I received an invite to try out the a mobile app, Spot, which is still in Beta. It aims to be a Venmo-like alternative. I got a great response from the Spot team and I’m proud to be the winner of “most engaged inactive user” award ???? I think there’s room for peer-to-peer settlements in South Africa, but with the current legislation that states all of these sorts of...
Excerpt from a mailer that went out this week (not composed by me): #StartUp Christmas was conceived by Jens (Shopstar), Alex (StoneTree) and Werner (PayFast) over a glass of wine at an end-of-conference party. Conversations, which started with the classic “Sjoe! What a year its been!“, ended with a serious discussion on how to best bid it farewell. The biggest challenge –okay...
Companies send out two very distinct, very different types of emails (or at least, they should). Transactional (or business) emails relate to the specific individual: welcome emails, invoices for payment, lost password requests, scheduled system downtime and the like. Marketing (or newsletter) emails relate to things that the individual might find interesting such as new features, opinion...
Big platforms (and companies) don’t always play nicely together. Google is the search engine superpower in the one corner, Microsoft is the hardware giant in the other corner (in South Africa, at least). Why you should consider Bing Ads Despite your spiffy company Macbook Air running the latest version of Chrome (with Google set as the default search engine), most of your...
I like crowdfunding. It usually removes friction, barriers and middlemen and matches demand with (sometimes only perceived) supply. Crowdfunding, thus far, has mostly either been for products (you send us $99, we’ll send you a smartwatch) or for donations/social causes (let’s raise money for an animal shelter). These two (product crowdfunding and donation crowdfunding) have already...
I made a cheeky little website a few weeks back to give a quick answer to all the bitcoin naysayers, who are all predicting an imminent crash. I present: So, Has Bitcoin Crashed Yet? Visit it at: For what it’s worth, I’m a borderline-naysayer as I don’t think that Bitcoin is currently a viable, stable crypto-currency (and I’ve sold all the coins I purchased early in 2013)...
Scenario: I’m walking down the street, trying to get in touch with a recommended restaurant to see if they have space available. Expected user experience: Do a Google search for the number, find it, tap it, call them (and hopefully find a table). Search, find, tap call. Actual user experience: Using my smartphone, I did a Google search for their name, found their website and tapped through...
How not to run email marketing I’ll preface this post by saying that this isn’t a stab at any of the people or companies mentioned in this case study, but rather a post that highlights some mistakes made by companies (big or small) and how to improve things. I’ll also say that bad design (and development) of websites and emails drive me up the wall (I registered the domain yourwebsiteisshit.com...
Formerly Business Development and Marketing at Luno (where we went from eight nerds in a tiny office to hundreds of people spread over three continents) and before that Marketing at PayFast. Currently a full-time nomad, learning, running long distances and doing research, mostly in Mexico.