'It's courage to persist that counts' - Meet innovation mastermind Russel Luck
CAPE CHAMBER: You have UCT and Unisa degrees – BA, LLB, and Law Masters. You were also involved with TAC and Legal Aid. Was your choice of tertiary education related to an interest in social justice? Or did you have other reasons for studying law?
RL: My choice in tertiary education was shaped by youthful ignorance more than anything else. I matriculated at 17 and had no idea what I wanted to do or where life would take me. The education system in general is flawed / favours children who have the luxury of good mentorship because young people are forced to make choices about tertiary education with significant life consequences at a stage in their life when they have no knowledge of the world around them or of themselves. My passion was poetry and creative writing. If the imperative of financial security finishing leaving school at 17 wasn’t a factor, I probably would have become the most prolific poet the world would never have wanted to read.
Jokes aside, upon reflection, my father was a famous attorney and my parents divorced when I was young, choosing law was definitely shaped by a desire to be closer to my father. After commencing my legal studies, I really enjoyed it and excelled. My early life around my father and his friends (mostly brilliant attorneys) enabled me to instinctively navigate legal thinking.
CAPE CHAMBER: Clearly you also have an interest in technology? Was this always the case? How did this come about?
RL: Growing up, I hated technology and was passionate about Martial Arts and poetry and creative writing. My creativity empowered me to see gaps and opportunities which others overlooked. Technology law was not a "legal specialisation" when I started and a Masters in technology law wasn't offered by UCT or Stellenbosch at the time I pursued my LLM in technology law. I read articles about an American Wallstreet banker who left his job to start an online bookstore in a new retail field called “e-commerce”....and the banker was successfully competing against the erstwhile giant Barnes and Noble – which I found fascinating.
That banker’s name was Jeff Bezos and his obscure bookstore is not so obscure today. Observing this e-commerce anomaly in America as it unfolded, I took a gamble that legal services (which inherently gravitate towards business needs) would eventually require experts in the uncharted field of technology law. At the time of pursuing my LLM in technology law, it was dismissed as a bizarre faux field of legal expertise. Despite the scepticism, I’ve always believed you can’t beat the market and used basic principles of economics as my north star in all business decisions.
CAPE CHAMBER: Can you tell us about your early business life? What was your first job and/or business enterprise?
RL: As a student, I was a professional kickboxer and martial arts instructor while studying law. My first "real job" after law school was at an investment bank in London. I was the only South African in a pool of gradate trainees all aspirant of receiving a permanent position. I’m not naturally numerate and wasn’t educated at one of the elite Oxbridge institutions of my colleagues. However, probably through my Martial Arts background, I realised early in life that a deficit in natural aptitude can always be remediated by extreme effort – if you’re resolute enough to sacrifice for the achievement. Of the approx. 20 graduate trainees of our intake, I was offered a permanent position after the program and a job with JP Morgan – the holy grail for young graduates in the early 2000s. What looked like a major victory was actually my first failure in my business life. I was completely depressed and discombobulated after my time in banking and was forced to re-assess my understanding of the world and linear perspective of a win/lose continuum. Extremely valuable experience.
CAPE CHAMBER: Were you a pioneer in this field in SA, or were you able to learn from other trailblazers?
RL: I was a pioneer in the field
CAPE CHAMBER: Did your work take you up-country? Have you always been based in the Cape?
RL: Yes, after qualifying in Cape Town, I moved to JHB where I worked as part of a legal team that did all the legal work for Microsoft Africa.
CAPE CHAMBER: What was your big ‘break out’ in business? Was it linked to one particular company and was it linked to a particular market need?
RL: I don’t believe in "big breaks" because success isn’t final and failure isn't fatal.... it’s courage to persist that counts. Every day requires maximum effort to sustain incremental improvement. There's no "one moment" that made us successful and if we ever took our eye off the ball, we'd move backwards as quickly as we moved forward.
In saying that – I’ve had many “big-breaks” along my business trajectory…
Off the top of my head - my team that makes the magic happen is a lucky break I’m incredibly grateful for, interpersonally the friends and family that supported me along my journey is a major factor. Aside from immediate family, my grandmother, aunt and uncle put disproportionate amounts of time and effort into me…I wouldn’t have been successful today without them. Having them in my life was a “big break” in life.
Our investors, particularly our Angel Investors, who took a huge 'risk on the jockey' and invested when we were pre-revenue – was another lucky break.
But my biggest break of all was marrying my wife, who is my personal hero, biggest supporter in challenging times and ineluctably accurate critic even when I don’t want to hear it!
Those were my “big breaks” in life, and our “big break” as SwiftVEE by extension.
CAPE CHAMBER: After your initial success, how did your career then evolve? I see you have founded multiple start-ups in the digital space; did you set out to replicate the success you had in one company by developing others? Did you spot digital opportunities in multiple sectors?
RL: There was no "initial success" I built an incredibly successful technology law firm and saw IBM Watson and A.I's development in 2011 and believed it would replace most jobs in the world, including legal jobs and everyone thought I was crazy. I hypothesized that AI would take most of the jobs in the world, but as populations rise, we'd need to produce food in greater quantities with less physical land with which to do so. Africa had the best prospects of solving this problem due its abundance of arable land and ideal natural environment
I proactively looked for opportunities in agriculture and saw cattle dying on the land during drought and thought this was a fragmented market problem which technology could solve
I spent 3 years doing R&D while practicing law to ensure online livestock trading would be successful in Africa
When we went live we grew over 100% year on year every year for five years, became Pan-African and then a global business.
But there was never "initial success".... there were three long hard years of practicing law to sustain the R&D without any tangible results to show for these efforts before we went live .
After go-live, traction was meteoric and beyond our wildest expectations… but it took time to get there.
CAPE CHAMBER: What is your take on AI? I’ve heard you speak about it being an advanced form of machine learning that has long been in existence. But would you agree we are now in unchartered waters so to speak?
RL: I believe AI is terribly dangerous and the economic drivers behind free markets are catapulting humanity towards consequences we’re not equipped to deal with and exist within. (But deeper discussion to validate this statement will have to wait for another time).
CAPE CHAMBER: Your companies now have international recognition. No doubt you set out to be successful, but have you been surprised at the extent of the recognition? Satisfying?
RL: I never set out to be successful. I set out to solve a problem and serve the market. I realised our solutions had wide-scale application in global industries and very few were truly innovating to solve these problems the way we do.
I try not to think about what we've done in the past or the size of our company today as it creates a mindset of complacency and inertia.
It’s only tomorrow that counts and incremental strides to improve and ascend the peaks of tomorrow that we focus on.
In saying that, yes, every day I wake up with mild imposter syndrome in disbelief at how far we've come and the incredible things we've achieved- all credit to the swiftVEE team, certainly not its CEO
CAPE CHAMBER: SwiftVEE would appear to have a social justice element in how it levels the playing field somewhat. Is social justice one of the motivating factors in your business drive? Are there other examples you could share about how this technology makes the world a better & fairer place?
RL: I’ve always believed that the narrative of "impact" and its articulation as separate from a "for-’profit” or “successful' business" is a misnomer.
All successful businesses create jobs, galvanize opportunities and propagate prosperity within society.
Swiftvee happens to be extremely credentialed for social impact with the recognition and awards from the UN / Gates Foundation, etc because the problem that we solve in fragmented markets is so acute and has such calamitous outcomes for Africa.
In drought, if buyers and sellers can't connect resulting in cattle dying on the land, the net outcome is unsustainable farming creating food insecurity, financial exclusion, poverty, global hunger
I’ve always focused on solving the problem, not the "sales-angle" ascribed to it. By solving fragmented markets, we solve many impact challenges of climate change, food security, financial inclusion, poverty mitigation... but this all stems from a more fundamental imperative of: Step 1 - solve the problem. Everything else will take care of itself after that
CAPE CHAMBER: And what is next for you? Can you share any future ambitions?
RL: Incredibly exciting things for the future, but we can't make any announcements yet. I'll share that these answers have been drafted on a flight in transit to America ...and we're aspirant of becoming a leader of technology innovation across global markets... so watch this space for some exciting announcements to follow soon!
CAPE CHAMBER: Starlink or no Starlink? Or something else? Where do you stand regarding the debacle over Musk’s efforts to enter the market?
RL: The recent Starlink repartee highlights the challenges of global market forces and domestic market imperatives. South Africa's government, like all others, can be criticized and commended with equally compelling arguments.
Starlink democratizes internet access and yet, due to various legislative machinery this opportunity is denied to South Africa's citizens
I am huge believer in the imperative to economically transform our economy and that we have lots of work ahead of us to achieve this. I’m sceptical if current legislation is the best way to achieve this.
The deprivation of Starlink is a cogent example of how regulations intended to transform our society obstruct the precise goals they purport to achieve.
To balance this statement, I think people underestimate the magnitude of the task at hand trying to transform our society.
It's always easy to criticize and much harder to actualize.
On a personal level, I believe free markets are the best catalyst to economic prosperity and this has been proven in multiple economies and diverse societies across Europe, North America and Asia. Socialism doesn’t have the same track record of creating societal prosperity. The goal is certainly to transform our society and we haven’t done well in this regard. However, if socialist directives are missing the mark, what’s to lose by implementing free market principles? I believe there is so much talent across South Africa and perhaps I believe in South African youth and their natural ability to excel more than some legislators by saying that free markets would create the social transformation we need more effectively than constraining free markets with socialist impediments. I’ll end with the caveat that I’m grateful not to be a politician or regulator and can answer the question with the privileged conjecture of someone whose opinion doesn’t matter.
Jacques Moolman
President of the Cape Chamber of Commerce and Industry