Sunday, February 26 dawned, and no surprise for us South Africans. The Sunday Times headlines exposed yet another corruption debacle at a state-owned enterprise. Collins Letsoalo, acting CEO negotiated, demanded and pressurised officials at PRASA (Passenger Rail Authority of South Africa) to pay him a salary the previous disgraced CEO earned – a cool R3,5 million a year. An increase of 350%! Oh yes, and just in case that was not enough – throw in a personal chauffeur for him as well. 

 In 2014, The Wall Street Journal estimated that the cost of cyber-crime in the U.S. was approximately $100 billion. In 2015, the British insurance company Lloyd’s estimated that cyber-attacks cost businesses as much as $400 billion a year.

Beaten down and broken? Come back fighting. Entrepreneur, the gurus are right – plan, prepare for success, do the hard work, take on the problems, including underestimated budgets and the multitude of little and huge failures. It’s never an easy path, but to achieve anything worthwhile, never is.

My business partner uses the following phrase ad nauseam, “you don’t know what you don’t know.” It sometimes sounds like a pretty dumb phrase, but it’s actually true. Collaboration is about ‘what you don’t know and what others do know’ and how knowledge is pooled to make stuff better. And as you collaborate, not only will knowledge around the project grow exponentially, but so will your luck. Ours certainly has.

 Image: Cangro 

In my previous blog ‘Thank you, Donald Trump,’ I tried to understand Trump’s US-exclusive phrase and then it struck me, in South Africa, we are even worse off. Here’s why.