Koos Bekker

Mind Your Business ebook short

Theo Vorster

• Publisher: Jonathan Ball
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781868426621
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Entrepreneurship
• Index: Business

Advice from South Africa's top business leader, Koos Bekker. Part of an ebook short series extracted from Theo Vorster's Mind your Business. The inspiring success story of Koos Bekker, founder of M-Net and chief executive of Naspers. Theo Vorster is a co-founder and chief executive of Galileo Capital. He is a regular market commentator on RSG's Geldsake programme and a weekly guest on kykNET's breakfast programme Dagbreek.

CHAPTER 38

Koos Bekker

FOUNDER OF M-NET AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF NASPERS | Interview broadcast on 14 October 2012

Koos grew up on a maize farm near Heidelberg (Gauteng). He studied Law at Stellenbosch University and completed his LLB degree at the University of the Witwatersrand. After obtaining an MBA degree from Columbia University in the United States in 1984, he joined M-Net on his return to South Africa. In 1997 Koos was appointed chief executive of Naspers, a position he still holds today.

My interview with Hendrik du Toit, chief executive of Investec Asset Management, took place a few days before I was due to interview Koos. When I mentioned to Hendrik that I would be talking to Koos later that week, he remarked that Koos was, in his view, South Africa’s greatest entrepreneur and our only real media and technology entrepreneur who can hold his own among the best in the world. According to Hendrik, Koos would be acclaimed much more prominently if he were not so strong and successful in the media industry; the other media groups in the country are all envious of his success, and his own group doesn’t want to create the impression that they are trumpeting his achievements too loudly.

Before the interview, I was asked whether I knew what KSS stood for. Well, right at the start Koos made it clear that he wanted us to move from the venue that had been prepared for the shoot to a more informal venue – which was indeed done, because Koos Says So!

I started by asking him about his LLB degree and why he decided so soon after graduating not to pursue a legal career. It was when he started working as a public prosecutor in Soweto and had to deal with domestic violence cases, Koos explains, that he discovered he didn’t like the court milieu. ‘I like people who are happy and who build things, and business attracted me – I don’t know why.’ No one in his family had ever worked in the business world or studied in a business-related field. ‘It was only really after starting to grapple with it that I realised I like the rhythm and the problems associated with business.’

Koos was newly married when he decided to do an MBA course at Columbia University in the United States. What prompted him to take this big step, he says, is that the MBA concept had basically originated in the United States and the best business schools were there. Studying at a top American university proved more demanding than what he had been exposed to in South Africa. Koos recalls that, during his first semester in a statistics class, it suddenly hit him that he was the worst-performing student in the class. ‘I was right at the bottom, and the reason was, of course, that there were 50 extremely bright people in the class; you had to give your all just to pass the course because all 50 were trying to pass. So America helped me to sharpen up.’

When he looks back today, and also taking into account the world we now live in, would Koos still encourage young South Africans to go to the United States to study for an MBA? Definitely, he says with conviction. ‘To understand your own country you have be outside it for a while, a...

Table of contents

• Description
• About the author
• Dedication
• Foreword
• Koos Bekker M-Net, Naspers
• Seven golden rules for success
• Copyright