A Swipe at the big time

Cape Town - From a corporate tech leader to an entrepreneur with a vision to help create a platform for other businesses, Leo Redelinghuys has certainly moved into a position of exciting innovation.

Redelinghuys, a former general manager at Media24’s technology division Touchlab, branched out to form the tech company Swipe, which recently developed WeChatBuilder, an innovative business tool for the WeChat platform.

Only 14 years ago, Redelinghuys “hardly knew how to switch on a computer”.

Where it all began

“I didn’t really know what I wanted to study, but knew that I wanted to attend Stellenbosch University,” she said. “I had to study something, so being good at sport I decided on sports science - but actually I just wanted to play netball for Maties. After graduating I, like many of my peers, went into the recruitment industry.

“A large part of our business was placing developers in the IT industry, and this meant speaking to a lot of people in digital agencies,” she said.

“What struck me was that people in this field were doing amazing things and were always so friendly, while still working in a high pressure environment.”

The big move

In 2000, Redelinghuys’s friend suggested that she join the internet company where he was working.

“It was streaming sport scores over the internet, which intrigued me as it was sport-related and I really wanted to be part of this field,” she said.

“My job was to sell banner advertising to agencies, which was super challenging. You must remember at that stage the internet was still very new to South Africa.

“One of our projects was to build a website for [sports publisher] Touchline Media,” she said. “For the next seven years I naturally went into operations, and eventually my role was focused on both internal operations, managing a team of developers and designers, as well as external, managing client services for all our clients, which included Touchline Media, Samsung and Pick n Pay.”

From Touchline to Touchlab

After a brief stint at 24.com, where she focused on social media product development, Redelinghuys was appointed head of New Media at Touchline.  

“My role there resulted in me once again being approached by Media24, who wanted me to drive digital for the magazine division,” she said. “I worked with a great team of experts on SEO, social media, commerce, mobile and usability."

In 2010, with the release of the iPad, Redelinghuys founded Touchlab, where she was tasked with developing smartphone and tablet applications for Media24’s magazines and newspapers.

“I loved the fact that we were always able to contemplate what the future of media would look like, and come up with concepts that we thought would suit that future,” she said. “My time at Touchlab also introduced me to some incredibly talented people.

“While I was there we came up with several ground-breaking projects, including Lia, the corporate travel booking service, spree and the paywall strategy for Media24’s Afrikaans newspapers.”

Time to Swipe

Pfew, need to rest after that:) RT @swipect: The scrum board being updated with the next round of sprint tickets pic.twitter.com/H7JoFS59OS

— Leo Redelinghuys (@leored) May 13, 2014

After four years, Redelinghuys decided that she wanted to branch out on her own. “I am absolutely passionate about mobile, and so wanted to see just what I could do outside the media realm,” she said.

“Of course I needed a partner with an outstanding engineering record, and that was when I approached my business partner Deon Heunis to be Swipe co-founder.”

In the last four months, they secured a number of big clients, including WeChat, Primedia Broadcasting, localfair and Soccer Laduma!

“We have a relatively small staff quota of six engineers, but they have certainly punched above their weight in the few months we have been around,” she said.

- Fin24