What happens when a respected framework forces you to look at your own business differently?
Michael Jordaan's four rules for fintech success offered a useful reminder that growth often comes from applying old principles to new opportunities.
The Savage Take is where EasyEquities CEO Charles Savage shares what he’s seeing, learning and thinking about each week, in markets, business and the bigger shifts shaping how people build wealth and ownership.
Michael Jordaan spoke at the RMB Think Summit last week.
Michael is a friend, an investor in Purple Group, and someone whose thinking I have learned to pay attention to over many years.
When Michael talks, I take notes.
Not because I always agree with him.
But because he has a habit of reducing complicated things into simple truths.
This time he outlined four rules for building successful fintech businesses in Africa.
As I read them, I found myself doing what most CEOs probably do when they encounter a framework they respect.
I held it up against my own business.
To see where we were falling short.
Because the real value of a good framework is not that it explains your successes.
It exposes your blindspots.
And as I worked through Michael's four rules, I realised something.
The biggest challenge facing EasyEquities today is not strategy.
The strategy is largely proven.
The challenge is whether we have the discipline to keep applying the principles that got us here as we enter the next phase of growth.
Michael's first rule was simple.
Build for the device people already own.
Don't build for the customer you wish you had.
Go to the channel they are already using.
That idea sits at the heart of EasyEquities.
The Fractional Share Right was never primarily a technology innovation.
It was an accessibility innovation.
The insight was simple.
Almost everyone starts in the same place.
Small amounts of capital.
Limited knowledge.
Uncertainty.
The industry had spent decades building products for people who already understood investing and already had money to invest.
We tried to build a product for people at the beginning of the journey.
People with small amounts of capital looking to invest in things they did not yet completely understand.
The result was the ability to start investing with as little as R1.
Not because R1 changes your life.
Because getting started might.
The same thinking drives many of our partnerships today.
Capitec
Discovery Bank
Satrix
Telkom
And now GCash in the Philippines.
Rather than asking customers to come to us, we go to where they already are.
The strategy works.
The evidence is clear.
Yet the blindspot may be hiding in plain sight.
Through our partners and platforms we now have access to well over 100 million potential customers. Today, just over 1.245 million of them are active clients.
That is an extraordinary achievement.
It is also a reminder of how much opportunity remains.
The channels exist.
The trust exists.
The product exists.
The opportunity remains vast.
That is not a strategy problem.
It is an execution challenge.
Michael's second rule was equally compelling.
Don't try to become the institution.
Become the capability.
The thing behind the institution.
The thing that solves a problem others cannot or do not want to solve themselves.
EasyEquities has always embraced this philosophy.
We never set out to become a bank.
We never set out to become an insurer.
We never set out to become everything to everyone.
We set out to solve a specific problem.
How do you make wealth creation accessible to ordinary people?
Over time we have expanded.
New products.
New partners.
New markets.
But the principle has remained remarkably consistent.
Build the capability.
Partner with trusted institutions.
Focus on what you do exceptionally well.
Let others do the same.
That sounds almost obvious.
Yet many businesses lose their way precisely because they cannot resist becoming more.
More complicated.
More sprawling.
More distracted.
Michael's second rule is a useful reminder that scale does not require owning everything.
Sometimes scale comes from becoming exceptionally good at one thing and allowing others to build on top of it.
That is the model we chose.
The challenge now is not proving it works.
The challenge is executing it at a level worthy of the opportunity in front of us.
Michael's third rule may have been my favourite.
Design for the constraint.
Don't wait for the constraint to disappear.
Africa has a way of teaching this lesson repeatedly.
Infrastructure constraints.
Trust constraints.
Education constraints.
Regulatory constraints.
Economic constraints.
Most people see those as reasons something cannot be done.
The best entrepreneurs see them as the reason something should be done.
The Fractional Share Right emerged from a constraint.
Our partnership model emerged from a constraint.
Our focus on simplicity emerged from a constraint.
Over time those constraints became advantages.
Because solving hard problems creates barriers that competitors cannot easily replicate.
The danger comes when success makes you believe the hard part is over.
It never is.
The next decade of EasyEquities will not be defined by the constraints we have already solved.
It will be defined by the new constraints we choose to tackle next.
International expansion
New products
New markets
New challenges
The principle remains the same.
Solve the constraint.
Do not wait for it to disappear.
Michael's final rule was perhaps the most important.
Keep the economics radical.
At first glance that sounds like a statement about pricing.
It isn't.
It is a statement about market size.
Businesses built on thick margins often end up serving small markets.
Businesses built on thin margins can serve very large ones.
The opportunity in Africa has never been the wealthy few.
It has always been the millions of people excluded by traditional economics.
EasyEquities was built on that belief.
The goal was never to extract more value from fewer investors.
The goal was to create more investors.
Lower barriers.
Lower friction.
Greater participation.
Because when the market is large enough, scale becomes more powerful than margin.
That is not just a pricing decision.
It is a strategic decision.
It shapes the customers you serve.
The products you build.
The partners you choose.
And ultimately the size of the opportunity in front of you.
Radical economics are not about charging less.
They are about believing the market is bigger than most people think.
The danger in business is not forgetting what worked.
The danger is forgetting why it worked.
Those are very different things.
EasyEquities was never supposed to remain a single-product business.
Our clients do not have a single financial need.
They invest.
They save.
They retire.
They protect.
They build wealth across different stages of their lives.
Of course we need more products.
Of course we need new solutions.
Of course we need to expand.
But expansion is where many businesses lose their way.
They become attached to the path that made them successful rather than the principles that did.
The path changes.
The principles endure.
Working through Michael's framework this week brought that into focus.
The future of EasyEquities is not about repeating the last twelve years.
It is about applying the same thinking that built the last twelve years.
Meet people where they already are.
Work through trusted partners.
Treat constraints as opportunities.
Keep the economics radical.
Again.
And again.
And again.
For every new product.
For every new partnership.
For every new market.
For every new customer.
That is how EasyEquities went from R1 billion in assets on platform in 2016 to more than R100 billion today.
Not because we found a formula.
Because we found a set of principles.
We sometimes talk about growth as though it requires something new.
A new product.
A new market.
A new partnership.
Sometimes it does.
But sometimes growth is simply the result of doing a better job inside the opportunities already in front of you.
Today, through our partners and platforms, we have access to well over 100 million potential customers.
We serve just over 1.245 million active clients.
Less than two percent penetration.
Which means the greatest opportunity in front of EasyEquities may not be the one we have not found yet. It may be the one we have already found.
The next chapter will require us to go deeper into the opportunities already in front of us.
Capitec
Discovery
Satrix
Telkom
GCash
But it will also require us to go wider.
To solve more financial problems.
To serve more needs.
To help more people build wealth in more ways.
The challenge is not choosing between depth and expansion.
It is pursuing both without abandoning the principles that got us here.
The next R100 billion will not come from repeating the products that got us here.
It will come from applying the principles that got us here to the problems we have not solved yet.
After nine consecutive weeks of gains, markets finally took a breath.
A stronger-than-expected US jobs report reduced expectations for near-term interest-rate cuts and pushed bond yields higher. Investors responded by taking profits in many of the technology and AI stocks that have led markets higher for much of the year.
The result was the sharpest sell-off in US equities since October, with the S&P 500 falling 2.6% on Friday and the Nasdaq losing 4.2% as investors reassessed both valuations and the likely path of interest rates.
Despite the pullback, the broader picture remains largely unchanged. Markets remain near record highs, economic data continues to show resilience, and investors remain focused on one dominant question.
What happens next in the Middle East?
Progress towards a lasting peace agreement with Iran would likely support further gains across global markets.
A deterioration in relations would almost certainly have the opposite effect.
For now, markets remain optimistic.
But they are no longer complacent.
|
Asset |
Close |
|
S&P 500 |
7,384 |
|
Nasdaq |
25,709 |
|
Dow Jones |
50,867 |
|
JSE All Share |
111,275 |
|
Gold (USD/oz) |
$4,366 |
|
Brent Crude (USD/bbl) |
$93.09 |
|
USD/ZAR |
R16.55 |
People often talk about success as though it leaves a recipe.
Follow these steps.
Apply this framework.
Copy this playbook.
Repeat.
I have never been entirely convinced.
Success feels less like a recipe and more like a witch's cauldron.
You spend years adding ingredients.
A great product
A trusted partner
A talented team
A little luck
A lot of hard work
Patience
Timing
Persistence
Culture
Hundreds of decisions that seem insignificant at the time.
One by one they go into the pot.
Then one day something shifts.
The magic starts to happen.
Not all at once.
Not perfectly.
But enough for you to know something real has started.
The mistake many people make is assuming the last ingredient was the important one.
It never is!
The magic comes from the combination.
The interaction.
The accumulation.
The thousands of things working together.
That is why success is so difficult to replicate.
Not because the ingredients are secret.
Most of them are hiding in plain sight.
The challenge is creating the conditions where they can work together.
Perhaps that is the real job of leadership.
Not protecting the outcome.
Protecting the process.
Protecting the ingredients.
Protecting the principles.
Because when the magic happens, it is never because of one thing.
And when it disappears, it is usually because we stopped paying attention to many things.
The world is not waiting. What you do next is the only thing that matters.
Stay Savage,
Charles
The Savage Take is published weekly.
Opinions are Charles Savage’s own. Not financial advice.
Any opinions, news, research, reports, analyses, prices, or other information contained within this research is provided by an employee of EasyEquities an authorised FSP (FSP no 22588) as general market commentary and does not constitute investment advice for the purposes of the Financial Advisory and Intermediary Services Act, 2002. First World Trader (Pty) Ltd t/a EasyEquities (“EasyEquities”) does not warrant the correctness, accuracy, timeliness, reliability or completeness of any information (i) contained within this research and (ii) received from third party data providers. You must rely solely upon your own judgment in all aspects of your investment and/or trading decisions and all investments and/or trades are made at your own risk. EasyEquities (including any of their employees) will not accept any liability for any direct or indirect loss or damage, including without limitation, any loss of profit, which may arise directly or indirectly from use of or reliance on the market commentary. The content contained within is subject to change at any time without notice.