Adii Pienaar

I've previously written about equal (50-50) partnerships in startups and this is something that I hold close to my heart. I have however developed a slightly different view on equal partnerships...

I recently read Jason Cohen's post on sacrificing your health for your startup and thereafter I read his wife's response. I could've potentially had quite a few, valuable take-aways from those two posts, but the thought that kept lingering in my mind was: I probably wouldn't have gotten very far in my professional career if it wasn't for my wife. Let me explain...

My priorities have changed. With a 2-month-old baby in the house, I've had my routines ripped to shreds and my previous priorities questioned. My life has changed, for the good.

During the last 2 months, I've continued to work and have been working on some of the most exciting stuff that I've ever been part of. I haven't been as productive as before and I've had no work routine. But I've generally managed to get things done, with the to do lists ticking over on a regular - albeit slower - basis. There is however no way that I would've been able to do this without my wife. 

See: my wife is amazing. This isn't me playing to gender stereotypes either. She's taken charge of our baby, sacrificed her own job (Jeanne has her own, boutique legal firm) and on top of that, she's managed to "indulge" me during my more difficult times on this startup rollercoaster. When I've been irrational or impulsive, Jeanne has had the time / patience / wisdom to slow me down and knock some (proper) sense into me. She's also been there to celebrate my victories along the way. And most of all, she just "gets" me and understands the awesomeness & challenges that are linked to being an entrepreneur.

She's done all of this whilst in the background there is an actual needy baby that has required so much more of her time & energy.

I don't think the nitty-gritty is important and it's even less important for me to figure out how Jeanne (and other women / wives) do this. All I know is that without Jeanne, I'd mostly be Adii Flopstar. Somewhere within our marriage & relationship, we've found a very unique blend of a partnership. If I had to formalize that on a shareholders agreement of sorts, it would probably look very similar to an equal partnership as we mostly know it.

At the very least, 50% of my success can be contributed to my wife's super-human ability to support, encourage, listen, understand, challenge and coach all at the same time. And then she probably deserves an extra couple percent for being a mom and the CEO of RockstarHQ on top of that.

(If I had to pick another title for this post, it could've been "An Ode to my wife".)

I'm contemplating doing more mentoring for startup founders, entrepreneurs or anyone else in our space, who feel that they could benefit from my experience in setting up a new business. I think I've got a lot to share and I'd love to be in the position of helping out other entrepreneurs if I could.

So I've got the idea of running a workshop of some kind, where I would sit down with a handful of smart people and cover a couple of applicable topics in a session of a hour or two. Depending on how much time I have to develop content for the workshops, I'd expect a whole "course" to run across 3 / 4 weeks, with one session a week (in the evenings most likely).

Workshops to be held in Cape Town only.

If this is something you'd be interested in, please drop me an e-mail on adii[at]radiiate.com or using the contact form above. (I'm just trying to gauge interest before moving ahead on this.)

As we'd all expect: having a new baby changes your life. I guess that bit was expected for me and I kinda settled into my own comfort zone of perceptions during Jeanne's pregnancy last year. What I didn't expect is how this would completely change me.

I'm typing this with Adii Jr strapped to me chest in his sling; "we" (it took me a little while and 2 cups of coffee longer) have been up since 5:30 in what has now become our default morning routine.

If you told me before Adii Jr's birth that I'd be waking up at 5:30 / 6:00 every morning - without the option to sleep in every now & again - I would've scoffed at you. I've always been an early riser, because I love the first 2 / 3 hours in the morning for productive work, but being my own boss I also had the option of sleeping in if I needed or wanted. 

The thing that has however surprised me is how these couple of hours every morning have become one of the most special parts of my day and if I didn't get that time to spend with Adii Jr, then I feel a little bummed throughout the day. There's just something special about peering down to my chest to see a beautiful baby peacefully sleeping, whilst I catch up on everything that I didn't get to work through the day before.

These are new emotions & experiences to me and what it's made me realize is that my work-life balance has been mostly crap in the last couple of years. It always felt that I needed to run from the one to do, to the next and it even sometimes felt that "time at home", "go out with friends" etc. felt like to do's rather than stuff that I wanted to do.

I'm slowly learning that sometimes it is okay for me to just spend time with Adii Jr: no computer, no iPhone, no TV. I'm learning that slowing down is a good thing and that I don't need to compromise on my ambitions & dreams to be able to do that.

Every now & again, it's okay to just take a moment, spend it with someone special and truly cherish it without having to worry about the next item on the to do list.

In the past, I've been very critical of (some / most, but not all) South African startups that tend to work on ideas that are either a poor man's version of an existing (international) product / service or just completely lacks any kind of quality. Stumbling onto new startup, MoneySmart, has restored my faith in my fellow countrymen.

I've not even got to the point where I've signed up and used the product, but everything else just oozes quality: the design on the sales page looks quality, the sales video is nicely done and previewing bits of the UI via the feature tour makes the product look mightily inviting. If it wasn't for the .co.za domain or the fact that they just support South African banks at this stage, I wouldn't have known it is a South African startup. This is actually something that I might use myself.

This has always been something that I've tried to do with WooThemes: create an internationally recognized product, whilst still being proudly South African. Fact is that I designed & developed the first product (which eventually lead to the creation of WooThemes) from my small apartment in Stellenbosch whilst I was studying. Yet very few people - and I'd bet a fair chunk of change that 99% of WooThemes customer - know that we've been born & bred in South Africa.

So what's the lesson here? Make quality shit and always aim to be on par internationally with the quality of your design & code.

I'm 26 years old now and ever since I can remember, computers have been billed as "the next big thing" in the way that we will integrate it with our daily lives. And so it has too; computers are being used by more people, doing more different things than they did at any given stage in the past.

In the last couple of years, the internet has taken over that moniker from "computers". We've seen platforms like Facebook, Twitter & Foursquare that have managed to integrate itself into our daily lives and actually change some of our social behaviour. For just a minute, consider how much time you spent online and how much of that time actually applies to physical, real-world stuff that you're doing: communicating, shopping, doing business etc.

One thing that is changing at a rapid rate at the moment, is the attractiveness of the internet to the mainstream masses. Before some of the things that the early adopters were doing online, were considered too "geeky" for the Average Joe Public. It kinda felt like if you were working online in some way, then you'd be the only type of person interested in some of these products & services. But this perception has changed significantly, since new online(-based) ventures have started to disrupt traditional industries. 

Seeing Uber, the luxury, personalized car service, raise another $32m in funding reminded me of how many great new ideas are truly disruptingthe  traditional status quo for transportation. I'm then quickly reminded of Hipmunk, who has done the same for travel booking, and AirBnB, who have revolutionized accommodation. This is online in the wild.

I'm excited to see this trend continuing and see a few more traditional industries disrupted.