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| Premium wireless telephony offers so much more than old-fashioned landlines. Here we have a webcam's live video feed streaming onto our receptionist's touch screen display on her office phone. Have you taken your phone to the Cloud yet? |
Our company started in a coffee shop. Visit Coloroso coffee shop in Meade Street, George - and you will always find a selection of businessmen who are meeting to discuss some idea or project. It seems there is always someone demonstrating something to a customer or a partner on an iPad, or pointing to a graph on a laptop.
I had been frustrated by bad connectivity on the Garden Route for years. When I sold my previous business I was left with a few months to decide what I wanted to do next. I really did not feel like being bound to a traditional office environment again. I was looking for something new. I wanted my office to be wherever I was.
But there was a problem. Connectivity in George as slow and expensive, and aside from cell phone telephony, communication was still land-based. I wanted a customer to phone a switchboard and reach me on my cell phone as a phone extension, just as if I was in the office next door. Added to that, I have always been techno-fascinated. I like information. I consume large amounts of it. I needed a next generation of connectivity. Unfortunately that kind of solution did not exist.
I had been discussing this problem with everyone who had ears to listen. Even though the terms were hardly known back then, what I really wanted was cloud connectivity - and cloud-based telephony. The technology itself wasn't new. It had all been done before. Just not in our local market. I knew that if I wanted it, others would want it too. I knew it so strongly that I could not stop thinking about it.
One afternoon I meet for one of our friendly technology talks with one of the most experienced brains in the local IT industry. Francois Redelinghuys had been involved in wireless communication since the early days when he pioneered a long distance wireless solution between international drilling platforms at sea. And he had by far the most knowledge and experience of wireless telephony. He was also a businessman who had an unusually good imagination.
As we drank our Coloroso's superb South American coffee, we kept pouring out our frustrations.
"The market is being screwed," Francois grumbled.
"I know," I replied. "We all are. Why isn't somebody doing anything?"
I hesitated for a while and then pitched a question that had long been on my mind.
"Don't laugh now," I said, "just hear me out before you say something, even if it sounds dumb."
Francois listened keenly. I still remember it well because that conversation became engraved on my mind later. I have replayed it many times since.
Then I asked: "If money or regulatory restrictions were not an obstacle, what would it take to somehow uninstall and fix the internet, and then roll out something that would be of international standard?"
Francois thought it over for a while, and then gave a surprising answer: "You needn't even go that far. The essentials are already in place."
I smiled. Francois smiled. And then we finished our coffee.
That might have been the end of that matter as many brainstorming sessions go. But ideas are like stars. Some streak through the night and leave but a brief show of light before burning out into a puff of gas. But some ideas are destined to live. They are the ones who actually reach earth and sometimes punch great big craters into the landscape. Two days later Francois called.
I can still hear his voice: "I have been thinking about it. We can do it..."
That is how our company started. Over a cup of coffee.
Since then, we have rolled out the most sophisticated network on the Garden Route, offering by far the fastest and most stable connectivity available. And it is delivered at the lowest cost in the market. We built the business on one pivotal principle: Give the market the kind of deal and the kind of services that we would have wanted ourselves. And that has worked ever since.
So where does a business that started over a cup of coffee end up one day? The sky is no limit. We are living in times of opportunity. It is a time in which the world is thirsting for ever more advanced ways to communicate and use the internet.
We still brainstorm business ideas at Coloroso. And there is no doubt that coffee will continue to fuel them to higher and higher levels. Beyond the stratosphere of today's limitations lie the stars. And we aim to be among them for a long time to come.
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