On Building Something Durable in South Africa

Running a family business in South Africa in 2026 is an exercise in holding contradictions. You operate in one of the most challenging business environments in the world — load shedding, infrastructure pressure, skills shortages, a complex regulatory landscape — while also living in one of the most extraordinary places on earth.

The businesses we admire in this context are not the ones that pretend the difficulties do not exist. They are the ones that have built something durable anyway. Not despite the context, but fully aware of it.

What makes a family business durable is not what most business literature suggests. It is not strategic planning, though that helps. It is not access to capital, though that matters. It is something closer to a clarity of purpose — knowing what you are for and who you are for — that makes the daily decisions easier even when the environment is hard.

Hayshack exists because of things we care about: the quality of technology advice available to mid-sized South African organisations, the state of independent publishing in this country, the opportunity to use AI in ways that make genuine work easier rather than just cheaper. These are not market opportunities we identified in a spreadsheet. They are things that bothered us enough to do something about. AI Write My Book and Hayshack Press came from that last conviction.

That is the version of strategy we believe in for a business like ours. Not the five-year plan that becomes obsolete in month six, but the clear answer to the question: what would be worse if we stopped? If the answer to that question is something real, you have a reason to keep going that is stronger than any financial model.