MXit needs no introduction .You all know, love and use it constantly (apparently 200 million messages are sent per day!) The user base is over 4.8 million and there are about 9 million log-ons per day!

It is the virtual shopping mall where you meet your friends; discuss movies, boy/girlfriends, fashion or anything else that you might have on your mind. All you need is your cell phone. No wonder you are called the ‘thumb tribe’.

Meet the mastermind behind your favourite activity, Herman Heunis. HIP decided to tap his brain for more exciting ideas to use as our own (moo-ha-ha-ha!) No, not really…we did want a few pointers on how to go about realising an idea, though…

HIP: How did you first get the idea for MXit?
Herman: I was fixing a flat tire on my motorbike in the Namib Desert, far far from civilization, then…Just joking! This is actually a long story.

I think I was on a plane in 2002 or 2003 coming back from Singapore or China (not sure) and I was playing one of the onboard games – the one with the cars.  I started thinking that it would be nice if a large number of people could play against each other in something like a treasure hunt, using their mobile phones.

When I arrived in South Africa, we started developing the game – an astral one where 1 million people could play against each other.  It was a really cool game concept – you had limited energy and one week to find a hidden planet and numerous energy sapping objects to avoid.  It also had a web interface – so during daytime you could steer your spaceship by phone and at night from your PC (if you had a PC). Players could talk to each other and exchange all sorts of information.

The game was based on the use of SMSs and we were trying to find sponsors to make the SMSs free or almost free in exchange for advertising. Needless to say – that did not work. GPRS was not there yet and so very disappointed and disillusioned, we parked the game.

Then a few months later we decided to use some of the code as an SMS bulletin board where users could post messages and that idea eventually became MXit – where users could talk directly to each other, not through a game or a bulletin board, but directly. At that time GPRS had just been released in South Africa by the networks and we launched MXit as a free service in May 2004. The rest is history

HIP: After the initial epiphany, how did you go about to making the dream a reality?
Herman: Wow – you are using big words here – e p i p h a n y!! (What the heck does it mean? :-))

We worked day and night; we had a fantastic vibe as a small group of only 8 people. We spent a lot of money buying servers and bandwidth and we all believed in one dream – MXit WILL work and it will be a success.  Needless to say, we became very good friends with some of the banks and I think they all prayed for us every night that we would not die before our debt was paid off :-)

HIP: Any words of wisdom for all the young entrepreneurs out there?
Herman: There are so many things to say but if I have to highlight one, that really makes or breaks entrepreneurs, it is the word “experience”. Not as in when you gain a lot of experience after many years of working. No, experience as in how someone feels from buying and using your product.   Many businesses fail because the ‘experience’ they give their customers is not a good one. They overcharge them, they are rude and unwilling to help, they provide inferior products, they are dishonest and many other things. The client is king and if you want to be successful, make sure the client recommends you all the time – it is so easy to do.

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