Built by someone who lived it.

My first safari was Kruger, age ten, crammed into a VW Combi with my parents and grandparents. My dad calling out bird names through binoculars out the window. My brother, sister and I, climbing between the seats every time something moved in the bush. Safari has been in my family for three generations. It is not a vertical I chose for business reasons. It is where I come from.

I did not take a straight line into this industry. I started in restaurants, got poached into cruise sales, then talked my way into Flight Centre after sneaking a competitor's brochures onto their shelves. That job taught me one thing above all else: unconventional thinking beats a bigger budget every time.

Rani Resorts came next, running their groups and incentives division. I learned to sell experiences, not just beds. I convinced Endemol Global to shoot Celebrity Survivor on one of our private islands. I designed a custom incentive game played on traditional Mozambican dhows. I also met my wife there, which tells you everything about how much I loved that chapter. What it taught me: the more memorable you make something, the easier it is to sell.

A decade in technology followed. I spent years building systems, including one for one of Africa's most prestigious safari collections that transformed how they handled direct bookings. I was not in the industry I loved, but I was learning that the right system changes everything.

While heading digital marketing at that collection, I started to see something clearly. Influencer marketing was not a gimmick. Done properly, it was the next frontier. Real people telling real stories to audiences who trusted them. My dad always said people buy from people, and in a world filling up fast with AI-generated content, I believed that more than ever. Africa especially. There is no place on earth with more extraordinary stories to tell, and I wanted to make sure those stories were being told by the right people, to the right audiences, in a way that actually did this continent justice.

If a collection of this calibre was getting it wrong, every lodge in Africa almost certainly was too. It was time to build something that could help all of them.

Not likes. Not reach. Bookings.