4. Justin Stanford
Founder, ESET Southern Africa and 4Di Group
Just a kid in a garage who wanted to be taken seriously
In the early years of ESET Southern Africa, the young entrepreneur realised that in order for the business world to take him seriously, he had to seem much bigger than he was (which was a kid working from a garage.)
“I was doing research for my only client, testing security tools for them, and I came across ESET, a small Slovakian company. The user interface was bad, but the tech was phenomenal. I knew there was huge potential, and so I contacted them. Without mentioning that I was alone in a garage, I told them I was an Internet security firm in South Africa, and that I was really impressed with their tech. With some tweaks, I thought it could be a great fit for our market, and we quickly struck a deal.”
He found an intern (Carey van Vlaanderen) who would work for free, and the two worked out a system.
“We had a decent website, and all of our business was online. When we got a call though, we would put the person on hold and put them through to the ‘department’ they wanted, which was really just me handing the phone to Carey.”