Your peers challenge you and force you to think differently. So it’s important to keep interacting with them, keep debating with them and, most importantly, keep relationships early on, you will gain a competitive edge over people that focus solely on academics.

In what way does your qualification relate to your work, whether directly or indirectly?

In the greater scheme of things having a degree or qualification has affords you many options. So my degree has given me the background knowledge in my field along with so many unexpected soft skills that have given me managerial grounds to grow in.

What are the key skills that have been useful in your career journey so far?

One of the major skills that has contributed to our success thus far has been communication. Understanding how to communicate with other people is critical. Building a business is all about relationships, and relationships are built on trust and communication. Knowing what to communicate, how and with whom has helped us in pitch competitions, investor meetings and partner discussions. We have gotten it wrong in the past and will definitely get it wrong in the future, but we learn from each encounter and continue to move forward.

What are your day-to-day activities?

The best part of running your own start-up is that you own your time. This can be seen as a sense of freedom, because you can work whenever and wherever. But in reality, we find ourselves working much longer, and getting paid less than any of our peers. Regardless, it is worth it because we are pushing our own vision and our own dreams. Nothing could be better than that. The challenge ties into the best part of being in a start-up. Because every day is different, it’s difficult to have a sense of stability. Having “unlimited freedom” means that you need incredible discipline if you want to get your company to go where it needs to go. It’s the discipline required to keep pushing 12-16 hour days, while also exercising, meditating and taking care of yourself on a minuscule budget.

How did your extra-curricular involvement while at UCT add value (transferable skills) to what you offer the world of work?

It’s important to realise that although students gain a lot of knowledge from their courses they do, they learn even more from their peers. Your peers challenge you and force you to think differently. So it’s important to keep interacting with them, keep debating with them and, most importantly, keep relationships early on, you will gain a competitive edge over people that focus solely on academics.

Do you have any advice for a new graduate entering the world of work ( e.g. how to develop skills while at university?)

Things don’t go the way you expect. We multiply whatever we think something will cost, or the time something will take by pi, because the future is hard to predict. I wish I knew that the soft skills of communication, presentation, time keeping, discipline and self care is a lot more important than many of the “hard skills” that we were trained in.