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Cape Town – South African entrepreneurs are respected internationally because of their internal resilience to work hard and succeed, according to a rising global tech leader.
Having developed Striata from a garage start-up to a global tech company, Striata CEO Mike Wright praised South African entrepreneurs.
“There is a dogged respect for the fact that we just keep going,” he said. “We have an internal resilience because of our South African roots.
“We come from the tip of Africa, segmented from the rest of the first world economies,” he said.
“We have to try harder to actually make it work. We put in the hours and the effort and really do the hard yards and that earns a certain amount of respect.”
WATCH: See who Striata CEO Mike Wright rates as leading SA entrepreneurs in the world
Praise for the early pioneers of the internet in SA
Specialising in digital message design, generation, delivery and storage, Striata now has operations in New York, London, Johannesburg, Hong Kong, Sydney and partners in North and South America, Africa, Europe and Asia Pacific.
While Wright has hit the big time, he doesn’t forget the small players in South Africa that got his company off the ground. He especially praised South Africa’s internet solutions businesses.
“Those were guys who were patching together little routers and modems and figuring out network protocols that nobody else had done in an environment where they didn’t have access to the greatest and latest technologies.
“They did a fantastic job and ensuring the South African market was able to keep up pace… very closely behind everyone else.
“It meant that we were able to develop these businesses that depended on connectivity to live and breathe.
“There is a lot of kudos that has to go to … the early pioneers of the internet in SA for enabling us to actually build these businesses and broaden out and go global.”
