Sitting at the end of a gigantic, dark, wooden table, Brandon Leigh looks dwarfed in this empty boardroom. He tells of his early business days, where the boardroom was a very small table in a very large room. He tells of the day when he had to gather his six employees around that small table to inform them that the company was going bankrupt, and that there was no money to pay salaries. He tells how they said they didn’t care, that they wanted to stay and work for free.
This is a far cry from the young man sitting across the table now, the head of one of the most innovative companies in South Africa’s information and communication technology sector and the recent recipient of the Ernst & Young Emerging Entrepreneur Award for 2005.
Not that Leigh feels comfortable about the recognition. “I do feel uncomfortable about it,” he says, explaining that success at Leaf Wireless is a team effort. “Sure, someone has to steer the ship, but did Francois Pienaar win the World Cup on his own?” asks Leigh. “I mean, I won the bigger office by the flip of a coin,” he says — and he is not being flippant.
In the mid-1990s, Leigh, fresh from completing his engineering degree at the University of Cape Town, convinced his older brother Conrad, who was working for an animation company, that wireless technology was about to explode. Their first project, Mimic, was a real-time, voice-recognition programme for animation that was used by the SABC to create the children’s cartoon character Cassie. With the profits from this project, the brothers launched Leaf Wireless in 1998.
Early on, Leaf was offered the chance to join a group of companies as its research and development arm. But, as Leigh says, “it fell to pieces and we went bankrupt”. Leaf had three months to become financially self-sufficient. “We cut salaries, kept running and, luckily, my mom and dad agreed to bond their house to help us through that time.”
Leigh laughs, but you sense this was no laughing matter. “If I’d lost my mom and dad’s house, I wouldn’t have been that popular.” Since those days, Leaf Wireless has gone on to make R140million turnover in the past financial year, and is expecting to double its revenue this year. “We are on a big growth curve,” says Leigh, “and we are looking to grow the company in a big way over the next few years.”
Leaf’s core areas of expertise are developing and maintaining cellphone content, such as ring tones and games, and mobile transaction software for SMS interaction with, for example, banks.
Its first major contract was to develop a software programme that connects computers to the Global System for Mobile Telphones (GSM) network using SMS. Companies such as MTN, Virgin Mobile Australia and Netstar have used the software, which is known as Genius. It also forms the backbone for First National Bank’s InContact product, which informs customers via SMS when account transactions have taken place.
Since developing Genius, Leaf has expanded its business into other areas. It has been developing a wireless point-of-sale terminal in conjunction with Nedbank. “When the pizza guy arrives, you can pay by card,” says Leigh.
It has also recently signed a deal with EA Games to market games to play on your cellphone. “The gaming industry is bigger than movies,” says Leigh, “but people don’t realise it. It’s a gigantic industry.”
When quizzed about the reasons for his success, Leigh says one of the most important things to do is spend time understanding consumers. “When you get a digital camera, you take thousands of pictures, not just three; the whole mindset has changed. But if you don’t understand that the camera is enabling you to take an emotive action, then you won’t create the right camera,” he says.
Leigh’s other advice for budding entrepreneurs is to have the confidence to pursue ideas. “If you are constantly trying to win, the probability is that you are going to win,” says Leigh. There are a billion ideas out there. All it takes is the confidence to go and pursue them. “Don’t believe that you are something because you have an idea, you have to be able to execute that idea.”