Sunday, in which she often interviews uplifting figures at her home.

comedian’s grandmother, who raised him while running a brothel. She is also set to appear in the OWN drama Queen Sugar, which she is co-producing with Selma director, Ava DuVernay.

Self-help guru

Publisher

Emcee

More than 4 million people across 200 countries have participated in the “Oprah and Deepak 21-Day Meditation Experience”, which offers online audio meditations led by Winfrey and New Age sage Deepak Chopra (4). It’s part of a large e-learning platform that she’s building on Oprah.com. Winfrey also serves up weekly

With her self-branded magazine, O (5), Winfrey has managed to avoid one big issue: who to put on the cover. Every month she herself is the face of the publication, still somehow discovering new poses 15 years after she launched it with Hearst.

Now the US’s 18th biggest magazine, O features a monthly column by Winfrey that was compiled into a book last year.

Actor Having co-starred in The Butler (6), Winfrey will reteam with director Lee Daniels for a Richard Pryor biopic, set to start shooting early next year. Winfrey has been cast as the

She doesn’t just come to your TV; she comes to your town. In 2014, Winfrey brought her “Live your best life” message to eight cities (7), offering presentations from the likes of Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert.

In December, she will take a similar tour to six cities in Australia and New Zealand.

Philanthropist The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls (8), which serves 275

Above: Winfrey chats with Ava DuVernay and David Oyelowo on Oprah Prime.

young women from grades 8 through 12, opened in South Africa in 2007, and graduates have continued to universities such as Stanford, Spelman and Brown. In 2014, Winfrey teamed with Starbucks to create a line of tea blends called Tea­vana Oprah Chai. A portion of the proceeds goes to charities such as the mentoring programme, Girls Inc.

Broadway producer After earning an Oscar nomination for her role in the 1985 film adaptation of Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple, Winfrey helped bring a musical version to the stage a decade ago. This year she will help bring it back to Broadway in a production starring Jennifer Hudson.

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constant oversight, leaving plenty of time to pursue additional projects that she’s passionate about. To make that work, she has installed a pair of trusted long-time employees as co-presidents: Erik Logan, who joined Harpo as an executive vice president in 2008, and Sheri Salata, who started as a marketer at Harpo in 1995 and rose to executive producer of The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2006, which she oversaw until the end of its run. The trio refer to themselves as a “three-legged stool” that supports OWN’s organisation of about 200 employees, with Logan mostly handling business and operations, Salata primarily steering creative, and Winfrey, of course, as the brand. “I try to surround myself with people who really know what they’re doing, and give them the freedom to do it,” Winfrey says.

Salata and Logan, who frequently complete each other’s sentences, oversee a leadership team that includes several other long-time Winfrey veterans, some of whom have worked with her for as much as two decades. Together, they’ve developed a keen sense of how she would likely react to any given issue. “I’m right about 89% of the time,” jokes Salata. “There’s a beautiful sifting and sorting process that happens with people who’ve been around the mission for a really long time.”

Words like mission are common when you talk to Winfrey’s most trusted executives; conversations are full of terms like disciples, sacred, moral compass and spiritual leader. “We work for a person who has a mission on Earth,” says Salata. “It’s a great North Star. Not just because she’s the boss, but because she is the heart and soul, and the spiritual leader of this organisation.” When you work at OWN, Winfrey’s voice isn’t just your product—it’s your guiding spirit. Consequently, signature Oprah queries become part of every aspect of OWN’s process. “What’s your intention?” is one important example, I eventually learn; it turns out that nerve-racking opening challenge wasn’t cooked up especially for me.

The ‘church of Oprah’ has been parodied plenty, but at OWN, it’s a highly effective management tool.

“It’s a mindset,” says Logan.

“When people deeper in the organisation have decisions to make, they can keep that present, because they ultimately know, as it flows up the organisation, that’s how we look at it too.” Winfrey is both the boss and the inspirational figure who leads by example. “What would Oprah do when you’re leading a meeting and you have a difficult person?” asks Salata. “[When] you’re in a deal, coming up with creative? It makes the ‘nos’ really easy. [I] know what Oprah wouldn’t do.” She looks me in the eye. “You do, too,” she says. (I confess: It’s true.) As I summarise all of this in my notes, “WWOD?” The system works out well for Winfrey, who lives about two hours away on a 42-acre Montecito estate and usually spends several days a month in the office. She makes a point to “really, really, really try to avoid meetings”, instead getting detailed summaries emailed to her by her staff. To underscore this point, she tells the story of a phone call she once received from the late Coretta Scott King, who wanted to fly to LA

I look up and see tears streaming down Winfrey’s face. “Would you get me some Kleenex, please?” she yells to her publicist.

48 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A NOVEMBER 2015

to meet with Winfrey to ask for help with a project. “And I go, ‘Mrs King, you should just tell me whatever it is on the phone and save yourself the flight,’ ” Winfrey says. “ ‘Whatever it is, I’m going to be more inclined to do it if you just ask me on the phone. Because if you come all the way here, if I don’t want to do it, I’m still not gonna do it. And then you would have wasted your time, and I’m going to feel bad, and you’re going to feel bad.’ I spent 20 minutes trying to convince her not to come.” She didn’t, “and it’s a good thing,” laughs Winfrey, who ended up granting the favour.

Winfrey may not be a constant presence around OWN, but the input she does provide is crucial. “Her brilliance is in frosting the cake,” says Salata. “Baking it—those are the meetings and all that. We could spend months and months and months [on something], and we come together, lay out our wares and say, ‘Go to town.’ Then she comes with a big bowl of frosting: ‘Not this, that’s not right, more of this.’ And you sit back and go, That’s why she’s Oprah.”

When OWN launched in 2011, it initially seemed like a rare Winfrey stumble, and her approach today seems in many ways shaped by the tumultuous experience of saving her creation. Originally, Winfrey intended OWN to be a destination for the kind of live-your-bestlife self-help content that she assumed her audience wanted. At launch, programming largely consisted of wellness shows—Ask Oprah’s All Stars, In the Bedroom With Dr Laura Berman—and uninspiring syndicated fare (including reruns of Dr Phil, no less). What’s more, none of OWN’s new shows featured its biggest asset: Oprah herself. Due to commitments with her talk show, Winfrey initially wasn’t able to host any new programmes, appearing only occasionally for special events. The Oprah Winfrey Network launched, essentially, without regular on-air contributions from Oprah Winfrey.

At the time, she was still based in Chicago, which also contributed to a lack of day-to-day engagement in moulding the network that bore her name. Early OWN ratings were disappointing, with just an average of 262 000 viewers tuning in during 2011. It turned out even the Winfrey faithful didn’t want quite that much preachy self-help. “My mistake was, I thought I could do that every day, in 24/7 programming,” says Winfrey. “I thought I was going to have people meditating in the morning, yoga classes midday, [spiritual guide] Eckhart Tolle on in the afternoon. I had a vision of what living your best life could look like. The people told me otherwise. I had to redo my vision.”

In 2011, when The Oprah Winfrey Show ended, she was able to focus on OWN. “I need to be there,” she told attendees of a Chicago media conference in June of that year. “I need to be engaged and involved. I need to do the same thing I did on my show every day.” By July she did just that, taking over as CEO and chief creative officer (former CEO Christina Norman had departed in May).

First she had to figure out what audiences

wanted—and find a way to give it to them without compromising her values. “If we made choices based on ratings, I know that we could be a top-10 network and make a lot more money,” says Discovery president and CEO David Zaslav, who created OWN with Winfrey. “But the choices Oprah’s making are purpose-driven.” To find her footing, “she spent more time looking at content and talking to the audience, learning what’s different between the cable business and the syndication business. Every week the network got a little bit better.”

One major turning point came in 2012, when Winfrey approached her friend Tyler Perry, a hugely successful entertainment impresario who’s known for his lowbrow sensibility. Initially, Perry had come to her, offering his services. At that point, Winfrey wasn’t interested. “Watching how difficult it was for her, I said, ‘You know, I can help you out,’ ” Perry recalls. “Nothing came of that because, you know, Oprah’s very clear on her vision and direction.” Eventually Winfrey changed her mind, and Perry was happy to get involved. “How do you say no to Oprah?”

According to Perry, Winfrey had faith that he could please his fans without straying too far outside her mission. “There was no ‘change this, do this, choose this’,” Perry says. “[It was,] ‘I’m gonna sit back and trust you. You know your audience like none other that I know.’ ” She was right.

Today, Perry’s OWN projects include the megahit soap operas If Loving You Is Wrong and The Haves and the Have Nots, which are currently the network’s two top-rated shows. Thanks to Perry, earlier this year OWN became the No. 1 cable network among women on Tuesday nights, when The Haves and the Have Nots airs, and the No. 1 network overall among African-American women.

Perry is quick to point out that OWN’s turnaround was under way before he arrived. Winfrey had stepped back in front of the camera with a weekly celebrity interview show (guests have included Steven Spielberg and Pharrell Williams), and she had introduced more crowdpleasing programming to replace some of the self-help. Thanks in part to Winfrey’s greater involvement, the network had also been able to negotiate more favourable contracts with cable providers, significantly increasing revenue.

But Perry’s shows established the kind of ‘destination viewing’ that most networks dream of, and have also helped lure advertisers.

According to research firm SNL Kagan, OWN netted $125 million (R1.68 billion) in ad revenue last year—nearly double its first year on the air. Now OWN is adding more scripted series including more serious fare like the miniseries Tulsa, starring Academy Award winner Octavia Spencer and set amid the infamous 1921 Oklahoma race riot; and the drama Queen Sugar, which is being written by Selma director Ava DuVernay and is slated to co-star Winfrey herself.

With OWN delivering both ratings and earnings—the network became profitable in 2013—it seems Winfrey can afford to be less hands-on than when she took control as CEO. “The first night after The Haves and the Have Nots, [ratings] were at such a high number that I gave a sigh of relief,” she says. “That allowed a lot of the pressure to come off, you know? That gave us some breathing room.” Later, Winfrey lights up when I ask her about her vacation schedule: “This is the first year I’ve actually said, ‘Okay, from these days to these days, I’m not going to be checking into the office.’ ”

How She Does It T HE TOOLS, T RI CKS AND T RU TH S TH AT HELP OPRAH GET EVERYTHING DONE

Sleep schedule “I function very well on five and a half hours of sleep. Anything less than that, I notice a lack of focus, a listlessness, a waning energy, and not-assharp thinking. If I do two or three days of that in a row, I’m no good. I’m literally just sitting at my desk and I can’t remember where I put anything.”

deadline. And then I’ll change that deadline when that deadline shows up [laughs]. ‘Okay, by 3, I’m going to make that call.’ Four o’clock comes around—‘Okay okay, by 5 today. Oh, everybody’s left New York! Can’t make that call!’ So now I sit and ask myself, ‘What’s the worst that’s going to happen here, and why do I fear the confrontation?’ ”

Morning routine

Key tools

“My body wakes up between 07h16 and 07h23, like clockwork. If I make it to 07h23, it’s like, ‘Wooo!’

I don’t use alarm clocks; they make me agitated.

Everything begins and ends with stillness: a conscious awareness of my presence within the greater presence of all, whether I’m paying attention to the way the sun’s rising, or whether it’s misty out in the morning on the trees. When I wake up now I have the privilege of listening to real twitter.”

“I have an iPad Mini and I do everything from there.

I haven’t used a computer in probably three years.

I’ve got every kind of app that’s supposed to help you keep up, but that means you have to check that thing every day! No. I don’t do to-do lists. It’s all right here [pointing to her head]. I have a wonderful chief of staff who, every night, sends me my itinerary for the next day. I look at that, put it in my head, and that’s it.”

Go-to motivator Strategy to beat procrastination “I procrastinate with confrontational things and uncomfortable conversations. I’ll give myself a

“I have a box of quotes which says ‘365 Truths’, and just this morning I pulled out about three.

When I’m standing in the kitchen and waiting on my tea to brew, I’ll read one for every minute it takes to finish brewing. Everything from Gandhi to Thoreau.”

Coping tactic “I close the door, wherever I am—at my old office in Chicago, I’d literally go in the closet—and just sit and breathe.”

OWN’s turnaround may have something to do with a concept that Winfrey considers one of her big productivity secrets: being “fully present”. “I have learnt that your full-on attention for any activity you

NOVEMBER 2015 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A 49

choose to experience comes with a level of intensity and truth,” she says. “It’s about living a present life, moment to moment—not worrying about what’s going to happen at 3 o’clock and what’s going to happen at 7 o’clock.” In other words: focus. “That whole thing about multitasking? That’s a joke for me. When I try to do that, I don’t do anything well.”

Being fully present is something she’s long cultivated, going back to when she would do interviews for The Oprah Winfrey Show.

Sometimes the technique can be too effective, especially when she’s conducting emotional interviews. “I am listening as hard as they’re talking and taking on the energy of whatever is going on in that moment,” she says. “I had to learn how to be present but not take it all in. Because at the end of the day, I’d just be messed up.”

DuVernay, who directed Winfrey in Selma and has come to think of her as a “big sister”, remembers when, on her very first day on set in character, Winfrey got the news that her close friend and mentor Maya Angelou had died. “She’s getting hair and makeup,” DuVernay recalls, “and Maya’s passing is reported.

It was a mournful moment, [but] it was about finishing her business—it was about her work as an artist and an actress.”

Director Lee Daniels, who worked with Winfrey when she executive-produced his film Precious and co-starred in The Butler, had a similar experience. “She stopped everything [to work on the movie],” he says. “She disconnected from the business world and her company that she was running. She didn’t come with a posse.

She was committed to the character, and she was committed to the work.”

The lessons Winfrey seems to have internalised from the OWN turnaround—being in the moment and aware, modifying your vision in service of your overall goal, establishing a trusted team you can delegate to—have helped her figure out what’s important.

To friends and co-workers, Winfrey can come off as almost superhuman. At the same time, one key source of her appeal is how she still remains so humble and in touch with her vulnerability.

“Most people think the way I did: that Oprah is Oprah and she’s perfect and has all the answers,” says Daniels. “But what makes her spectacular to me is she’s aware that she doesn’t have all the answers. She’s in search of them, in a space of humility.”

Some of OWN’s content is filmed on a large soundstage located behind its headquarters. The day after our interview in her office, Winfrey is perched on a stool in Studio 7, sipping sparkling water from a can with a straw as dozens of assistants, makeup artists, cameramen, sound engineers and lighting specialists swarm around her. She’s here to shoot promos for Belief, the documentary series that she and long-time collaborator Jon Sinclair, with Brooklyn-based Part2 Pictures, produced for her network. In typically efficient fashion, Winfrey is dressed for the camera from the waist up—with gold bangles and perfectly primped curls— and for comfort below, yoga pants and leather sneakers.

Eventually a short and very authoritative man yells for quiet on the set, and Winfrey begins recording the spots. Salata prompts her with a series of questions about her spiritual beliefs.

“I remember praying on my knees the very first night I had been removed from my grandmother,” says Winfrey, who was sent to live with her mother in Milwaukee at the age of 6. “My belief and understanding that there was a force—a presence, a power, a divine entity, a being, that loved me, and the very idea of being

50 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A NOVEMBER 2015

loved into being—is what has kept me grounded, what has kept me centred, what has kept me strong.” There’s near-total silence as Salata, sniffling, moves on to the next question.

Belief traces a range of moving stories about people exploring their spirituality or looking for purpose, from a former pro skateboarder on a pilgrimage to Mecca to an atheist who finds meaning by scaling mountains without ropes or a harness.

“I welcome people in all of their beliefs that allow them to aspire to the best of their humanness,” Winfrey says. “What really mattered to me about creating a network was having a platform where I could connect ideas that let people see the best of themselves through the lives of other people.”

At one point, I share with Winfrey that there’s a story in Belief I find particularly gripping, about a Christian couple named Ian and Larissa. Ten months into their relationship, Ian suffers a traumatic brain injury that renders him barely able to move or speak. Through their faith, they’re able to stay together and get married. I talk about how I identified with the couple’s ability to find meaning in tragedy, and of the similar journey that began for me after the recent loss of three close family members within a 10-month span. As I finish telling Winfrey what their story meant to me, I look up and see tears streaming down her face, threatening to ruin her carefully traced eyeliner. “Would you get me some Kleenex, please, so I don’t go ugly-cry on JJ here?” she yells to her publicist, then turns back to me. “Weren’t you reeling, though? Weren’t you reeling?” Then she tells me she wants to talk off-the-record, and offers some unprompted insight and advice.

What she shares is heartfelt, genuine and appreciated.

Winfrey financed Belief on her own, and it has been quite a project, involving three years of production, hundreds of hours of footage, and thousands of miles travelled by her crew around the globe. “We cast it, sent people all over the world to tell their stories, and have been in the process of refining in order to create this mosaic that makes sense to the viewer,” she says. When Winfrey talks about focusing on the work she cares most about, this is the sort of thing she has in mind. In fact, she says, this is why she wanted to start OWN in the first place. Though the network’s more conventional offerings continue to rake in the ratings, this is what really drives her. She’s giving people what they want in order to support the kind of programming she feels they need.

In her office, Winfrey keeps a large charcoal drawing titled Having by the artist Whitfield Lovell, which depicts two AfricanAmerican women, one standing and the other sitting, wearing what appears to be simple, early-1900s-era garb. Winfrey doesn’t say why she’s drawn to it, though she has displayed it—both here and before that in Chicago—for at least a decade. But it’s easy to imagine this image of black women in a very different time keeps her somehow grounded.

“Through the grace of a force I call God,” Winfrey says, “I have been privileged to live this exquisitely inspired life. Daily, it continues to astound me that I’ve come from where I come from, and I am where I am. I feel that my role here on Earth is to inspire people, and to get them to look at themselves. My genuine wish is to do better and be better to everybody. That’s not just some kind of talk for me. That’s who I am.” jmccorvey@fastcompany.com

So pleaSe, help uS to keep giving SiCk Children the mediCal Care they need. visit: www.childrenshospitaltrust.org.za or call +27 21 686 7860 to become a supporter.

Fundraising for the red Cross War memorial Children’s hospital and Child healthcare. the Children’s hospital trust is an independent charity (pBo no. 930 004 493) and works in partnership with the Western Cape government: health, who finances the running costs of the hospital.

Go-to motivator “I get out of the building and go for a walk and look at the trees. Time to think is the scarcest resource in life. I use my drive to and from work to think, but it’s never quite enough. For me, going for a walk and being in fresh air is almost a form of meditation.”

Meeting master Twohill has as many as 20 a day—and makes them all count.

Email pet peeve “I still believe the best form of communication is talking. I know this is very antiquated. The most common email people get from me is two words: ‘Call me’.”

Approach to prioritising “Every morning, I look through all my emails and star the ones that I want to have cleared by the end of the day. I have made peace with myself that I may not get back to all the rest. You get older and wiser and realise you can’t do it all. You can’t even begin to do it all. You have to be realistic.”

Meeting strategy LORRAINE TWOHILL SENIOR VP OF GLOBAL MARKETING, GOOGLE

“ Time

to think is the scarcest resource . ”

“Google is a very fast-paced place,” says Lorraine Twohill, who oversees product launches and ad strategies for all its many projects. “It’s never got boring, but you also have to be super organised.” A 12-year Google veteran, Twohill is intimately familiar with the company’s productivity tools. But she’s also fond of a more natural sort of Google resource.

52 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A NOVEMBER 2015

“I have between 17 and 20 meetings in a day. I’ll do stand-up meetings, walking one-on-ones. In my role, a lot of people want to run stuff by me, and I don’t want to be the bottleneck. I’m obsessive about making meetings highly productive.”

Decompression method “I go to SoulCycle [US indoor-cycling studio brand] at 5:30 p.m. on Friday. It’s a cleansing ritual.

It makes me feel like I have earned my glass of wine.

And when I walk into my home, I’m done. The kids take over, giving you hugs and telling you about their day. Kids are the best way of balancing your life.”—As told to Elizabeth Segran

Photograph by Amy Harrity

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The point-of-sale is designed for businesses that want to accept card payments quickly and simply. A business only requires a device and an Internet connection. SMEs no longer need to go through a lengthy application process as well as acquire complicated equipment, installation and training to manage payments and point-of-sale.

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Easy access to payment solutions

is but one of the problems plaguing SMEs. Everyone has seen incredible consumer-focused products built with truly customer-centric experiences, with design at the centre of it all. One cannot say the same for products typically offered to SMEs. Looking specifically at South Africa and Africa at large, you see an underserved SME market in terms of access to quality products and support. The expectation tends to be that because SMEs are small, they will settle for lower quality products and sub-standard support.

SME owners work hard! They live and breathe their customers’ problems. In order to do this, they need to be equipped with reliable tools at their fingertips to fulfil their day-to-day activities efficiently, so they can spend more time making their business better.

Yoco is an SME-first venture.

Every touchpoint of the product is built around an intended customer experience for the business owner and staff. A central focus is testing and rigorous simulation to remove all the friction from that experience.

Payment acceptance is a common problem among SMEs, but it is the tip of the iceberg when one sees how much time and resources a small business owner spends on mechanical, administrative tasks that have very little pay-off.

By simplifying these day-to-day activities, Yoco brings business owners closer to doing what they were meant to do: delivering great products and delighting their customers.

SME owners need to be equipped with reliable tools to fulfil their dayto-day activities efficiently, so they can spend more time making their business better.

JULIE LARSON-GREEN CHIEF EXPERIENCE OFFICER, MICROSOFT

“ Being

lazy makes me more efficient . ”

Procrastination as a productivity tool? Julie Larson-Green’s job is to help people work smarter—but when it comes to her own day, she has a somewhat counterintuitive approach. A 22-year Microsoft veteran, Larson-Green is responsible for the overarching experience of getting stuff done with Office and other tools on PCs, phones, wearables and tablets. “We want to help you manage your scarce resource of time,” she says. Here’s how she does that herself.

Office worker Larson-Green guides how users interact with Microsoft’s products.

Strategy to beat procrastination “I’m a huge procrastinator and a fairly lazy person.

Being lazy makes me more efficient, because I try to find ways that I can do the best work in the least amount of time. I also know that I need pressure to perform, and procrastination is one of the levers for creating that pressure.”

Time-management system “I keep a lot in my head: people I need to talk to, projects I’m working on.

I usually have a running tally of things I need to get done. But I also keep a lot in Outlook. Unread mail is my to-do list.”

Media matters “I spend some time before I get out of bed looking at Twitter and Facebook, looking at headlines about Microsoft. That doesn’t always sound like the most productive thing—it sounds like leisure reading. But it often comes out in things later: ‘Oh, I read this article about that—here’s something to think about.’ ”

A quiet start “I need thinking time, so I carve out a few hours, usually in the morning.

I get centred and ready to go.”

Great advice “My parents always focused on making sure you finish what you start, and you do what you say you’re going to do. That was instilled pretty early in my family. My sisters and I are all kind of overachievers, so I think it worked.”—As told to Harry McCracken

54 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A NOVEMBER 2015

Photograph by Clayton Cotterell

Back in the day, alarm clocks didn’t have snooze buttons Nowadays, however, procrastination is just a snooze button away. And for business owners, hitting the snooze button and delaying making a business decision, could mean missing out on the next big opportunity!

We say: don’t snooze. Go out and make it happen!

If you believe that your business could be more successful, contact us and we’ll help you achieve your business goals.

SMS your name and the words Fast Company to 44332.

One of our Entrepreneurial Scouts will then give you a call to discuss how we can help you accelerate your business’ success.

STEVE AOKI DJ, PRODUCER

have to have a business plan on the road . ”

horizontal for a lengthy period of time is an incredibly gratifying experience that most people take for granted.”

“ You

Lying horizontal is a luxury for Steve Aoki. The Grammynominated DJ and producer has a relentless global schedule that finds him spinning records in places like Shanghai and Oslo, along with ongoing residencies in Ibiza and Las Vegas. He also puts out albums, including the recent Neon Future Odyssey (which collects his previous Neon Future I and II releases), and runs the record label and clothing brand Dim Mak. Fuelled by catnaps and meditation, Aoki has managed to grow his empire while staying connected to his fans.

Biggest productivity issue “Being on the road. It’s easy to treat that life as a vacation. Since I’m the guy who makes the parties turn up, I have the image of, ‘Let’s have fun and have no rules.’ But it’s a job. You have to have a business plan on the road. That’s why I don’t drink or do drugs, and I work out on the regular. I have a clear head, which is incredibly important to be able to balance and manage so many businesses.”

Area for improvement “I have a tendency to be late. When I’m on the road, my tour manager is really good at getting me on time to places. My team at home is not that good at getting me on time to places. That’s one thing I’m battling. It’s a firstworld problem.”

Great advice “In an economics class at varsity, there were two things the professor said.

One, most businesses don’t survive the first year.

And two, who you hire is going to be the success or failure of your business.

Luckily for me, I’ve met so many different people from so many different avenues that it’s helped me find a more colourful team and a team that’s going to be the most efficient.”

Coping tactic “Meditation is a key component in my daily cycle now. I went through a major physical change in my life in June when I had vocal-cord surgery. I used that time to reset and think about a different set of rules to be more efficient and productive.”

—As told to KC Ifeanyi

Sleep schedule

Grooming: Homa Safar for Exclusive Artists Management using MAC Cosmetics and Oribe Hair Care

“I don’t require too much.

I’ve done three-week tours when I survived on naps and never had a long sleep. That long sleep— I feel lucky when I get it.

Having your head

56 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A NOVEMBER 2015

Photograph by Jessica Haye & Clark Hsiao

Highflier Aoki heads to his private plane at Las Vegas’s McCarran airport.

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THE SECRETS OF

P EOP L E W HO H AV E A CHIE V E D IN B OX Z E R O THEY FILE EVERYTHING “Archive anything that’s an FYI or that maybe you need to refer to again,” says Mark Hurst, author of Bit Literacy: Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload. “Then move the rest of the items, which should be action items, to a to-do list and remove them from the inbox.”

THEY UNSUBSCRIBE A N D F I LT E R Ditch recurring emails you rarely look at, like social media notifications. Set filters for the ones you do care about.

“Any subscription or mailing list skips my inbox,” says Alexandra Lee from New York– based studio, Crush & Lovely. “On the commute home ... I see if there’s anything relevant.”

THEY ANSWER Q U I C K LY “If I can respond to an email in five minutes or less, I answer it immediately,” says Lee.—Jessica Hullinger

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15 EASY WAYS TO WORK SMARTER

By Stephanie Vozza

2. B E PA RT OF THE 20%

1.

Declutter your desk

Messy workspace:

Tidy workspace:

Creativity may arise from chaos, but a litter-strewn office probably isn’t helping you get stuff done. “Attention is programmed to pick up what’s novel,” says Josh Davis, director of research at the NeuroLeadership Institute and author of Two Awesome Hours. Visible files remind you of unfinished tasks.

An unread book is temptation for procrastination. Even if you don’t think you’re noticing the disorder, it hurts your ability to focus.

People with neat offices are more persistent and less frustrated and weary, according to a recent study in Harvard Business Review, which found that a clean desk helps you stick with a task more than one and a half times longer.

“While it can be comforting to relax in your mess, a disorganised environment can be a real obstacle,” says Grace Chae, a professor at Fox School of Business at Temple University (Pennsylvania) and co-author of the study.

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3. W O R K L E S S

58 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A NOVEMBER 2015

How weekly hours of work impacted factory output

7 500

(OUTPUT)

Think you can get more done by tacking on extra hours? According to a 2014 study by Stanford professor John Pencavel, who examined data from labourers during World War 1, output was proportionate to time worked—up to 49 hours. Beyond that, it rose at a decreasing rate, and those who put in 70 hours had the same productivity as someone who worked 56 hours.

No matter how crazy your days get, make sure you carve out and ruthlessly protect just 90 minutes— 20% of an eighthour day—for the most important tasks. “Even if you squander the remaining 80% of the day, you can still make great progress if you have spent 90 minutes on your goals or priorities,” says North Carolina–based productivity coach Kimberly Medlock.

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Illustrations by Rami Niemi

4. S T O P P H O N I N G IT I N You may believe you’re ignoring your iPhone, but unless it’s fully turned off, it’s a major distraction. In a report published this year in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, researchers from Florida State University found that even if you don’t look at your phone when it buzzes, the sound makes your mind wander.

5. Try this email hack Vodacom subscribers can use this great idea from Alexandra Samuel, author of Work Smarter With Social Media, to avoid getting distracted when waiting for an important message: 1. Register for the Email2SMS service to allow three free SMSes per day from an email account. If your mobile number is 072 123 4567, your address will be 0721234567@voda.co.za.

2. Using that address, set up your email so that it will forward the message from a specific sender to your cellphone via SMS (in Outlook, find “Rules” in the “Tools” task bar).

3. Shut down your inbox while focusing on more pressing tasks, knowing you’ll be alerted via SMS when the important message comes in.

6. Go heavy on HVAs People are more efficient at things that come naturally, while tasks that feel like a struggle are likely to impede progress. If you can, delegate the duties that feel like an effort, and instead focus on “high value activities”. “HVAs are within your mission, leverage your strengths, and create impact or change,” says Hillary Rettig, author of The Seven Secrets of the Prolific: The Definitive Guide to Overcoming Procrastination, Perfectionism, and Writer’s Block. “They also create clarity and open your schedule.” Delegating your non–HVA activities also helps create community. After all, they could very well be someone else’s HVAs.

8. Sleep on the job

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7. M E E T S M A R T E R Three ways to get the most out of your group sessions: 1. Make a plan Many meetings don’t have a particular agenda, but it’s important to know what you want to accomplish going in. “Keep meetings short by limiting the agenda to three items or less,” says Alan Eisner, professor of management at Pace University’s Lubin School of Business. “Afterward, send out minutes using your agenda so everyone knows what to work on.”

2. Banish distractions Put non-agenda thoughts into an “idea parking lot”. “People bring up ideas that are important to them, but not on-topic,” says Cary Greene, co-author of Simple Sabotage: A Modern Field Manual for Detecting & Rooting Out Everyday Behaviors That Undermine Your Workplace.

“Instead of losing them, write them down.” Don’t let the parking lot be a black hole: Assign followup steps right at the end of the meeting.

3. Play musical chairs Walking meetings are gaining popularity, but you can get a similar benefit without hitting the hallway. Set a timer for 30 to 45 minutes.

When it goes off, have everyone get up and move. “You can stand and shake it out a bit as a group, which lightens everyone up,” says workplace psychologist, Karissa Thacker. “Moving regularly is good for us in all kinds of ways, including improving our ability to focus.”

It may be tough to convince your boss, but researchers from the University of Michigan found that taking a daytime nap counteracts impulsive behaviour and boosts tolerance for frustration. The findings also suggest that workplace dozers could be more productive.

9. B E W A R E THESE PRODUCTIVITY KILLERS Identifying distractions is the first step to avoiding them.

Here are the top five workplace attention destroyers, according to a 2015 survey by CareerBuilder: 1. Cellphones/texting 2. Internet 3. Gossip 4. Social media 5. Email

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11. Stay in the slumber “sweet spot ” It’s not surprising that getting more done starts with a good night’s sleep, but it turns out getting too many hours is as bad as too few. Analysing the sleep and work habits of 3 760 people over seven years, researchers at the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health found that under-sleepers and oversleepers were both more likely to take extra sick days.

15

MEN

(DAYS ABSENT)

WOMEN

1 0. M A K E P R I O R I T I SAT I O N A PRIORITY To get more done, be mindful of everyday choices, suggests Lisa Zaslow, founder of the New York– based Gotham Organizers:

1. Follow your brain “We can’t operate at peak performance all day long,” says Zaslow.

“When I’m feeling my best, I concentrate on important activities like writing. When I’m feeling tired and foggy, I do relatively mindless tasks like dealing with routine emails.”

2. Practise strategic procrastination “In order to focus on urgent or meaningful activities, let some other things slide,” she says. For example, open your post just once a week; these days, nothing urgent arrives with a stamp on it. And while some organisers will tell you to touch any piece of paper just once, Zaslow is more forgiving. It’s okay to toss less-pressing work in a pile for later, she says.

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SWEET SPOT!

1 2. S E E K O U T THE SUN

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13. WA N T T O M OT I VAT E PEOPLE? BE HUMAN Energise staff by clearly defining expectations and routinely offering positive feedback. According to a recent study by Gallup, companies that engage their workforce see a 65% decrease in turnover, a 21% bump in productivity, and a 10% increase in customer ratings.

14. Complain But do it the right way. Present your beef with an idea for improvement. “Framing things in terms of solutions lessens the focus on the problem and who may be at fault,” says management professor Russell Johnson, co-author of a study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology. “It evokes pleasant emotions instead of negative ones that cause mental fatigue.”

An office with a view sounds like a recipe for mind wandering.

Actually, access to sunlight boosts productivity. In a study by the California Energy Commission, workers who sat near a window performed better— processing calls 6% to 12% faster and performing 10% to 25% better on tests that involved mental function and memory recall.

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60 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A NOVEMBER 2015

1 5. H I T T H E E L L I P T I C A L Exercise not only improves health, it boosts output. And you don’t have to kill yourself in CrossFit—a jog will do. Researchers from the University of Otago in New Zealand found that a daily 20-minute run helped lab rats complete problem-solving tasks more quickly and efficiently than their non-exercised counterparts.

Fast Company promotion

Simplicity and ease Modern business telephone sys tems are key to operational e f ficiency

There has not been much innovation in telephony since the VoIP revolution, but every telephone service provider still claims to have the best quality at the cheapest rate. With all this competition in the market, what is the real differentiator in today’s highly competitive business telephony environment?

Euphoria Telecom CEO George Golding says a key consideration when choosing a telephony solution is proprietary software that is locally developed. “It allows the vendor to have maximum control over development direction and features.

We developed a number of solutions that wouldn’t necessarily be required in first-world countries. These additions have made our product extremely successful in South Africa.”

In novation He says innovation is the strongest differentiator. “All providers push PBX functionality, but the truth is, PBX functionality is literally a commodity that has been available since the 1970s. It’s not new or innovative. True business telephony innovation lies in three areas: control, integration, and management and cost reporting.”

Cont rol “Use technology to do the work and create beautiful, easy-to-understand user interfaces that empower

customers. Would you use a bank that does not offer Internet banking? Of course not. The reason is, it is disempowering and forces you to rely on outside assistance,” Golding explains.

Additionally, technology must enable businesses to control their telephone system—simply and easily. Management should have the ability to quickly and effectively see cost reporting across the organisation. It empowers businesses to take control of communication costs without a heavy administration burden.

Ma n ag e m e nt re por ti n g Euphoria Telecom offers its customers full control and reporting over their telephone system. An easy-to-use web interface allows them to configure the system to their specific requirement. The automation functionality of the cloud-based system means lower costs and higher efficiencies, while giving business owners direct access and agility to respond to changing demands.

Integ ration a nd a utom ation By automating and also integrating one’s telephone system with a customer relationship management system in the cloud, executives can now have activity tracking combined with call tracking and recording at their fingertips. Enterprise-class business cloud services remove

complexities, automate processes and simplify everything. This allows businesses to focus on their core service offering instead of their IT infrastructure.

“Telephone systems are businesscritical. Euphoria offers a cloudbased telephone management system that will help company executives manage, control and analyse every element of their telephone system with precision.

Euphoria’s cloud VoIP PBX provides all the communication features needed to keep businesses operationally efficient—no matter where or when,” Golding concludes.

“True business telephony innovation lies in three areas: control, integration, and management and cost reporting.”

Connect with Euphoria!

Cape Town: 021 200 0500 Johannesburg: 010 593 4500 Website: www.euphoria.co.za Twitter: @euphoriatelecom Facebook: euphoriatelecom

NOVEMBER 2015 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A 61

Next

Master Class

“Surfers make great ambassadors for the ocean” Wavescape founder Steve Pike’s surf film festival is creating greater awareness of the planet’s most important ecosystem

“With proper stories and documentary techniques coming into play, the old ‘surf porn’ genre is giving way to more cerebral and interesting plots and themes—but nothing beats the incredible close-up shot of a man dwarfed by a huge barrelling wave while the gritty thump of a good soundtrack adds an aural rhythm.” This is why surfing and cinema work so well together, explained Pike in an article for TheCoffeeMag. His annual Wavescape Festival has attracted more than 10 000 visitors and reaches almost 6 million people via print, radio, television and the Web. In 2014, it generated R10 million in media value while the accompanying art exhibition and auction raised over R220 000 for various ocean charities. The festival’s success

62 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A NOVEMBER 2015

from beach culture and entertainment, with an underlying ethos of ocean sustainability and conservation, has provided a firm foundation for future growth.

The 2015 festival will screen surfing, extreme sport and ocean films from around the world in South African cinemas and at an amazing outdoor beach location in Cape Town. Among a number of other activities, there will be an evening of talks by ocean gurus.

In an interview with Fast Company SA, Pike sheds more light on how Wavescape all began and where the festival is heading.

Fast Company: How did you get the idea for Wavescape?

Steve Pike: Wavescape evolved over a period of about five years.

The seed was sown when I was

overseas, living in Hong Kong in the early 1990s, and missing South Africa in general and the great surf in particular. It was the early days of the Internet, and I couldn’t find any websites with surfing information, so I started listing all the surf spots I had frequented in South Africa. The list filled two or three A4 pages. I then wrote a description for each place, and it grew into several thousand words.

Scene and sand

A big attraction each year is the open-air film screening on Clifton 4th Beach.

This surfing content slowly expanded over many years, and included a long dictionary of surf slang I called “Surfrikan”, and a collection of stories and anecdotes.

I had a full-time job as a sub-editor on the South China Morning Post and later The Age in Melbourne, Australia, so this was a hobby and a fun pastime, nothing serious. Eventually, I registered the domain and dabbled in

creating a website, but it was very crude. On my return to South Africa, I worked for a small startup called Dockside Internet, where I further honed my HTML skills with the help of the web development team, and eventually launched Wavescape.co.za in 1998.

The content I’d collected also became a book titled, Surfing in South Africa: Swell, Spots and Surf African Slang

So it all began as a resource for surfing in South Africa?

Yes, plus I intended it to be a creative, quirky expression of the subculture of South African surfing. There was the Surfrikan slang section, a list of spots with whimsical descriptions, surfing doodles and art [Wavescape is the ocean equivalent of ‘landscape’, and has a strong artistic connection], as well as a surf

NOVEMBER 2015 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A 63

report that I would send out to subscribers in text-only format.

It slowly evolved to include surfing news, galleries, videos and a sophisticated marine forecast, as well as live video feeds from beach cams around Cape Town and Durban to which people can subscribe.

Tell us more about the Wavescape Festival.

The festival began in 2004, and includes a surf film component and the art board project, where we get famous artists to decorate specifically shaped surfboards, put them on exhibition and hold a charity auction. I did the first poster design—a ‘surf Kombi’ covered in Ndebele art. We have long since moved on to creations by professionals. Our artwork, for which we take great care to ensure a unique and beautiful theme, has become a key part of our branding over the years. This year, our festival includes a satellite event as part of the Durban International Film Festival [with a show on the beach at the Bay of Plenty, plus indoor screenings]. The Cape Town leg includes the Shortcuts Film Contest with Red Bull Media House [young filmmakers submit their extreme sport films], Wavescape Art Board Project exhibition, Fish Fry sustainable fish braai contest and surf market, Slide Night [10x10–minute talks by ocean experts], and the openair film festival at Clifton 4th Beach, at the Labia Theatre and the Brass Bell restaurant.

Master Class

STEVE PIKE

Tit l e Founder, Wavescape Media

30-SECOND BIO

Next

Any details on the auction?

It takes place on December, 1 this year—the last day of a weeklong exhibition that begins on November, 23. Both the exhibition and auction take place at Tiger’s Milk Restaurant & Bar in

64 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A NOVEMBER 2015

H o m e tow n Lusaka, Zambia B a c kg r o u n d Pike was born to British parents, Audrey and Maurice. His father was a bush pilot, and relocated to work for Lesotho Airways. The family moved again, from Lesotho to the former Transkei, where his father founded Transkei Airways.

Pike attended school in Maseru, Mthatha and Queenstown, and completed a BA (Hons) degree in Journalism and English at Rhodes University.

Ca ree r t ra c k He started out as a sub-editor at Independent Newspapers, before moving to Hong Kong where he became chief copy editor of the South China Morning Post international edition.

After stints at The Age in Melbourne and Dockside Internet in South Africa, Pike founded Wavescape Media: a digital surf media business that includes a website and annual festival.

Favo u rite boo k The Lord of the Rings trilogy U nw i n d i n g He enjoys mountain biking, “in particular going fast downhill.”

And, of course, surfing good waves.

Muizenberg. Our auctioneer for 2015 is comedian Rob van Vuuren, who will include some comedy sketches in his routine. There are eight fish-shaped surfboards on auction, decorated by artists such as Brett Murray, Beezy Bailey, Claire Homewood and Sergio Rinquist, Asha Zero, Jake Aikwood and Sanell Aggenbach.

Beneficiaries of the funds raised at the auction are Shark Spotters, Waves for Change and the NSRI. How popular is the festival?

We get maybe 8 000 people passing through our event, with a big crowd always coming down to Clifton 4th Beach. Last year we had more than 5 000 people on the beach. If the weather is nice, we will get a similar crowd this year. Our Fish Fry event at the Blue Bird Garage Market is always busy and lots of fun, with up to a thousand people passing through during the day, while the movies are often booked out. Slide Night at the Centre for the Book in Cape Town city centre is very popular, and we get a full house for the talks by the ocean gurus.

What do you think has contributed to the success of Wavescape?

We thought that within a few years of forming the festival we would’ve exhausted the surf-movie genre, but we’ve grown from year to year, with an increasing sense of the importance of ocean conservation and seafood sustainability. Surfing movies are just getting better and better due to evolving technology such as drones, the GoPro and ultra-HD cameras. Initially, we wanted to recreate that community feeling of going down to the Scout Hall or lifeguard club to watch movies on a Saturday.

It was meant to be a celebration of beach culture, with its quirky

and uniquely South African style.

The festival grew to include events such as Fish Fry and Slide Night, which focus on ocean sustainability and marine conservation as we began to realise the penetrative power we had with not just surfers but a wider coastal community. We also realised we could start having a positive impact on saving our oceans. As surfers, we understand the critical role that the oceans play, and surfers make great ambassadors for the ocean.

This has inherent value for our partners Pick n Pay [its sustainability arm], Save Our

“I intended [Wavescape] to be a creative, quirky expression of the subculture of South African surfing.”

Seas Foundation, WWF-SASSI and Jack Black Beer.

Have you yourself experienced anything worthy of a surf movie?

It was quite a challenge surfing the 15-foot Crayfish Factory [near Kommetjie] and overcoming panic to turn emotion into a positive attitude to actually ride some of the waves rather than merely scratching around, dodging the sets. But perhaps the most daunting was surviving a dismasting in the middle of the Atlantic on our return leg of the Cape to Rio yacht race. We lost all communications and had to find a way of getting back to Rio. It was character-building!

Next

Are you involved in any other endeavours?

I’m working with the CSIR [Council for Scientific and Industrial Research] on an inshore forecasting system.

The idea is to prevent sea accidents such as the recent tragedy off the coast of Hangklip [11 people were killed when they were forced to abandon their fishing trawler that had taken on water]. This is an opportunity for a company to be associated as a key innovator in a unique area of social responsibility. I’m also working on launching a range of Wavescape Wines with winemaker Jeremy Walker from Grangehurst. The red will be called “Red Barrel”, and the white one “White Curl”.

Your plans for the future?

Find a way to work less and play more!

That’s kiff, bru!

SOUTH AFRICAN SURFERS TALK FUNNY— MOSTLY BECAUSE THEY’RE SURFERS, BUT ALSO BECAUSE THEY’RE SOUTH AFRICAN. HERE ARE A FEW SURFRIKAN PHRASES AS COMPILED BY STEVE PIKE

ballie (bul-lee, with the u as in ‘up’)

Parents, old people. “My ballies won’t let me go to the jol*.”

blind

Bummer, nasty. If you pull a blind action on your bru*, you have done something nasty.

“Bru, that’s blind—you scaled* my Britney Spears poster!”

bru (broo), my bru (may broo)

Brother, friend, mate, buddy.

An all-purpose South African

Cartoon by Andy Mason

word. Variations include brah, brahdeen, boet and bro. From the Afrikaans for brother (broer), pronounced ‘broor’ with a roll of each ‘r’. (Lazy English speakers say it without the roll.) Spelled “bru” by most South Africa surfers.

jol, like the word kiff*, can be used in any context. “I am going to a jol (party).” “I am having a jol (good time)!”

“That spectacular wipeout at Supertubes was a jol (rush)!”

stokerfade

kiff, kief, keef

A cheap red wine called Tassenberg. You never know what you’re going to get when you buy a bottle. It could be a good wine, or it could be plonk. Only the label is constant. For many, Tassies evokes memories of beach parties and a sandcaked babalas.

Idiot, twit, dolt. “Yissus*, you pulled a blind* move klapping Clayton with the Tassies* bottle. You are such a chop!”

Nice. Like the allencompassing word “nice” used by semi-literate English speakers the world over, kiff can be used in any context and is a convenient way to express a limited vocabulary. “I just had such a kiff wave.” Can be pronounced ‘keef’ (drawing out the syllable).

graze

scale

charf

1. Flirt, court, seduce.

2. Pretend, lie.

chop

Eat. There is a strong agricultural tradition in South Africa. This may explain graze, which means “to eat”, as in “What are you grazing?”

“What’s for graze, dad?” Be warned: Don’t mention sheep.

That joke refers to another southern hemisphere country.

hundreds

Good, excellent, enjoyable. “I skeem* the jol* was kiff*. What do you skeem?” “Ja, bru, it was hundreds.

jol (jorl)

Party, have fun. The word

Steal. A person who is “scaly” is a scumbag or a sleazy type.

sif

Disgusting. A shortened version of syphilis, “sif” doesn’t necessarily refer to disease, but could refer to a gangrenous coral wound, an overused long-drop toilet, or a car accident.

skeem

Think, reckon. “You skeem?”

(You think so?) “What do you skeem?” (What do you think?) “I’m skeeming we surf Seal Point.”

Surf trip that ends with no surf. The amped excitement and stoke fades when a long drive reveals no surf.

Tassies (tuss-ees)

tune grief

To irritate someone.

Whatever you do, if a big oke in a bar pesters you with macho stories of how he tore off a kudu’s head with his bare hands, don’t show your irritation by saying, “Are you tuning me grief?”

Your relatives will be in grief, indeed. And you won’t be around to tune them anything.

yissus, yussus (yuh-siss)

Expression of surprise, fear or shock. From the Afrikaans pronunciation of “Jesus”.

The same as “My God!” or “Oh Lord!”.

NOVEMBER 2015 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A 65

WHAT MAKES

UBER RUN

The transportation service has become a global brand, an economic force and a cultural lightning rod. Here’s how and why the architect of all this disruption, CEO Travis Kalanick, plans to continue confounding expectations

By Max Chafkin

Illustration by Tavis Coburn

66 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A NOVEMBER 2015

GUTTER CREDIT TK

Art credit teekay

NOVEMBER 2015 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A 67

Jordan Kretchmer remembers what Travis Kalanick was like before Uber was Uber.

68 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A NOVEMBER 2015

GUTTER CREDIT TK

Kretchmer was a 25-year-old college dropout with a lot of ideas, and Kalanick had even more. He was in his early 30s, an engineer who talked like a sales guy, smart as hell and high on life. He wore a cowboy hat and referred to himself as the Wolf, after the cold-blooded, coolly rational fixer played by Harvey Keitel in Pulp Fiction. He was tireless— always on the move, always thirsty.

They met in 2009 at the South by Southwest festival and bonded at an all-night ‘jam session’ about the future of the Internet.

That night in Austin was a sort of satellite version of the round-the-clock ideas salon Kalanick routinely held at his three-bedroom house in San Francisco. These gatherings were full of young people like Kretchmer who had come up through the wreckage of the first dot-com bust, before jobs in tech were thrown around like free T-shirts at a launch party, before venture capitalists regularly talked about startups as if they were mythical creatures. They were entrepreneurs who knew about hustle, who saw opportunity even in the muck of a desperate economy, and were going to take advantage. This is what drew them to Kalanick, and vice versa.

Art credit teekay

T R AV I S KALANICK 30 000: New Yorkers who sign up for Uber each week.

“If you can predict where demand is going to be and you can get the supply to match to that,” ­K alanick says, “that’s a big freakin’ deal.”

Grooming: Amy Lawson at Artist Untied

GUTTER CREDIT TK

CEO

Art credit teekay Photographs by ioulex

NOVEMBER 2015 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A 69

70 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A NOVEMBER 2015

GUTTER CREDIT TK

AUSTIN GEIDT

Although Kalanick had been a startup guy since high school, he was Head of global a grinder, not a mogul. He had made expansion enough on his last one, RedSwoosh, and process to buy a house and do a bit of angel 59: Number of investing. Uber, the on-demand countries where transportation app that he co-founded Uber operates. “ ‘Oh, it won’t work with Garrett Camp in 2009, was still here,’ ” Geidt recalls more or less a toy, a personal limo sceptics saying. service for the founders and their “We were just like, friends in San Francisco. When Camp, ‘All right, let’s hit the gas.’ ” who’d recently bought back his old company, StumbleUpon, asked Kalanick to run Uber full-time, Kalanick said no. Uber was “supercrazy freakin’ small,” Kalanick tells me when we meet in July, the first time he had given an in-depth interview this year. “I was not ready to get in the game and give 100% or 150%,” he says.

Back in those days, if Kalanick liked you, he’d invest in your company, and if he thought your idea was big enough, he’d show up at your office one or two days a week and work for free. Kretchmer hadn’t screwed up the courage to pitch Kalanick that night in Austin, but he met Kalanick later that year to pitch him ideas. The one he was most excited about was called Tweetbios, and it basically gave Twitter users an expanded homepage.

“That’s a small-time idea,” Kalanick told Kretchmer. “Small-time, man.”

Kretchmer pushed back. “It pissed me off,” he recalls. “I had users. It was growing. And I’d built the damn thing.”

Kretchmer stuck around the Jam Pad, as Kalanick and his crew referred to his home, where sometimes as many as 15 entrepreneurs at a time would debate business ideas as well as drink his beer, eat his food, play his Nintendo Wii, and stay the night if they wanted. Kretchmer spent the next three hours arguing with Kalanick until he’d settled on a Travis-approved big idea. Kretchmer went to work on the ­product, social media software for publishers and brands, and when Kalanick thought it had progressed enough, he made 45 introductions to other angel investors in less than a week and agreed to invest in the company himself. The startup, now called Livefyre, has customers such as News Corp and Coca-Cola and has raised $72 million (about R968 million) in funding. “I got every ounce of value out of that relationship,” Kretchmer says.

I heard something similar from Ade Olonoh, the founder of another Kalanick portfolio company. “I’d send Travis an email asking, ‘What do you think about this job

“If you looked at everything he’s done,” says a friend, “I don’t think there was another human who was more destined to build Uber.”

posting?’ and he’d send a page or two back, completely rewritten,” Olonoh says. “I know him as somebody r­ eally smart and driven and hungry, and also very generous.”

When I first started hearing these stories, I was surprised, mostly because they seemed at odds with the portrait of Travis Kalanick that has emerged since Uber launched in 2010. Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley investor, has called Uber “the most ethically challenged company in Silicon Valley”, and the journalist and entrepreneur John Battelle has suggested everyone in the tech industry is “worried about the sheer expression of capitalistic force that the company represents.” Those, it turns out, are some of the more circumspect critiques. The CEO of Uber has been routinely described as a callous and ruthless capitalist, the kind of guy who jacks up prices during natural disasters, who is so fond of brotastic aphorisms that Late Night’s Seth Meyers once joked, “Are you a man, or did they just spray Axe body spray into a suit until it became sentient?”

“The caricature you see of Travis does not come from a place that’s false,” Kretchmer says of his longtime friend. “He is an incredibly aggressive person.” But, he adds, as if to reconcile the caricature with the man, “he’s building one of the most important companies of all time.”

About that last point there is little room for debate. In five years, Uber, which dispatches low-cost taxis and limousines operated by independent drivers, is likely the fastest growing startup in history. It has more than 1 million active d ­ rivers—meaning they did at least one trip in the past week—operating in 330 cities (as of mid-August) and a valuation of $51 billion (R685.6 billion), which is roughly equivalent to the market capitalisation of General Motors.

It is a global phenomenon that is redesigning urbanites’ relationship with the world around them, transforming their smartphones into control pads for their harried lives. Uber—the first company since Google with a service so popular that its name is in regular use as both a noun and a verb—has spawned an entire category of business known as the one-tap economy: Millions of people now routinely open an app to enlist a distributed workforce to deliver groceries, hot meals and their clean laundry on demand.

But no other one-tap-economy company has changed society like Uber has. The availability of cheap and reliable transportation has helped spur a real estate surge in San Francisco and a nightlife boom in downtown Los Angeles while also (at least according to some studies) reducing drunk driving. Uber’s classification of its drivers as independent contractors has sparked a national conversation about the changing nature of employment and has made Uber a litmus test on jobs for the 2016 US presidential candidates. Elsewhere, Uber has been seen as a stand-in for the excesses of global capitalism, prompting violent protests in Paris and Mexico City.

All this influence has come at the price of Kalanick’s reputation. The 39-year-old has been presented in an almost cartoonish light, coming off as either a Randian Superman, a Snidely Whiplash–style mustache-twirling villain, or both. And yet Kalanick has wooed some of the most august financiers in the world to give him, essentially, a blank cheque. Key staff members from some of the world’s best-run organisations—including Facebook’s head of security, US President Barack Obama’s campaign manager, and a good-size chunk of Carnegie Mellon University’s driverless-car research division—have gone to work for him.

I spent five months interviewing dozens of Kalanick’s current and former ­associates— investors, employees, co-workers, friends—and, of course, the man himself, trying to square the Kalanick they know with the avatar for Silicon Valley disruption. Uber and Kalanick’s next-step plans are shocking to contemplate: conquering the world’s biggest and toughest-to-crack markets in India and China; transforming Uber from “everyone’s private driver” into a carpooling service; and then further reinventing itself—and how the world’s cities operate—by introducing a fleet of autonomous vehicles. If you want to get your head around Uber’s wild growth, and its even wilder potential, you have to get to know its wildly ambitious, ever-restless CEO.

If Uber is the apotheosis of the current technology boom, its roots date to the first dot-com frenzy, when Kalanick was an ambitious 21-year-old computer engineering student at the University of California, Los Angeles. In 1998, with a few months to go before graduation, he dropped out to join the founding team of Scour, a proto-Napster. Kalanick ran product, and

UBER’S BIG BET

#

1

UBERPOOL This service lets riders heading the same way share an Uber and save. CEO Travis Kalanick believes that UberPool “has the potential to be as affordable as taking a subway, or a bus, or other means of transportation.”

7. 5 million Estimate of kilometres saved in June 2015 from UberPool rides in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin and Paris

820 Metric tonnes of carbon dioxide saved from those shared rides

1.95 million Number of cars in New York

50 Percentage of New York taxi trips that would be saved if users were willing to wait up to five minutes to be paired with another passenger

365 000 Number of UberPool cars that could serve the same number of people and trips that those 1.95 million private cars do

Sources: Uber; “Quantifying the benefits of vehicle pooling with shareability networks,” Senseable City Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, September 2014; US Energy Information Administration

NOVEMBER 2015 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A 71

“What Travis infuses in the company is that the best ideas win,” says Uber’s CTO. “You’re supposed to only be loyal to the idea.”

because he was also the least geeky member of the group, his friends also put him in charge of business development and marketing.

Kalanick, a natural salesman who sold knives door-todoor as a high school student one school holiday, helped bring in investment from Michael Ovitz, co-founder of the talent agency CAA, and Ron Burkle, the supermarket magnate. Ovitz, among the most feared Hollywood players at the time, gave Kalanick a crash course in hardball business tactics. Not only did he insist on an onerous 51% share of the startup for $4 million (more than R50 million) from him and Burkle, he sued Scour as a negotiating tactic when the company looked for other investors. “In some way, LA respects the young guy that’s out there just trying to make it happen—but in some ways, they disrespect that too,” says Kalanick, who’d grown up middle-class in LA’s San Fernando Valley, close enough to people like Ovitz to want what they had and also to hate them for it. “[Kalanick] was seen as a prodigy,” says Angelo Sotira, another young entrepreneur who’d sold a company, D­Music, to Ovitz, and who became close with Kalanick. But being under Ovitz’s wing exposed Kalanick to the worst of late-1990s management wisdom. Executives at Ovitz’s companies would routinely hand out copies of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, using the book and others like it to teach lessons. If people struggled, personally or professionally, Sotira recalls, they were told it was because “you’re a Peter and not a Howard”—that is to say,

a weak-willed conformist, like Peter Keating in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, rather than its individualistic hero, Howard Roark. “You can imagine how fucked up that is,” says Sotira. “When you’re really young, you think that’s gospel.”

Scour grew to have millions of users largely because it offered movies as well as music, including bootleg copies of thencurrent theatrical releases Gladiator and The Perfect Storm. Inevitably, the company was served with a lawsuit from nearly every major record company and movie studio. The damages—$100 000 (about R1.3 million) per file—added up to as much as $250 billion (R3.3 trillion). It was, as Kalanick has noted, roughly equivalent to the gross domestic product of Sweden.

The lawsuit put Ovitz in an awkward position as the backer of the very thing that many in his professional circle were trying to sue out of existence. He declined to fund the company further, and the studios suing Scour informed any potential investors that they’d risk lawsuits if they helped Kalanick and his friends. Scour was forced to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. When Kalanick declined to go away quietly, as he recalled in a 2011 interview, Ovitz responded by sending an associate to approach C TO Kalanick at a public event where he intimated that if Scour did 30: New engineers anything to hurt Ovitz’s reputation, hired each week, the consequences would be dire. in pursuit of his goal of hiring 1 000 in “Like, ‘There’s an alley in the back’,” 2015. “If we grew at Kalanick said, paraphrasing what he half the speed we’re saw as a threat. “ ‘If you fuck this up, growing, it’d be like a vacation,” says Pham. you’re going to get very familiar with it.’ ” Ovitz has denied that a threat was made, and today both men refuse to go into detail about the incident.

These scars still sting. Kalanick tells me that for years he had trouble watching movies without becoming physically ill when the studio logos would appear in the opening credits. “You learn quickly in that business how deals are done and not done, and how you can get run over,” he says. “You learn a lot about that.”

THUAN PHAM

Kalanick rebounded by starting “a revenge business”, as he put it to an audience at FailCon, the startup conference where founders tell stories of their past failures. “The idea was to take those 33 litigants who sued me and turn them into customers. So now those dudes who are suing

72 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A NOVEMBER 2015

me are paying me.” Kalanick intended to transform Scour’s consumer-file-sharing technology into an enterprise software product, RedSwoosh, which would make it cheaper for media companies to deliver big video files on the web.

Like many revenge plans, it sounded better than it worked. Bandwidth prices fell rapidly beginning in the early 2000s, and the dot-com bust meant there was suddenly less enthusiasm for big investments in streaming video. RedSwoosh shrivelled to just Kalanick and one other engineer. Kalanick moved in with his parents and scrambled to prove he was right despite continually being on the verge of insolvency. At one point in 2005, he seemed close to a major deal, but it fell apart when the website, FuckedCompany, carried news that his only remaining engineer had defected. “We thought he was crazy to keep going,” says Dan Rodrigues, who had been Scour’s CEO. But, he adds, “we all believed that if anybody could do it, Travis could.”

Through little else but the sheer force of his personality, he landed an investor, Mark Cuban; rebuilt a team; signed up a real client in satellite TV provider EchoStar; and, finally, in 2007 sold the company to his much larger rival, Akamai, for $23 million (around R300 million).

It had been a hard six years. “When you’re in the dark, your prism for everything around you is, ‘could this help the company?’ ” Kalanick explains. “And with your friends, you have to call favours from them, which is fine. But when you don’t have many favours to give and there’s enough failure stacking on top of failure, you get in this phase of loneliness.” (“That meant not getting any girls”, is how he once described it to a Chicago entrepreneurial conference.)

“Why didn’t you give up?” I ask.

“You can’t control who you fall in love with,” Kalanick says. “She”—meaning the company— “was an abusive partner.”

Kalanick came away from the experience with a profound sense of relief and also a bit of a problem with authority. One evening, he was arrested after getting into a confrontation with a nightclub bouncer who’d asked him to step away from the club. (Kalanick refused, citing that the pavement was public space.) Another time, when Kalanick had flown the seven-person RedSwoosh staff to Tulum, Mexico for a work retreat, he got into it with a taxi driver whom he believed was attempting to overcharge him. The dispute escalated, the driver reputedly tried to lock the doors, and Kalanick rolled out of the moving vehicle. (Writing about the incident on his Formspring home­page in 2010, Kalanick struck a philosophical tone, declaring his actions “wholly justified for anybody who values their physical freedom, and who may be scared of somebody who attempts to appropriate taxi rents through such physical detainment.”)

“Thinking back, it was amazing that happened,” says Tom Jacobs, who was a RedSwoosh engineer. “This guy was going to disrupt the taxi industry.”

“We’re gonna head to Travis’s house.”

It was Austin Geidt’s first day at a tiny startup called Ubercab. She’d landed the job shortly after graduating from the University of California, Berkeley in 2010. The company then consisted of four employees in a 10-by-10-metre cubicle. Geidt, an intense 25-year-old with long blonde hair and a powerful speaking voice, was supposed to be a marketing intern, but she spent most of her first day handling customer service requests. Ubercab’s app had been built quickly by a team of freelance programmers hired by co-founders Kalanick and Camp, and as a consequence it was full of bugs that would sometimes send all the Uber cars in San Francisco to the same place.

Around 3 p.m., Ubercab’s CEO Ryan Graves, who’d got the job when he sent a cold Twitter message to Kalanick, announced that the entire team would be repairing to the Jam Pad. “Who’s Travis?” Geidt asked.

“He’s pretty important for us to know,” Graves responded.

A few minutes later they were in Kalanick’s living room along with a few Jam Pad regulars.

The meeting was only to decide the future of the tiny startup.

“What kind of brand do we want to be?” Kalanick asked.

A debate ensued that would last until past midnight. One person argued that Uber should focus on luxury. “We’re gonna do airplanes and helicopters. It’s luxury all day, all night.”

Somebody suggested that Uber could advertise the service with images of attractive women in front of nightclubs.

Kalanick bristled. He was beginning to see Uber not as a “supercrazy freakin’ small” premium product, but as a wild math ­experiment—the kind that a guy who once told a conference audience “I really love numbers” and who referred to himself as “Rain Man– analytical” could get excited about. In the early days, Camp and Kalanick assumed they could

UBER’S BIG BET

#

2

CHINA AND INDIA “To put it frankly, China represents one of the largest untapped opportunities for Uber, potentially larger than the US,” Kalanick wrote investors in a letter this May. The same goes for ­India where, befitting Uber’s hyperlocalised strategy, it has launched auto rickshaws, cash payments and an SOS safety button for riders.

80

479x

Number of Chinese metropolitan areas with more than 5 million residents (there are nine in the United States)

Number of trips Chengdu residents took in the first nine months of Uber’s availability, compared to New York’s first nine months

50 Number of Chinese cities in which Uber will operate by mid-2016

5 Number of the top 10 Uber cities in the world that are located in China as of August 2015, up from four in June

63 000 Number of drivers in India who have given their first Uber trip, January to August 2015

1 million Trips-per-day goal for India by early 2016 Sources: Financial Times; Uber

2 billion US dollars (more than R26 billion) Uber will spend in the year ahead to fuel its expansion into China and India—$1 billion for each market

NOVEMBER 2015 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A 73

PA I G E L E W I S Driver

1 million: Number of active Uber drivers worldwide.

“I’ll drive in the morning, go to a lunch meeting, and then go drive some more,” says Lewis, a singer-songwriter who also happens to drive for Uber in Los Angeles.

disrupt the high-end limousine business by replacing dispatch services with an app. What they did not appreciate initially was the effect that low prices would have on the service.

When Uber would have, say, three cars prowling around San Francisco, riders had to wait 20 minutes for a lift; but on weekend evenings, when 15 or 20 cars might be on the streets, wait times plummeted. In other words, as Uber got busier, it got better. Drivers made more money and passengers were happier. “I started to see how maths moved the needle,” he says. “Things clicked in my mind about how this could scale.”

The thing to do, Kalanick argued, was to make the service a low-cost accessible luxury. “If Uber is lower priced, then more people will want it,” he explains. “And if more people want it and can afford it, then you have more cars on the road. And if you have more cars on the road, then your pickup times are lower, your reliability is better. The lower cost product ends up being more luxurious than the high-end one.” Kalanick had been resisting Camp’s overtures to become CEO, but it was this insight that got him excited: Uber could be huge.

All that struggle and setback from his first two startups geared up Kalanick almost perfectly for what was to come. “If you looked at everything he’s done, I don’t think there was another human who was more destined to build Uber,” says Angelo Sotira. “You had peer-to-peer networks, aggressive dealings, large lawsuits.”

The first battle came on the very day Uber’s board formally named him CEO in late 2010.

After the meeting, Graves, who became Uber’s head of global operations, showed Kalanick a text he’d just received from Geidt: “FYI: people came looking for you with a clipboard with your face on it.”

74 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A NOVEMBER 2015

The visitors were process servers: Ubercab had been issued a cease-and-desist order by the city of San Francisco, which accused the startup of operating as an unlicensed taxi company. Uber’s executives faced fines of $5 000 (around R67 000) per ride and 90 days in jail for every day they stayed in business.

This wasn’t going to add up to the GDP of Sweden, but it would kill the company nonetheless.

Kalanick, the Wolf, didn’t flinch. He kept the cars rolling, dropped “cab” from the company name, and scheduled a meeting with the city’s Municipal Transportation Agency to explain his position that Uber was not a taxi company but rather a technology service for independent drivers.

“Did Ubercab just crash and burn?”

TechCrunch bleated when news leaked from anonymous taxi-industry officials who were apparently attempting to pressure Kalanick to make further concessions, or perhaps shut down. Instead, the opposite happened, as San Francisco’s libertarian techies jumped to the company’s defence. “Our sign-ups went through the roof,” Graves says. “These debates attract a lot of attention.”

Kalanick responded to Uber’s new, controversial status by amping things up. He’d attended President Obama’s first inauguration—and to this day is an avowed supporter of Obamacare—but to support Uber’s growth, he took up the mantle of libertarian firebrand. He changed his Twitter avatar to the cover of Rand’s The Fountainhead. In a Washington Post article he not only called The Fountainhead “one of my favourite books”, but he also brought up Atlas Shrugged, suggesting the regulatory hellscape conjured by Rand bore an “uncanny resemblance” to what Uber faced. When critics attacked Uber’s so-called surge pricing policy, a system akin to the scheme used by

“I didn’t even know what a libertarian was,” Kalanick says.

“But it just sort of gets repeated enough times that it becomes real.”

UBER’S BIG BET

airlines and hotels to raise prices when demand is high, the CEO who’d been fanatical about lowering prices began publicly mocking customers who complained. “I like pissing people off,” he said in one interview. When asked about competitors, he said, “If you’re sleeping, I’m gonna kick your ass.”

Kalanick looked like an irrepressible jerk to many outside the company, but he was dynamite with the financial press, who portrayed him as the ultimate insurgent (“Silicon Valley’s rebel hero”, as Fortune put it).

Venture capitalists fell hard for Kalanick, too. “Any time you’re disrupting an industry, people are going to try to take you down,” says Bill Maris, the managing partner of Google Ventures.

Maris says he started trying to invest in Uber as early as 2011. When he finally got his shot, in the last quarter of 2013, he gave Kalanick what amounted to a blank term sheet and told him to name his price. “What’s it going to take to get this deal off the table?” he asked.

Kalanick wanted more than $250 million (R3.36 billion) at a valuation of a little less than $4 billion (R53.7 billion)—a huge figure for a three-year-old company. Maris agreed to the deal on the spot.

On the fourth floor of Uber’s San Francisco headquarters, there is a 60-centimetre wide walking track, delineated by a stenciled pattern of the San Francisco city grid, running around the perimeter of the open-plan office. It’s 400m long, and it’s where you’ll find Kalanick when his mind is in motion, which is to say pretty much all the time. In a typical week, he does 64km, or 160 laps. “That’s just how I think,” he says, compulsively screwing and unscrewing a bottle of iced tea that he’d finished half an hour earlier.

Kalanick still seems, to borrow one of his favourite words, “fierce”, but there is also something slightly cowed about him these days. Maybe it’s his gray beard, or the way his shoulders slump when he sits, or how his hands seem to shake as he talks. He appears to be making an effort to smile as he meets me in Uber’s main conference room, which is known as the War Room. He’d been hesitant to speak with me—hurt and angry, his friends tell me, by the barrage of negative press that has presented Uber as a malignant force. “I’m okay being seen for who we are, but it’s not clear to me that’s always what people have written,” he says, almost meekly. “We’d prefer to just be helping people get from point A to point B—but when the company starts to succeed, in a city, or in a country, or around the world, you start to get brought into more and more of these political debates.”

Kalanick started the conversation by diving into Uber’s five “brand pillars”—grounded, populist, inspiring, highly evolved and ­elevated—but he’d only named two before getting sidetracked, and didn’t complete the set until I reminded him about it 90 minutes into the interview. Kalanick seemed to light up most when he learnt that I was, like him, a former high school track ­runner—he asked me my best time for the mile and deemed it “strong”. When I brought up the question of Ayn Rand, Kalanick denied adamantly that he had any particular affinity for the books. “I didn’t even know what a libertarian was,” he says. “But it just sort of gets repeated enough times that it becomes real.”

This new, subdued Travis Kalanick who claims he’d never heard of a libertarian seemed to me a significant overcorrection from the bad-ass antigovernment crusader he has played for the past few years—and also just one sliver of his actual personality. That in itself is telling.

Kalanick is not the kind of person who clings to beliefs, or even a fixed sense of himself.

“He has an inner circle whom he opens up to, and then an outward personality and image he projects of a hard-charging disrupter who takes no prisoners,” says a longtime friend.

That duality, the friend says, “is part of why he’s been successful.” According to friends and colleagues, the only ideology Kalanick subscribes to is contrarianism. “He really thrives when he can subvert the norm,” says someone who has known him for more than a decade. Another co-worker tells me Kalanick likes “poking conventional wisdom in the eye.” Kalanick’s natural state, it turns out, is debate. When Uber’s CTO Thuan Pham, then a vice president at VMware, was interviewing for the job in late 2012, Kalanick called him every day for two weeks to quiz him on recruiting or how best to manage engineers. In all, they spent 30 hours talking. “We’d just hammer each other,” recalls Pham, who came to the US in 1980 as part of the exodus of Vietnamese “boat people”, got into MIT and eventually found his way to Silicon Valley.

Kalanick, Pham says effusively, encourages his employees to disagree. “What Travis infuses

#

3

DRIVERLESS CARS Although autonomous vehicles represent Uber’s longest term bet, research studies reveal their potential to transform both Uber and our reliance on personal automobiles is profound. “When there’s no other dude in the car, the cost of taking an Uber anywhere becomes cheaper than owning a vehicle,” Kalanick said at a conference last year. “And then car ownership goes away.”

8.5 t o 1 0 The number of traditional cars that each shared selfdriving car can replace while still getting people where they need to go without long wait times for a ride

65 Percent fewer cars that are on the roads at peak hours in a city that has shared selfdriving cars plus mass transit

Sources: “Urban Mobility System Upgrade,” International Transport Forum, 2015; “Travel and Environmental Implications of a Shared Automated Fleet, with Varying Levels of Dynamic Ridesharing,” University of Texas at Austin, July 2015

23 Percent fewer cars that are on the roads at peak hours in a city that has shared selfdriving cars but no mass transit

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in the company is that the best ideas win,” he says. “You have to be willing to step on toes to make sure the idea is heard, and you’re supposed to only be loyal to the idea, to the truth.”

I witness this myself when Kalanick and I discuss China, one of his current obsessions and a place where his ideological flexibility has been an asset. “It’s just different than everywhere else,” he says, referring to Uber’s recent expansion into the country. “And, so, you can’t take your pattern or your model for other places and take that to China. You just can’t. You have to do it different.” Kalanick has made numerous trips to the country to try to understand the quirks of Chinese transportation systems and its brand of government bureaucracy.

Some Silicon Valley founders pride themselves on being visionaries; Kalanick exults in an ability to read the data, revise and adapt, likening running Uber to driving a car without a clear destination in sight.

“You’re going down the highway, and it’s a bit foggy,” he says. “You have to keep your eyes on the road and your hand on the steering wheel. You can only see so far ahead. But if you keep solving interesting problems, you get somewhere you didn’t expect.” I found this admission refreshing in light of the absolute certainty that most CEOs project.

It also felt like the most honest thing that Kalanick said during our entire interview, and the only time he really broke character.

Kalanick has brought this kind of dynamic thinking to bear in every market Uber has entered, adjusting prices and product offerings and, at times, moulding his personality to fit a given city or business opportunity. When the company launched in New York in early 2011, ­Kalanick’s ­announcement struck a no-nonsense tone. “The folks who rock Uber value their time, they appreciate nice things with a taste of luxury, and loathe inefficiency,” he wrote. A few months later, in crunchy, geeky Seattle, Kalanick sought to paint the service as utilitarian: “A big question I get here in Seattle is how we’re going to get over the whole ‘ewwww, you showed up in a Town Car?’ Well, this isn’t your father’s black-car service.” And in December 2011, in Washington, DC, he touted the service’s “populist” bona fides. “These big-time lobbyists, politicos and government officials can afford their own private driver and maybe don’t need Uber, but their staff

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“Part of being an entrepreneur,” Kalanick says, “is going to places that go against the conventional wisdom.”

definitely aren’t allowed to expense that,” he said.

This malleability, which Ryan Graves explains as a desire “to build a business that serves millions of people, not be slaves to a brand”, makes sense given how idiosyncratic transportation can be. Each city’s taxicabs have their own colour scheme—yellow in New York, but beige in Berlin—pricing structure, and set of cultural norms. For years, Muscovites have used a modified hitchhiking system in lieu of taxis and, weirdly enough, so have some residents of the ritzier parts of Oakland and Berkeley.

That’s why each Uber market effectively operates as its own startup. “Travis really wanted people who embedded in the fabric of the city,” says Rachel Holt, who served as Uber’s general manager of Washington, DC (and is now responsible for operations for the East Coast). Holt, who had been a product manager at Clorox, was given an annual revenue goal—$7 million (R94 million)—in her offer letter and told to do whatever she saw fit to attract drivers and riders in Washington. She cold-called limo companies, arranged to hand out $10 (about R130) Uber credits at corporate holiday parties, and organised a series of marketing stunts including a Presidents Day “Ubercade” in which a handful of lucky riders were surprised with three-car motorcades, complete with actors in Secret Service garb. She hit her revenue goal within six months. “For the most part, we were left alone,” she says.

Kalanick tends to micromanage certain parts of the business—pricing, for instance, as well as recruiting—but the company’s local general managers, who tend to be hustlers hired in his own image, are given wide latitude in figuring out how best to attract drivers and riders to the service. “I don’t make decisions unless I’m all the way in the details,” says Kalanick.

He expects ­everyone else to follow that example. Local staff members are allowed access to almost all the company’s data, meaning a marketing manager in Jakarta can instantaneously call up the overnight revenue for Town Cars in London or look at what happened in Chicago when the company gave out free ice cream. “I always tell new GMs that you’re an entrepreneur, but you have 300 A/B tests [split tests] going on in cities around the world,” Holt says. “You have the ability to say, ‘Hey, we figured something out that made this a little bit better—let’s spread it.’ ” Of course, there have also been negative repercussions to this hands-off approach. In Lyon, France, a local GM launched an Ubercade-like promotion in October 2014, but one with a misogynistic bent. “Who said women don’t know how to drive?” an Uber Lyon blog post teased (it was cancelled immediately). The following month, at an ostensibly off-therecord dinner with media power brokers, an Uber business-development lead suggested Uber should fight back against bad press by investigating the personal lives of those who criticised the company. The news went viral almost immediately.

Kalanick was not the mastermind behind these blunders, but he had set the tone that produced them, including referring to his company as “Boob-er” in GQ magazine for its success in improving his luck with women, and his public declaration that Uber planned to “throw mud” at its critics.

The gaffes have been described by some as evidence of a morally rotten company, but they’re more a symptom of Uber’s wild growth. The company more than quadrupled the number of cities it served in 2014, and thoroughly eclipsed Lyft. (According to a September 2014 report, Uber was generating 12 times more revenue than its erstwhile peer.) Kalanick may be a data obsessive, but there’s no metric to reveal precisely when you’ve won. His perception of himself and of Uber had not caught up with reality: He was no longer the young gun in a cowboy hat trying to make it happen; he and Uber were big-time. “Travis’s views were shaped by getting his ass kicked over and over again,” says Lukas Biewald, whose company, Crowd Flower, was born in Kalanick’s Jam Pad. “He didn’t realise he wasn’t an underdog anymore.”

To Kalanick’s allies, the dinner, and K ­ alanick’s subsequent apology (via a tweetstorm), represent a turning point. It was the first time Uber had taken a punch without throwing one in return. “Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg went through something similar,” says Uber board member Bill Gurley. “They were the young entrepreneurs who were allowed to kind of say anything, and do anything, and then all of a sudden their companies had this kind of influence on the world. That responsibility gets thrown at you quickly.” David Plouffe, the former Obama consigliere who now serves Kalanick in a similar role as Uber’s chief strategist, compares

Kalanick’s response to the 2008 Obama campaign’s rebound after losing the New Hampshire ­primary to Hillary Clinton. “It seemed like the most devastating thing imaginable, but we ended up being stronger for it,” Plouffe says. “Everyone understood that we are a really big, interesting company under the spotlight.”

The first public unveiling of this Plouffe-ified Travis ­Kalanick—who now, Boob-er days behind him, lives with his girlfriend, the violinist Gabi Holz­warth, and their goldendoodle Yobu—was at the company’s five-year anniversary celebration this past June. The event was stage-managed like, well, an Obama campaign rally: A series of close supporters warmed up the crowd; a cast of ­camera-ready Uber drivers had been invited to be on hand, including a military spouse who introduced Kalanick; there were balloons. It was all impeccable, but for Kalanick’s inability to replicate the president’s soaring rhetoric. He read from a teleprompter, sometimes stumbling over words, and he kept a tight hold on the lectern. “I realise that I can come off as a somewhat fierce advocate for Uber,” Kalanick said. “I also realise that some have used a different A-word to describe me.” He barely mentioned the taxi industry at all in his speech, choosing instead to frame Uber in a grander narrative. “Uber isn’t just the better choice for drivers and riders and commuters—it’s the right choice for cities, and all the people who live there.” The speech was good; the speaker looked miserable.

“It’s not my natural state of affairs to have a scripted thing,” Kalanick tells me. “When you’re a startup guy, you have to be really lean and scrappy. But as you get perceived to be big, you can’t have that same kind of scrappiness.” His word choice—perceived—makes me wonder if Kalanick sees Uber as a big company or not. “Are you an underdog?” I ask. Kalanick hesitates, as if he knows that the answer is no, but he wants it to be yes. “I mean, we’re an underdog in China, right?” he says. “The thing is, how do you build a company where you’d still feel small, even as you get bigger?”

Kalanick’s answer to these questions is a series of audacious initiatives including a major push into China and other new markets and investments in Uber’s core offering that could eventually move it even further away from its roots in limousines and luxury. Over the past year, he has been throwing money into UberPool, a new service that pairs up riders on the same route and charges them a reduced price. I found the experience of buddying up with a total stranger a little weird the first few times, but in San Francisco the offering now accounts for 50% of trips, thanks to big discounts for riders who pay $7 (about R94) or less to go anywhere in the city centre regardless of how much the trip actually ends up costing Uber.

Kalanick made UberPool the centrepiece of his five-year anniversary speech, teasing a future of the “perpetual ride”: when drivers always have at least one passenger in their car. “Two people taking a similar route are now taking one car instead of two,” he said. “Not only is it much less expensive than taking a cab or owning a car, it has the potential to be as affordable as taking a subway, or a bus, or other means of transportation. And that’s what we believe is the real game changer.” Kalanick tells me Uber may one day expand UberPool to include buses, which he calls “the ultimate carpool machine”.

What’s perhaps most surprising about UberPool is how quickly the initiative took shape.

Pham, Uber’s CTO, tells me the company launched the service in just two weeks. Uber is now expanding carpools to New York, Paris, Los Angeles and Boston, again offering big subsidies to entice riders to try it out. It’s been slow-going and expensive, Kalanick admits, but he’s willing to invest money to push his big idea in cities where the communitarian spirit doesn’t come as easily as in San Francisco. “You have to induce people to do it at the beginning,” he says.

That’s just the start of the company’s efforts to reinvent public transportation. Earlier this year, Uber poached dozens of members of the Carnegie Mellon University robotics department for a driverless-car initiative that could one day make its services much cheaper and more efficient.

In the near term, though, the move represented a significant expense. Uber reportedly doubled researchers’ salaries and offered six-figure bonuses to the defectors. It also antagonised some drivers, whom Kalanick has gone to great lengths to court with promises of flexible, dependable work. “We need to make sure that we are a part of the future,” says Kalanick of autonomous cars.

“You can’t call yourself a technology company if you’re resisting technological progress.”

A few months later, Kalanick again found an opportunity to play the insurgent when he announced that Uber would be expanding its efforts in China, a market currently dominated by Didi Kuaidi—a merger between the two largest local players and backed by the Asian tech giants Alibaba, Tencent and Softbank. As of September, Uber has cars on the road in almost 20 Chinese

cities—with plans to be in 50 next year. The results so far have been astonishing: In just nine months, three Chinese cities (Chengdu, Guangzhou and Hangzhou) have each already accounted for more rides than New York.

In a letter leaked to the Financial Times in June, which detailed Uber’s growth in China, Kalanick told investors he was “personally overseeing” Uber’s local expansion in the country and identified himself as “CEO, UberChina”. Just a month thereafter, he announced Uber would invest $1 billion (R13.4 billion) to grow its business in India.

These moves are risky, and Kalanick’s persistent impulse to bet big has been expensive. Uber has raised more than $8 billion (R107.5 billion) to date. It’ll need more, most likely, as recently leaked financing documents show it is losing more than a dollar for every dollar it takes in. Uber claims to be profitable in dozens of markets, and it could close this shortfall if Kalanick were willing to focus on generating profits in the company’s most mature cities—but that’s not how Uber’s CEO rolls. Bill Gurley compares Kalanick to Jeff Bezos, and it seems likely that Uber will follow a path similar to Amazon, relentlessly pushing to keep prices low while expanding—at the cost of shortterm profits.

All of this should scare Kalanick. Instead he seems to welcome it, telling me he sometimes fantasises about relocating to China. “That’s where the action is. There are certain things in life where you have to go for it—just for the sheer adventure of it, and also for the potential,” he says, his eyes widening.

“Part of being an entrepreneur is going to places that go against what the conventional wisdom might say. And when you win, well, you’ve won, right?”

At Granada Hills High School, in another Valley and another time, the teenage Kalanick specialised in the long jump and the quarter-mile. He was never the fastest guy on the team, but he was the perfect kid to run the anchor leg on the school’s 4-by400m relay because he ran best when he ran from behind. “I would put it all in,” he tells me. “Leave it all on the field.” A photo from his senior yearbook, the only one of Kalanick besides his class portrait, shows him lunging forward, his front leg kicked out far ahead of his slender body, his face contorted in a striving grimace. He has always been this way. Now Kalanick must learn how to run from the front. chafkin@fastcompany.com

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78 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A NOVEMBER 2015

GOING A L O N G F O R T H E R I D E How Uber convinced South Africans to

adopt a new method of getting from point A to point B Interview by Evans Manyonga

Pictures supplied by Uber

Uber is evolving the way citizens move, work and live—seamlessly connecting riders to drivers through smartphone technology.

The poster child for disruptive tech, it aspires to transforming the way we connect with our communities and bringing reliability, convenience and opportunity to transport systems. The Uber network is now available in over 300 cities in more than 60 countries, including South Africa.

Alon Lits joined Uber in August 2013 as its first general manager in Africa. In an exclusive interview with Fast Company SA, he discusses disruption of the industry, innovation, safety and where Uber fits into the bigger picture.

Fast Company: How has been the experience of being the regional GM for sub-Saharan Africa?

Alon Lits: It’s been a really unique opportunity to be part of an amazing team that’s growing Uber across the continent. Uber is changing the way African cities move, and at the same time enabling entrepreneurship and creating economic opportunity. I’m very proud and grateful for the experience thus far, but I’m even more excited about what the future holds.

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What was your biggest challenge in launching an unfamiliar concept in South Africa?

When we arrived in South Africa to launch Uber, our biggest challenge was that people didn’t believe South Africans would adopt such a technology into their daily lives. There’s a huge culture around car ownership, and a hesitance among South Africans to store their payment information online. But here we are, two years later, and in South Africa alone we have created more than 2 000 work opportunities for driver-partners.

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What made you realise you are on the right track?

A great triumph has been announcing the creation of thousands of work opportunities for driver-partners through the Uber platform, and that we’re on track to create a further 15 000 by 2017—with 2 000 of these for women. Furthermore, in 2014 we helped facilitate more than one million trips and we’ve already doubled that number in the first half of 2015.

Importantly, there are a large number of existing metered taxi operators who make use of Uber’s technology to supplement their existing businesses, reduce their downtime and increase their earnings. We believe we’re creating a new way to get around South Africa, as people now know they get safe and reliable rides within minutes, no matter where they are. Uber was founded to provide people with a dependable ride, wherever and whenever. For decades, neighbourhoods traditionally served by taxis have had no option for easy, trustworthy transportation. Now, with a GPS-based dispatch, the service simply sends the nearest driver to the requesting rider—in any neighbourhood.

Uber is becoming a word synonymous with mobility in South Africa, and it’s been very special to be part of the team who has helped change the way people move.

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ALON LITS

GENERAL MANAGER: SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA Moving with the times: “We believe we’re creating a new way to get around South Africa, as people now know they get safe and reliable rides within minutes, no matter where they are.”

Uber has been described in some quarters as the poster child for disruptive technology. Does this tag have any impact on the company’s efforts to speed up legislation that can make it easier for your business model?

Any time you have a disruptive technology like Uber coming into an industry, you inevitably have some resistance. Despite a few individual, countryspecific setbacks, the future is bright for Uber and the sharing economy— especially in South Africa. We’ve been engaging with policy- and lawmakers for the last two years and it’s been encouraging to see how many policymakers have embraced an innovative technology such as ours. Uber has the ability to provide South Africans with safe, reliable and affordable

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Photographs by ioulex

transport but, more importantly, the ability to have a positive impact on job creation—given the increased work opportunities facilitated through our tech.

Furthermore, through split-your-fare functionality, Uber has the ability to reduce congestion on South African roads and improve productivity. Policymakers see these benefits, and we’ll continue to be a constructive partner in finding solutions that will create more choice, more economic opportunity and more benefits for the people of South Africa.

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Is South Africa one of your fastest growing territories?

Since launching here, the uptake has been incredible.

In a short space of time, we’ve been doing tens of thousands of trips per week, with thousands of drivers in our system. South Africa is a really great example of Uber’s growth in a marketplace. We believe a reason for its success here is that, before its launch, many South Africans were very reliant on their own vehicles to get around and were just waiting for an Uber-type solution. In the same way, our driverpartners have adopted our tech as a means to facilitate a powerful entrepreneurial opportunity.

How do you ensure your providers always deliver optimum service to clients?

All drivers are rated by their riders after their trips, so clients give feedback immediately. It’s very important that there’s mutual respect on the platform. We have a zero-tolerance approach to instances where rider or driver safety is compromised, and we immediately suspend partnerships if this is the case. Drivers and riders are aware of this approach and, accordingly, the system encourages professional and safe conduct by both parties.

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Why is Uber not in every major city in Africa?

Are there any plans for expansion?

Of course! Launching in a new city—or even a new product option in a city we’re already in—obviously requires a significant amount of planning to ensure the launch process is seamless, our driver-partners are happy, and the product is well received by the public. Currently, we’re in South Africa (Cape Town, Durban, Johannesburg and Pretoria), Nigeria (Lagos) and Kenya (Nairobi) and we’re excited about working toward offering Uber in other cities across the continent. We’re focused on identifying key challenges to scaling Uber in Africa before launching in too many markets too quickly. We’re confident there’ll be opportunity beyond our core markets.

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ALON LITS

Lits studied Actuarial Science and Statistics at Wits University, and holds an MBA from INSEAD.

Privacy and safety are big concerns, especially for women. What measures do you have to ensure everything is above board?

We screen all drivers before they’re allowed onto the system and we proactively monitor driver quality.

Every driver on the system has a Professional Driver’s Permit (PrDP), which means he or she has undergone police clearance. In addition to the checks required to obtain a PrDP, all driver-partners undergo a comprehensive AFIS criminal background check before they’re allowed to drive on the system. Uber also performs regular vehicle inspections to ensure safety standards are maintained.

Ca ree r t ra c k

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Having created over 2 000 jobs in South Africa, you now aim to create another 15 000 within the next two years. Isn’t that overly optimistic?

We’ve been humbled by the growth we’ve achieved so far in South Africa. Since January 2015, we’ve seen phenomenal growth across all cities and we’re well on track to achieving the growth targets of over 15 000 jobs within the next two years.

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How do you plan to stay ahead of your competitors?

Competition is good and offers more choice to customers, improves safety and service, and encourages innovation. We love choice. We love competition. We love that other people are trying to compete with us. Competition and choice mean we all have to up our game to improve our service and products. We believe our riders should be allowed more choice in the way they travel—and more choice that’s affordable.

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What is the most popular Uber class used by passengers in SA? UberX’s lower prices make the use of our technology more accessible to more people. It provides a very real and cost-effective alternative to car ownership, providing people with access to safe transport and allowing more productive time throughout the day.

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Tit l e

30-SECOND BIO

General manager: SubSaharan Africa, Uber

H o m e tow n Johannesburg

B a c kg r o u n d

He began in the leveraged finance division of Investec Bank Limited, providing debt and preference share financing solutions to public and private companies, as well as Africa’s largest private equity funds.

He interned with LeapFrog Investments, focusing on investment opportunities throughout Africa.

Favo u rite boo k s Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul by Howard Schultz; I Am Pilgrim

by Terry Hayes

U nw i n d i n g “I spend time with family and friends, doing the simple things. I do try to get to the gym and play a casual game of soccer.”

E n d o r se m e nt “Now that Uber is in over 300 cities around the world, it goes without saying that I Uber everywhere.”

Would you consider having franchisees?

No, we won’t consider franchising. The way in which we launch in each city across the world is very similar.

We do so with a city team of three people: a marketing manager who focuses on building the Uber brand, driving sign-ups, customer support and adoption of the product; a driver operations manager who is tasked with growing supply of drivers with whom we partner as well as data analytics to ensure we can effectively match demand with supply; and finally, a GM who works with the rest of the team and helps drive the business forward from a strategic perspective. You can achieve huge efficiencies with this structure, and this team can support a city that completes thousands of trips on a weekly basis. We’re also able to leverage off the global Uber network and expertise in the rest of the world to help provide best practice locally and scale the city efficiently.

Where do you foresee Uber in three years?

The exciting thing is that once you can deliver a car in five minutes to collect a person, the opportunities are endless. We’re experimenting with a number of products globally, from UberRush (product delivery) to UberEats (food delivery) and UberPool, which makes it easier for people to share rides, thus reducing costs and congestion. In sub-Saharan Africa, we foresee having Uber in all major cities—providing people with another transportation option and providing driver-partners with further economic opportunities.

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INNOVATION BEGINS AT HOME

How a new wave of black entrepreneurs are using their knowledge of the townships to devise solutions to local problems

By Stephen Timm

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It’s another day in a bustling township in South Africa.

Mamas are haggling over prices at their local spaza; a young man is struggling to sell his handmade goods on the corner; a matric student sits at her desk, unsure of her future; while her tata searches for an electricity vendor before their power runs out... An increasing number of entrepreneurs are devising ways to address the many issues with which township residents struggle daily.

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One such person is Desmond Mongwe of startup moWallet, who in July won the Hack Jozi Challenge—a hackathon sponsored by the City of Joburg, with a prize of R1 million in seed funding— for an app that allows township residents to redeem coupons from large retailers for specific branded goods on sale.

Another is 25-year-old Nhlakanipho Shange, originally from Umlazi, who has developed a digital signage company, ad.it, that serves minibus taxis. Already 21 taxis that ply the route between his former home and Durban city centre have his HD TV screens installed. He is aiming to get another 200 screens fitted by 2016. Even though taxi owners get a 10% cut of advertising sales, Shange, who has been operating since August last year, admits that with no track record it’s often difficult to convince many. Yet, he remains confident his business will expand. “If they say no, I just go to the next one,” he adds.

A survey released in June by startup news website, Ventureburn, reveals that 17% of the country’s tech startups were founded by black South Africans—up from the 6% reported in its 2012 survey. However, two-thirds of tech founders are still white males.

A number of black Africans in the informationtechnology sector are focusing on devising solutions, says Mixo Ngoveni, who runs Geekulcha: a Pretoria-based group that helps students and learners keen on technology to connect with industry heads and to get business help. “Some people are now looking at building for the local market rather than the international market.”

Many of the new ideas and apps are being nurtured by the increasing number of tech hubs, social innovation labs and incubators that have sprung up in recent years. In 2014, The Innovation Hub and the City of Tshwane partnered to form eKasi Labs, an initiative based at the Ga-Rankuwa Arts & Craft Centre.

In March this year, The Barn Khayelitsha, run by the Cape Innovation and Technology Initiative (CiTi), opened in that sprawling Cape Town township. At present, about 20 entrepreneurs from the local community have hot desks there. While some are running marketing firms or a children’s soccer club, others are developing solutions using the likes of education apps. Chris Vermeulen, The Barn manager and head of CiTi’s enterprise development programme, believes there is “huge potential” for the new centre to use innovation to address social and economic challenges in the township. The idea, he says, is to use a living-lab model to get entrepreneurs to interact with the surrounding community to learn what the key

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In much the same way, the University of the Western Cape’s CoLab for e-Inclusion and Social Innovation has, since 2012, attempted to get youth from poor areas to work with communities to develop apps that address social problems. These include an app to help community members find the nearest point for recharging their electricity account, and another to offer matrics advice on which university subjects to take. The centre’s director Dr Leona Craffert says a key challenge is that great ideas take time to be refined. To get one good idea, you often have to go through about 300, she reckons. Getting various stakeholders involved also

Media on the move With Nhlakanipho Shange’s ad.it “Taxi TV”, advertisers can reach around 160 000 economically active commuters every month.

helps to realise a successful idea, Craffert adds.

In tackling township problems, entrepreneurs can run profitable businesses. Take Luvuyo Rani, based in Khayelitsha. He started his Internet café and computer training business, Silulo Ulutho Technologies, with two partners in 2004 and now has 36 branches. Each outlet makes about R80 000 a month, with an average gross profit margin of 60%. Rani says he has become a “bridge” for those wanting to get into the township market by running a monthly event called Ekasi Business Network, and he is trying to encourage businesses based in the wealthy Cape suburb of Constantia to partner with those in Khayelitsha.

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Dry run

Ludwick Marishane initially sold his waterless-bathing product to overseas companies and middle-income households, rather than punting it to township communities. “You don’t want to position it as a poor man’s product.”

While Internet access has not been a big problem in the Western Cape, Rani says in some more rural areas of the Eastern Cape he has had to turn to 3G connections. Although he is presently in talks with Internet service providers (ISPs), he says Silulo Uluthu itself aims to become an ISP in the future to address the issue.

In much the same way Rani has tried combating the Internet challenge, the Soweto Wireless User Group aims to bring free Wi-Fi to the country’s biggest township. Jabulani Vilakazi founded this non-profit in 2010. The group has a licence from the South African telecoms authority, Icasa, to broadcast on the 2.7GHz and 5.8GHz spectrum; it currently has 28 hotspots that receive about 2 000 unique visitors a month. An e-commerce platform has been proposed by a local spaza association, while Soweto residents already use the network to search for jobs and homework help for their children.

Vilakazi admits that resources to expand have been a “huge challenge”, but despite this, more than R100 000 has been invested with the project thus far from various big companies to fund branding and some infrastructure.

Yet, as any entrepreneur operating there knows, designing solutions for the townships does not come without difficulties. Ludwick Marishane of Headboy Industries designed DryBath—a gel ‘soap’ for waterless bathing. He initially sold the product to overseas companies and middle-income households, rather than punting it to poorer communities. “You don’t want to position it as a poor man’s product,” says Marishane.

Since mid-2015, he has been testing the township market, using unemployed youths to sell sachets to homes there. His main customers seem to be those who live in city centres, who return to the rural areas and townships over weekends.

Another challenge is licensing of one’s business.

Sizwe Nzima, who runs Iyeza Express, has had to put on hold his plans to grow his logistics business—which delivers chronic medication to township residents using a fleet of bicycles—while he gets accreditation with the South African Pharmacy Council and a licence to run a courier business. Once he has accreditation from the

88 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A NOVEMBER 2015

A key challenge is that great ideas take time to be refined. To get one good idea, you often have to go through about 300.

council, he plans to offer delivery services to both private and government-run clinics, and to help courier companies extend their services to townships.

It is hoped the government’s new drive to support township entrepreneurs could help transform these areas. Yet, much of the government’s strategy to develop the informal sector focuses on unregistered traders and those in light manufacturing—through the provision of grants, business training and funding of new workspaces.

The Department of Trade and Industry’s National Informal Business Upliftment Strategy (Nibus) does not specify how entrepreneurs from both inside and outside townships can help develop new ways of dealing with specific issues. But the project manager of Nibus, Stephen Umlaw, stresses this does not mean such entrepreneurs will not be included in the department’s move to uplift townships. He adds that, for example, his unit is compiling a database of the innovative ideas that entrepreneurs have devised so far. He did not, however, reveal what the next step would be.

A key challenge, says Stuart Thomas, one of the authors of the Ventureburn survey, is that about 70% of startup founders come from corporate backgrounds and are therefore far removed from the poor and their problems. Connecting startups to townships, and teaming township residents with support centres that encourage innovation, could help entrepreneurs in their efforts.

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Next

The Great Innovation Frontier

Walter Baets

Let the god of Profit step aside I N T H E B U S I N E S S O F TO M O R R O W, W E N E E D TO T H I N K B I G G E R — N OT O N LY I N T E R M S O F E X PA N S I O N B U T H O L I ST I CA L LY I N T E R M S OF PURPOSE

T

HE CATASTROPHIC PLUNGE of the Volkswagen

share price—following news that the automotive legend has been systematically gaming the system and faking measured emissions of nitrogen dioxide—is yet another cautionary tale of capitalism gone awry. More specifically, it is a tale of wasted opportunity and innovation failure.

Given the degree of ingenuity required to develop special software that closed down nitrogen dioxide emissions during tests and fooled American regulators, I can’t help wondering if the culprits had put as much energy into actually solving the problem of emissions, what the outcome might have been.

At the risk of sounding like Pollyanna, it is worth focusing on the right things in business—by which I mean things other than profit. And when it comes to innovation, you just may be rewarded. And not merely with good returns but with a business that is more sustainable in the long term.

A recent longitudinal study from Harvard and London Business School—which compared 90 American companies that took sustainability seriously with 90 that did not—showed that over 18 years, the 90 committed to sustainability delivered annual financial returns 4.8% higher than those that did not. The reason for this, they hypothesised, is not because doing the right thing would be rewarded per se (now that really would sound like Pollyanna), but because in order to deliver sustainably, they had to organise themselves around a core purpose and then embed checks and balances to keep themselves honest. This included factoring in outside stakeholders with whom they checked their strategy, and inserting metrics beyond share price in their reporting measures.

A focus on sustainability worked for these companies in the longer term, in part because they were able to attract better human capital, establish more reliable

90 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A NOVEMBER 2015

Imagine what Volkswagen could have achieved if it also committed itself to a more sustainable future for itself and the planet?

Or what about just being honest with its customers and stakeholders?

supply chains, and avoid conflicts and costly controversies with nearby communities. This in turn allowed them to engage in more product and process innovations in order to be competitive under the constraints that the corporate culture places on the organisation. Purpose and sustainability are, it seems, good for innovation.

By contrast, in traditional firms, the authors wrote, “executive compensation based on short-term metrics may push managers toward making decisions that deliver short-term performance at the expense of long-term value creation.” Sound familiar, Martin Winterkorn? Imagine what Volkswagen—a company with a great brand and engineering excellence—could have achieved if it also committed itself to a more sustainable future for itself and the planet? Or what about just being honest with its customers and stakeholders?

In the business of tomorrow, we can’t underestimate the role of values and purpose as a key driver of sustainable success. We are living in the “shift age”: a term coined by futurist David Houle, where change is the new normal. And in these times, it is not enough simply to be faster, better, cheaper; we need to think bigger—not just in terms of expansion but holistically in terms of purpose.

A strong purpose can act as a compass for business (as in life) in chaotic times. It can keep us oriented. It can assist leaders to match the need to the possibility, knowing when to commit resources for the right purpose. Without it, we can lose ourselves and run the risk of barrelling forward without ever asking where our path leads.

The issues at stake may sound abstract, but purpose is ultimately very concrete. The success of every aspect of business depends on a search for meaning. Archbishop Thabo Makgoba, who teaches a course on the role of purpose in leadership at the UCT Graduate School of Business, says: “We are all searching for meaning. We are all looking for dignity.” If a product or service does not offer meaning, or does not add to the purpose and dignity of the consumer’s life—and to the lives of the people who are producing it—it will have a limited shelf life.

Robert Haas, former chairperson and CEO of Levi Strauss, sums it up: “A company’s values—what it stands for, what its people believe in—are crucial to its competitive success. Indeed, values drive the business.”

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 and 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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I T IS MORE THAN A M AG A ZINE, I T'S A MOV EMEN T The Digital version of Fast Company South Africa is now available on Apple iPad and Android tablets

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

Top honours in advertising The King James Group has been named African Advertising Agency of the Year at the annual African Cristal Festival. Held in Morocco in October, the event brought together African and international experts to celebrate exceptional work produced on the continent.

In addition to this coveted title, the King James Group walked away with a further nine awards across three client brands and the following five categories:  Johnnie Walker’s The Gentleman’s Wager took Gold in the Integrated category as well as Gold and Silver in Digital & Mobile.  Santam’s One-of-a-Kind TV commercial was awarded two

Silvers in the Film and Press categories.  Sanlam Woordfees snatched Silver in the Outdoor category;  Sanlam’s Genius TV commercial received two Bronze awards in the Film category.

 Sanlam Idols brought home

Bronze in the Digital & Mobile category.

“Being recognised as the leading agency on the continent for the second year is a fantastic

DOING GOOD—NOW MADE EASIER The City of Tshwane has launched an initiative known as Tshwane forgood on the Tshwane Free Wi-Fi content portal, W W W.T O B E T S A . C O M , in partnership with Project Isizwe, the social startup forgood, and nonprofit Happimo. Tshwane forgood is an online platform that connects citizens who want to volunteer time or donate goods with registered and vetted non-profit organisations. It makes finding ways to give back quick, easy, fun and free: All users connected to Tshwane’s free Wi-Fi can browse and use the forgood platform ( W W W. F O R G O O D . C O . Z A ) without their daily browser limit being affected. The City of Tshwane aims to create a more tolerant and inclusive society, and bridge the economic gap between the haves and the have-nots. “It is another example of how the City of Tshwane is using technology to improve the lives of residents,” says Kgosientso Ramokgopa, Garth Japhet (left) and Andy Hadfield, executive mayor. founders of the social startup, forgood

92 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A NOVEMBER 2015

achievement for King James Group. We are most proud of the fact that these accolades were picked up for work done on our large and long-standing client brands,” said James Barty, King James Group CEO.

VOLVO SETS THE PACE The all-new Volvo XC90 has been selected as one of only 12 finalists in the 2016 Wesbank/South African Guild of Motoring Journalists Car of the Year competition. With the sole aim of rewarding automotive excellence, the jury will score each finalist against its direct class competitors on a number of aspects. The 2016 winner will be announced at a black-tie event on March, 8. Since its initial reveal in August 2014, the luxury Swedish SUV has received worldwide recognition for its innovative approach to design— interior and exterior—and its groundbreaking approach to in-car control systems and connectivity features with its Sensus technology.

Two of the Volvo XC90’s most recent accolades are a Top Safety Pick+ rating from IIHS, and a five-star rating in Euro NCAP.

Fast bytes

Cyberattacks on the rise

CAN’T TOUCH THIS NASA has found strong evidence that water flows on the surface of Mars. But we can’t go near these streams while the Mars rovers are collecting data, the digital news outlet Quartz reports.

Curiosity is unable to climb the steep slopes where the darkish streaks may indicate water flow. Even if it could, it’s not allowed to, according to the 1967 United Nations Outer Space Treaty, which lays out the rules for space exploration: It should be conducted in such a way as to avoid contamination from Earth life. “Our current rovers have not been sterilised to the degree needed to go to an area where liquid water may be present,” explains Rich Zurek, a scientist on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft team. There’s hope, however: “The rovers have been sterilised for their particular landing sites where there’s been no evidence of present-day liquid water,” he noted.

“To go to the [water flows], rovers will be required to be sterilised to a higher level. We also take samples of microbes that may be on the spacecraft before they’re launched, so we can compare with any future discoveries.”

Worldwide, entertainment and media companies are increasingly becoming targets for cybercrime as cybercriminals find new and innovative ways to defeat security measures and controls, according to research carried out by PwC. “The theft of content from an entertainment and media company—be it data, email or any other vital intellectual property—can severely undermine an organisation’s reputation and revenues, and ultimately even destroy a business,” says Vicki Myburgh, PwC entertainment & media leader for southern Africa. “Their protection should no longer be viewed as a function of IT; it should be seen as a priority of the board—and placed high on the agenda.”

GREEN ENTREPRENEURS BLOSSOM The winners in The Green City Startup—a competition with a R5-million prize purse, aimed at unearthing creative green entrepreneurs whose ideas could help boost Johannesburg’s green culture—were announced in September. An initiative of the Green Challenge Fund, the contest was developed by the City of Joburg (CoJ) in partnership with the University of Johannesburg and Resolution Circle (the CoJ’s technology commercialisation company and incubator). The CoJ sought ideas that could change the world and accelerate innovation in the city.

Eighty-six proposals were reduced to eight finalists, who received R250 000 to build a prototype of their ideas, and were offered in-depth technical support.

They presented their prototypes and businesses to a panel of judges including an independent team of entrepreneurs and technical experts.

WINNERS (FROM LEFT TO RIGHT)  Gabriel Ally, GezaJozi — e-Trike R 3 0 0 0 0 0  Paseka Lesolang, WHC — Leak-Less Valve R1 MILLION

 Yolandi Schoeman, Baoberry — AqueouSphere

Floating Treatment Wetland Islands R 3 0 0 0 0 0  Sean Moolman, PowerOptimal R 5 0 0 0 0 0

EMPLOYEE (DIS)ENGAGEMENT THE SOUTH AFRICAN WORKFORCE IS FEELING UNINSPIRED;

they don’t feel they are being communicated with effectively by their senior managers, and are distrustful of the little information they do receive.

This is according to the latest State of Employee Engagement in South Africa survey, run by Public Display Technologies. The 2014 Deloitte Human Capital Trends South Africa report highlights trends that should be top of the agenda for HR and company execs with respect to people development.

This includes leadership, retention, diversity and inclusion, as well as capability and talent acquisition.

STATISTICS of respondents in the 2015 Employee

Survey feel their manager 35%  Engagement or direct superior inspires them. of company execs feel their direct

lead by example and 77%  superiors communicate goals clearly.

senior managers believe improved 0%  ofcommunication is required. the ordinary workforce is looking for 73%  ofbetter communication from managers.

 Only

3 10 out of

middle managers and staff said regular feedback was received.



7 10 out of

executive managers felt performance was openly discussed and shared with staff.

NOVEMBER 2015 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A 93

Fast Events Upcoming events Fast Company will be attending

TEDxPretoria Date: 12 November Time: 08h00–18h00 Location: The Innovation Hub, Science and Technology Park, Brummeria, Pretoria www.tedxpretoria.com T H E M I N D - S H I F T I N G S H O R T-TA L K P H E N O M E N O N TED returns to Pretoria for a day of disruptive ideas and bold new voices C H A L L E N G I N G A B U S I N E S S - S AV V Y A U D I E N C E T O R E B O O T T H E I R T H O U G H T S A N D A C T I O N S to meet the needs of the future. T H E T H E M E F O R T H I S Y E A R ’ S E V E N T I S M O V E M E N T —personal and social, mental and physical—and exploring the importance and impact of radical ideas and FA S T C H A N G E I N A N A G E O F U P H E AVA L .

Appsafrica.com Innovation Awards 2015 Date: 16 November Time: 07h00–23h30 Location: Cape Town, TBC Appsafrica.com The Appsafrica.com Innovation Awards 2015 C E L E B R AT E T H E E N O R M O U S G R O W T H I N M O B I L E , T E C H N O L O GY A N D E N T R E P R E N E U R S H I P I N A F R I C A . Innovation knows no borders, and Appsafrica.com rewards positive impact in 1 0 C AT E G O R I E S F R O M V E N T U R E S T H AT C A N C L E A R LY D E M O N S T R AT E I N N O VAT I O N U S I N G M O B I L E O R T E C H to meet the needs of any African market(s). The awards evening, kindly supported by Mobile Monday South Africa, will take place in Cape Town with K E Y I N D U S T RY P L AY E R S F R O M M O B I L E , T E C H A N D I N N O VAT I O N F R O M A R O U N D THE WORLD. 1 0 AWA R D C AT E G O R I E S

1. Best disruptive innovation 2. Best mobile innovation 3. Best non-data mobile innovation (using SMS/USSD/ IVR) 4. Best African app 5. Best fintech innovation 6. Best health innovation 7. Best educational innovation 8. Social Impact Award 9. Best entertainment innovation 10. Women in Tech Award

Startup Grind Cape Town hosts Kevin Vermaak Date: 16 November Time: 18h30–21h30 Location: Townhouse Hotel, Cape Town www.startupgrind.com Startup Grind is a global event series and community D E S I G N E D T O H E L P E D U C AT E , I N S P I R E A N D C O N N E C T L O C A L E N T R E P R E N E U R S . Each month, an amazing speaker shares his or her story and tells the audience what worked, what didn’t, and what he/she would do differently next time. I T ’ S A G R E AT O P P O R T U N I T Y T O L E A R N F R O M T H E B E S T, N E T W O R K W I T H O T H E R M E M B E R S O F T H E S TA R T U P C O M M U N I T Y, A N D I M P R O V E Y O U R C H A N C E S O F E N T R E P R E N E U R I A L S U C C E S S . Kevin Vermaak, a University of Cape Town electrical engineering graduate, founded the Cape Epic—routinely referred to as “the Tour de France of mountain biking”. His vision was to create the world’s premier mountain bike event and to set a new benchmark for the sport.

94 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A NOVEMBER 2015

Fast events

2015 Ericsson AHUB Date: 17 to 19 November Time: From 09h00 Location: Cape Town International Convention Centre ahub.comworldseries.com C A L L I N G A L L T E C H S TA R T U P S , I N C U B AT O R S , E N T R E P R E N E U R S , I N V E S T O R S , O P E R AT O R S A N D D E V E L O P E R S ! AfricaCom 2015

brings you its latest invitation-only, grassroots, community-driven feature: the Ericsson AHUB, the destination for A F R I C A’ S L E A D I N G T E C H E N T R E P R E N E U R , D E V E L O P E R , V E N T U R E C A P I TA L I S T, O P E R AT O R A N D V E N D O R C O M M U N I T I E S . In partnership with Africa’s leading incubators, accelerators and innovation hubs, the Ericsson AHUB will S H O W C A S E TA L E N T, FA C I L I TAT E PA R T N E R S H I P S , A N D E N C O U R A G E I N V E S T M E N T A N D I N N O VAT I O N —in a sector that has an abundance of ICT tech skills but little industry support.

Freebie Friday Workshop: Boosting Your Personal Brand Date: 20 November Time: 10h00–12h00 Location: Shift ONE Training Academy, Eden on the Bay, Big Bay C U LT I VAT I N G A P E R S O N A L B R A N D B U I L D S C R E D I B I L I T Y F O R Y O U R B U S I N E S S and allows you to showcase what makes you special. Take charge of your life and discover the K E Y S T O B O O S T I N G Y O U R P E R S O N A L B R A N D .

UX Conference Cape Town Date: 24 to 26 November Time: 08h00–17h00 Location: Atlantic Imbizo, Clock Tower, V&A Waterfront www.uxsouthafrica.com This conference aims to R A I S E AWA R E N E S S A R O U N D U S E R E X P E R I E N C E A N D B U S I N E S S I N T E G R AT I O N in South Africa.

During this second Cape Town conference, there will be E I G H T I N T E R A C T I V E W O R K S H O P S E S S I O N S W I T H 2 2 L O C A L A N D I N T E R N AT I O N A L S P E A K E R S .

Venture Network Date: 25 November Time: 18h00–20h00 Location: Johannesburg Woodmead Country Club Estate venturenetwork.co.za P O W E R I N G I N N O VAT I O N A N D E N T R E P R E N E U R I A L N E T W O R K S , Venture is a free entrepreneur meet-up with innovative startups, L E A D I N G A C C E L E R AT O R S A N D I N F L U E N T I A L I N V E S T O R S A L L U N D E R O N E R O O F . The evening I N C L U D E S P I T C H E S , D E M O S , N E T W O R K I N G A N D TA L K S .

NOVEMBER 2015 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A 95

One more thing

Let me pay for it WITH ALL THE CONCERN ABOUT A TECH BUBBLE B U R ST I N G A N D D E A D U N I C O R N S , I H AV E O N E B I T O F A DV I C E T H AT CA N F I X E V E RY T H I N G

B

USINESS LEADERS OF the future and future funders of those leaders, I have one request: Please take my money.

I insist. I want to offer you my money in exchange for your services. Maybe you’ve heard of this: It’s called capitalism. I’m tired of you telling me my money is no good; of you refusing to entertain the possibility that I may explicitly value your service. Mostly I’m talking to you, Internet businesses.

For too long, people have embraced the compromised notion that free is not just an acceptable price but also the optimal one. Investors have clamoured that user growth, not revenue, is what matters. Because why monetise now when you can figure it out later? And we, the people—readers, viewers, members and users—have thought we were getting a great deal.

We’ve paid—with information and tracking and invasive interruptions. (I’m shaking my fist at you, Ethan Zuckerman, inventor of the pop-up ad.) We’ve paid with delayed service updates and poor communications and ignored pleas. We’ve paid with services vapourising because they wanted to build an audience before building a business.

We’ve paid by failing to notice that we are not the customers.

The customer is the advertiser, the data miner, the bigger fish to come along and acquire the assets of a promising young company

Baratunde Thurston

that cashed out, offering us as the asset.

By refusing to turn users into customers, many of these companies have a confused loyalty. Paying customers can demand refunds. They can organise their money with that of other customers and demand improvements. It’s called accountability.

I want your incentives to grow to be aligned with me, not some third party paying you to snitch on me.

Private company valuations are so chimerical in part because there’s rarely a financial relationship between the business and its users. We invent these proxies for value such as time spent on a site or the number of sunset photos uploaded. Do you know what’s easier to count than all that?

Money. I value those great sunset pictures, but can I exchange them for online photostorage space? Does Amazon accept hugs as payment?

Not every service should be delivered solely on the basis of a person’s ability to pay. Healthcare is one example. Some types of education and housing qualify too. For certain classes of services, we are all customers and we should all contribute. It’s called taxation, and we are living another myth in thinking that we can stop paying that money and still maintain the relative quality of communal services that sustain our society. Even Donald Trump understands that. We’ve been sold a false sense of ‘free’ in both business and government.

I implore you, experimental entities masquerading as financially sound businesses: Take my money. I don’t just want to be your user, a term that implies subservience and substance abuse. I want to be your customer. I want to be your primary source of funding rather than a series of investment rounds.

You may think me old-fashioned to bring up this idea of money and customers in a business discussion, but lots of things are making comebacks these days: mohawks and neon-coloured clothing and nationalism and vinyl records. Let’s bring customers back too.

Baratunde Thurston is the author of The New York Times best-seller How to Be Black and CEO and co-founder of creative agency, Cultivated Wit. He is also a supervising producer for The Daily Show with Trevor Noah on Comedy Central, where he oversees digital expansion.

96 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A NOVEMBER 2015

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