Technology has taken over in several sectors, but it’s not just about incorporating tech in your business, but how well you can leverage this medium to scale and gain resilience in all aspects.
Daniel Novitzkas and Jacques Jordaan built Specno to help businesses achieve these and much more. Their vast experience in innovation, venture building and the entrepreneurial space enabled them direct Specno towards helping technology startups grow seamlessly, build digital products, and drive corporate innovation.
Explaining how they have done these and navigated through challenges successfully, Daniel Novitzkas, also the CEO of Specno, had a Q&A session with TechEconomy.ng
Could you please explain what Specno stands for?
Founded in 2018, Specno helps startups, businesses and large enterprises validate, design and build their app ideas. In 2022, the company was recognized as the top-rated app development and user-experience agencies in South Africa.
As one of only (and leading) venture builders in South Africa, Specno is unique in that we blend startup theory with business models used by UX agencies, development houses, venture capitalists, and accelerator programmes, to ensure that our clients build not only world-class products but highly sustainable and scalable businesses.
The pandemic period is always one to remember. Lots of businesses closed down, while others encountered slow growth. But Specno achieved a consistent annual growth rate of 230% year-on-year. How were you able to pull this off?
We have been studying strong cultures from Silicon Valley, namely Netflix, Google, Amazon and Valve, and have adopted many of their practices for how to build high-performance teams.
What sets us apart is that we acknowledge that we might fail anyway, so let’s risk failure and adopt Silicon Valley’s approach to talent management and transparency, and create a culture of freedom and responsibility where people feel like owners of the business.
With everyone feeling like they were owners, we were able to take advantage of the chaos that COVID-19 brought and I think we captured a lot of market share in this way. We are now under pressure to maintain our culture and growth as we continue to scale.
These days, lots of people are either scared of starting a business or you find others running into one for purposes best known to them. From your expertise in building high-growth startups, what are the approaches that must be put into consideration before saying it’s a go?
Well, starting a business is basically saying go, and just the learning that goes into getting the business to a point of generating revenue counts as starting. For me, education is key, where how quickly people want to build their business is a direct result of how much they are willing to learn, and how much time they are willing to spend executing.
A lot of people want to start a business, but very few people engineer their lives to accomplish their desires. Setting small achievable goals and spending time learning and implementing – those are the ways you start a business. I also believe a lot can be picked up on the go, and I think people can change. Many entrepreneurs who make it through Y Combinator are surprised to find themselves as business owners, they just want to build something that solves a problem, and that’s what business is at its core.
During the process of growing Specno, what were the initial challenges encountered and what are the new challenges that rose after much success?
Specno gets much of its competitive edge by hiring mostly young people, who bring an eagerness, determination and open-mindedness to problem-solving which is vital to understanding and developing world-class solutions to complex challenges.
However, young people inherently lack extensive experience and wisdom, which is needed when trying to scale your company. As Specno has grown – and as our teams have grown to include older and more experienced staff – our biggest challenge has been ensuring that our youthful spirit isn’t lost.
How have you been able to navigate through these challenges?
To maintain a youthful energy, we’ve taken inspiration from the likes of Google and created a flexible and more informal working environment. Staff are allowed to determine their own working hours and locations, we provide free meals, snacks and entertainment, and our offices are littered with scooters and skateboards which team members can use to commute from one part of the office to the other.
In this way, it’s all about removing friction and making the office a space where people are excited to visit. Instead of making it a space where people feel forced to sit for hours, we’re trying to give them everything they need to live a happy and healthy life – one where coming to work is easy and leaves them feeling energized.
What does failure mean to you and how would you help other founders overcome the fear of failure?
Failure is missing your target/goal without learning from the situation. If you view building a business as the ultimate opportunity to learn, then it’s very difficult to “fail” as each instance where you receive a different outcome than the one expected is an opportunity to understand why the outcome was different and make improvements that allow you to be more accurate or successful the next time.
I would also say that failure is an inability to remove your ego from what needs to be done. Entrepreneurship is an internal battle, and if we can’t overcome our own insecurities, our own need for control, or the need to be right, then it’s very difficult to build a successful business. You need to be comfortable trusting others and trusting the process.
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