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The Alan Knott-Craig MXit interview

Published by on Nov 29th, 2011, 16 Comments

Alan Knott-Craig is likely the most talked about local Internet entrepreneur at the moment. After his tenure as MD of wireless Internet provider, iBurst, Alan moved to Stellenbosch and started a mobile applications investment company. Enter World of Avatar, consisting of approximately 14 mobile related businesses, some of which were launched and incubated from within WOA while others were acquired.

Then Alan made his boldest move yet – he met with Herman Heunis, founder of South Africa’s most popular social network, MXit, and convinced him to sell. The acquisition was widely covered and the price was said to be a massive 9 digit number.

Some say Alan bought a technology past its prime with the likes of BlackBerry’s BBM and Whatsapp enjoying huge growth on smart phones. Alan saw it differently. With the next billion or two of the African population not even connected to the Internet yet, there is huge scope to provide communication tools to ‘feature’ and ‘dumb phone’ users. However, they aren’t overlooking MXit for smart phones and will aim to release a new version – said to be a game changer – in April 2012.

Alan Knott-Craig is a deal maker and with a huge community as bait, has set out to close several deals that will continue to drive MXit’s growth and revenue. Recently he setup an embed deal with Opera and has several similar deals in the pipeline.

MXit plans to focus on its core strength – instant messaging. Alan notes that they are well aware that its current ‘API’ is not up to scratch (it’s considered to be more like a C# SDK) and they intend rebuilding it from the ground up. This will allow third party developers to build games, apps and other value adds on top of MXit. Alan has hired COO David Weber to head up the API rebuild – David previously helped Herman evolve the MXit core.

In the interview Alan shares MXit stats including the size of the active user base versus the total base of 45 million plus users, and the fact that MXit generated just below 20 billion messages in October. We discuss the success of their virtual currency Moola, the future of MXit on smart phones and their new developer API.

Alan notes that ‘the ship has sailed’ for entrepreneurs looking for investment or a possible acquisition from WOA. They realise the task at hand “we took a pretty big bite” to turn MXit into a globally relevant business. He has however concluded a few deals since the MXit acquisition, for instance investing in Joe Botha’s new startup, Trust Fabric, which we exclusively covered on Bandwidth Blog.

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Comments

  • http://twitter.com/shotbeak Simon de la Rouviere

    I am really looking forward to the improvements, especially in terms of the user experience.

  • Preshengovender69

    mxit hsa gone to the dogs there are only gay and people selling naked picture for airtime

  • Kevin

    ah so you either gay or a $lut or both

  • Bla

    I’m not sold by this “mobile entrepreneur” who rides on his daddy’s coat-tails.

    The move from a suit to a T-shirt i.e. accountant to techie is even less convincing.

    Pretender at best.

  • Sdg

    not the most convincing leader, definitely doesn’t instill confidence in the brand. If I was a shareholder in Mixit, I’d be worried.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Jenna-Crystal-Gordon/529545224 Jenna Crystal Gordon

    How does Mxit compare or better itself with the likes of BBM and WHATSAPP, if your phone is able to download WHATSAPP. why choose mxit?

  • Charl Norman

    This is the question on everyones mind. I think MXit are aiming to target a different market. The users that not online yet – those that are connecting to the internet via dumb or feature phone for the very first time.

    Also as Alan notes in the interview they plan to release a totally overhauled version of MXit for smartphones in April. But you are right, the smartphone IM battle will be a tough one.

  • Herman

    This says a lot about what Alan thinks about his dev’s at Mxit…

  • Charl Norman

    Why?

  • Ozzy

    Not a very likeable character.

  • http://twitter.com/shotbeak Simon de la Rouviere

    MXit is probably one of the only IM services with an actionable community. The people who use MXit and not whatsapp or BBM use it for the chatrooms and extra services. You can’t meet people on whatsapp or bbm.

  • Ant469

    Must be nice to have daddy bankroll everything and then being idolised for your “wonderful entrepeneural spirit”. Please, anyone with a rich daddy can become a wonderful entrepeneur!

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Ntombiziyabusa-Bhengu/599444615 Ntombiziyabusa Bhengu

    Stupid comment. A persons background has no bearing on their entrepeneural spirit.

  • Can you fly bobby.

    absolute crap.

  • http://twitter.com/TheRealRafiek RafiekTheReal

    if you have a springboard you can see the sharks from above. the rest of us have to swim with the sharks. obviously daddy’s money and experienced advise adds to it.

  • http://twitter.com/LFM86 Linda Faith Mtambo

    Dude…So what if he got a helping hand from family (if  he did). Is that illegal, moral wrong?? If you cared much for the purpose of WHAT he’s doing you’ll soon realist its pretty freakin superb for SA and Africa. 

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