Founder: Stefano Sessa (co-founder)
Venture: Panacea Mobile
Website: www.panaeamobile.com
When I first started Panacea Mobile I thought of the world as a place where ‘it’ was wrong and I was right. Now I know that is the truth. Kidding.
Although I am kidding (and I really am), the fact is that if I had a different attitude I don’t believe that we would have been stupid enough to start a company in such a mature market.
When we started Panacea Mobile we were probably a little naive to think that we could successfully become the largest SMS Aggregator in South Africa by volume. But this is what we thought nonetheless. AND we succeeded in less than 5 years.
Please don’t get me wrong, I fully believe that equipping yourself with enough knowledge and insight into the industry you are entering is a vital function of becoming a successful entrepreneur. At the same time however when things do change, they can change fast, and with that change, opportunity is born. It takes a fast mover to seize opportunity, and as they say, the first mover wins, ceterus parabus. Regardless of your experience; by that law, you will win.
I received a call from a UCT MBA class the other day, wanting to scrutinise our ‘innovative’ business, asking questions and dissecting the various decisions we had made along the way to become successful. My first retort was that SMS is hardly innovative and that if they wanted to offer an MBA level presentation of an innovative business they should probably look for a company that has changed the way in which people transact or live their daily lives.
I’m glad that they didn’t listen to me. The fact that we went through this process made it abundantly clear that Panacea Mobile was, in fact, a very innovative business. An innovative business selling an already commoditised product.
What we discussed was the ways in which we seized certain opportunities to create valuable sources of income. As a business we focussed heavily on platform integrations and 1-to-many relationships to drive sales. As our own sales effort was sub-par, teaming up with strong sales enterprises gave us the end-user sales that we required.
We moved from being a SMS Gateway to being a fully integrated technology provider, scooping up the SMS Gateway business along the way. We were out-moving our competitors by a mile, all the time.
The point I am trying to make here, without delving into detail, is that our business was so innovative in its core. Everything from the way our technology was built to the way our business models were formed and adapted along the way was innovative.
Had we not jumped into the market the way we did we would never have been exposed to the various gaps within the market, and we would never have been given the opportunities to develop the innovative business models to plug them.
This sounds like luck, which to a degree it definitely was. However, your chances of luck increase the more opportunities you face. It is imperative to put yourself in the way of luck if you wish to be lucky.
Being a founder is an opportunity in itself, and with a bit of persistence, innovative thinking and a supportive team, I believe that a business could succeed regardless of your entry point.
Today Panacea Mobile terminates 200 million SMS’s per month, and growing.
I remember the days when we sent 1 million a month, like it was yesterday. I treasure those days, as those are the days from which you personally grow. I am equally excited for the next wave of startup days in my new venture, sure to offer equal amounts of emotional turbulence from which to build a long-lasting business.
Stefano is a co-founder of Panacea Mobile, which he co-founded with Donald Jackson in 2010 and sold to Blue Label Telecoms (JSE:BLU) for an undisclosed amount.